By Alexa Woods
Photo by Chrissie White
The house was quiet when Sophia opened the door. It was late and Paul didn’t come down to greet her. He had stopped speaking to her over a week ago. That was why she hadn’t felt guilty she’d said yes to Mark Stillwell’s offer to meet for drinks.
She wondered if she smelled of smoke, and wondered more if Paul would notice. The bar had been crowded, oozing men in suits tapping at their Blackberries. Sophia had been embarrassed when Mark’s phone had gone off in the middle of their conversation and he’d shushed her so he could read his messages. But she hadn’t pushed him away when he brought her face close to his and breathed heavily on her neck and pressed his lips to her skin, lips that had been stuck in constant motion the entire night, spewing out his opinions, his life story, his wants, his everything.
Sophia had worried that she might run into someone she knew, someone who would tell her it was so soon, so incredibly soon after this whole thing with Paul had started; that she shouldn’t be doing this, not until she figured things out. But there’d been no one she knew, only Mark’s friends who kept stopping at their table to shake hands business-like and make lewd comments about Sophia, as though she weren’t even there.
Now, all Sophia wanted was to crawl into bed and feel Paul’s arms around her. But she wouldn’t feel them. Not tonight.
* * *
“It isn’t healthy.”
“Of course it’s healthy. How would you act? Sanely?”
“She’s in denial.”
“Wouldn’t you? Cut her some slack.”
“Tricia said that her husband saw Sophia at The Red Lounge last night. Last night!”
“Does he even know who Sophia is?”
“He must. But can you believe it? After what she’s been through? Having all this thrown at her within a week?”
Sophia was hiding behind the ficus with a wine glass in her hand. She wasn’t drinking tonight, but she still carried around the glass, sipping imaginary Merlot. She heard the women, her friends, sitting on her couch, talking about her. She wanted to stand up for herself; tell them that it wasn’t easy when your husband stops looking at you, stops seeing you. She hadn’t imagined it turning out this way. When they’d bought the house in the city, things were supposed to get even better. Better than they could ever be. They had redecorated the house, planned dinner parties, went to the movies and kissed in the corner like they were teenagers. Paul even talked about the idea of having a baby, and Sophia had been thrilled. Until he’d stopped seeing her. It had been sudden, unexpected, like walking into an invisible wall.
In this house, with these women, these men, she felt patronized. She watched as they helped themselves to the potluck dishes, the casseroles, the potato salads, and the finger sandwiches; sucked down wine spritzers from the glasses that she and Paul had picked out when they’d first moved to the city, wine glasses that would fit their new life. We’re high class now, Paul would say with a laugh.
She looked around for her husband, expecting to see him talking to his friends. But they stood huddled in a corner, alone, giving her strange looks. She hated to be left alone when they had friends over. She’d thought that Paul would stop being so cold for one night at least and stay by her side. Treat her like he used to. But he didn’t.
Sophia stepped quietly out from behind the ficus and walked past the women on the couch, heading for the bedroom. Paul was there. He faced her as she walked in.
“God dammit, Paul. What are you doing in here? I spent hours getting everything ready for tonight. Do you know what it takes to have all of our friends for dinner? Do you?”
Paul just stared at her, motionless from his spot against the wall.
“I’m sick of this Paul,” Sophie hung her head and rubbed her watering eyes. Her voice was pleading, “I can’t do it anymore. Do you even care about us? Do you care that I’m not happy? That you’re driving me to do things I never thought I would do?”
Paul didn’t respond.
“Is there another woman? Is that it? Is that why you’ve stopped touching me?” Sophia didn’t care that her voice was carrying out the door and down the hallway, down the stairs and into the hushed living room. She didn’t care that everyone could hear her rant and rave to her unfeeling husband.
“You know they’re calling me delusional,” Sophia finally dropped her voice. She clasped her hands against her stomach. “Like I’m some kind of freak for wanting a husband who’ll be there for me.” Sophia turned on her heel, away from Paul’s silent rebuke. Her husband just stared as she left the room.
Sophia’s footsteps padded down the carpet in the hallway and the din of the living room rose once again. In the kitchen plates were beginning to pile up on the counter. She almost wished she’d used paper plates, but Paul would never have forgiven her. If something was going to be done, it was going to be done right, no matter how much extra work it took.
She turned the faucet on and let it run hot as she began scraping off the plates. She let herself cry knowing that no one could hear her over the rushing water and for once she didn’t want to be heard. She wished that Paul wasn’t stuck upstairs. She wanted him to come down, walk into the kitchen, come up behind her and slip his arms around her belly like he used to. Sophia wished that everyone was gone and she and Paul would have sex on the kitchen table and laugh at their adolescent inability to make it to the bedroom. But Paul didn’t walk in. Instead, Sophia’s friends did; that gaggle of women who would never leave her alone lest she do something regrettable.
“Sophia, you don’t need to be doing this right now. Come back into the living room. Sit with us. Talk to us,” they said; those women with their faithful husbands never leaving their sides. Sophia loathed seeing them.
The atmosphere in the living room was awkward but sympathetic. Sophia sat stiffly on the couch while her friends talked blatantly about Paul. Right in front of her. As though he’d done nothing wrong.
* * *
She didn’t want to, but Sophia let Mark take her out again. She wore her blue dress, the one that Paul loved, the one he’d never been able to resist. But he said nothing as her watched her leave their bedroom and walk downstairs. Sophia let herself out of the house and hailed a cab to take her to the restaurant that Mark had chosen. When she arrived, Mark wasn’t there yet, but the hostess led her to a table in the corner, near the fireplace. She ordered a glass of water. The hostess left her alone.
Paul used to bring her to places like this. Places that had table cloths, that spent hours polishing glasses, that pulled your chair out for you. Sophia looked at the menu and ogled the expensive soups and appetizers, the lavish entrees, wondering if Paul cared that she was out with another man, out wearing her blue dress. His favourite blue dress.
Mark arrived, following the hostess and eyeing her small, pert bottom. Sophia pretended not to see, and instead smiled widely at Mark as he reached down to kiss her on the cheek.
“Sorry I’m late,” he apologized without meaning it.
Sophia shrugged and took a sip of her water. She didn’t tell him that Paul had never been late. In fact, she hadn’t told him about Paul at all, though her wedding ring was displayed prominently on her finger. She twisted it nervously round and round. Mark raised an eyebrow at it but said nothing.
Mark rolled out his stories one by one and Sophia tried to look interested. Was she doing this to get back at Paul? Mark was not the kind of man that Sophia’s husband was, he was not the kind of man that she was attracted to, and so it must have been for retribution. But she wondered if she could follow it through when Mark would pull her towards his car, drive her to his place, try to seduce her with Frank Sinatra and mood lighting.
Tracing her finger around the rim of her glass, Sophia considered her options. She could sit there, listening to a self-absorbed man while he opined about everything he thought was worth having an opinion about. She could tell him she wasn’t feeling well and go home to Paul. But Sophia did neither of those things. Instead, she excused herself to the bathroom.
Staring in the mirror, she noticed the red streaks in her eyes, how wilted her shoulders were, how faded her lips were. She began rummaging through her purse for her wallet. In the slot behind her credit card was one of those photos that people got for four dollars in a shopping mall booth; the ones that printed off pictures with a faded look and those awful orange and blue curtains, as though the booths hadn’t been upgraded since the sixties. Sophia stared at her own face, smiling brightly as Paul kissed her cheek. His hand held her neck softly, as it had done so often since then. It felt odd to see herself so happy when she felt so miserable.
Sophia slipped the picture back into her wallet and raised her head once more. She wanted to go home. Mark would be furious. Of course he would. He’d be livid that for once a woman walked out on him. But Sophia didn’t care. She was tired of this charade, this make-believe romance that was floundering too much to hold onto.
As she walked back through the restaurant, Sophia spotted Mark swirling his wine to give his hands something to do as he waited for her to return. His Blackberry sat patiently next to his napkin. But Sophia kept walking. She smiled politely at the hostess who smiled politely back at her as she held the door open.
Once outside, Sophia felt her body relax. She knew that that was the end of Mark and his talking and was grateful for it. It had been short and bitter and gave Sophia a sense of satisfaction to leave him sitting in the restaurant, expecting.
Instead of hailing a cab to take her home, Sophia called her friends, those women who talked about her when they thought she wasn’t listening, and asked them to meet her at a café a few blocks away. They said yes, because they couldn’t say no. They left their dinners, their children and their husbands, and went to meet a friend in need. It was a half past eight by the time they all showed up, this parade of women and handbags and guarded smiles.
They knotted around a table on the patio, blowing on their cappuccinos, their espressos and lattes while Sophia sipped water, wary of the high to which caffeine would subject her. She wanted to stay miserable at the moment; she had not called them there to feed them her pity in return for comfort. What she wanted was familiar territory. She wanted to be surrounded by predictability, by people she could count on to be who they’d always been. But they disappointed her in their attempts to root out the problem of her misery and try to fix it. They mollycoddled her and asked her over and over again if she needed anything, anything at all. Nothing was too much to ask.
Sophia just shook her head and asked them about their husbands, their children, their perfect, untouched lives that had once mirrored her own and were now horrible opposites.
She turned towards the street and rested her elbows on the railing and her chin on her hands. Watching the night time strollers walk past on that, the cosiest of summer evenings, Sophia imagined their tragedies. The older man with the cane had lost all of his money and subsequently his family. He had three daughters.
The young girl had run away from home, thinking she was old enough to make all of her own decisions, but had discovered too late that she was wrong and was working nights at Lucid taking her clothes off for a pittance.
The two boys holding hands had been ostracized from their families and friends, their love not good enough for God.
She came up with worn tragedies, trite tragedies, but a tragedy was a tragedy and Sophia took pleasure in the possibility that there were others with lives as chaotic and as awful as her own.
“She’s losing her mind.”
“I would be too.”
“Do you think it’s true? What that Tricia’s husband said? Is that where she was tonight, all dressed up like that?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. But why did she call us here?”
“Maybe she just wants to be comforted.”
They would say all this while Sophia was in the washroom, while she wasn’t listening. And Sophia would pretend that she hadn’t heard them, that she hadn’t been standing just inside the doorway, needing to know what that they were saying when she wasn’t there. These women were her friends, but she didn’t want them to care about Paul and her, she wanted them to pretend like nothing was wrong. Only she was allowed to feel what Paul had done.
She left abruptly again, but muttered her sorry goodbyes to those women, those disappointing women and finally went home.
Sophia unlocked the door to her house, aware of how familiar the scene was, like the one that had played out only nights before. The house was still quiet and dark. Where was Paul? The man who was supposed to wait up for her and make sure she was okay when she got home. Sophia walked through the living room and heard the echoes of those women, the echo of her own voice yelling at her husband. She was sorry she’d yelled. There was no other woman. Of course there wasn’t. Paul wouldn’t do that to her. Paul loved her.
In the kitchen, the garbage hadn’t been taken out in days and Sophia thought of the pregnancy test at the bottom, those two little pink lines that had made her cry because she was finally pregnant. She thought of what a good father Paul could have been, what good parents they could have been together and how cruel fate was to give her a child now, when she least wanted it. She thought of how those two little pink lines had made her agree to Mark Stillwell’s offers, because she was afraid to be alone.
Sophia sighed and left the kitchen heading for her bedroom. Paul was waiting for her; he’d always be waiting for her, his frozen stare thrusting itself into her own. She couldn’t avoid it.
Delusional, that’s what they were calling her for pretending that her husband was still there. They understood what he had done, said it was his time; they didn’t blame him for going and dying. But Sophia did. And they said she was delusional, for talking to his picture on the wall. She knew that she wasn’t, she just needed to hold on. Just a little bit longer.
