“Who I am.”
I’d seen so many of my friends in the department struggle in their relationships, in their marriages, so many who’ve ended up apart, separated, divorced, alone. It’s the tired cliche of crime novels-the cop who struggles in a relationship because of-wait, here comes the big shocker-the pressures and obligations of his job!
Wow. What an unexpected plot twist that was.
Taci and I had talked about all that early on and I’d told her that if we ever came to the place where we were thinking about taking things to the next level, if it looked like I’d have to choose between her and the force, I would either leave her before we got serious, or I’d leave the force so I could be with her. And we had gotten serious. And she’d never asked me to choose.
And it didn’t even sound like she was asking me to do that now.
“Taci, if you’re saying my job is doing this, hurting us, I’ll quit.”
She shook her head.
“No. I mean it.”
“I know. But that’s not the thing.”
“Listen to me. I will. I love you more than-”
“It’s not you, Pat. It’s me. That’s what I’m trying to…It’s…me.”
Her words seemed like solid objects that were wedging their way between us, pushing us apart.
“How is it you?”
She touched away a stray tear and I wasn’t sure at all how to respond to that.
I asked the question I had to ask. “Is there someone else?”
She shook her head firmly. “No. It’s not that. There isn’t anyone. There’s never been. Not since we got together.”
“Then what are you saying?”
Then, like the proverbial floodgates opening, she finally told me what she’d come here for: “I was in the hospital yesterday, on rounds with my attending physician. I hadn’t gotten any sleep the night before and I was on my fourth or fifth cup of coffee, I don’t know. Well, the doctor, he asked how everything was going and I said good, that things were good, and they were…They are. But he could tell how both tired and wired I was. ‘Get used to it,’ he told me. ‘It doesn’t get any easier.’”
And with that, a weight lifted from my shoulders.
So that was what this was all about. Work had gotten to her. The long hours of residency and the stress of putting in twenty-four-hour shifts, hundred-hour weeks, that’s what’d brought all this up.
“But it will get easier, Taci. You know it will. When your residency is over.”
“Pat, that’s the thing. I don’t want it to get easier. I want it to stay the way it is. With the adrenaline and the hours, the stress, and the trauma of life and death right there in front of me every day. The rush. Living on that sharp edge. That’s what I realized when the doctor said that. I’m not made for having kids and going to soccer games and chaperoning field trips. I don’t want the weekends off to go antique shopping. I don’t want to come home to a safe little life every day after work.”
I stared at her. “And you think that’s how it would be with me? A quiet, safe little suburban life? Are you kidding me?”
“I’m saying I don’t have what it would take to make our relationship work. It wouldn’t be right to treat you that way.” She paused as if to gain the courage to go on. “You’d always be in second place. There. I don’t know how else to say it. I don’t want to hurt you. I’m sorry. It took me a long time to figure this out, I know it did. Too long. I’m really sorry. I am.”
I could feel the moment splintering apart like a piece of china that’d just been tipped off a table and shattered on the floor.
“I can’t change who I am,” she said, “and I don’t want to-and I couldn’t live like that, with the knowledge that I was holding you back from being loved like you deserve.”
“I’m a big boy, Taci. I can-”
“Don’t say you can handle it. Love isn’t supposed to be something that needs to be handled; it’s supposed to be the thing that helps you handle everything else.”
I had the sense that I was falling, that I’d just stepped off an escarpment and was now plummeting through a thin stretch of air toward the bottom of a cliff.
“I love you.” It was all I could think to say, words that I knew, even as I said them, weren’t going to change anything.
“Yes,” she said simply.
The whole conversation seemed surreal. Two people who love each other, two single, available adults who respect each other, who’re committed to each other and care deeply about each other and have been together for this long being torn apart by nothing more than uncertainties, priorities that might change over time.
At that moment I realized it: hope has the potential to dissolve right before your eyes. You can be looking at it, something golden and precious, like the way I felt when she was joking around with me when she first walked in here, and then suddenly it’s folding back into the air, leaving a dark trail behind-the dissipating smoke of the very things you used to gain strength from.
“Taci, listen, things have been crazy for us both lately. I understand that. But there’s no reason to-”
She clutched her purse in front of her now as if she was using it as an emotional shield. “I can’t.” And before I could stop her, before I could come up with anything to say that might salvage things, she rose. “I’m sorry. I just care about you too much to…to…Second place isn’t right. Not for you, Pat, not for anyone who’s in love.”
I stood up as well, tried to think of a way to talk her out of this, but no words came to me.
She made her way toward the door and slipped outside.
My feet seemed like they’d been rooted there forever. Go! If you just let her walk away, you’ll always regret it!
I hurried outside and made it to her car just as she was climbing in.
“Taci, please. Let’s talk about-”
“No, Pat. It’ll only end up hurting worse. Please.” These were the words she said as she closed the door. Then she pulled onto the road and drove down the street.
Those were the final words she said.
Of course every relationship suffers fractures. I get that. Of course they do, but people work through them, especially when they’re in love.
How is this happening? This cannot be happening!
But it was happening.
It had happened.
She turned the corner.
And then the woman I loved, Taci Vardis, disappeared out of sight.
51
As I returned to my car and drove to HQ, the questions hit me hard: How could she just let things end like that? Just abandon everything that’d been, the us we’d become, and say it was over? How can someone that important to your life, that central to all of your dreams and plans, so suddenly and unexpectedly walk away?
It happens every day, Pat. People break up. They divorce. Just like that. It’s over. All the time.
I thought it might’ve actually been easier if she were leaving me for someone else, but then it hit me that, ironically, she was leaving me so that I could find someone else.
And she was doing it because she loved me.
A tumble of clouds hung in the sky, lavender gray and still marred with the remnants of night. I left them, and the day they were ushering in, behind and rolled into the dark mouth of the police headquarters’ underground parking garage.
Ten minutes later, at my desk, I was trying to focus on the case, but it didn’t feel like I’d ever be able to concentrate on anything again, only that I would feel numb and distracted and full of unanswered questions from now on.
Ralph’s low voice rumbled through the room. “Just think…” I looked up. He was walking my way, holding up a manila folder. “As computers take over, there’s gonna come a day when these things disappear. Completely obsolete. Can’t wait for that.”
To me it seemed like the more we used computers, the more things we printed out. Manila folders weren’t disappearing at all from the department; they were multiplying like rabbits.