winter

My wife is on the telephone. Talking with her lover. So, I stand outside. Fingers aching cold. Eyes watering at the sky. It’s too late in the year, but there’s a V of geese flying above me. Struggling to keep formation. So low, I can hear the whistling of wings. They are headed south. Or maybe not even that far. Perhaps the city, only thirty miles away, will be warm enough. Year-round parks. Bird feeders and hand-outs. Ponds that don’t freeze. The birds honk as they ascend into thick, gray clouds that layer and fold. Create shapes and forms. A heart. A horse. A ring. The face of Jesus in the sky.

Finally, filled up on cold, I go inside.

I stomp the snow off my boots. Plates and cups rattle on shelves behind cupboard doors.

“Why are you stomping? You know I’m on the phone!”

She says this with her hand clamped over the mouthpiece. To stifle our sound. As if any of this can be kept silent.

I stomp more, then move to the coffee pot. Her cup is there. Lipstick on the rim. I touch it then look at the color on my fingertips. It is not quite red, and it is something new.

I pour coffee. Add milk and sugar. I stir. Clank the spoon all around inside the cup.

She’s twirling her hair with fury. Glaring at me, as she listens to her lover. They are making plans. I know this because she has told me so. In all of this she has told me plenty. She has been honest. She’s told me the Truth.

Finally, she says, she’s fallen in love. Our marriage was something else. Not love, but something to help us find Love. She has found hers. I will find mine. Our divorce is necessary, she says. It is a parting of ways that will free us. And we need to be free because we are no longer the people we used to be.

“I can’t wait to see you,” my wife tells the other man. “I’m taking care of things on this end, and I’ll be leaving shortly.”

I have not seen my wife in weeks. She has come now to deliver paperwork. To resolve our broken life with a folder of documents. A list.

“I don’t want this to be messy,” she says to me, as she returns the receiver to its cradle.

“It’s already messy,” I say.  

She takes a sheet of paper from the folder she’s brought.

“Here’s a list,” she says, holding it out for me. “Things I want to keep. Things you can have. I trust we know enough of each other that we don’t need the lawyers to decide on these things.”

The list is written on personalized stationery. Kali Beck, it says. Already, she’s dropped my last name.

“I’ll look it over later,” I say, and squeeze my coffee cup.

She sighs. Fills her cup over the sink. Like she’s always done. As usual, she only pours half a cup, and she spills a little.

I stare out the window into the field across the road. There are turkeys marching through dead grass. I count twenty-seven hens. There isn’t a tom in sight. The turkeys gather near a row of abandoned hay bales. They peck and scratch the ground.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asks, sipping her coffee.

I raise my cup to my lips as slowly as I can. Take a long, noisy sip.

“I know when it happened,” I say. 

“What?”

“When it ended.”         

 

She sets her cup down. Leans against the counter top. Stares into the floor.

“Listen,” she says, “I don’t want to fight. I just came to give you the papers and say goodbye.”

I feel something shaking loose inside. I hold my cup tighter. Move closer to her.

“Listen,” I begin. “One night, I came home early, and you were in the shower. The phone rang. I answered it, and I could feel him on the line.”

She turns and reaches for her coat. I continue.

“He didn’t say anything, but I knew he was there. It was like both of us were standing silent, face to face in the dark. And I wanted him to say something, to ask for you, but he didn’t. And I walked to the bathroom door with the phone in my hand, and I wanted to confront you. Both of you. But he’d hung up before I could say anything. So, I stood there, outside the bathroom, waiting for you, not knowing what to do, trying in my mind to put together the pieces. And then, that’s when I heard it.”

Kali slips her arms through her sleeves. Pulls on her hat.

“Heard what?” she asks. 

“The shower spraying. Water drops against the shower curtain. And you, my wife. Singing a song I’d never heard before. That’s when I knew.”

She looks into my eyes and I feel it, as I have always felt it, but I see that she feels nothing. Her brown eyes are glass. Small, dark surfaces for reflecting the world.

“Stop it,” she says, quietly.

“After I heard you singing, I walked outside and stood in the dark looking at our house. And I thought about all of things we had shared. And all of the things we had planned. I stared for a long time at the bathroom window. Through the shades and the steam, I could see a shadow. An outline of a woman. But it wasn’t you.”

“It was me,” Kali says, “It was me, but…”

She moves away. Toward the wood carving of Jesus that hangs on the kitchen wall. He’s leaning forward under the weight of the cross he carries. She reaches up and touches him. 

“I forgot about this,” she says. “I didn’t put it on the list.”

“You made it.”

“I did. But you can keep it.”

Kali turns. Faces me. Our eyes lock. I feel it again, as I’ve felt it thousands of times, but she shows nothing.

I turn away. Look out the kitchen window as big flakes drift and whirl. The turkeys are gone. The sky is white. And behind me, Kali opens the door. There is a moment of shared silence. Like two strangers passing in the dark. And then, she is gone.  

~ KJ