AN: I wrote this after nearly falling asleep trying to bike to work at 3am. Not so happy. Also, not that this applies here, but I hate the word angst. It's the hipster of deliberate words, right up there with the label "dark material." Blegh.
A product of needless impatience and imagined sorrow, here you go...
Mother's Day for Lovers
"Happy Mother's Day, Temari," I greeted my estranged wife from an unfamiliar spot outside our front door, facing in this time, waiting to be let in if acknowledged at all. Just seconds before – No, minutes. Long minutes before, I had stood feet before my own house squinting at its windows trying to spot signs of my own children, my son and daughter who I had been originally blessed with and now deprived of by the woman in front of me now. That would change today. I could feel it. Something would have to change today.
Two months is a long time for a married couple to spend apart, even if that decision was voluntary and agreed upon by both parties. I called it a refresher for those bold enough to ask about it; I'd look them in the eye, search for something less dense to roll my eyes at, tell them what they wanted to hear then left it to them to decide what it all meant. But only I knew which definitions applied. Refresh can mean a lot of things.
She didn't look any different; the cynic in me thought she looked better than before – relaxed, comfortable, happy – until she saw me, anyways. To think that our welcome mat could have actually implied the atmosphere it warranted… I must've been delusional when we bought it together straight out of college. Five years later and I know that's true, about so much more than the rug I'd wipe my soles on before entering what used to be home.
But not yet. We hadn't reached that milestone just yet. I was still standing at our front door with flowers in my hand, looking down at the mother of my children (because I was taller than her) with her looking down on me (for reasons unknown). She had beautiful eyes, and even through that dead stare I could see the fire that used to be there. Her too, then.
"Happy Mother's Day," I repeated in case she didn't hear the first time. "These are for you." I put forth my hand and offered the bouquet, expecting her to at least reach for it even if only to push me away. She took it in with her eyes instead, taking deliberate time to judge each bud, each color, each thorn like I knew she loved to judge me.
"They're dead," she said.
How can that be when I can feel them alive in my hand, leaking water down my wrist and dilating my pupils, pricking holes into my fingers and chilling the veins around them?
"Surely, they're not," I countered.
"If they're not dead, then they're dying."
Patience is a heavenly virtue, one exhilarating to let go of. I released it through my nose and breathed in the beginnings of fury, only to choke on whatever feeling other than numbness this happened to be. She ripped the flowers out of my grip and retreated into the house, leaving the door open as I considered whether or not I should follow her inside.
It's an odd feeling stepping into a home that's no longer really yours, one you're technically allowed to enter but aren't wanted to. And perhaps I'm not needed here anymore. I don't know how my kids have been, how my wife has been, who she's been with, nothing. I know nothing about these people anymore, but these people are my own.
I must have lost track of her movements while locked in place trying to reacquaint myself with the walls and routine memories than went along with them. Small things that I never noticed before suddenly stood out – the decorations on our shelves, the corners on the ceiling, and the wrinkles in our curtains, things Temari treasured as greatly as anything else but always neglected by me. A metaphor for our marriage? Maybe. An analogy for my life? I think so.
As quickly as the corners and wrinkles spoke to me, they fled away. That's when I finally found myself in surroundings just as dull as I'd left them several weeks before. Those flowers certainly helped; I spotted them half-hazardly dangling off the couch, immediately drawing my eye away from every single other thing they had no reason to be looking at. The light blues, pastel purples, lovely pinks and smooth oranges made me want to kill myself.
(Exaggeration, I've learned, begets sanity where the sane otherwise go insane. I don't think I'm there quite yet, but it's probably good to practice for the future.)
I bought those flowers with hard-earned money, even hand-picked them after the shop keeper told me which ones to pick. No, not that one. That one's ugly, I remember her saying, to which I responded, I know. That's why I want it. The flower lady won that battle, but we both lost the war as these flowers had been graciously dumped where I used to so frequently sit – either that, or this was Temari's homage to the man she used to love and the husband she never did.
I didn't move the flowers, didn't want to touch them or smell them or see them anymore. Didn't want to see for myself that something young, colorful and full of life could indeed survive in the house that sucked the very life and color out of its two naïve benefactors. I heard her approaching from the garage and braced myself when I saw her holding a vase bound to shatter around my head. She reached for the flowers instead, but I remained braced anyways. You never knew with this woman.
She was standing so near to me. I could've wrapped my arms around her or massaged her shoulders like I used to, but the thought of doing it now felt dirty, almost as if she was another woman or even more sickening, that I was another man.
What I couldn't touch, I could still sense; she smelled good, reeked of our children. Speaking of which…
"How are the kids?" I asked. Good? Asleep? Alive? Aging? I guess she didn't want me to know. I followed her into the kitchen, silently watching as she filled the vase with water before speaking up again.
"Can I see them," I again asked my college sweetheart, "or do I have to wait for Father's Day?" The water sloshed hard in the vase as she turned to finally look at me.
"You can a little longer," she spat at me, sending another wives' curse upon me to add to my already large collection.
"Temari, they're my children, too."
"They're not here."
"What?"
Nothing.
"Where else would they be on Mother's Day?"
"I needed a break, too," she said looking down, exhaustion shedding a new light on her features. "A mother's break. A refresher."
It's a strange thing, not so much the transition from in love to defeat as the state of finality that follows. I see this woman, my wife, my best friend, the great love of my life; I could touch her and kiss her if I wanted to, and I do, but it wouldn't change a thing. Our minds have already decided. They decided without us knowing, but we have to suffer through the degradation anyways.
"Where are they?"
"Where were you?"
But I can't help but wonder what went wrong because I loved her, I really did, with all my heart even. I guess it was never enough, and somewhere in the back of my mind I've always known the doom we were headed towards.
"You knew I had to go."
Was it the kids? Our jobs? Us? All of it, I think.
"I didn't, actually," she said with tears in her eyes, and I wiped them away with my thumbs before succumbing to tears of my own.
Should I ask how can we fix this? How do we fight through this? Tell her I tried and failed and failed in trying again? None of that would matter, though. We've already finished.
"I loved you."
"I loved you, too."
AN: Now, whatever you do, please DON'T review. That's the last thing any fanfiction writer wants.