I'm Thinking of Ending Things (3 page)

The next day I saw I had two missed calls. Both were received in the middle of the night when I was asleep. I checked my missed-calls list and saw it was the same number as the wrong number from the day before. That was weird. Why would he call back? But what was really weird, and inexplicable—and this still
makes me upset—was that the calls had come from my own number.

I didn't believe it at first. I almost didn't recognize my number. I did a double take. I thought it was an error. It had to be. But I double-checked and made sure I was looking at the missed-calls list and not something else. It was definitely the missed-calls list. There it was. My number.

It wasn't until three or four days later that the Caller left his first voice message. That's when it really started to get eerie. I still have that message saved. I have them all. He's left seven. I don't know why I've kept them. Maybe because I think I might tell Jake.

I reach down into my purse and take my phone out, dial.

“Who're you calling?” asks Jake.

“Just checking my messages.”

I listen to the first saved message. It's the first voice message the Caller left.

There's only one question to resolve. I'm scared. I feel a little crazy. I'm not lucid. The assumptions are right. I can feel my fear growing. Now is the time for the answer. Just one question. One question to answer.

The messages aren't obviously aggressive or threatening. Neither is the voice. I don't think. Now I'm not so sure. They're definitely sad. The Caller sounds sad, maybe a bit frustrated. I don't know what his words mean. They seem nonsensical, but they also aren't babble. And they're always the same. Word for word.

SO THIS IS BASICALLY THE
only other interesting thing in my life right now. That I've been seeing Jake and that someone else, another man, has been leaving me unusual voice messages. I don't often have secrets.

Sometimes when I'm in bed, sound asleep, I'll wake up and see that I have a missed call, often around 3:00 a.m. He usually calls in the middle of the night. And the call always comes from my number.

Once he called when Jake and I were watching a movie in bed. When my number came up, I didn't say anything but pretended I was chewing and handed the phone to Jake. He answered and said it was some old woman who'd called the wrong number. He seemed unconcerned. We kept watching the movie. I didn't sleep very well that night.

Since these calls have started, I've had nightmares, really scary dreams, and have woken up twice in the middle of the night in a bit of a panic, feeling like someone is in my apartment. That's never happened to me before. It's a terrible feeling. For a second or two, it feels like someone is right in the room, standing in the corner, very close, watching me. It's so real and frightening. I can't move.

I'm half-asleep, but after a minute or so, I fully wake up and go to the bathroom. It's always very quiet in my apartment. I run the water in the sink and it sounds extra loud because everything is so quiet. My heart's pounding. I'm very sweaty, and once had to change pajamas because they were so wet. I don't usually sweat, not like that. It's really not a nice feeling. It's too late to tell Jake any of this. I just feel a little more on edge than I usually am.

ONE NIGHT, WHILE I SLEPT,
the Caller called twelve times. He didn't leave a message that night. But there were twelve missed calls. All from my number.

Most people would have done something about the issue after that, but I didn't. And what could I do? I couldn't call the police. He'd never threatened me or said anything violent or harmful. That's what I find so bizarre, that he doesn't want to talk. I guess I should say he
only
wants to talk. He never wants to converse. Anytime I've tried to answer one of his calls, he just hangs up. He prefers leaving his cryptic message.

Jake isn't paying attention. He's driving, so I listen to the message again.

There's only one question to resolve. I'm scared. I feel a little crazy. I'm not lucid. The assumptions are right. I can feel my fear growing. Now is the time for the answer. Just one question. One question to answer.

I've listened to it so many times. Over and over.

All of a sudden it had gone too far. It was the same message as it had always been, word for word, but this time there was something new at the end. The last message I got changed things. It was the worst. It was really creepy. I couldn't sleep at all that night. I felt scared and stupid for not putting a stop to the calls sooner. I felt stupid for not telling Jake. I'm still upset about it.

There's only one question to resolve. I'm scared. I feel a little crazy. I'm not lucid. The assumptions are right. I can feel my fear
growing. Now is the time for the answer. Just one question. One question to answer.

And then . . .

Now I'm going to say something that will upset you: I know what you look like. I know your feet and hands and your skin. I know your head and your hair and your heart. You shouldn't bite your nails.

I decided I definitely had to answer the next time he called. I had to tell him to stop. Even if he didn't say anything back, I could tell him that. Maybe that would be enough.

The phone rang.

“Why are you calling me? How did you get my number? You can't keep doing this,” I said. I was mad and scared. This didn't feel like a random thing anymore. It didn't feel like he'd just dialed a number off the top of his head. It wasn't going to stop. He wasn't going to go away, and he wanted something. What did he want from me? Why me?

“This is about you. I can't help you!”

I was yelling.

“But you called me,” he said.

“What?”

I hung up and threw my phone down. My chest was heaving.

I know it was just a stupid fluke, but I've been biting my nails since fifth grade.

—The night you called, we were having a dinner party. I'd made a pecan galette with salted caramel sauce for dessert. That call. The whole night was ruined for everyone after we heard. I can still remember every word of your call.

—The kids were out when I heard. I called you right away.

—Was he depressed or sick? Do we know if he was depressed?

—Apparently he wasn't on any antidepressants. He was keeping secrets, though. I'm sure there were more.

—Yeah.

—If we'd only known how serious it was. If only there'd been some signs. There are always signs. People don't just do
that.

—This wasn't a rational person.

—That's true, that's a good point.

—He's not like us.

—No, no. Not like us at all.

—If you have nothing, there's nothing to lose.

—Yeah. Nothing to lose.

I
think a lot of what we learn about others isn't what they tell us. It's what we observe. People can tell us anything they want. As Jake pointed out once, every time someone says “Pleased to meet you,” they're actually thinking something different, making some judgment. Feeling “pleased” is never exactly what they're thinking or feeling, but that's what they say, and we listen.

Jake told me our relationship has its own valence.
Valence
. That's the word he used.

If that's true, then relationships can change from one afternoon to evening, from hour to hour. Lying in bed is one thing. When we eat breakfast together and when it's early, we don't speak a lot. I like to talk, even just a bit. It helps me wake up. Especially if the conversation is funny. Nothing wakes me up like a laugh, really, even just one big laugh, as long as it's sincere. It's better than caffeine.

Jake prefers to eat his cereal or toast and read, mostly in quiet. He's always reading. Lately it's that Cocteau book. He must have reread it five times by now.

But he also just reads whatever's available. At first I thought he was quiet at breakfast because he was so into whatever book he
was reading. I could understand that, though it's not how I operate. I wouldn't ever read this way. I like to know I have a good bit of time set aside for reading, to really get into the story. I don't like reading and eating, not together.

But it's the reading just for the sake of it that I find irritating. Jake will read anything—a newspaper, a magazine, a cereal box, a crappy flyer, a take-out menu, anything.

“Hey, do you think secrets are inherently unfair, or bad or immoral in a relationship?” I ask.

He's caught off guard. He looks at me, then back to the road.

“I don't know. It would depend on the secret. Is it significant? Is there more than one secret? How many are there? And what is being hidden? All relationships have secrets, though, don't you think? Even in lifelong relationships, and fifty-year marriages, there are secrets.”

On the fifth morning we had breakfast together I stopped trying to start up a discussion. I didn't make any jokes. I sat. I ate cereal. Jake's brand. I looked around the room. I watched him. I observed. I thought: This is good. This is how we
really
get to know each other.

He was reading a magazine. There was a faint white film or residue under his bottom lip, concentrated in the corners of his mouth, in the valley where the top and bottom lips meet. This happened most mornings, this white lip film. After he showered, it was usually gone.

Was it toothpaste? Was it from breathing out of his mouth all night? Was it the mouth equivalent of eye boogers? When he read,
he chewed very slowly, as if to conserve energy, as if concentrating on the words slowed his ability to swallow. Sometimes there was a long delay between the last revolution of his jaw and his swallow.

He'd wait for a bit and then dig out another overflowing spoonful from his bowl, holding it up absentmindedly. I thought he might drip milk onto his chin; each spoon was so full. But he didn't. He got it all into his mouth without a single drip. He rested the spoon in the bowl and wiped at his chin, even though there was nothing on it. It was all done distractedly.

His jaw is very taut and muscular. Even now. Even while sitting, driving.

How can I stop myself from thinking about eating breakfast with him twenty or thirty years from now? Would he still get that white residue every day? Would it be worse? Does everyone in a relationship think about this stuff? I watched him swallow—that prominent Adam's apple, more a gnarled peach pit stuck in his throat.

Sometimes post-eating, usually after a large meal, his body makes sounds like a cooling car after a long drive. I can hear liquids shifting through small spaces. This doesn't happen so much at breakfast, more often after supper.

I hate to dwell on these things. They're unimportant and banal, but now's the time to think about them before this relationship gets any more serious. This makes me crazy, though, right? I'm crazy for thinking about this stuff?

Jake is smart. He'll be a full professor before long. Full tenure and all that. This stuff's appealing. It makes a good life. He's tall.
He has his clumsy physical appeal. He's attractively misanthropic. All things I would have wanted in a husband when I was younger. Checks in all the boxes. I'm just not sure what any of this means now that I'm watching him eat cereal and hearing his body make hydraulic noises.

“Do you think your parents have secrets?” I ask.

“Absolutely. I'm sure they do. They'd have to.”

The weirdest part—and it's some pretty unalloyed irony, as Jake would say—is that I can't say anything to him about my doubts. They have everything to do with him, and he's the one person I'm not comfortable talking to about them. I won't say anything until I'm sure it's over. I can't. What I'm questioning involves both of us, affects both of us, yet I can only decide alone. What does that say about relationships? Another in the long line of early-relationship contradictions.

“Why all the questions about secrets?”

“No reason,” I say. “Just thinking.”

M
aybe I should simply enjoy this trip. Not overthink it. Get out of my own head. Have fun; let things happen naturally.

I don't know what this means—“let things happen naturally”—but I've heard it over and over. People say it to me a lot about relationships. Isn't that what we're doing? I'm letting myself consider these thoughts. It's natural. I'm not going to prevent doubts from blooming. Wouldn't that be
more
unnatural?

I ask myself what my reasons are for ending things and have trouble coming up with anything substantial. But how can you not ask this question in a relationship? What's here to keep it going? To make it worthwhile? Mostly, I just think I'd be better off without Jake, that it makes more sense than going on. I'm not certain, though. How can I be certain? I've never broken up with a boyfriend before.

Most relationships I've been in were like a carton of milk reaching its expiration date. It gets to a certain point and just sours, not inducing sickness but enough to notice a change in flavor. Maybe instead of wondering about Jake, I should be questioning my ability to experience passion. This could all be my fault.

“Even when it's cold like this, if it's clear,” Jake's saying, “I don't mind. You can always bundle up. There's something about the deep cold that's refreshing.”

“Summer's better,” I say. “I hate being cold. We still have at least another month before spring. It's going to be a long month.”

“I saw Venus without a telescope one summer.”

Such a Jake thing to say.

“It was one night around sunset. It wasn't going to be visible from Earth again for more than a hundred years. It was this very rare planetary alignment that coordinated the sun and Venus, so you could see it as a tiny black dot when it passed between Earth and the sun. It was really cool.”