Something Blue by Emily Mills

I woke up with a stranger in my bed.

It wasn’t so unusual anymore. It was, in fact, something that had gotten to be so familiar that it had stopped bothering me altogether. I was numb to the feeling of his hand on my waist and his breath on the back of my neck. Anymore, I was numb to so many things.

I caught a whiff of cologne on the bedspread and my stomach twisted itself into a knot. I felt guilty, but not about doing this to him. Instead, I felt like I was selling myself out by doing this to myself every night. I was telling myself that everything was okay when I knew that it wasn’t.

I thought about getting out of bed when the grip on my waist tightened. I felt the cold press of a wedding band, the one that I had once slipped into place so carefully, against my stomach and for a second or so I actually felt sick. It was a change, maybe even a nice one from the apathy my mornings were usually cloaked in. The feeling worsened when I lifted my eyes and saw the photograph sitting on the nightstand.

“What time is it?” his sleepy voice inquired beside my ear.

It was a picture of us on our wedding day. The photo was in black and white and it showed the two of us standing together on a beach, our hands clasped. My arms around his neck and his around my waist. As far as we were concerned, we were the only people in the world.

“Quarter to six,” I replied.

There was movement and then I felt lips on the side of my neck. “I need to get going, hon.” 

The hand pulled away and a cold draft invaded the warmth of the bed. The mattress shifted and he got out. I rolled onto my back to watch him as he stretched. I always own up to the fact that it was his looks that had attracted me to him in the first place, but I recall a time too when I had appreciated him for his mind. It’s just been a while since long, intelligent conversations owned any place in our routine.

I shifted under the blankets, trying to get warm again. “Do you think we could do lunch?”

“I got a pretty busy day today,” he said, talking only partially to me as he picked his clothes up off the floor. “We’re meeting about that merger this morning.”

“Oh.”

“What’s on your agenda today, Vi?”

He was trying so hard to sound like he cared that it sounded unctuous and annoying. I shrugged and closed my eyes. I heard his belt scrape against the wood floor, followed by jingle of the buckle as he picked his pants up. “I’m interviewing for new assistants.”

The lid of the hamper squeaked as he opened it and then threw the trousers inside. “That’s right. Your guy quit.”

He sounded almost like he was gloating and I felt the compelling urge to throw something at him. Or maybe he was just teasing. 

“Good luck,” he added casually.

“Thank you.”

The mattress moved again and I opened my eyes to find him leaning over me.

“I’ll see you later,” he said.

“Have a good day at work, Jason.”

He smiled and pecked me on the forehead, like I was his kid sister. “Thanks, Vi.” 

* * *

Despite the full exposure our apartment had to the sun’s morning rays, everything about it felt cold. The white walls and contemporary leather furniture were stylish, but all of the harsh black and white monotony felt sterile. Even the lush carpet that could be found throughout felt unwelcoming under bare feet.

The sun glimmered off the silver frames of the pictures that lined the granite mantelpiece. They were meant to seem warm, but in truth they were all just artificial moments captured in a studio and then put on display for the benefit of our visitors. If one were to look at our pictures as artifacts of our lives, they would be left with no choice but to assume that we always wore matching holiday sweaters and phony smiles. 

I turned the picture nearest to me down onto its face as I passed, crossing the room towards the couch. The leather squeaked beneath my weight as I sat down. Neither of us were ever home often enough to break it in and it was just as uncomfortable as I had thought it might be when Jason insisted we buy it.

My mother had told me once to make it work.

Make it work. That was the theory that had been acting as a respirator to my parents’ marriage for the last thirty years. Mom had been “making it work” with no help from dad since I was born. I had no desire to end up the same. I had even promised myself before that I wouldn’t.

The faces on the mantel mocked me a little with the truth.

I sat there for a long while. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours, but I didn’t bother to look at the clock when I finally got up. The couch leather squeaked as it adjusted to my absence.

In my mind, I began to take an inventory of each of the rooms as I passed through them. I trailed my fingers over the marble countertops of the kitchen, admired the coffered ceilings, and examined myself in the many mirrors that the interior decorator had insisted upon hanging—to make the apartment appear larger, she said.

I hadn’t argued then, but I didn’t need the apartment to look any bigger than it already was. Before I married Jason, I had been content with my small, shamelessly unfurnished studio flat on the West Side. No, it hadn’t had any of the sleek, contemporary flair that this one had, but it had been mine and it had been mine for almost five years. It had seen me through boyfriends, countless dead-end jobs, and the general mess that was a twenty-something’s life in New York. 

Then I met Jason in an idyllic, fairy-tale like way that some of my friends still refused to believe to be the truth. It was in Riverside Park, during spring while everything was in bloom. He was a Californian transplant. He had ended up in the park on accident and we had run into one another, quite literally. He twisted his ankle and we ended up sitting down together on one of the benches.

I smiled at the memory and found my feet taking me up the stairs and then down to the end of the hallway, where one of my drawings was framed and hung over a credenza. I had done it that day in the park, while Jason sat just across from me, asking me every question he could about New York. I told him where the best places to get take-out were, where not to go for coffee, and how to hail a cab. All the while, I was sketching him. If I never saw him again, I had thought, I would at least have some way to remember him. 

“You can’t hail cabs in LA,” he explained. “It’s illegal.”

“Well, unless you have a car, it’s sort of important that you do it here.”

“…Would you show me how?

He was being coy and I knew that, but it and his smile sucked me in.

A cab ride turned into a date, and then another, and another. Soon enough, we were growing together. I was on his arm at every cocktail and holiday party that would get him a step closer to his next promotion. And he took me to every art opening, every play, and every museum. He supported my nomadic treatment of jobs. When one got too tedious or boring, he prompted me to find another one, even at times when we couldn’t afford it.

I walked passed my studio on the way back down the hall, but I avoided going inside. I hadn’t been able to get anything down on a canvas for weeks, maybe longer, and all that room meant was frustration. 

So I went into Jason’s office instead.

  It was at the end of the hall, adjacent to our bedroom, and it was decorated in the same fashion that the rest of the house was, in chrome, leather, and glass. Behind his desk, another array of photographs was arranged on a shelf. It was a pictorial chronology of his career and in it we age from right to left.

I stepped closer and examined our smiling faces. I moved slowly, following the line down. Different bosses, different poses, different holiday-themes in the background, but we were the same. Or at least Jason was. His hair changed from photo to photo—long, short, spiked, buzzed, clean-shaven, bearded, goateed—and as the years passed before my eyes, his suits became more and more expensive, finer, and better made. He aged, but in a sickeningly handsome way without the need for beauty products or push-up bras.

In contrast, I felt a little stricken at the images of myself. Would the woman in the first photo even recognize the woman in the last if they sat down together or saw each other in the mirror? They certainly weren’t the same person. Long, girlish pigtails had been transformed into a short, stylish bob. Grungy, Good Will chic turned into flattering tops and dresses attached to designer tags…

Where was I?

Numb, I turned to Jason’s desk and slumped down into the leather office chair. There was an actual ache in my chest, an actual pain coming from the inside. When had that happened? How could I have gone for so long without noticing what I had changed into? How had I missed it?

I began to rifle through the contents of the desk drawers. I don’t know what I was looking for, or even if I had a real goal in mind, but my hands kept going. Papers, pens, manila folders packed with figures and charts that I couldn’t decipher the meaning of were pushed aside. Appointment books, old pocket calendars, receipts, bank statements, all once neatly organized dumped out onto the desktop.

My mind was moving just as frantically as my hands. It would have been easy to blame Jason. He certainly looked better if his wife didn’t look like a starving artist pulled right out the 1970’s. 

That had never been lost on me.

In fact, I had cut my hair and changed my appearance as a whole to better fit in with the wives of Jason’s partners and bosses—the Plastic smilers that I tolerated during luncheons, cocktail parties, and book club meetings. In a weird, chain reaction, the better I got along with them, the closer Jason could get to his bosses and his next promotion, which was always one step closer to his dream. 

I was done at Jason’s desk and wandered into the hallway, where I stood with my back to the wall, still reeling.

Jason and I had always been complete opposites. When we met, he had clearly defined goals, a Masters degree, and a five-year plan. He had his life figured out; he was already planning retirement. He knew exactly what he wanted and exactly how he was going to achieve it.  He had it all together and his sense of control was sort of sexy.

On the other hand, I had a lot of job experience in fields that required a basic grasp of the English language and no problem wearing an apron, but nothing more ‘respectable’ than that. It wasn’t like I didn’t have any dreams. I had always liked the idea of teaching art or at the very least making a somewhat profitable career out of my talent, but I had dropped out of the university when I married Jason.

Our first year had been rough. We were living in my apartment because the rent was cheaper. We both had debt and we were splitting an already so-so paycheck with Uncle Sam. It was better for us that I ‘take a break’.

Jason had insisted that we would make it one way or another, but I insisted that it would be easier for us if we weren’t paying tuition and if I found somewhere to work full time instead. I went back to filling orders and smiling for tips. When I didn’t work, I focused the rest of my energy on doing what I could for our future. For Jason. 

I found myself standing in the doorway of my studio—my part-time sanctuary and part-time hell. There are more pictures. They’re pinned to a bulletin board behind my easels. They’re not posed or staged as the ones in the living room or in Jason’s office. They’re of moments, real moments, where no one is looking at the camera or even aware of its presence.

One caught my eye. It’s framed at the center of the collage and it’s been my favorite since it was taken. Jason and I had gone on a camping trip with a few of our friends about a year after we had been dating. The camping itself had been disastrous, or so everyone else still insisted. I couldn’t remember. All I could remember about that day was that Jason had proposed to me. 

The picture itself is a close-up of us, just after he slipped the ring on my finger. We’re staring at each other, standing against a backdrop of branches and leaves and because it shows us only from our shoulders up, and I’m wearing a bandeau and he’s shirtless, we actually look nude. 

We looked like Adam and Eve: blissfully happy, living outside of the world’s turmoil, caught up completely in ourselves. We were so in love…

Tears began to slide down my face as I stared at the photo. My right hand played with the matching rings on my left. They’re modest. Jason had wanted to get me a diamond, but I insisted on bands and no jewels. I didn’t like jewels. Jason hadn’t argued. He never did when it came to what I wanted. That was why I had let him buy that stupid couch…

I’m in our bedroom before I even realized that I moved at all. 

My closet was the second victim of my mindless actions. I wasn’t even thinking as I pulled blouses, skirts, jackets, dresses, and pants off of their hangers. I glanced at each and then threw them outside onto the floor.

I would never have worn any of it before. The materials are dark and stiff. I had bought them only to impress the other wives and Jason’s bosses and coworkers and everyone else that I had spent my marriage trying to impress.

Jason never liked them though.

The thought snuck up on me and I paused. I ran my fingers through my hair thoughtfully, pulling at the short strands. He acted disappointed whenever I cut it… he hadn’t asked me to in the first place.

Jason had never asked me to change. Jason had never asked me to drop out of school. Jason had never asked me to do anything that I had. If I had given up my dreams, if I had changed into something completely unrecognizable, it wasn’t because he had asked me to.

It wasn’t Jason who was the stranger in our bed at night. 

It was me.

I slumped down onto the pile of my clothes and began to cry.

* * *

I was still there when Jason got home a few hours later.

“It went really great this morning, Vi!” he called, his voice carrying through the whole apartment.

I hardly heard him. 

“I mean, Jerry got sick on himself just before, so I had to do the pitch, but I think we really nailed it.”

I heard him on the steps and started running my fingers through my hair to arrange it. I wiped at my face, rubbing at long-dried tears.

“Listen, I just came by to change. The client wants to meet for drinks, so I might be out late, but I don’t want you waiting up for me again. I’ll—Violet?”

He was frozen in the doorway, obviously caught between concern and confusion. I looked insane. I knew it. I was sitting on the entire contents of my closet, in pajamas, trying to look normal, when I wasn’t even sure what that was anymore.

“Vi?” Jason began uneasily. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Yes, you look it.”

I made a sound that was like a laugh and a cry at the same time.

“Vi?”

“I’m fine, Jason. I’m just having a… moment. You’re going to be late for your meeting.”

He nodded. Then he left.

I wanted to blame him, but couldn’t. I wouldn’t want to deal with me either. I didn’t want to deal with me.

But I’d fix it later. I’d tell him that it was just a premenstrual thing. That I had taken a few pills. That I was fine. I’d clean up the bedroom and his office. I’d shower and then order take-out. I’d wait up for him. We’d eat and then we’d go to bed. Then maybe in the morning everything would be normal again. Not great. Not good. But normal.

“All right, what kind of ‘moment’ are we dealing with?”

Jason was standing in the doorway. “What are you doing?” I asked. “I thought you—”

“I called and said that I’d have to reschedule.” He approached and sat next to me on the floor. “What’s up, Vi?”

I stared for a moment, lost for words. I was so deeply touched by the simplicity of the gesture and said the first thing that came to mind. “I’m still in love with you.”