Yuri POV

 

April 14, 2011

 

 

It’s raining.

 

It seems like it always rains when we fight.

 

When I want most to walk out of the house and go to my office, or just walk anywhere far away from the accusing ash brownie that owns my heart.

 

That’s when it rains the hardest.

 

I could bear the weight of the drops, if I wasn’t so drained by everything else.

 

I am drained soul deep from the words that tumble from my mouth, and her equally caustic observations.

 

The weight of our love keeps us trapped together, circling one another for round after round of warring.

 

I absolutely hate it.

 

Jessica is too damn good at it.

 

Too smart and strategic.

 

She’s never been the one to back down from anything, nor am I.

 

We whip words against each other’s hearts to see whose shatters first.

 

Believe me when I say, it’s been more times than I can count we’ve been in tears, staring at each other across a dining room table too narrow for our bitterness to be buffered properly.

 

I’m meaner than she is, I’m the bully.

 

I always have been.

 

It’s her truths that hurt me.

 

They gouge me to the bone.

 

So I watch it rain, blanket over my shoulders in front of our big bay window.

 

I watch the sheets come down and try to ignore the sound of Jessica slamming things in the kitchen.

 

I think she is putting away the dishes.

 

Though by the sound, breaking them is more likely.

 

At least, the pots and pans are getting the brunt of it.

 

I fix my eyes on the rippling water at the end of the driveway while I pull the blanket higher on my shoulders.

 

I can’t hear the dishes being banged around anymore, so I have a feeling she is looking at me.

 

It makes my spine icy and tingly with that razor sharp glare.

 

I wish we fought about normal things, fixable things like money or affection.

 

I wish it were simpler.

 

I can do simple.

 

But no, we fight about stupid unfixable things like careers and drive and schedules.

 

We fight about children, the ones that don’t exist yet.

 

We fight about time.

 

Like right now.

 

We are having the same fight again, about me spending too much time at work and not agreeing to have kids until after I finish my push toward the Physician of the Year award.

 

I’m so close I can taste it, truly.

 

When she drop down next to me silently, I’m surprised.

 

I’m even more surprised when she produces a mug of hot cocoa for me.

 

It’s in her tea mug painted with glossy musical notes.

 

I take it staring down at the froth on top.

 

It makes me sad when she gives me her favorite mug.

 

“I like sipping hot cocoa when it rains.” I don’t know why I say it, I know she knows that.

 

It is probably just to fill the space of our silence.

 

I’m shocked by the gesture considering I was on the winning end of this fight.

 

We are both pretty sore losers when it comes to our spats.

 

“I know.” She sips her cocoa, her eyes tracing the weather outside. “Wow, it’s really coming down.”

 

She is stalling.

 

“Yeah.” I fix my focus on the water painting the window.

 

When my eyes finally drift toward Jessica her gaze catches mine.

“Why do we keep doing this, Yul?”

 

I don’t have an answer to those words.

 

I don’t even know what they mean. “I don’t know.”

 

I set my mug down on the carpet and pull the creases of my blanket shield tighter around me.

 

She runs a hand through her hair, gathering up the courage to say what she is going to say.

 

I brace for it.

 

“If nothing’s gonna change, then what is the point? I mean, I love you, but is that enough?”

 

My hands go a little numb when my heart stops.

 

That question rattles the foundation of everything I know.

 

It makes the world seem so much bigger and more frightening.

 

I don’t know how she can hold my gaze so easily when she says those words.

 

I can’t, so I stare at the floor instead. “Don’t you think so?”

 

“I used to.” Jessica sighs and puts her hands over her face, breathing deeply as she tucks her knees up to her chest.

 

In the drop streaked window, the lights of a car swing by and highlight the shadows of water over her.

 

It is the manifestation of how I feel her slipping through my hands like water, like rain.

 

I swallow, catching my breath. “But you don’t anymore?”

 

She laughs bitterly, crossing her arms on her knees. “I know I need more than that. You need more than that. We have both sacrificed for this, fought for this, waited for this.”

 

She regards me evenly. “We shouldn’t have to wait anymore. It’s been a lifetime of promises and glittering hopes that never come to fruition.”

 

“Not all of it.” I defend though I don’t even have enough air to make the words come out right.

 

Everything is just stuck in my chest as it seizes up.

 

“There is more to life than our career success.”

 

It makes me mad that these words come from her.

 

She is still the woman that obsessed over fame and success her whole life.

 

It is easy for her to say it now that she’s made it. “You’re such a hypocrite, Sica. You can say that now, but there would be no way that you would have said it 5 years ago, 10 years ago. You wouldn’t have said it if you were still fighting for your dreams. You just don’t give a about mine, what I want, what I dream, because you’re selfish.”

 

There, I said it.

 

And like always I regret it when she looks away.

 

I watch her jaw tighten and I can practically hear her teeth grind.

 

“You’re right.” She doesn’t look at me, doesn’t blink as she looks through the storm outside. “I have the benefit of being on the other side of that mountain. You know what though,” she glares at me then, “it’s gotten me nothing.”

 

“You’ve got everything, Sica. Don’t say it’s nothing,” I whisper against the positively desperate look in her eyes.

 

“What did it get me, Yul?” She drudges the words out. “A big house, an empty marriage, no children, no hope that things will ever change. I’ve got money in my bank account, and my face tattooed across the Calendar section of the Times. But, tell me, really what did it get me that mattered?”

 

I’m focusing on her empty marriage gibe, so I don’t answer.

 

I hear the words over and over in my mind until I think my head might explode.

 

“Empty marriage.” The words might as well be a slap in the face. “Is that really how you feel?”

 

I’m hoping the answer is no, that she is being melodramatic.

 

“Yes.”

 

It hurts.

 

It hurts in a breathlessly painful way.

 

It’s probably the meanest thing anyone has ever said to me.

 

After everything I have done, sacrificed, shared with her.

 

Calling our marriage empty is a venomous heart strike with the intent to kill me.

 

“Fine.” I get up, throwing the blanket down as I go for my shoes. “You wanna see an empty marriage? I’ll give you an empty marriage! I’ll give you a big empty house and a big empty life to match it!”

 

“Yul, stop and listen to what I’m trying to tell you.”

 

“Sica.” I level my gaze at her as she stands to face me.

 

The sheer lack of emotion I see in her eyes sends the blade that much deeper, “So help me God, if you say one more word, divorce papers will hit you in the face so hard it will make your head spin.”

 

It is the only leverage I have.

 

I’ll take it away before she can.

 

“Don’t you dare threaten me! I’m not your high school punching bag anymore! I’m a grown woman and your wife, so unless you are gonna put your money where your mouth is, or pen to paper in this case, don’t you dare say that to me! This is my life too!”

 

I know it is, but it just feels like everything is my fault.

 

Our past is my fault, our lack of future is my fault.

 

“You’re absolutely right this is your life, and they’re your mistakes too! Not just mine, yours! You are just as driven, just as motivated, you want to preach humility but you can’t. You don’t have the right! You have a lot of balls to look me in the face and say it isn’t worth it!” I slip into one tennis shoe.

 

“It isn’t worth it Yul! How can you even be blind enough to think it might be?” She yells her words in my face, eye to eye with me, making me back up a step. “It’s not worth it! If I could go back…” She stops, frozen.

 

I hold her wild gaze as she swallows rapidly.

 

“What?” I egg her on. “Would you have not even been with me?”

 

She focuses on me again but this time her motions intercept mine and she grabs my shoe, holding it firmly. “Of course I would have been with you. I would have done everything the same for you. I would have loved you. I would be right here fighting with you now.”

 

“Why?” I don’t understand. “Why the hell would you do it all again just like this?”

 

“Because I love you.” She lets go of my shoe.

 

I drop it to the carpet as I huff and puff and shove my foot into it.

 

“I love you. I wanted love to be enough, but it isn’t.”

 

“Then, what? You want a divorce? You want me to quit my job?”

 

Jessica looks positively struck as she stares at me.

 

Her eyes glaze over as she thinks.

 

“What? ing tell me!”

 

“I’ll quit.” She softens her voice and it tears all the wind out of my angry sails.

 

She backs up a step. “I’ll quit, retire for now. I’ll close my spring show and that will be that. It will be easier that way.”

 

“No.” I glare at her. “You can’t quit. You can’t just give it up.”

 

“Sure I can.” She laughs lightly, melodically.

 

The music is everything in her.

 

She can’t just throw it away.

 

“It’s easier than this. I might love what I do, but it isn’t worth it. This wasn’t the plan.”

 

I narrow my eyes at her. “What do you mean?”

 

She gestures wildly even for her.

 

Her wedding rings flash in the light from the kitchen. “I just... you know... the plan... our life together. We were supposed to be in love and happy and not fight.”

 

“People who love each other are gonna fight, Sica.” I sigh heavily.

 

“We were supposed to have children. I wanted children. I want them, with you, now, not in some far off future. We don’t have a lot of time honey.”

 

She makes it sound like our ovaries are rotting away this very moment.

 

“Sica, we’re 34. It isn’t like we’re ancient.”

 

Jessica deflates.

 

I see it in her shoulders.

 

“I wanted to be a younger mother than this. I wanted you to be, too, for us and for our child. So we could all run and play together.” Her voice breaks over the next words. “I can’t wait anymore for the little girl we promised to each other 7 years ago.”

 

I pull her to me.

 

Her face hits my shoulder at the same time those barely hidden tears burst forth.

 

I wish I could erase the pain she feels.

 

I wish I could be that person she wants me to be, the one that is content to be domestic.

 

But, all I can do is hold her while she cries and mews broken words into my neck.

 

“I love you, give me more. I need more. I need the ‘us’ I believed we would have, not this. I’ll do anything for it. I love you.”

 

 

 

 

For the past 2 days now, this moment haunts me every second I’m not focused on something else.

 

It’s a daydream, a nightmare, a moment stolen from the rip of time.

 

I suppose it wouldn’t bother me if it was just a figment that materializes from my deepest fears, but it’s a memory.

 

It is as real and concrete as the day Jessica died.

 

It’s a testament to how desperate she was that she gave up everything to have a life with me.

 

It’s a reminder of how easily I forgot that she did.

 

As I drive to school balancing a chai tea for Jessica and a coffee for myself, I feel the sting of that inaction.

 

It is more than a fight we had because people who love the way we love fight.

 

It’s the fact that I made her beg for something I had promised her.

 

It’s the fact that I should have given her the family she wanted without her having to retire.

 

And the worst part, the part that bothers me the most, is that I still made her wait.

 

She gave up her music so she could run to doctors’ appointments and play house alone for a whole year before I bit the proverbial bullet and we got pregnant.

 

Stopped at a red light with a misting of rain coming down, I remember the moment the car’s headlights painted over her.

 

It’s so vivid and stark in my mind it might as well be happening right now, right here beside me.

 

I swear if I look over, I’ll see her in the dark of our living room, sitting on the floor with tears in her eyes.

 

It’s the place not even 5 feet from where I collapsed to my knees when I came home to an empty house after her death.

 

It’s the place not even 3 feet from where I drew my last breath.

 

The light turns green and I drive, leaving all those