Something She Can Feel

“Just what?” Evan picked up some of the pages from the floor and threw them at me. “He can take you to parties and have you in magazines? Is that what you mean? He can take you out of this boring old house and away from your boring husband?” He came over to me. “What do you want? What do you want, Journey?” He bent down on his knee in front of me. “Because I swear to God I’ve been trying to give you what you want all my damn life and I can’t seem to do it right. I give you everything.” His head dropped and tears fell, salting the carpet between us. “My life. My whole fucking life and it’s never enough.”

“It is enough, Evan.” I tried to touch him, but he pulled away.

“No, it’s not.” Evan looked back up at me and I saw in his eyes that he was broken. Broken inside. Past the tears, his eyes were shallow and empty like something had died. And then, just then, everything I was doing and how it must’ve affected him became so real. This wasn’t sneaking around. This was pain. And if I never wanted to hurt anyone, to make anyone feel pain, it was Evan.

“I’m so sorry,” I whimpered, wiping his tears. “I’m so so sorry.”

“Do you love him?” he asked, stopping my hand on his cheek. And while my first instinct was to say no, I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I hadn’t even been sure if anything I was feeling for Dame was real until that moment, but then, it just was. And I couldn’t lie about it.

I dropped my hand slowly and looked cautiously into Evan’s eyes.

“Tell me,” he blurted out, his voice cracking as tears poured down his cheeks again.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

Evan fell back and began to weep.

“I’m sorry.”

And I couldn’t take it back. Seeing Evan, my best friend, my love for my whole life, crying on the floor for what had just been lost, I wanted so badly to take it back, but I couldn’t. I was screaming inside and I couldn’t stop it.

I stood up and tried my best to wipe my tears, but I was shaking so hard that I couldn’t hold my hand to my face.

“Where are you going?” Evan called

when I reached the hallway. And I didn’t know where I was going. I just knew I had to leave. I had to go somewhere quiet.

“Don’t leave me,” he said. And I turned to see him up and coming toward me.

“I’m not leaving you. I just ... I need to go,” I cried, picking up my purse.

“You can’t leave me, Journey. We can work it out. We can try to make this work.” He was stuttering and heaving.

“I have to go,” I said. “I can’t pretend anymore. We can’t pretend anymore.”

“No ... no ... no,” he protested, grabbing the purse from my hand.

“Evan, we can’t go back. We can’t just go back and pretend anymore. I need to go and be alone, so I can figure this out.”

“You’re my wife,” Evan blared.

“I’m in love with another man,” I said and the words stabbed me so hard in the gut that they went through me. Through me and then through Evan.

He stepped back from me and dropped the purse.

“He can’t love you like I can,” he said. “There’s no one in this world who’s gonna love you like I can.”

“But I have to find out. I have to go out in the world and find that out for myself.”

The Listener

June 23, 2008

Sunset in the Sky

“Where were you going?” the white man seated behind me on the plane asked sympathetically. His name was Pete. He was an architect from Philadelphia who’d gone to Ghana to finalize a new contract for his company. Kweku and I gave up on locking him out of our conversation when we could actually hear him groaning in disagreement at my decision to go see Dame at the Apache. Then, we just stood up and leaned over the seats like teenagers on an overseas end-of-the-year school trip—chatting, laughing, and, me, sometimes crying.

The sky was growing calm with the setting of the sun. It wasn’t gray yet. Just dull with streaks of pink and disappearing white clouds beneath us. The flight attendants announced that we’d soon be approaching our layover in Amsterdam.