Caroline Eriksson
THE WATCHER
To Mom and Dad
For what was
For what is
For all we have left
PROLOGUE
So this is how it’s going to end?
I’m teetering on the edge. I turn around and our eyes meet, hers the same ones that once looked into mine at the altar in that picturesque little village church. They were filled with happiness and emotion then, but now they’re black with the hatred of revenge. And I see decisiveness in her face, a purposefulness that hasn’t been there for a long time. Only now does it occur to me that what’s about to happen is not a coincidence. My wife has been waiting for an opportunity like this. She wants to see me dead.
This whole time I’ve been worried about her… Suddenly I realize that I should have been afraid for myself.
People say that in your final moments you see your life pass before your eyes, from beginning to end. How would anyone even know something like that? I don’t experience it. No cavalcade of birthdays and celebrations, flickers of failures and successes, or the faces that I held most dear. I see only one thing in front of me, and, oddly enough, it’s that church where we once promised to love each other forever, for better or for worse. I remember everything, every single detail of our wedding day, just as clearly as if it were yesterday—our fingers intertwined as we slowly walked down the aisle, the smiling faces in the pews, the rustling of fancy clothes, the scent of freshly picked summer flowers, our vows that we’d written ourselves, the sun shining through the stained-glass windows, the pastor’s blessing.
And now? Is this—this church where we swore to love each other until death do us part—where she’ll bury me, or rather, what’s left of me?
The chasm before me is deep and unforgiving. It contains no uncertainty, no mercy. Everything is happening so quickly, and yet this moment stretches out for an eternity. She comes closer, right up beside me. She raises one hand, then the other. Soon I’ll fall. Soon I’ll be dashed to pieces. Soon it will be over.
Three, two, one.
Now.
1
Just before four o’clock, I get up and throw on my bathrobe. I’d stopped counting the hours and minutes I lay awake at night ages ago. It’s not even a month since the separation, and I haven’t gotten used to sleeping alone yet. I can’t imagine I ever will. On a purely physical level, I miss Peter. Even the first night we slept together, it was like our bodies had found their way home, as if they had slipped into each other’s nooks and filled each other’s crannies. I’d slept in different people’s arms before, but I’d never experienced anything like this. Peter felt it, too. “We’re like a puzzle,” he whispered into my ear, “with only two pieces.”
The staircase leading downstairs is shrouded in nighttime darkness. The steps are steep and narrow, easy to slip on if you’re not careful. I close my eyes and lean forward, feel my body’s center of gravity being sucked farther and farther over the landing. If I started walking with my eyes closed, if I let fate have its way, maybe I would make it all the way down, descending calmly and steadily. I lean even farther forward. I don’t actually even need to try taking a step, don’t need to anticipate fate. There’s another alternative: to throw myself headlong into the darkness. I can make sure to land on my head, allowing my neck to break under the weight of my body. One life extinguished in the night, one drop in the vast cosmos.
It’s not the first time this idea occurs to me. But just as before, the thought leads to my sister. To the realization that she would be the one to find me; she would be the one forced to deal with all the practical matters. Of the family that once existed, only the two of us remain. I can’t do that to her. My hand reaches for the light switch. An instant later, the light pours over the stairs and I descend, step by step.
I walk through the empty town house in a little development built around a landscaped communal yard. This place is meant to play the part of my home now, although it actually belongs to someone else. I am a shadowy figure in this existence, passing through on my way elsewhere. The rent has been paid in advance for three months. I have no idea where I’ll go after this. Maybe that should worry me, but I feel nothing.
In the kitchen I pour myself a glass of water and drink it while leaning back against the sink. The unit across the yard is dark. I see no lights on in any of the windows. The people who live there are probably asleep, like all normal, sensible people at this hour. Safe and undisturbed, with the ones they love most in the next room or in bed beside them. My borrowed twin bed awaits in the bedroom upstairs. The bed will be cool when I return. No one is keeping it warm under the covers. There will be no legs to press the freezing soles of my feet against, no one whose neck and back I can nestle up against and shape my body to.
A puzzle with only two pieces. I used that phrase once in a story. When the manuscript came back, I saw that the editor had drawn two red lines through those specific words and written “Kind of cliché” in the margin. She couldn’t have known how special those words were to me. She was just doing her job, and I accepted the edit. But maybe I should have stood my ground. Those words meant something to me. A publisher’s opinions are suggestions—usually prudent ones—but ultimately the author has final say over her own text. I’ll remember that next time. In my next manuscript, I’ll… The thought flows into nothingness. I empty my glass and shake my head. Next time, next manuscript, who am I kidding? I haven’t written a line in almost two years.
I continue moving through the house, following the same pattern I usually do during these nightly ambles, and soon wind up in the living room. It’s not a big room, and yet it contains most of what I brought when I left the home Peter and I shared. The moving boxes stacked along the walls are filled with things I haven’t bothered to unpack—meaningless objects, relics from a time that will never return. There’s only one thing here that means anything to me.
My steps slow, and I move over to the bookshelf. I reach out my arm and carefully run my hand over the densely packed rows of book spines. There are so many stories between their covers, the fates of so many lives. They relate the joy and pain of being human, the cruelties to which we subject each other. There are certain common themes in all stories, just as in all human life, and I know that I’m not alone in my adventures and experiences, although it feels like it. Oh, Mama, if you could see me now.
My hands select by themselves, moving as if they belong to someone else, as if they have a life of their own. One book at a time is pulled out and assigned a new place—sometimes on the same shelf, but more often than not somewhere else. At first it happens slowly, almost randomly, then with more and more focus. Book after book is repositioned, ending up higher, lower, closer to the middle or to the edge. Tonight I’m sorting by title, but my actual criteria are unimportant. What matters is having something to do to keep the turbulence below the surface at bay.
Some of the shelves are crowded, so I hold the books awaiting reshelving in my lap and continue working with one hand. Empty spaces appear and are filled again. One context is undone and a new totality gradually emerges. But it doesn’t help, of course. Nothing helps. When I finally stand in front of the bookshelf and survey the results, everything is different. And yet it’s exactly the same. I slowly back out of the room.