A Hope for Emily

Somehow, in the mist of everything, I forgot to tell James I was fired. And so when Friday morning rolls around, and I stay in bed, having endured two days’ of tense silence, James looks at me blankly and says in a voice devoid of emotion or interest, “Aren’t you getting up?”

My limbs feel leaden as I struggle to sit up. I’ve slept badly the last two nights, caught between a terrible, corroding guilt and a furious self-righteousness. Since walking out of the house after I told him about my part in the whole crowdfunding scheme, James has not spoken to me. I realize I am getting a taste of what Rachel experienced when she broached the idea of experimental treatment—his complete emotional shutdown. The only words he has said to me—more than once—are ‘I can’t.’

I accepted that at first; I was humbled, penitent when he came home at ten o’clock at night, having been out for hours, and still didn’t want to talk. The next morning I got up, even though I had nowhere to go, and made the coffee.

“James,” I said as I poured him a cup, “Please, can we talk about this? I’m sorry—”

“I can’t.” The words were so flat and final it felt like he’d put a hand over my mouth. He left for work—twenty minutes earlier than usual—as soon as he’d put down his cup.

I mooched around the house all day, feeling restless, knowing I should do something with my resumé, figure out my life, but I felt so adrift that I ended up watching several hours of trashy TV and forgetting to have a shower.

James was back late, and when I asked him where he’d been, he just said briefly, “To see Rachel.”

“Can we talk—”

“I can’t.”

Not again. “You can’t talk?” I repeated, a scathing note entering my voice that I knew didn’t help matters. “What are you, mute?”

“Yes, when it comes to this. To you. I just don’t even…” He shook his head, and then he went into the bedroom and shut the door. He didn’t seem angry, which was frightening. He was something worse, something deeper, as if I’d mortally wounded him.

I veered from guilt to self-righteousness then; it wasn’t as if I’d cheated on him. I’d tried to help his daughter, for crying out loud. I’d been doing his family a favor.

Except I knew James didn’t see it that way, and in truth I didn’t either. He felt I’d betrayed him, and no matter what my motives, I knew that I had.

I pounded on the door, stupidly, because it wasn’t even locked. “Are you going to hide away forever?” I shouted, tears of anger and worse, despair, springing to my eyes. “Are you never going to talk to me again?”

No reply. James didn’t come out; I didn’t go in. Eventually I curled up on the sofa and fell asleep until sometime past midnight; when I crept into bed, James was already asleep, his back like a brick wall to me.

And now, Friday morning, here I am, blinking sleep out of my eyes, having to tell him another unfortunate truth.

“I’m not getting up,” I say. “I was fired.”

James pauses in the act of knotting his tie. “Seriously?”

“Do you think I’d make that up?”

“What for?”

Some contrary streak in me makes me lift my chin. “For using company contacts to boost Emily’s Instagram account.” Even if it wasn’t really just that. It’s almost as if I want him to hate me, or maybe I just want to come completely clean. James presses his lips together and turns away. He leaves the room, and by the time I motivate myself to get up ten minutes later, he’s already gone.

Is this the end of my marriage? I consider the question like a dusty artefact, examining it from all angles, feeing weirdly distant from it, from James, from my own self. Is this all it took—one step out of line, one little push, and it’s over?

It’s not even that I blame James; I knew all along what I was risking. I knew what we had was precarious, even if we pretended it wasn’t. We’ve only know each other a little more than a year. How could such a new relationship be strong enough to withstand this kind of stress and pressure? In any case, deep down I knew not to trust it, just as I’ve never trusted anyone, or any relationship, since I was twenty years old and my world fell in fragments all around me, because Lucas, another man I loved, told me he was there for me when he actually wasn’t.

Now it all weighs on me, the past along with the present, a burden too heavy for me to bear, and so I don’t. I don’t think about it. I act as if I don’t care. I’ve done this before; this feels familiar. Act the part and you will become it. To one degree or another, I’ve been doing this all my life for whomever I need to—my dad, my high school boyfriend, Lucas, James. All men I ached to trust, tried to impress, in one way or another. I tried to be what I thought they wanted me to be.

And so, while James is at work, I clean the apartment, I grocery shop, I tinker with my resumé and then send it out to several marketing firms. I text Naomi to go out for cocktails this weekend. And I check Emily’s page—one hundred thousand views, thirty-six thousand dollars. I don’t know how to feel about any of it; looking at those figures makes me numb. So I put my phone away and open some jars of expensive pasta sauce for dinner, and pretend everything is going to be fine.

When James returns home, he looks around at the clean apartment, the sauce bubbling on the stove, the expression on my face that I think is a combination of eager and desperate. His shoulders slump a little.

“I don’t know if you’ve spoken to Rachel, but she’s decided to go ahead with the treatment. I gave my agreement.”

“You… did?” I haven’t spoken to Rachel since this all broke, even though I’ve wanted it to. It felt easier, not to.

“Yes. I can’t fight you both. I don’t want to fight either of you.”

“James, I never meant…”