I glanced across the table at Jane. This was the first time we’d had a meal together in over a week. There were legitimate reasons — she’d had to see her mother; I’d had to take the car into Sears to have the brakes checked; she’d had to study at the library — but the real truth was that we’d been avoiding each other. Looking at her now, I realized I didn’t know what to say to her. Any conversation starter would be just that, a forced and awkward effort to initiate talk. Whatever rapport we had once had, whatever naturalness had previously existed in our relationship, seemed to have fled. What would have once come easily was now stiffly self-conscious. I realized that I was becoming as estranged from her as I was from everyone else.
Jane looked around the dining room. “This is really a nice place,” she said.
“Yes, it is,” I agreed. “It really is.” I had nothing to follow this with, nothing more to say, so I repeated it again. “It really is.”
The service was amazing. There was a virtual platoon of waiters assigned to our table, but they did not hover, did not make us feel uncomfortable. When one dish was done, a waiter silently and efficiently took it away, replacing it with the next course.
Jane finished her wine soon after the salad. I poured her another glass. “Did I tell you about Bobby Tetherton’s mom?” she said. I shook my head and she started describing a run-in with an overprotective parent she’d had at the day care center that afternoon.
I listened to her. Maybe nothing was wrong, I thought. Maybe it was all in my head. Jane was acting as though everything was normal, everything was okay. Maybe I’d imagined the rift between us.
No.
Something had happened. Something had come between us. We had always shared our problems, had always discussed with each other our difficulties at school or work. I had never met her coworkers at the day care center, but she’d brought them alive for me, I knew their names, and I cared about their office politics.
But now I found my mind wandering while she recited the litany of today’s injustices.
I didn’t care about her day.
I tuned her out, not listening to her. We had always had a balanced relationship, a modern relationship, and I’d always considered her work, her career, her activities, as important as my own. It was not rhetoric, not something I forced myself to do out of obligation, but something I truly felt. Her life was as important as mine. We were equals.
But I didn’t feel that way anymore.
Her problems seemed so fucking petty compared to my own.
She chattered on about kids I didn’t know and didn’t want to know. I was annoyed with her and my annoyance soon graduated to anger. I had not told her about being ignored, about discovering I was some sort of quintessentially average… freak, but, damn it, she should have noticed something was wrong and she should have asked me about it. She should have tried to talk to me, to find out what was bothering me and cheer me up. She shouldn’t have just pretended that everything was okay.
“…these parents entrust their children to our center,” she was saying, “then they try to tell us how to — ”
“I don’t care,” I said.
She blinked. “What?”
“I don’t care about your damn day care center.”
Her mouth closed, flattened into a grim line. She nodded, as if this was something she’d been expecting. “Now it comes out,” she said. “Now the truth finally comes out.”
“Come on, let’s just enjoy our meal.”
“After that?”
“After what? Can’t we just try to have a nice meal together and enjoy our evening?”
“Enjoy it in silence? Is that what you mean?”
“Look — ”
“No, you look. I don’t know what’s wrong with you. I don’t know what’s been bothering you lately — ”
“Why don’t you try asking?”
“I would if I thought it would do any good. But you’ve been living in your own world the past month or so. You just sit there brooding all the time, not talking, not doing anything, shutting me out — ”
“Shutting you out?”
“Yes. Every time I try to get close to you, you push me away.”
“I push you away?”
“When’s the last time we made love?” She stared at me. “When’s the last time you even tried to make love with me?”
I glanced around the restaurant, embarrassed. “Don’t make a scene,” I said.
“Make a scene? I’ll make a scene if I want to. I don’t know these people, and I’ll never see them again. What do I care what they think of me?”
“I care,” I said.
“They don’t.”
She was right. Our voices were raised now, we were definitely arguing, but no one was looking at us or paying us even the slightest bit of attention. I assumed it was because they were too polite to do so. But a small voice in the back of mind said that it was because they didn’t notice me, because I created a kind of force field of invisibility that surrounded us.
“Let’s just finish eating,” I said. “We can talk about this at home.”
“We can talk about it now.”
“I don’t want to.”
She looked at me, and it was like she was a cartoon character or something. I could see in the exaggerated expression on her face the birth of an idea, the dawning of realization. “You don’t care about this relationship at all, do you? You don’t care about me. You don’t care about us. You’re not even willing to fight for what we have. All you care about is you.”
“You don’t care about me,” I countered.
“Yes, I do. I always have. But you don’t care about me.” She sat there, staring at me across the table, and the way she looked at me made me feel not only uncomfortable but profoundly sad. She was looking at me as though I were a stranger, as though she had just discovered that I had been cloned and replaced by a soulless look-alike impostor. I could see the sense of loss on her face, could tell how deeply hurt and suddenly alone she felt, and I wanted to reach across the table and take her hands in mine and tell her that I was the same person I’d always been, that I loved her and was truly sorry if I’d said or done anything to hurt her. But something kept me from it. Something held me back. I was dying inside, desperate to right the things that had gone so wrong between us, but something made me look away from her and down at my plate.
I picked up my fork, began eating.
“Bob?” she said.
I looked at my plate.
“Bob?” Questioningly, tentatively.
I did not answer, kept eating.
After a moment, she too picked up a fork and started eating.
Smoothly, silently, a waiter took my plate, replaced it with another.
Nine
August became September.
I arrived at work one morning to find a manila interoffice envelope and a small rectangular cardboard box sitting on my desk. I was early; Derek had not yet come in, and I had the office to myself. I sat down and picked up the envelope, staring at the rows of crossed-off names on its front. The envelope’s itinerary for the past month was printed plainly on its cover, in different ink, with different signatures, and it made me realize just how much I hated my job. As I scanned down the list of names and departments now hidden behind ineffectual lines and halfhearted scribbles, I found that there was not a single individual I felt warmly toward.
I also realized how long I’d been here.
Three months.