THE BITING WIND makes my eyes tear. But the sun is glorious. Daily I run these woods, through elegant pillars of oak and maple. The trees wear their stillness with the same ease a matriarch purveys her brood of children and grandchildren, at complete peace with her life’s solidity.
The trees watch me. I watch them. I run. I talk to you. I tell you my wishes. I harbor the same ones I know Momma and Papa always had: to love and be loved in a way that doesn’t hurt.
I’ve been running for eleven years now, the same length of time I’ve acted and performed. I’m not exceptional by any means. I don’t have the inherent physical strength for speed nor the sparkling talent of prodigal athletes. But, as we know, I have one thing in my favor: zealous commitment. If I tell myself, Today you’ll run fifteen miles without pause, I will.
“Come run with me,” I say to him.
“Babe, you’re a distance runner; I’m a sprinter.”
As a sapling, the earth around my roots were ever-shifting. The nourishment sometimes failed to reach me. As I run, I retrace my story, to see so clearly that if a person is raised and loved in a way that conflates love with pain, they will grow capable of loving beliefs and characters that hold the potential to wound. I page through the partners I’ve gravitated toward in the past, to arrive at my husband. Most of them were chosen for their alluring passion, charm, and shadow. Hardly solid ground.
I have always been my first response and line of defense. When drawn to a man or a friend, I have never prioritized emotional strength, self-awareness, wisdom, integrity, or accountability as traits to seek. I’ve learned to accept that as long as I have you and myself, I don’t need anyone else to give me comfort, kindness, support, and protection, so it doesn’t matter if they can’t.
I’m feeling the harsh effects of my beliefs. In a relationship, all of this matters. Equal ownership, tenderness, responsibility, investment, maturity, willingness, and capability matter. Fault lines are cracking apart our love. Depleted and lonely, the distance between him and me stretches like a mouth without a hinge to snap the jaws shut.
Where did you go, where do you go, why have you gone, come back.
I have looked under every stone. I’ve expunged every method to improve us, scouring books and articles for answers to the riddle that is my husband. We’ve lost the only glue we began with: affection. Where is our common language? The further I dig, the more I feel we can’t be mended by discussions about rapport, flexibility, love languages, quality time, and cultivating deeper connection.
I don’t think he wants us to succeed. I don’t think he wants happiness. I don’t think he likes me very much, and I think he’d enjoy it if I were unhappy and unsuccessful.
More often than ever, I think of Momma and Papa, and how impossible it is to understand the narrative between two people. Love draws forth our most beautiful and jarring faces. Rarely has any tale a tidy verdict. Something about feeling my own marriage come apart so messily, so easily, helps me lay my parents’ marriage to rest. It is effortless to become mean. And we are all capable of it.
Daily, I collect miles of thought. Such is the grim blessing of this love. A hill crests before me. Although the weather is still cold, the asphalt has absorbed the sun and the heat makes the road buckle like a mirage, the air shimmering as if wrinkled. I’m getting stronger. I’m running farther. My muscles are more alert and able. Should I need, should I want, I could run my way to safety and freedom.
While I run, I write in my mind. Running always helps organize my thoughts. But today, unlike other days, what I’m mulling isn’t a poem, play, screenplay, or short story. Last week, while memorizing sides for an audition, reading them off my laptop, a stern order sent from that spot where my spine meets my brain told me to open a blank Word document. The white filled quickly with paragraphs on love, family, pain, trauma, healing. Paragraphs turned into pages.
I stared at the screen, stunned. What are these words? Where have they come from? Did you send them? Are they the harmony of our voices, yours and mine? I wrote for what felt like minutes but were actually hours, in a trance, until he came home. I haven’t had a chance to return to the pages. But every day since, while on my run, my mind keeps writing. Writing words whose fate is as much a mystery as my marriage’s.
I finish my run and return to the Barn. He is on the bed, his laptop’s light illuminating his face in the dark Barn. He quickly shuts the laptop, looking suddenly like a teenage boy caught red-handed.
“Porn?” I ask, half jokingly.
“Yes,” he laughs. “I needed a pick-me-up.”
“Oh. Did you get one?”
“No. I was interrupted.” He yawns, stretches, curls a lock of hair around a finger. “How was your run, mottu?”
Mottu means fatso in Bengali. On a recent call with my parents, Momma mentioned their new dog was rapidly layering on pounds, a veritable “mottu.” My husband promptly anointed this my new nickname, explaining it will obliterate any relapse of anorexia.
“You’ll hear just how ridiculous it is to call you that, so you won’t think the same of yourself either. I’m protecting you, mottu. You gotta get the crazy out of your head.”
“My run was great, thank you.” I sit down on the bed, pull out my laptop. “Will you read something I wrote, please? It’s not much, just some thoughts on love and family . . .” I trail off.
His eyes skim the screen. My heart begs, Please hear me. He brands a kiss on my forehead.
“Too many words, baby. Papa’s gotta go.”
Papa or Papa Bear are his nicknames for himself. I take off my tank top, sports bra, shorts. Naked, I perch on our bed.
“Baby,” I reach for him. “We need to feel connected again.”
“There you go, again,” he says. “Complaining all the time.”
He strolls out to the car. I collect my clothes, hastily cover myself, from whom I don’t know. I hear him whistling, the engine growling, while the wind’s thin cries keep me company.
THE SUBWAY LURCHES and groans. I stand, swaying with its rhythm, nursing a paper cup of coffee like a broken wing. I swallow my coffee quickly, scorching my throat. That’s me: a tongue perpetually burnt.
I’ve been babysitting more, and the week is generally divided as three days in the City, four with him. It’s Monday. He is miles away.
I love the subway. It’s a chance to be alone while with others. It is soothing to feel like I’m part of something bigger. Even though the togetherness is sweaty, smelly, messy, uncomfortable, it is all the more human. We need these reminders of our oneness. Interdependency. Impact. I’m reminded I can always give someone my seat. I can share or abuse space. I can grimace, avert my eyes, or smile.
Today, as always, I have my journal. During these years with him, I’ve written my thoughts less than any other period of my life. And I keep breaking my habit of logging daily gratitude lists. As with nearly all my qualities, he has grown to resent this habit that he once admired. So I skip days and wait to write my thanks on the sly, as if gratitude were my clandestine lover.
I cherish this time on the subway for exactly that sort of thing: to be. I’ve started carrying another journal as well. A Moleskine notebook I use for love notes for other people. Friends, acquaintances at auditions, and mostly, strangers on the subway. Some notes I have prewritten, ready to tear and pass on. Others I’ll write from a spontaneous feeling, off a person’s expression.
The note will say something like, It will be okay. Own your voice. Or, You are the spine of your life. Stand tall. Or, Thank you for you.
At times all I write is, I promise you are loved.
I look around the subway car. There are a few here who could use a note. My pen gets busy.
I don’t know anyone’s details. I don’t know what happened, how long ago, or if it’s happening right now. But I can read emotion. Especially pain. I can tell if something hurts. Like now, standing by the far window, is a woman, looking like she’s being eaten from the inside. Something or someone is atrophying her spirit. Shaken and tired, she’s trying now to maintain her balance through the roar of the subway mouth.
I deliver her love note like a crumpled Valentine from a clumsy, not-so-sly admirer. I try to time it so she gets it right before her stop. Sometimes this works, and the person opens it before disembarking. Sometimes they tear up. Sometimes they mouth “Thank you. You too.”
It takes her a few seconds to realize what has happened. She isn’t able to open her note until she’s on the other side of the doors, on the subway platform. The doors slide closed. She reads it. She looks at me through the glass as the subway jerks, readying to move. She places the opened note on her heart, like a rose pressed inside a book for safekeeping. She smiles. The subway moves on.
Sometimes, a scrap of sentences is the match that lights a flame. If I ever write a book, it will be to give all of us more than a hurried line of love.
THROUGH THE DARK OCEAN, my anchor and lighthouse are the families for whom I babysit. In particular, my Warriors and Healers. The Warriors are the actress, the athlete, and their three daughters, who charge through life with spectacular flair. The Healers are led by a wise, calm mama I met a few years ago, when my husband and I were living on the Boat. An ethereal beauty with a smoky-sweet voice like spiced apple cider, she says I’m her spiritual daughter and she my spiritual mother. She and her husband have one son, whom I’ve taken care of since he was four months old. I think of his mama as my Healer, for she has slowly, over the years, been monumental in my relationship with food and anorexia. She talks to me. She has taught me how to cook. She has taught me how to enjoy food.
My Warriors have two nannies now, but I still peek in from time to time. The baby I met all those years ago is now 5 and her twin sisters, 3. The memory of their christening feels like a dream, when he and I wore matching blue, glowing with love.
In each home, there is a room called Reema’s Room. These are the addresses I’ve known the longest. One for five years, the other for three.
It’s spring break and the Warriors are hosting the kindergarten classroom pet, a guinea pig. The poor thing is a little ruffled from all the travel. He squeaks and squeals something heartbreaking. The cage is on the island in their kitchen. The girls surround his cage, worry tensing their faces, dedicated as they are to making him feel better. I’m mixing the ingredients for dinner and banana chocolate chip bread. Their dad, the tennis legend, sits at the dining room table a few feet away, scrolling through emails on his iPad.
The oldest girl frowns sweetly, her forehead furrowed in concentration, her chin set, determined. It’s the look she wears on the tennis court. The twins are fraternal, looking similar yet completely different. One’s taller, athletically built, a cherubic cannonball of tight curls and giggles. Her eyes are now wide with despair. The smaller, lithe twin has an angelic perfection to her face, a delicacy and symmetry that feel painted. She dons glasses and a delicious lisp.
“Daddy,” says the oldest, “What do we do?”
Dad comes over and hushes the girls with a few comforting words. He opens the cage, gathers the guinea pig into his hands. It’s wonderful to see these great, weathered hands, famous for strategy and strength on the court, cup a tiny, terrified, trembling creature as carefully as water. It quiets down immediately. The girls look at him with awe and reverence, as if he has just willed the world to change. For them, he has. They stroke the guinea pig’s head, their little hands the length of their dad’s thumb.
“See,” he says, “All the little guy needed was to be held close, to know he’s safe. We all do.”
This moment will drift into those girls’ hearts quietly and unnoticed like dust in a column of sunlight floating to the ground at its calm pace.
I smile, thinking how incredibly blessed they are. And, how lucky I’ve been to witness and share this abundant love, for years.
One day, I will have a husband like that, who will be a remarkable father for our kids.
The thought flits through me like light playing hopscotch along the sea. I’m singed with horror and guilt.
I have a husband. I’m already married to the man with whom I’m supposed to bear and raise children.
A chill races along my skin. It leaves goosebumps in its tread despite the sizzling stove, the warmth of the oven, and the beauty before me.
A SATURDAY NIGHT. THE moment my husband leaves, his dog defecates, a geyser erupting with a three-foot radius. The poor beast slumps right into his mess, his eyes rolling back in his head, keening and panting. The sound, the sight, the smell: it is death, approaching. I run to the animal, pull him out of his swamp, and begin cleaning it off him and the floorboards. I call my husband’s phone, leave one, two, three messages begging he come home, saying, This may be the end. He texts, “Take care of it. I’m out.” I wash the dog, give him water, then sit with him until both he and I, exhausted, fall asleep. My last thought before sleep is, He loves his dog so much; he must really hate me. I awake to the pungent stench of tequila. Papa Bear is home.
“We needed you.”
“Oh come on, baby, I’m sowwy. I made a boo-boo.”
“Please stop talking like that.”
“Aw, mottu, I hadn’t seen those guys—”
“Please stop pouting.”
“You’re being a bitch.”
“Don’t call me a bitch.”
“I didn’t say you’re a bitch. I said you’re being one.”
No one tells us love can curdle so quickly. Like milk, when love decides to sour, it seems to happen instantly.
He paces and yells, pulls out clumps of hair, arguing he has every reason to be furious with me. How dare I ask he come home. In the end, the only way to make him stop is by placing my hands over my ears and screaming, “Stop it, stop it! Stop!”
He leaves the Barn to prowl outside. Because of love, I yearn for his return. Happily, warily, like the earth sensing incoming rain. She wants it, needs it, while knowing the love will land hard.
He comes back. Drained, we opt to sleep. He snores. I watch him with the clenched-jaw tenderness you feel for a child who has a stomach bug, hasn’t kept anything inside, and you can’t remember a time when your life didn’t smell like bile and feces. Due to our gutted septic tank, half-constructed toilet, and the sweet, aging dog, this isn’t hyperbole.
He snores. Unconsciously, he throws an arm over me. By habit, my fingers engage in a nightly ritual: to search his skin and along his hairline for telltale hard knots where deer ticks may have bitten into him. Deer ticks can lead to Lyme disease. I’ve lost count how many I’ve found and pinched off during our years together. He turns his head and from under his pillow comes a crackle of plastic. An empty condom wrapper. Bizarre. A year and half into our relationship, I still insist on him using a condom. Even more bizarre, he amiably complies without argument.
One by one, telltale symptoms are coming into view, of a disease demanding diagnosis. “It’ll be just you and me, baby!” he had said. Miles away from cell service towers and other humans, I now see our seclusion for what it is: isolation. Perfect romance has festered into perfect hell. Although all my emotions and earnings are invested in our lives, our future, the Barn, the car, he insists only his name appears on every lease. Aside from our marriage certificate, the sole contract that bears my name is blame. Everywhere else I look is evidence of my slow erasure.
How peaceful he looks when he sleeps. I imagine we all look this way, when the face finally stills, the day’s worries subside, and the chaos we carry calls a truce for these stolen hours of rest. The raging mind and heart decide for these hours, we won’t battle.
Sometimes, I wish he would physically hit me. Then, I could point to a bruise as a receipt, proof of grief, permission to leave. The catch with emotional warfare is it’s inflicted with far more stealth and elegance than abuse delivered by touch. Making it easier to accept, rationalize, ignore, forgive, page after page.
I author my life. How have I let it come to this? I had so much promise. Talent. Intelligence. My high school friends and teachers, my college professors, my parents, would be devastated with the state of my story. I have let everyone down. I have let you and myself down.
He turns away, then I. We lie this way, as if repelled by the other’s skin.
Strange, to lie next to someone you miss.
He is making it increasingly easy to fall out of love with him. From our very beginning, I have moved around him, traveling the space between us. Now, I let the distance lie. As I cry, I try to do it soundlessly. The thing is, though, constricting sobs makes the body shake. My muted tears ripple the bed, confessing my secret without meaning to.
“I hate hearing you cry,” he says suddenly, his voice boomeranging off the far wall to lodge itself in my heart.
I say nothing. Faintly, I hear the ballerina’s song. I feel the love leaving me as though I’ve been pierced.