She watched him look at her over the rim of his mug, the steam rising up and losing itself in the autumn air.
“I don’t love him anymore.” The words, even more than the coffee, tasted bitter in her mouth, unfamiliar.
“I don’t think you ever did.”
She had no rebuttal. After all these years, he still understood her better than anyone. He still knew how she would feel before she could name the emotion herself. He still knew that every relationship she ever had would fall apart before it started. All but one.
“Whatever life is really about, I know it’s simple. I know it’s buried somewhere down inside this mess I’ve made. I just need to find it.” She paused. “I just need to figure out who I am.”
It had been a full minute since he last met her gaze. She stared down into her mug, fingers tight around the ceramic as though it might shatter at any moment. She knew his silence held the promise of carefully chosen words, but patience had never been her strong point. “But I don’t even know what I’m looking for.”
At the sound of her voice cracking, they both looked up. She carried with her every heartbreak she had ever experienced. A mosaic of disappointments, her eyes held onto every struggle she had never been able to give up, and he could name each one. But when his eyes met hers, an understanding passed between them, an acknowledgment that had never found its voice. It was in that moment—when he pried her hand away from what she was holding and placed it on the table under his—that she realized the truth. Sometimes the thing you’ve been searching for has been right in front of you the whole time.
After reading my headline about hoarders, I just kept thinking about identity--about this woman who has spent her whole life bogged down in all these relationships that have defined her. I wanted her to search for herself, to get to the bottom line of who she is. As far as sacrificing goes, I gave up a lot of dialogue. I tried to make my characters too wordy, but of course glances and gestures can say just as much--usually more.
ReplyDeleteI really like your use of the headline, Marissa, and yes, I think, particularly in the first half of this you found a way to make dialogue and simple gesture, even the object of the coffee cup and its contents do a lot of work that a more "talky" piece might have spoiled. One thing I'd point out is some confusion over the point of view. It seems throughout that this is "her" story, and all mention of "him" and what he knows are observations made from her point of view, but sometimes this distinction gets hazy, as, in the last paragraph, the observation about the understanding passing between them seems to come from a perspective completely outside the scene, a third observer. I also wonder about the move, in par. 6, when they look away from each other. I kind of like taking the opposite approach, doing the difficult thing, which is to look at each other and try to read what's there, to see each other, to see change happening, to think it, think through it, making the moment as much intellectual as it is emotional.
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