My last day in London, I walked around the city, what had once seemed like a million details I would never learn and suddenly seemed so small; it is where I lost myself, it is where I found myself; I stood in Trafalgar Square, amid a bevy of things known to me, the uniformed teenagers riding one of the great lions after school, the tourists, the easily recognizable Americans, slumbering along in their sneakers, the rest of them European, but easy to pick out with their maps, their stares upward, their gaping cow eyed indiscretion toward everything but themselves, there I was among them, scowling and cold, indignant and righteous, most of all alone.
After Wales, the rest of the trip was strained. Things were still polite, of course, but strained. So I reigned myself in and snipped off every bit of me that was too wild or unruly. It made me a little sad, but it didn't bother me, I had done it before. And yet, I was startled to see that in growing older (I was thirty one years old), I could not be anything other than myself. People are often befuddled by that, that my seemingly endless well of niceness has a bottom, and in it is me happily living my life, doing what pleases me and attempting not to be unraveled by every stare, smile, hand, hug, moment.
Thankfully his sister and her family embraced me, not understanding that I had tried their patience with my gloominess and perhaps a trickling confusion about what was going on and a growing concern that I was never going to be alone even in sleep. To say it simply, it was poorly planned and I am a person who thrives on plans.
Still, despite the strain, it was a wonderful trip and I enjoyed myself immensely when I was left to my own devices, I traveled through London and saw so many things, I had never traveled alone before and it was gorgeous, I took photographs all day, I walked until I had blisters on my feet, I went through many museums, I rode the bus and peered out the windows, I really enjoyed myself. And his sister and her family, they took me to things I preferred to see, markets, historic sites, cafes, eateries, shops, it was a pleasure to be with them and I was thankful for their cheerful company and the opportunity to be myself.
When I returned to them, things were lighter, maybe because I was lighter, or they enjoyed the separation from me, but insignificant things brought the strain back. Even then I still tried to remove my worries and concerns from our interactions but eventually I realized it was no use. Who fights the hurricane, with the precursors of its arrival stinging enough; the sleeting endless rains, the brute winds, the disappearance of the sun?
That day was the second to last day of our trip. We had exchanged pleasant enough verbal uppercuts all day, many of hers landing full on and making me pause in fury. How unfair when she had somehow managed to plant doubt in all of their interactions with me (was it my being his playpal that made them worry? or how much she loved me and I loved her? or how much I beamed at him and enjoyed him? all things that felt like pure joy to me, did she make seem bad to them?).
When we reached our destination for lunch, it was nearing three in the afternoon. I was hungry and crabby, as were the girls, who were not captivated in conversation with anyone and did not care for how many years it had been. I had a difficult time seating both of the girls and her verbal jabs set me to boiling (I recall clearly how she yelled across the table at me to lift something on the ancient high chair which she described in such unhelpful words while I was holding her screaming and thrashing child above the contraption).
The girls had finally been settled in and we were looking at the menu. I was so happy to just eat. I let the squish hold and play with the butter knife closest to her reach while I perused the menu. She was happily playing for a few minutes until that woman looked over and noticed and humorously mentioned to me (while she sat down in her chair five seats away, had she been truly worried, she could have gotten up) across the table of eight or so of her long ago friends that her baby had a knife in her hands. No one laughed. Everyone looked at me. She was trying to embarrass me, and it was not nice. She asked, across the table if I was not enjoying myself, I seemed upset. I sighed, I said something outright rude (I don't always have to smile, I'm not a clown, I'm not here to amuse you), clattered my plate and got up and walked off, shocking and surprising everyone. They had felt a brewing discontent between us and now she was free to blame the entire thing on me, but I could not stand to sit at the table any longer.
I remember him coming out and trying to talk me back in but I would not. Then he brought the kids out and we spent some time exploring that alleyway, investigating every tree and closest branch of leaves they held. When I came back in she was offering me her meal if I was that hungry, that I had an outburst at the table, and I muted my rage and sat, defiantly. The food arrived and the table shifted away from me and the children and to her, where I felt it should have rested the entire time, had she not been so focused on bullying me. As the meal ended, the tension eased up as everyone gathered their things. We walked up the block and everyone pretended not to know me, except the one who'd met me before the day laid out before us, before she set the minefield, and she alone was the only person to acknowledge me. Even him, I could feel his disappointment in me, I sensed a weariness from him that surprised me.
Our train ride home was focused on the children. The frozen sister jumped to my rescue with lots of darling things to say, and she devoured the attention she had been missing while her routine was in disarray. When we returned to the home, the children were sequestered with him while she and I found ourselves together in the kitchen. I remember things being somewhat informal, as if we just happened to be in the same room at the same time and had some things to discuss. I knew she was angry at me, and I was not going to hide from her. As she began her argument, she seemed particularly stuck on the fact that I had slammed my plate and silverware down in frustration. I tried to explain myself, defend myself, relate to her, but really there was no way we could see each other's side (she was upset that I had not been more of a lovely person and intermingled naturally with her friends as she fantasized) (I felt battered and beaten and tired and cowered in the job I had come there to do, which was no solace, she seemed to keep wanting to point out just how badly I was doing it). Then she screamed the words that scoured my soul, that underscored just how much pain and anguish I had caused her those four years, conveyed exactly how she felt about me, she said I was acting like a brat because I wasn't the fucking center of attention for once.
Imagine unweaving a braid from a basket. I was that secure, that firm, that settled with where my life was, and who I was, I had everything I thought I wanted at that point, except at night when arrived that nagging part of me that cannot be quieted, unless by chemicals or other force.
She didn't have to do much, sometimes it was just a gesture, just a look in her eyes, she was like a creature, a snake, hypnotizing me, with nothing as terrifying as the quiet frozen moment that snaps into quick sharp unexpected and yet expected movement.
For the duration of the trip, to live under that level of awareness of her feelings, having sensed her her rage repressed for four years, all the elements converged, knowing that I had outshone her, knowing that her own child had cried in her arms for me in front of her in-laws who she already felt like she hadn't proven herself to in the ten years they'd been together, even though I was just being myself and trying to do my job amidst a lot of bad planning and not enough alone time, it was really like something I would consider hell.
Then to have the man I imagined is perfection, the kind I would have liked to have married, when I now consider that perfection it looks and acts and still speaks like him, the surface of him that I knew at least, having finally accepted he would not belong to me, that he would always be hers even if she wasn't there for some reason, that his vow was that deep, that his love was that rooted. He tried to reason it out with me and even though I told him how my side of the day had gone, he would not agree with me. Maybe I knew he wouldn't be able to agree, but I still wanted to plead my case to him, fuck the rest of them, I don't care if they like me or not, or think I'm a piece of trash, but it was him that I couldn't stand to hate me. Even knowing I could never have him, I still consider him one of the finest human beings I have ever had the pleasure to encounter.
And in the face of that, of making the case for myself and having someone of his caliber dismiss me, I was ruined.
The next day, I was told I had the day off. It felt like I was exiled. The following day we were due to fly home. I struggled with the events of the day previous, finding no joy in being alone, in reliving what happened, in trying to find some way that my pride would relent and I would be able to make things right. To never speak to her again meant to never see Iris again. And that day, I knew it already, that I would never see her again, it clamored at me, as I listlessly walked through The National Gallery, seeing paintings I knew from art history, paintings that should have had the power to obscure my building dread, but not being able to see anything but the anguish I would feel from never seeing her again.
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