I'm Thinking of Ending Things (7 page)

“We're communicating,” I say. “We're thinking.”

IT'S MY PHONE THAT BREAKS
the silence, ringing from my bag. Again.

“Sorry,” I say, reaching down to retrieve it. It's my number on the screen. “My friend again.”

“Maybe you should answer it this time.”

“I really don't feel like talking. She'll stop calling eventually. I'm sure it's nothing.”

I put the phone in my bag but pick it up again when it beeps. Two new messages. This time, I'm glad the volume of the radio is high. I don't want Jake to hear the messages. But the Caller's not talking in the first message. It's just sounds, noises, running water. In the second, it's more running water and I can hear him walking, footsteps, and what sounds like hinges, a door closing. It's him. It has to be.

“Anything important?” Jake asks.

“No.” I hope to sound casual, but I can feel my face growing warmer.

I'm going to have to deal with this when we get back, tell someone, anyone, about the Caller. But now, if I do say something to Jake, I'll also have to tell him I've been lying. It can't keep going on. Not like this. Not anymore. The running water continues. I'm not sure why he's doing this to me.

“Really? Not important? Two calls, not even texts, in a row. Seems important, no?”

“People are dramatic sometimes,” I say. “I'll talk to her tomorrow. My phone's about to die anyway.”

I THINK JAKE'S LAST GIRLFRIEND
was a grad student in another department. I've seen her around. She's cute: athletic, with blond hair. A runner. He definitely dated her. He says they're still friends. Not close friends. They don't hang out. But he said they had coffee a week before we met at the pub. I probably sound jealous. I'm not. I'm curious. I'm also not a runner.

It's weird, but I'd like to talk to her. I'd like to sit down with a pot of tea and ask her about Jake. I'd like to know why they started dating. What was it about him that attracted her? I'd like to know why it didn't last. Did she end things, or did Jake? If it was her, for how long was she thinking of ending things? Doesn't this seem like a reasonable idea, chatting with a new partner's ex?

I've asked him about her a few times. He's coy. He doesn't say much. He just says their relationship wasn't long or very serious. That's why it's her I have to talk to. To hear her side.

We're alone in a car in the middle of nowhere. Now seems as good a time as any.

“So, how did it end?” I say. “With your last girlfriend, I mean.”

“It never really started,” he says. “It was minor and temporary.”

“But you didn't start out thinking that.”

“It didn't start out any more serious than when it ended.”

“Why didn't it last?”

“It wasn't real.”

“How do you know?”

“You always know,” he says.

“But how do we know when a relationship becomes real?”

“Are you asking in general, or about that relationship specifically?”

“That one.”

“There was no dependency. Dependency equates to seriousness.”

“I'm not sure I agree,” I said. “What about real? How do you know when something's real?”

“What
is
real?” he says. “It's real when there are stakes, when something's on the line.”

For a while we don't say anything.

“Do you remember me telling you about the woman who lives across the street?” I ask.

I think we must be getting close to the farm. Jake hasn't confirmed we are, but we've been driving for a while. Must be close to two hours.

“Who?”

“The older woman from across the street. Remember?”

“I think so, yeah,” he says noncommittally.

“She was saying how she and her husband have stopped sleeping together.”

“Hmm.”

“I don't mean not having sex. I mean have stopped sleeping in the same bed at night. They both decided a good night's sleep
trumps any benefits to sleeping in the same bed. They want their own sleeping space. They don't want to hear another person snoring or feel them turn over. She said her husband's a pretty vicious snorer.”

I find this very sad.

“It seems reasonable that if one person is disruptive, sleeping alone would be an option.”

“You think? We spend almost half our lives asleep.”

“That could be an argument for why it's best to find the optimal sleeping situation. It's an option, that's all I'm saying.”

“But you're not
just
sleeping. You're aware of the other person.”

“You
are
just sleeping,” he insists.

“You're never just sleeping,” I say. “Not even when you're asleep.”

“You've lost me.”

Jake signals and makes a left turn. This new road is smaller. It's definitely not a main road. This is a back road.

“Aren't you aware of me when we're sleeping?”

“I mean, I don't know. I'm asleep.”

“I'm aware of you,” I say.

TWO NIGHTS AGO, I COULDN'T
sleep. Yet again. I've been thinking too much for weeks. Jake slept over for the third night in a row. I actually like sleeping in bed with someone. Sleeping beside someone. Jake was sound asleep, not snoring, but his breathing was unmistakably close. Right there.

I think what I want is for someone to know me. Really know me. Know me better than anyone else and maybe even me. Isn't that why we commit to another? It's not for sex. If it were for sex, we wouldn't marry one person. We'd just keep finding new partners. We commit for many reasons, I know, but the more I think about it, the more I think long-term relationships are for getting to know someone. I want someone to know me, really know me, almost like that person could get into my head. What would that feel like? To have access, to know what it's like in someone else's head. To rely on someone else, have him rely on you. That's not a biological connection like the one between parents and children. This kind of relationship would be chosen. It would be something cooler, harder to achieve than one built on biology and shared genetics.

I think that's it. Maybe that's how we know when a relationship is real. When someone else previously unconnected to us knows us in a way we never thought or believed possible.

I like that.

In bed that night, I looked over at Jake. He was so stable, babyish. He looked smaller. Stress and tension hide during sleep. He never grinds his teeth. His eyelids don't flutter. He usually sleeps so soundly. He looks like a different person when he sleeps.

During the day, when Jake's awake, there's always an underlying intensity, an energy that simmers. He has these little movements, twitches and ticks.

But isn't being alone closer to the truest version of ourselves, when we're not linked to another, not diluted by their presence and judgments? We form relationships with others, friends,
family. That's fine. Those relationships don't bind the way love does. We can still have lovers, short-term. But only when alone can we focus on ourselves, know ourselves. How can we know ourselves without this solitude? And not just when we sleep.

It's probably not going to work out with Jake. I'm probably going to end it. What's unrealistic, I think, is the number of people who attempt an enduring, committed relationship, who believe it will work long-term. Jake isn't a bad guy. He's perfectly fine. Even considering the data that shows the majority of marriages don't last, people still think marriage is the normal human state. Most people want to get married. Is there anything else that people do in such huge numbers, with such a terrible success rate?

Jake once told me that he keeps a photograph of himself at his desk in his lab. He says it's the only photograph he keeps there. It's of him when he was five. He had curly blond hair and chubby cheeks. How did he ever have chubby cheeks? He told me he likes the photo because it's him, yet physically, he's completely different now from the child he sees in the photo. He doesn't just mean he looks different but that every cell captured in the image has died, been shed and replaced by new cells. In the present, he is literally a different person. Where's the consistency? How is he still aware of being that younger age if he's physically completely different? He would say something about all those proteins.

Our physical structures, like a relationship, change and repeat, tire and wilt, age and deplete. We get sick and better, or sick and worse. We don't know when, or how, or why. We just carry on.

Is it better to be paired up or alone?

Three nights ago, with Jake fully comatose, I waited for the light to start peeking through the blinds. On the nights I can't sleep, like that one, like so many recently, I wish I could just turn my mind off like a lamp. I wish I had a shutdown command like my computer. I hadn't looked at the clock in a while. I lay there, thinking, wishing I was asleep like everyone else.

“Almost there,” says Jake. “We're five minutes away.”

I sit up and stretch my arms over my head. I yawn. “Felt like a quick trip,” I say. “Thanks for inviting me.”

“Thanks for coming,” he says. Then, inexplicably, “And you also know things are real when they can be lost.”

—The body was found in the closet.

—Really?

—Yeah. A small closet. Big enough to hang shirts and jackets, some boots, not much else. The body was all scrunched up in there. The door was closed.

—It makes me sad. And angry.

—Why not reach out to someone, right? Talk to someone. He had coworkers. It wasn't like he was working in a place without other people. There were people around all the time.

—I know. It didn't have to happen this way.

—Of course not.

—Do we know much about his background?

—Not a lot. He was smart, well-read. He knew things. He'd had an earlier career, some sort of academic work, PhD level, I think. That didn't last, and he ended up here.

—He wasn't married?

—No, he wasn't married. No wife. No kids. No one. It's rare these days to see someone living like that, entirely alone.

I
t's a long, slow drive up the farm's potholed driveway. Trees line both sides. We bump along for about a minute. The gravel and dirt grind under the tires.

The house at the end of the driveway is made of stone. From here, it doesn't look huge. There's a wooden, railed deck on one side. We park to the right of the house. There are no other vehicles in sight. Don't his parents have a car? I can see a light coming from what Jake says is the kitchen. The rest of the house is dark.

There must be a woodstove inside, because the first thing I smell as soon as I step out of the car is smoke. This would have been a pretty place at one time, I imagine, but now it's a bit run-down. They could use some fresh paint on the windowsills and trim. Much of the porch is rotting. The porch swing is ripped and rusted.

“I don't want to go in yet,” says Jake. I've already taken a few steps toward the house. I stop and turn back. “All that sitting in the car. Let's take a walk around first.”

“It's a bit dark, isn't it? We can't really see much, can we?”

“At least to get some air, then,” he says. “The stars aren't out tonight, but on a clear night in summer they're unbelievable. Three
times as bright as in the city. I used to love that. And the clouds. I remember coming out on humid afternoons and the clouds were so massive and soft-looking. I liked how gently they moved across the sky, how different they were from one another. It's silly, I guess, just watching clouds. I wish we could see them now.”

“It's not silly,” I say. “Not at all. It's nice that you noticed those things. Most people wouldn't.”

“I used to always notice stuff like that. The trees, too. I don't think I do as much anymore. I don't know when that changed. Anyway, you know that it's damn cold when the snow crunches like this. This isn't that wet snowball-making snow,” Jake says, walking ahead. I wish he wore gloves; his hands are all red. The interlocking stone path we take from the lane to the barn is uneven and crumbling. I appreciate the fresh air, but it's frigid, not fresh or crisp. My legs are numb. I thought he'd want to go right inside and greet his folks. That's what I was expecting. I'm not wearing warm pants. No long underwear. Jake's giving me what he calls “the abridged tour.”

A blustery night is a weird time to be surveying the property. I can tell he really wants me to see it. He points out the apple orchard, and where the veggie gardens are in summer. We come up to an old barn.

“The sheep are in there,” he says. “Dad probably gave them some grain an hour ago.”

He leads me to a wide door that opens from the top half. We walk in. The light is dim, but I can make out silhouettes. Most of the sheep are lying down. A few are chewing. I can hear it. The
sheep look spiritless, immobilized by the cold, their breath floating up around them. They look at us, vacantly. The barn has thin plywood walls and cedar pillars. The roof is some type of sheet metal, aluminum maybe. In several places, the walls are cracked or contain holes. It seems a dreary place to pass your time.

The barn isn't what I'd pictured. Of course I don't say anything to Jake. It seems dreary. And it smells.

“That's their cud,” says Jake. “They're always doing that. Chewing.”

“What's cud?”

“It's semidigested food that they regurgitate and chew like gum. Beyond the odd bolus sighting, not much excitement in the barn at this time of night.”

Jake doesn't say anything as he leads me out of the barn. There's something much more disturbing than the cud and the constant chewing out here. There are the two carcasses up against the wall. Two woolly carcasses.