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34. Night Time Fog
"I'm not crying," she said.
Her back was to him, almost lost in the fading sunlight. It was a statement. Spoken as matter-of-factly as when she had said, "I'm leaving you." (She didn't.) This time those were his words. He was leaving her, teetering like a tightrope walker on the idea of staying -- falling either way would be bad. But leaving was something "they" always did, not him. He thought he was only doing it to beat her to the punch. She had put the idea in his head when she had come back from not leaving. The idea had said, "Don't be here when she goes. Next time, she might not return." So he told her, "I'm leaving." She didn't believe him, so he shoved her away. Pretty hard. Some psycho-analyst might say he was trying to shove away some deep insecurity of his own, that the aggression he was exhibiting toward her was actually aggression he was feeling toward himself -- some internal conflict, struggle, that he could not resolve and, thus, had to act out against those he loved. It�s good he�s not seeing a psycho-analyst. They were on the porch and night time fog had come in off the lake when she said, "I'm not crying." "Neither am I." (That's what he said.) Which brings us to now where it is midnight and he is reading the back of a postcard with a picture of the beach and a cartoon sun saying Welcome to Florida and in her delicate hand she has written, "Missing you wasn't half as hard as I thought it would be." |