The Distance Between Monday and Friday

On the morning of December 29th, at 10:41, Rory McAllister awoke alone.

This was not unusual in itself, and in fact did not register as unusual to Rory for some time until his sense of place and surroundings returned to him. It had been an unrestful night of bad dreams, fueled all the worse by the whiskey consumed to aid in sleep. A feeble, stupid attempt in retrospect, but it was all he could think to do to ease his mind.

Therefore, his head hurt when he opened his eyes, which were assaulted by sun rays shooting aggressively through window blinds only half-closed. He groaned and threw his pillow over his head. Even when he dared open his eyes again under his refuge a dull pain lingered, deep set between his eyes, as if someone placed a strong thumb on the spot and was ever-so-slightly increasing the pressure in so slow an interval that by the time he discovered the pain was worsening, the threshold for tolerance had already been surpassed.

Besides this was the dry stickiness that coated his mouth, tongue, and throat. Producing saliva was out of the question, and until he braved getting out of bed to drink water, his current state was simply what it was.

A few minutes passed until the pain normalized and he could focus his mind on other things, such as last night… No… He didn’t want to think about that.

Rory felt blindly for his phone kept on the nightstand, all the while keeping his head beneath his pillow. He knocked over an empty glass but did eventually find the phone and checked the time. Camille was almost always up by then, and it was this assumption and Rory’s literal blindness to his surroundings that kept him from noticing something had changed.

He spent some time in the dark feeling like a piece of shit, the reasons why being too numerous and multifaceted to be properly documented, though it may prove useful to highlight a few. For one, he hardly ever drank. The drink, “Cider Cask Finish” of Tullamore D.E.W. Triple Distilled Irish Whiskey, had been gifted five years ago at the wedding and had stayed unopened, though always on display, on a shelf in the dining room until recently. Secondly, now that he had dehydrated himself, going for a run probably wasn’t going to happen, and running had been the only thing of late giving him purpose, more-so than work ever could, and besides, he would not return to work until January 2nd. It would have been better to smoke pot, but he hated the smell and found the whole practice tacky by the age of twenty-eight.

When he flipped over because his downturned ear began to feel hot, he remembered the third reason, which actually nullified the second. The injury on his hip flared at his twisting, some kind of strain, but probably a tear in truth, that had kept him from running since the middle of October, derailing the two years of progress he had built towards. He couldn’t pretend he had handled it well.

Still, the drinking made him feel like shit, because what if he had been able to run? It would have at least given him something positive to do while he cleared his memory of last night, and provided a clear head to formulate some kind of apology better than what he could come up with hung over and brain fogged as he was.

There it was, the most important reason he felt like human garbage. Things between him and Camille had come to a head, and he had yelled at her, the one thing he promised never to do. Suddenly the pain felt like nothing compared to the guilt and so he lay in silence, wondering how in the world he could apologize in a way that conveyed his shame, but he could think of nothing until he decided that thinking itself was worthless.

It was in this state of attempting to be devoid of thought, though very much failing, that he first noticed the silence. He could hear no movement at all beyond the bedroom. Camille could very well have been out, but this was a different silence altogether. Rory’s stomach knotted and, disregarding the pain of being exposed to sunlight, shot up to look at the door.

Everything at first appeared fuzzy and unformed before him and he had to blink several times before the images solidified and he found the door closed to the rest of the house. For a minute, though maybe more, he stared at the door, expressionless, as if he expected something on the other side, but there came no change of any kind. All there was was the absence of anything living, and that was unusual.

“Zoomie!” Rory called, and clicked his tongue in an inviting manner, but there came no sign of the cat’s response.

He could not remember the original name they had picked for it. The wildness of the kitten years had led to the nickname, which in turn simply became the name for a rambunctious boy cat with separation anxiety, who constantly cried and scratched at doors which denied him access to his humans. Those scratchings and cries were what usually woke Rory up, and even if he had fallen asleep again, he always remembered being woken by them, and he had no such memory today.

Cold. Coldness spread to every limb and extremity. Coldness overcame him. Why was the cat not at the door? Why was it not trying to get to him? On any other day Rory would have been annoyed, but now he wanted the cat’s affection more than anything, wanted for it to be waiting on the other side, ready to spring into his arms, to head-butt his chin, to drape over his shoulder and purr and fall asleep with the little breathes that signaled that it was warm and safe. Rory had taken the affection for granted, but he wouldn’t ever again.

So focused was he on the cat that he failed to notice Camille’s pillow missing, nor did he realize that the various scarves, cardigans, and blouses that draped over the chest-of-drawers and the reading chair were no longer there. He only saw the door and what he wished were behind it, and so he got out of bed and walked to it, but hesitated a beat before turning the handle.

A cat-less, unlit hallways was all he found on the other side. The Christmas lights intertwined in the holly that ran along the border of the walls and the ceiling were unlit, silent and devoid of merriment. Camille did not believe in turning off the lights until the New Year. Rory could not hear the tiny skaters on the miniature frozen pond in the living room. The radio in the kitchen, which always played Christmas tunes at a low decibel level, had been turned off. The only sound was the air coming through the vents, but that too stopped just as he made note of it. The place was empty.

Somehow, he could not remember how he got there and could not remember walking after opening the door, he ended up in the living room that, though was still decorated, housed no joy or good cheer, but was rather dark and desolate, like a tomb long neglected. The tree in the corner was all shadow, for the angle of the Sun did not fall on its tinsel and ornaments accumulated through the years. Empty boxes filled with Camille’s presents to Rory that he hadn’t yet put away sat by the hearth of a fireless fireplace. Yet his present to her, a mahogany lamp decorated in a floral pattern stained glass of reds and blues, was gone along with the box, as were her shoes usually parked by the front door. Neither did her coats hang from the hooks installed over the shoes.

Rory drifted, walked slowly over to the front door, as if in a daze. Some impasse blocked the signals between optic nerve and his brain. He didn’t touch anything. One, if there had been an audience, would have thought him confused, perhaps he was, and he remained that way for some time, and only snapped out of it when he noticed the litter box also gone from its place in the kitchen’s alcove, and where there was usually a cold French Press half-full of coffee upon the island there was none.

Then the confusion fell away in an instant, which was not confusion in truth, but rather the washing away of a mental dam thrown up haphazardly by himself. He ran back to the bedroom and into the bathroom. Gone was her toothbrush, razor, soaps, lotions, and medicines. The last of the dam washed away.

The tips of Rory’s fingers buzzed with a static that itched. His cheeks flushed. He had the sudden urge to vomit, and so he did, right into the toilet, the kind of vomiting that temporarily blinds the vomiter and that expels snot through the nostrils. He emptied himself thus three times, sputtering and spitting, unsure if the wetness of his eyes came from the strain of retching or from his realization that Camille had left.

After he wiped his face with a wet towel and brushed his teeth Rory knew he had to call her, but he did not find his phone in bed, and figured he must have dropped it somewhere in the living room.

He found it by the front door, but once he picked it up he froze, unsure of what to say were he to call her, unsure if he would even have the ability to talk at all if she answered. This was going to require some sitting and thinking before he trusted himself with words.

As he went to sit down on the couch, something caught his attention that, for once, was not an absence of something, but a new thing, occupying the space on the coffee table between a picture of Camille’s parents and another of Rory with his mom, taken sometime right after he graduated university. It was a letter written on brown paper in a fluid cursive that unmistakably came from Camille’s hand using the gel-roller that she swore by.

Voices in Rory’s head told him not to touch it, much less read it. His hands trembled. He thought he heard himself whimper, though he could not be sure. All he was sure of was that he would not listen to the voices. Because if he did, then the chances of him ever reading the letter were slim. And so, setting his phone on the table, he took the letter which rattled and crinkled in his hands, and he began to read.

Rory,

By the time you read this, you’ll have realized that I’m gone. I’m sorry to have done so, but I feel like it’s the best option to take if we ever want this to work out. I need some time to think and let my emotions be what they are without your interference.

It’s not that I think your interference would be malicious in intent, I truly don’t believe that, but you have to understand that I don’t feel like my own person when I’m with you, and that’s part of the problem. You will feel the same way about yourself if only you took the time to self-examine. I encourage you to do that.

We’ve got a lot of things to figure out besides that. Why couldn’t we just talk about them before they grew to such insurmountable sizes? I share in the blame for that, and you do, as well.

Do you remember when communicating felt easy for us? I do. That’s part of what made me fall in love with you then. You were an optimistic English Lit major, full of words and dreams, eager to share them, and to hear mine. I felt truly known then.

But then your optimism faltered. I cannot entirely blame you. You chased your dream until the rejection pile stacked too high to ignore, and though you never told me so, you truly gave up writing once we were married. It felt irresponsible for you to spend time making things up when you could be making money to put away for a house, and once we had the house so much had to go into repairs both planned and unplanned. I don’t think you wrote at all in the first two years of us owning the house and I felt you resented me for that. It’s easier to blame people than circumstance, I suppose. God knows I’ve felt resentful when it was unfair, but I’ve already apologized to you, while this still lingers to this day.

To make things clear, I never asked you to stop writing. You did that yourself. When your conception for the perfect writing environment crumbled, you folded instead of making a new environment or a new routine that would work for you. In fact, I wished you would take up writing again, because that’s when I felt you were most emotionally in tune with yourself and with me, and I hope that you will one day pick it back up.

It is resentment itself that sums up the gulf between us. You already resented me for no longer writing, but I believe it festered more after Mom and Dad passed. You would deny it, because I think you realized the unfairness of it, but you still felt it all the same.

Grief did change me, and thus our dynamic. I probably, no, not probably… I was less intimate with you. I couldn’t fake it, and I couldn’t make myself get over it any faster, even when enough time seemed to pass on the outside. I couldn’t meet any of your needs because I was numb to my own. But we never talked about it. Maybe we could have cut the resentment out right then and there, but cowardice and complacency won out.

By the time I was able to regain some normality, you had already shut me out. You had taken up running by then, probably as some sort of outlet for your frustration, and seemed guarded around me. Okay, I figured, it’s going to take time. But then your mom died suddenly, and it was your turn to spiral, and I let you do so, because how could you not?

However, it was after your injury that your behavior became inexcusable. No longer were you acting distant, but treated me poorly. Little passive-aggressive remarks here, ignoring me there, refusal to help me out around the house. It was out of character for you.

Rory, all I did was ask you to help with the dishes last night and you yelled at me to get off your case. You yelled at me, when I told you on our first date that a man yelling at me was my greatest fear, over dishes, which up until this year you have always volunteered to do yourself. You came just short of calling me a bitch.

Now, after thinking it over last night I know it is all more than a single incident over dishes. We’re not healthy, and I want to reiterate that I share in the blame here. But I’m worried about you. You’re prone to anger now, just as much as you are prone to lethargy. You’re emotionally detached, always seeking distraction of some sort, and it’s only gotten worse since Christmas. It’s like being away from work has derailed you. You’re just not the you that I once knew. I’m not even sure if you’re capable of crying anymore.

In short, give me some space. I still love you. I hope that you still love me. But I’m not sure if we’re right for each other anymore. I hope I’m wrong in that, but I have to know what I truly feel. Do not call me in this time. I am safe at my brother’s.

Take the time to find out how you feel, too. Because, regardless of how we turn out, I do wish for you to find yourself.

With love,

Camille

Rory sat down on the couch, letting the letter fall to the floor, and buried his face in his hands. His phone sat like some cursed object upon the table, cruel in its taunting the fact that Rory could call Camille with it if he wanted to. Oh, how bad Rory wanted to!

But he wouldn’t. He would respect Camille’s wish and wait for her to reach out to him, and he would do what he could not to be driven to madness in that waiting. If only he could make it to January 2nd, maybe he would be okay. If only he could go for a run. Why did this have to happen now, of all times? Why this period where nothing is normal and time stands still? No amount of reading or writing, no amount of brainless media consumption would make the time pass as it should, and here his mind and heart would be stuck, where the distance between Monday and Friday is not measured in numbers, but is only an unbridged chasm, the depths of which cannot be plumbed, though all are required to traverse it, though not all alone, but Rory was alone, and through that darkness he would have to travel, unsure of the destination, unsure if a destination even existed, with nothing but his own ailing and spiraling thoughts to guide him, and the hope that the other side lay just beyond arm’s reach, that if he put one foot in front of the other, eventually he would come to the end. That is all that could be done.

When Rory finally raised his face from his hands, his palms were wet.