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Doing Without
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4
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They were empty.
The piles I had been hoarding on the dining-room table were gone. The
books in my room, the ones in every room. She had taken every last book
in the house. And she didn't stop at the novels, the poetry, the plays.
She took the cookbooks, the phone books, the manual to my stereo. I
felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. I sat down in the living
room facing the empty shelves. They were staring at me, betrayed, I
think. You went too far this time, they scolded. But it wasn't the loss
of the books I mourned. I knew that I had nothing more to hold on to
her with. Had I been here when she did it, I would have helped her; I
would have gotten the books down for her, carried them to her car,
loaded in my couch and coffee table too, if that's what she wanted.
Whatever she wanted. Just to be able to see her a few minutes more,
just to be able to say "Goodbye, Siobhan," and wave, maybe, as she
drove away for the last time. But closure was what she denied me.
So I guess this means we do it on her terms. She handles the goodbyes
in her life, who gets to give them, what words or actions they consist
of. And on her terms I'll remain forever. I can't deny that anymore.
But I can still content myself with words, recall the pages I
bookmarked, rubberbanded, folded over. "Never loving ourselves, hating
even our shoes and our hats, we love each other, precious, precious.
Our hands are light blue and gentle. Our eyes are full of terrible
confessions." And every time I look at the empty shelves, I think, I
know where those books are, and I know that I am there now too, in the
books, in her house. I know that when she reads Pygmalion, reads "I
shall miss you, Eliza. I have learnt something from your idiotic
notions: I confess that humbly and gratefully. And I have grown
accustomed to your voice and appearance. I like them, rather," she
will hear my voice speaking the words. I will be in that room with her,
no matter how much distance she has tried to put between us, how many
miles she has driven trying to get away from the pieces of me that cling
to her slender fingers, the particles that float around her night and
day, getting lost in her curves the way I thought I would always be able
to.
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