X Years
The Other Woman. A real killer in a relationship, ‘Specially when you realize that it’s you.
Well, technically it’s her, I’m the one married to him, but she was there first, and so, I can’t help but feel like an interloper.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t enter the relationship knowing this, I’ve got more self respect than that.
It was your typical story, boy meets girl, boy is charming and kind, and a little closed off, which is nice because I’ve just done a 6 year tour with an Open Book, who turned out to be a sociopathic narcissist, so in my head I think, let’s do the opposite, let’s not discuss our flaws, our mental health issues that we absolutely refuse to deal with, and how we self sabotage inside the first three dates.
So instead we have light, easy, mostly wholesome conversation and somehow this is enough for us to hurtle towards being exclusive, towards moving in together- note, your lease expiring is your lease expiring, not a sign. Careen towards an engagement and a quiet registry wedding one Thursday afternoon (my Mum is still salty).
He tells me I am the light at the end of his tunnel. I keep waiting for the love bomb to go off, and break the spell that enchants him. Either the bomb is a dud or he’s for real, so I eventually drop my guard.
We’d probably been together four months, and had been living together for six weeks when I first heard him in the bathroom. The tap was running but I could hear his sobs, the wail of pure misery. He eventually calmed down, came out of the bathroom, and got into bed quietly, and with his back to me, went to sleep. I however remained wide awake.
In the morning, it was like nothing had happened. I heard him singing off key to whatever he was listening to as he made us omelettes. I decided not to talk about it. I was meant to be asleep and it was a private moment.
He brought me breakfast in bed and his attitude was light, just like his eggs, so I asked myself why I was obsessing over it. We all have our burdens. I let it go even though it lurked at the back of my mind, throughout our milestones.
My bff, Alice, was not a fan. “You should confront him,” she said, more than once.
“I’m tired, Alice. Can I just have a nice, quiet, relationship without drama?”
“Crying in the bathroom isn’t drama?” She thought for a moment. “Did you guys fuck that night?”
I blushed, in spite of myself, even though Alice had been like this since primary school. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Maybe he’s low-key gay, and he was weeping with self-loathing?” Alice said nonchalantly like she knew something I didn’t.
I blinked at the shimmering heat from that hot take. “Erm…I don’t think so.”
“Anyway, confront him.”
I didn’t confront him, and Alice, being the awesome friend that she is, swallowed her misgivings and took the day off work on a Thursday to be a witness at our wedding (and help me fix my makeup after the professional we got made me look like an evil Asian clown).
We get married, and all is fine. There’s still the odd bathroom meltdown, not all the time, but enough to be a routine. And the dark moods and binge drinking every March. But mostly fine. We are doing fine. We even move to a bigger house. One just right for a family.
It is during the move that I find his box of memories. For Sophie, that’s her name. Cards, postcards, holiday, party, night-out photos from a time before everything went on Instagram.
They weren’t always alone, as I flip through the photos, I start to recognize people, some of them we’ve had dinner with, the occasional drink. No matter how many people there were, there was always one constant. My husband, Alex, looking at this woman with a hunger, with a sadness. Like he is a compass and she is North.
I see a save the date, a wedding invite, to her wedding, he is not the groom. I sigh with relief. I am not in some weird polygamous relationship.
“Sera?” I hear him calling me, his footsteps getting closer. I close the box, an old biscuit box and pretend to be junking my clothes.
“I’m in the closet.”
“Oh” He walks in. Inadvertently, his eyes snap to his box. If I wasn’t watching him a little more closely, I wouldn’t have noticed.
“Are you fucking insane?” Alice said, when I told her what I saw. “You just let him off?”
“Keep your voice down,” I hiss. Her voice wasn’t loud, but in the quiet of the cafe, it snaps through the air. A patron frowns at us from behind her laptop, the beads in her braided hair clicking as she looks in our direction. She sighs theatrically and goes back to work.
“Are you fucking insane?” Alice whispers theatrically this time.
“We’ve spent 90 percent of the time together since our first date, I can’t imagine when he would have the time to see her.”
“I told you you were rushing into things.” Alice said, as she sawed at her chicken breast like it was Alex, or maybe even my stubborn self. “You didn’t listen.”
I sighed. “I’m trying not to jump to the worst possible explanation, Alice, this is the first odd thing in our relationship.”
“The crying when he thinks he’s alone? The time they rushed him to that hospital because he blacked out?”
“Ok that’s problematic, yes. But he’s stopped drinking since then so maybe it was a phase.”
“Hmph!”
“Look, I’m not stupid, besides I need your help.”
“I’m not going to jail for you, Sera,” Alice says. “Break your husbands legs yourself.”
“What are you talking about you mental case. I need you to help me find her on Facebook.”
“You think she’s blocked you?…Only one way to find out, what’s her name?” She whips out her phone.
“Sophie Martinez.”
“Ah a spicy mamacita.”
“Fuck you, Alice,” I laugh in spite of myself.
“Nothing,” Alice says, disappointed. “Did you go through his friends?”
I smack my head. My pulse quickens as she looks at Alex’s friend list.
“Bingo! It’s not even hidden.”
I swallow hard. Well if he’s not hiding it, then there’s nothing there, there can’t be.
“Are you sure this is her?”
I enlarge the picture. “It’s definitely her, I can’t forget those eyes and the Afro.”
“Well he’s not cheating.”
“How do you know?”
“It says ‘Remembering’, that means she’s dead.”
I take the phone from Alice. She has one of those memorial pages and no posts for 5 years. I deflate like a balloon, tension leaving my body.
The rest of the meal passes by with Alice trying to tell me that it doesn’t matter if she’s dead. In the end I agree that I will find a way to bring it up.
That night, I watch him sleep so intently, he wakes up. He half smiles at me. “What?”
I take a deep breath. “Oh, nothing,” I hear myself saying. “I was just checking you out.” I laugh.
“You like what you see?” he says in a goofy tone.
“Very much.” I say, and I realise I do. He turns around to face me and pulls me close. I take in his scent, listen to the bass of his heart and I make a decision to let things go for now. His heat lulls me into drowsiness and as I fall into an uneasy sleep, I think we’ll be fine. Maybe when the time is right, I’ll bring up Sophie. Maybe talking about her and his grief will exorcise this ghost.
X+3 Years
I never do. As he sits across from me the wild thought that maybe if I had, maybe if I had just said something, maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
I can’t say I’m particularly surprised, now that the shit is hitting the fan, I need to be honest with myself. The last eighteen months, he’s been nice, but closed off. A roommate rather than a husband, a lover.
I told myself it was normal, the honeymoon period couldn’t last forever. Even when we spent evenings entranced by our own screens, or when I realized we were so passionate, we actually folded our clothes before sex. Occasionally, I would scroll past the thriller series that we spent a weekend watching and never got round to finishing. It felt like a splinter in my heart.
This is how the relationship died. A slow decline, so full of routine, I sometimes wondered if this conversation was on some schedule somewhere.
“I’m sorry, Sera.” His head is bowed in contrition. I know he tried to make this work, but things like this, trying isn’t enough.
“Stop saying you’re sorry, Alex.” I half-snap.
“It’s my fault.”
“We can go see someone, let’s go home, look up a marriage counsellor, let’s fix this?” I lurch from anger to desperation.
“What’s wrong with us can’t be fixed by some random charging 60 bucks an hour…I’m the problem, Sera and you deserve better.”
“Divorcing me isn’t going to bring her back.” The words are out of my mouth before I can engage any sort of filter.
“What?” Alex’s eyes freeze over. I feel a chill.
“You think I don’t know? You never loved me because you’re too busy loving a dead girl. You’re right, I deserve better.” The words spill out of my mouth.
“You should try not to talk about things you don’t understand.”
His voice is cold and dangerous. He calls for the bill.
I scoff. “What will you do next? Find someone new to play happy couples with until you get bored again?”
He can’t even meet my eyes, the fucking coward. He doesn’t come home that night. I don’t know when he comes home. I’m too busy bawling in a fetal position in Alice’s bathroom.
We barely speak afterwards, our lawyers handle the legal stuff. Technically, we are separated and the divorce won’t actually be final for another two years, but I take my ring off my finger and put it in my bedside drawer.
I try to detach and so does he, organising the fine details of our decoupling via a series of emails including a way-too-long thread about the cutlery.
My replies are polite. I’m even magnanimous, all but forcing the coffeemaker on him. At night, I unravel. Even when I don’t sob myself to sleep, I wake up with my pillow wet from tears. I hate this.
X+5 Years
I don’t hold Alex. Maybe I think it’s a dream he’s in my house, in my bed and touching him will reveal the truth about the mirage.
It’s not a dream. Alex turned up on my doorstep, delirious with fever. Shitting and puking like he’s being paid. My shampooed doormat tells me none of this is a dream but it’s so incongruous I can’t help but think otherwise.
I’m pissed, but when confronted with a person in physical distress I can’t shut my door against him especially when a small part of me loves him. Besides he would only have violently vomited against it. It wouldn’t have looked good to the neighbors.
I’m also annoyed he knows where I live, although that’s a result of bringing me some stuff I had mixed up with his things when we moved out. I don’t know where he lives and it feels like an imbalance.
Deep down, I’m happy. He came to me for help. He still needs me. I cringe at the thought. I want to throttle the part of me that is so pathetic. He groans, and I pick up the cold compress and lay it across his head.
I look at his naked back. His fever has broken and he ate some chicken broth hungrily earlier. It looks like the worst is over.
He’s more gaunt, probably from his food poisoning and most striking, has a new tattoo on his shoulder, a sword with stylised sharp wings along the blade. It looks sore, almost angry.
“Does it hurt?”
“What?” He says, sleepily.
“Your tattoo, it looks a bit raw?”
“Oh it’s fine.” “I don’t know what I was thinking when I got it.”
He turns toward me. Smiles. “Thank you.” “I don’t think I would have made it without you.”
He reaches towards me. Parts of me thrum for the first time in two years.
I want to ask him why he didn’t just go to a hospital, why he came to me, but I’m overwhelmed by his touch. Somewhere within me a dam has burst and I’m overcome with need. They say never go back, but I do.
I wake up smiling, trying not to think about the logistics of having Alex back in my life. Of having to tell everyone Alex is back in my life. Trying to tell him we need to work on fixing things, that I won’t go back to whatever that was at the end of our marriage.
The house smells fresh and clean. Alex has been cleaning. My flat is almost spotless. “Alex? You didn’t have to.”
Then, I see the letter. I don’t take it in immediately, but I read enough for something inside me to shatter. He’s done it again, the bastard. Words and phrases like “mistake” and “I’m sorry” and “Thank you” jump out at me. Each one chipping away at my soul until I break completely.
X+8 Years
I don’t look at myself in the mirror much. It’s hard for me to deal with the woman with the cold, hard eyes staring back at me. Hard for me to accept she is me.
I’ve retreated into myself. I had what the kids call a ‘hoe-phase’ a couple of years ago, but ultimately I’ve decided I enjoy my own company. My own space. I enjoy being an auntie to Alice’s kids. We don’t talk about he-who-should-not be named. Life is…life. I’m alive, and healthy and sometimes that’s all you need.
X+12 Years
“I was a twat; you deserved better,” he said.
I feel a tingling in my eyesocket. My eye is probably twitching, which is a sign that I’m about to murder this fool- well if I had a gun and wasn’t squeamish about blood. I calm myself by sipping-no gulping- the house white, using the non-twitching eye to make eye-contact with a waiter for a refill.
When I trust myself enough to speak I say “It’s taken you 7 years after you left in the middle of the night to realize this?”
Not how I wanted this conversation to go. In the early days when our marriage ended, I would dream about this moment. The moment when he would apologize for all he had done. We would meet at our favorite place and he would beg me for forgiveness, and I would tell him how much he hurt me, but eventually I would forgive him because deep down I didn’t want to do life without him.
The dream was a tauntingly regular in those early days. Even when I couldn’t remember it, my wet pillow and sore eyes were the evidence it happened. I would wake up, having been hugging him in my dream, and if I never felt that feeling of heartbreaking confusion at my suddenly empty arms again, it would be too soon.
Even after the whole stupid Florence Nightingale nursing him back to health incident, I still occasionally had those dreams, although they filled me with anger, not yearning. However, years had passed and I realized that it had been a long time since I had the dream.
To be honest, he looked like shit, and we were in a nice but shabby hole in the wall trattoria rather than the restaurant he proposed to me at twelve years ago. Who knew whether that place was even still in business?
“I don’t deserve your forgiveness,” he said. “I am really sorry. I was fucked up, I should’ve fixed that before.”
“Uh huh.”
I realize I don’t want to go over old wounds, even if they never healed right and the scarring isn’t pretty. So I say nothing. He’s fidgety and I don’t think he notices or cares that I haven’t given him any absolution.
We share a pizza. He doesn’t seem to have much of an appetite, and I end up eating most of it.
He looks at the time, his wrist is skeletal, and the watch hangs loosely and his skin looks flaky. He really looks shitty. Sick. Is this a dying confession?
“Do you have somewhere to be?”
“Yeah, sorry, I have an unmissable appointment.”
“Well, don’t let me keep you. This place is nice. I’ll definitely come back,” I say.
I hope he’s wondering if I’ll come back with company, a new boyfriend. In truth, it’ll be me alone, or maybe with Alice if she’s off the wagon with her diets again.
“You should.” His voice cracks. “I’m so fucking sorry, Sera.”
“I get that.” I say. “All its doing is making me super alert to you stabbing me in the heart again.”
He sighs.
“It’s true. Every time you say you’re sorry, with that stupid constipated look on your face, you break my heart, Alex, so please don’t be sorry…you don’t have to be. I’ve moved on. You should too.”
“I have,” he says quickly. “I mean, I haven’t really but I know I don’t deserve to be in your life.”
“So why call this meeting?”
His bird-like throat moves around like he wants to tell me more, but even in this pit, he still can’t bring himself to open up. The last embers of our relationship blow away.
“You should go for your appointment, Alex.” “I ate most of the pizza, I’ll get the bill.”
X+13 Years
I don’t feel like cooking that evening, so I order some Chinese food. The doorbell rings and I look through the peep hole and see a young woman.
I open the door and then almost keel over with shock. It is not the crispy duck I was expecting.
“Sera?” Sophie Martinez looks at me questioningly. “I need your help.”
“But you’re dead!” I blurt out.
“It’s complicated. Listen we don’t have time.”
“What are you talking about.”
“It’s Alex. I begged him to stop but he wouldn’t.”
“Sophie, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t give a fuck about Alex. Or you for that matter. You haunted my marriage and now god knows what game you guys are playing.” God, that feels good to say. I move to shut the door in her face.
“Please don’t, this isn’t a game.”
“I don’t even care really. I’m not playing. I’m done playing stupid games. I’ve won enough of Alex’s stupid prizes”
“I need your help, really!” “Alex keeps bringing me back, he’s destroying himself to do so. Look!”
My eyes adjust to the gloom. I thought it was her belongings at first, or some trash, but I look closer and see it shuddering.
Alex.
“What the hell? What happened to him?” “And what do you mean bringing you back?”
“Alex made a deal with an…entity who can bring memories to life.”
“An entity…”
“We call him the Broker. They’re like a god, of memories, or a devil, I don’t even know.”
“I’m a memory made flesh. Everytime he brings me back, the Broker consumes some of his life force.”
“Oh.” I’m speechless.
“Listen can we come in?”
I debate. I really should just send them away and wait for my Chinese but where would they go.
I find myself helping the man shaped bundle into my flat. He smells like a sad barbecue. He moans and slumps against the door.
“Shit, I’m going to need a bucket.” I run to the kitchen.
He croaks and fills the bucket with black chunks of viscera. It smells like death.
“We need to get him to a hospital.”
“He’ll be fine. His body will adjust to what it has lost.”
He’s worse than last time. His hands seem raw and burnt, god knows about the rest of him. The skin around his neck is ragged and flaky, bits of pink poking through.
“Are you sure about that?” I can’t resist snarking, it helps me not freak out.
“Not really. I’m pretty sure if he tries this again next year he’s a dead man.”
“Well, that’s his problem.” I say.
“You can’t mean that,” she says.
“Why not?”
“You loved him once, a part of you probably still does.”
“It would maybe be my pinkie toe.” I snap.
“Look, I don’t know you, but I know he did you wrong.”
“No shit.”
“I’m sorry, Sera,” Alex rasps. “I never got a chance to say goodbye to Sophie and then I got addicted.” “I walked out for a second and she died…I never got to say goodbye!” “That time seven years ago. I thought it was enough, but then I couldn’t imagine not seeing her again.”
“It’s a scam,” the Sophie Memory says bitterly. “Once the Broker brands you, you can’t help yourself. Surely I must’ve told you that?”
“You did. You even told me how to break the hold.”
“Then you’re a bloody fool, Alex.” Sophie snaps. “I never wanted this for you. I wanted you to live.”
“How do we break the hold?” I ask.
“You need to find a tributary of the River Lethe. You need to fill up a cup and pour the water on the tattoo. That’s what I’ve heard.”
Alex groans once more, and then before my very eyes crumbles into nothing.
“What the fuck!” I scream.
“Well it’s moot now…” Sophie says.
The room seems to contract and then sitting where Alex was a handsome person with the most unsettling black eyes.
“Hello,” they say.
“Er, hi.”
Sophie says nothing, merely bows in supplication.
He waves his hand and she fades away.
“You can call me the Broker.”
“What the hell is happening?” I ask, starting to hyperventilate.
He moves, inhumanly fast, I feel his hand on my forehead. It feels like nothing.
“Calm.”
Instantly, I remember being carried by my mother and her singing to me. My senses overload and a cry builds up before my mother’s warmth and at once familiar smell overwhelm me. The cry turns into a contented sigh.
“Sorry, I need you to calm down.” He says.
“I can bring old memories to life- 10 years ago, Alex figured out how to contact me.”
It all makes sense now. The sudden divorce. The last visit.
“The cost is…a lot. Most people do it once to get closure, maybe say a proper goodbye, relive their best memories. Alex kept returning to the well until there was nothing left to give.”
“But the Memory said it was addictive.”
“Alex was weak. He spent most of his adult life pining for that girl. She finally gave him a chance, after her engagement went south, and then she gets terminal cancer. It’s sad to see someone only live for those memories.”
I sit there gaping like a fish. The Broker taps my shoulder. I’m aware he’s touching me, but…
“Busy, busy, busy,” he says. He hands me a business card. It is black, with the tattoo Alex had, embossed in gleaming white.
“You’d be different, I think; See you soon, maybe.” He says, as the room contracts again and he vanishes.
I look at the card for a long time, and then I take it to my bedroom and put it in the drawer along with my ring, Alex’s last note and our wedding pictures.
X+15 Years- Epilogue
The woman who owns the ramshackle house ties up her fierce looking dog, and lets me in.
“We don’t get many visitors these days. Used to be full all the time.”
“What happened?”
“People forgot the old stories. Forgot about the ancient power. They have no respect, they even dredged the Great Rivers, at least on the overworld.”
I make a sound of commiseration.
“My family never did though. We keep those traditions…speaking of, did you remember to bring it?”
I open the envelope and bring out two gold coins. I had to buy them from some home shopping channel and they are still spamming me with offers for more weird tat.
The woman snakes out a way too long tongue, and licks the coins. I question nothing, it’s on brand for the madness of this trip. I hope they are real or this trip will have been for nothing.
“The stream is at the bottom of the garden,” she says finally. “Do you have something to hold the water in?”
I show her the silver bottle I bought from the department store I once bought stuff for Alex and I’d first flat. I think it’s for olive oil or vinegar or something but it’ll do for this.
I go outside. I hear the burble of the stream at the bottom of the garden. I feel bits of myself erode with each step I take towards the brook.
Honestly the next thing I remember, I’m back in my hotel room. The coins are gone and I’m starting to feel like I’ve been had but there on the bedside is the silver bottle of the waters of the Lethe.
I’ve been doing some reading. Who knows whether it’s actually real or not. I put my wedding ring in the bottle. It’s a tough fit, but I feel it eventually slide past the neck and sink to the bottom.
It’s time for the moment of truth.
“Goodbye, Alex.” I mutter to myself. Then I open the cap of the bottle, tip it to my lips, and drink.