Rachel Weaver
You’re not that bad, I tell people all the time. That’s what people like to hear anyway. It makes them feel fine, allows them to go about their day without worry. No one likes to worry and maybe there isn’t much to worry about or maybe there is.
There’s this life we’ve built together. The great jobs, the boats, the way we laugh on the docks. Looks fine. Is fine. Except for the glint in your eye that I catch every so often. The heavy drape of your arm. But how to explain that to anyone? It’s nothing. Except for the imperceptible way I am smaller every day because of it.
No one is around for your cold stares, the way I duck under the pressure, question myself, over and over. It’s not that bad, I tell myself. Plenty of people have it worse.
I get good at pretending it’s fine. Earn a master’s degree. Achieve some other things that divert everyone’s attention as things turn icy hot between us, keeping me on my toes, unsure all the time.
Whole years pass without incident and I relax a little. But, I learn to not be ready spells disaster. I watch you closer, try to read the weather as if I were a meteorologist. I’m no meteorologist. I eat more carefully, try to sleep more regularly, remind myself to tiptoe, so that I will be ready when I need to be ready.
I’ve tried to leave a hundred times; thirty-three to be exact. Nothing works. The people to whom I whisper the details press their lips together, slowly shake their heads. Everyone agrees I’m stuck. Accept what you cannot change, they say. Make peace with it.
I try this when I get home. You rage so loud paint peels and I end up in bed unable to move. When I slowly ease my feet to the floor hours or days later, there are no physical marks that would make everyone understand this isn’t okay, nothing is okay, I am not okay. Instead, I go back to work, ride in other people’s trucks and chat about anything other than what’s really happening and everyone reassures themselves that I am okay.
Hope is the worst part. Hope that I might gather up the courage to ask for help again. Hope that whoever I choose to whisper to next will happen to be the mastermind of The Final Escape Plan. And then the slow shaking of the head, the impatience to move on to something less complicated. The way I am left alone again with you, fear now full and pressing out all the hope that never really stood a chance anyway.
You smile in the way that steals the breath from my chest and say, Let’s go home. I gather up my coat and walk out of the exam room in the way I’m supposed to, pay my copay or out of pocket because insurance is a joke, wander the labyrinth of hallways until I find fresh air and I’m not sure what takes over but I begin to sprint, as if I could outrun you, as if you and I were separate somehow, as if it was possible to be cured of you.
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Rachel Weaver is the author of the novel Point of Direction, which Oprah Magazine named a Top Ten Book to Pick Up Now. Point of Direction was chosen by the American Booksellers Association as a top ten debut for Spring 2014, by IndieBound as an Indie Next List Pick, by Yoga Journal as one of their top five suggested summer reads and recently won the 2015 Willa Cather Award for Fiction. Prior to earning her MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University, Rachel worked for the Forest Service in Alaska studying bears, raptors and songbirds. She is on faculty at Wilkes University’s low-residency MFA program, and at Lighthouse Writers Workshop. Her work has appeared in The Sun, Gettysburg Review, Blue Mesa Review, Alaska Women Speak and Fly Fishing New England. www.rachelweaver.net