Come Closer

by Sara Gran

Ed was my hero, my savior. Ed was the man who had imposed order on my chaotic life. When I was single, I’d eaten cereal for dinner and ice cream for lunch. I’d kept my tax records in a shopping bag in the closet. I’d spent Saturdays in a hungover fog, watching hours of old black-and-white movies. With Ed I spent Saturdays outdoors, doing the things I had always imagined I should do: flea markets, lunches, museums. He did our taxes, with itemized deductions, every January, and filed the records away in a real file cabinet. Here was a man who could finish any crossword puzzle, open any bottle, reach the top shelf at the grocery store without strain. Here was stability, here was something I could rely on, my rock, day in and day out. Someone who loved me, who would never leave me alone. You can’t blame this sophisticated, civilized man for not having the same instincts as a wild dog.

We could devote our lives to making sense of the odd, the inexplicable, the coincidental, but most of us don’t. And neither did I.

Over six years, though, I had become accustomed to a certain amount of irritation, as I’m sure all spouses do, and these were small arguments and disappointments that didn’t interrupt the steady flow of our marriage.

Suppose you’re looking at a bottle of whiskey. And one part of you says, Gee, I’d really like a sip of that whiskey. Then another part pipes in and says, Well, you shouldn’t, you have to drive home, and you know whiskey’s very fattening. And then a third part says, Just drink it. This mental voice is new, it’s a sound you’re not accustomed to hearing in your own head, but it’s not that different either, it’s done a good job of imitating your own silent voice and you like what it’s saying. Come on. Don’t stop. Don’t think. It’ll be fun. Just drink it. Now. You wouldn’t guess that the third part wasn’t you. You’d probably just drink the whiskey.

I felt wonderful, like my old friend was back in town. Sort of like seeing Pansy again, after all those years.

What if I burned my husband? What if I pushed him off this cliff? What if I jumped off this roof? The thought came into my head and then disappeared just as quickly.

didn’t believe that just because something was alive, that meant you had to love it.

The job reminded me of Michelangelo’s line about sculpting a block of stone; he chipped away everything that wasn’t David.

couldn’t get the night before off my mind. In the meat aisle I stopped and looked at the steaks. I would make Ed his favorite dinner tonight, steak with mushroom sauce, and I would start again, retrain myself to see him as my husband, the man I had chosen to love and respect for the rest of my life. All this nonsense had to end. We fought almost every day now. In a rare lucid moment I saw that we were dissolving as a couple, and if I didn’t stop it now there would be nothing to save.

By now the most shocking truth wasn’t that there were more like her and me, or that her ability to manipulate me was growing so rapidly—it was that, previously, I had been so stupid as to think I had any understanding of the universe at all.

Or she would start—“We won’t go to work today. Instead, I think, we’ll get dressed up and go back to that little bar where the bartender had those strong legs.” I would scream and cry and beg and fight every way I could imagine, but she would always win. She was stronger, and so she always won.

tried to catch her off guard, to scream out the truth at an unexpected moment. But you can’t surprise a thing that lives inside you. The screams came out of my throat as long, dry coughs. Help me, I was screaming inside, save me—but all anyone heard was a long ahem. Each day I would wake up and say to myself Today, no more of this nonsense. Today I am going to put all this craziness behind me and be a normal human being. And she would answer: But I love you, Amanda. I love you and I’m never leaving. Go! I would silently scream at her. Get out! Oh no, she would answer, I’m not going anywhere. Then, first thing, she would start a fight with Ed. He would say “Good morning” and I would try to say “Good morning” back and nothing would come out.

“Eric,” I said. I didn’t know how I had gotten here or how I knew his name, but here I was. “Naamah,” he said. “That’s a weird one. What’s that, Arabic?” “Satanic,” I answered. “Huh?” “Akashic.” “What’s that, like Persian?”

“Oh Ed, I—” I love you, I wanted to say. I love you and I miss you and I don’t know why this happened. To us, out of everyone in the world. Remember the flowers you gave me on our third date? Remember the seagulls we laughed at on the beach last year? The horrible movie, the one with the subtitles, we made jokes about for weeks. Long Saturdays in the park. Sundays at the flea market. The Christmas party where we drank so much and got in a huge fight and almost killed each other, the next day it was so funny. The candy you bought me when you didn’t come home. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. But Naamah locked my throat closed and I sat poker-faced as he pulled himself together. “I’m filing for a divorce,” he said. “I want to get married again.” All the nights I waited. The nights you never called.

The rooftop pool in California where we watched the sunset. All the take-out meals. The feel of your skin warm and dry against mine. Your mother’s birthday parties. Your father’s funeral. We were going to go to Hawaii someday, to Paris someday. We were going to buy a new dishwasher, a new car. Nothing’s changed, I wanted to say, not for me, I’m still here, look at me, look at me—but when I tried to open my mouth I couldn’t. I was falling, down into the thick red haze, an endless black well, I clung and grasped with all my might, I wanted to stay, but there was nothing to cling to, nothing to grab, and I fell and fell until I was gone. I was lying on the crimson sand by the blood red sea. Naamah lay next to me. She smiled and in the sand she wrote two words with her left index finger: I WIN.

And that’s all I’ve ever wanted, really: someone to love me, and never leave me alone.