My phone didn't make a sound all day, which was not entirely out of the ordinary. I didn't know whether to expect anything from Mikey. At work, I pushed back against this silence with indifference; already during the early-morning bus ride home I had cried at length, the front of my shirt no less than soaked in my sorrow. A meager assortment of riders had climbed on along the southbound stops, and I felt relief only because none came to sit near me.
It had been enough to carry me through the day. I made cheerful conversation with Jennifer about whose couch would be better-suited to our new living area. I slotted into my familiar productive groove and began clearing my desk of personal effects toward the end of the day.
I came home to a still, silent apartment and lay on my bed, the few items I had removed from the office spilling out around me. I looked at my phone, then placed it screen-down and scooted it across the blanket, over the edge. I heard it thud on the carpet below.
Mikey had fully respected my wish to be left alone, and maybe he wouldn't have tried to contact me anyway. If he was upset then he probably wanted to be left alone, too.
I lacked the self-control necessary to keep memories at a distance, and they flooded me now--most of all: his bare feet out on the sand, t-shirt clinging to the taut skin of his chest, black hair kicking up in the warm wind. I thought of the way his smile, in that moment, offered up the slightest amount of vacancy, awaiting fulfillment by wonders soon to arrive. This behavior was innocent. It did not calculate. He waited like a child would wait, because he understood that he could not know what mysteries these wonders would hold before their time.
With my head against the pillow, I looked up at the ceiling and started to cry again for the first time since early that morning. I imagined him alone now, wishing he could contact me but believing it to be something I didn't want. I remembered his plea, about how happy being together made him, and how he didn't want it to stop. He had described the feeling as a simple one, and he had been right.
But it didn't matter. I knew myself, and I knew what it would take for me to stay. Mikey was quick to admit to (and could probably have listed, had I asked) the things that scared him. I was frightened at least as much by other things, but they were more difficult to lay to paper, and whereas his fears were cause for me to stay, my own were the driving force in my departure.
The radio silence would last through the rest of the night. I got along by cooking dinner, then throwing myself into packing the apartment, chiseling out a significant portion of the job before I realized that if I continued at this rate, there would be nothing left to distract me on Thursday and Friday. I wanted to go to bed, but the hour was not suitably late and I knew I wouldn't sleep. I read until I could not focus anymore.
Whatever experience Mikey and I had shared, I stood just barely outside of it now. I had minimally but effectively decoupled myself from it. For a precious couple of minutes, I saw our relationship for that to which it amounted; it did not feel like a lifetime now, nor could it be compressed down to a single whirlwind day. Several weeks brought together two compatible people, each interested in the other, interesting to the other, to a decidedly extreme degree.
Objectivity was helpful now in a way, but I did not feel especially comforted by it, and I got the sense that it wasn't accessing something important--some overarching essence of what it was to be in the same place as him. After preparing for sleep I lay on my side, slightly off to the right portion of the bed. There was room left over for Mikey to lay facing me, and it was not hard to imagine it now. The feeling of assurance as his eyes looked deeply into mine from the other pillow, as our fingers fluttered lightly against one another's between us was powerful and complete.
His absence and his silence now dug into me. I had no less than demanded it, and I knew with some amount of incredulity that if I did nothing, Mikey would be gone, silenced forever. I had asked for it, and there was no doubt in my mind that he would honor it. This truth rattled me; I tucked up my knees, pulling my feet close to the rest of my body, and remembered nothing else besides crying in prolonged, wrenching sobs until I fell asleep.
I rode the bus into the city the next morning, imagining what it was like for Mikey to be driving alone in his car for yet another day. I wondered how quickly he would return to this groaning, shuddering beast once he knew for sure that I was gone. I hoped it would be easy for him to come back to it, to sit alone, smiling to himself from time to time, content in his quiet productivity, just as he had been before we ever met. I hoped he would soon feel calm and happy, back on his own, more aware of his own identity, and free.
By the end of the day, the thought of returning to my small, upended home was not yet bearable, so I did not text or call ahead, just departed from the 40 as usual and then crossed under the highway toward my parents' house. It would occur to me later that I had not showed up unannounced at their home in some time, and at first I could not comprehend my mom's surprise when I walked through the front door and began removing my shoes.
"How's packing going? Oh, and this was your last day downtown," she said. "Are you feeling overwhelmed at all?"
I took long enough to respond, stepping slowly over to the couch and resting my chin on my hands, that I was certain she sensed something was amiss already. "It's not the packing, Mom, or work. How is work going for you?"
She cleared her throat and said, "It's pretty good." She then came over and sat next to me. "Tell me what's wrong, sweetie."
I leaned against her, feeling very much like I needed to cry again, but holding it back. "It's been hard saying goodbye. Actually...it just didn't work. It fell apart. I think it's done."
She knew whom I referred to without asking and said nothing in response; she knew, too, that I would continue on my own after enough time. Her hair tickled my neck and I felt a thin curtain of safety rise up around me, blocking everything out except for her and the sunlight pouring in through the front window.
"When I left his place yesterday morning," I began slowly, "he didn't say much. He was crying, and he said something about how he didn't think it would ever end up like this. He said some things that I don't understand, and some things I don't agree with. But I agreed with him when he said that."
"Oh no. Did the two of you argue?"
I nodded. "He wants me to stay, Mom. He wants it so bad, and I kept thinking that it was so selfish of him. He always said he would support my decision to go. But when I was leaving, he just looked so sad that I couldn't see anything else--not selfishness, and nothing else he would be playing at. I don't think he operates that way. All I could see was his sadness. He was, like, shivering, Mom. It was very cold in the room. And he even said it--he said, 'I am so sad,' like that was the only thing he had left to say."
Her body shifted against me. "Wyatt, has he committed himself to you?"
"No." I paused. "Well, sometimes it feels like he kind of already did, in a way, but he can't say it. I don't think he could promise me anything like that, even if I wanted him to."
"You don't want him to?"
"I don't know," I said. "I don't think so. It's been a month, Mom. I'm not sure it's right to even be asking for any kind of promises." After saying this I waited for her response, but she offered none, and although she had turned toward me, I could not tell how she felt from her expression. "What do you think about that?" I asked.
"A lot of people say this," she started. "I think it's true, though. Every situation is different. Everyone is an individual. I can't tell you if a month is long enough, or too short a time for anything. I haven't lived in your experience with him. I don't know."
I waited to continue, gathering an inclination together in my mind which seemed simple in a way, but was difficult for me to articulate. "I think it kills me just as much to leave him as it kills him that I'm going...but still, we came up with two different decisions about it."
She nodded. "It's weird how things like that happen sometimes, isn't it?" She hesitated for a moment. "And there's no chance you could keep seeing him while you live up there?"
I took a long time to answer her, finally lowering my head and muttering, "I just can't have it that way. I don't want it. I don't know why."
"Some people just aren't built for that, and it's okay. I certainly don't think I could do it."
"In my last relationship, I was willing to try it." I paused and looked up at her. "Remember that?"
"I do. Maybe you've changed. I'm tempted to say change like that is more common at your age, but people can change at any time in their life. Or maybe it's just that you see it differently with Mikey. Maybe it's all or nothing with him."
"I guess so," I said. I thought for a moment. "Part of what bothered him was me letting on that I had some serious doubts about my career, then deciding to go through with the move anyway." I glanced over at her, anticipating her surprise--I rarely ever really talked to her about my job--but she barely reacted at all. "On top of everything," I continued, "he believes I'm not being true to myself if I go."
"He can't really say if you are or you aren't. Only you will know that."
"Yeah, I know. But it doesn't mean he shouldn't have brought it up, if it's how he feels."
"Alright, yes, I see that, too. Look, sweetie, I got a particular feeling from the two of you the other night. It seemed like you were awfully close...and it seemed like a good thing to me." She stopped and looked me in the eyes. "I'm just wondering if it's going to make you incredibly sad not to be around him. I believe in the potential for another person's presence to affect how happy you are. I know you probably already know that, but please consider it as you make your decision."
"I did consider it. And I think I have already," I said.
"Wyatt, I need you to tell me this, because I'm worried you're holding it back from me. Are you are missing him as much as I would imagine you are?"
"I'm not sure that it's had time to sink in yet," I said. This was mostly a lie and there was no reason for me to have said it. "Everything just feels so quiet and empty right now."
I stopped talking, aware that I had shared more of myself with her in this one conversation than in all of the weeks leading to it. She was right; I missed Mikey so much that I felt ill. I nearly rejected the thought of having said goodbye to him forever. I began to consider the full gravity of it again, took one more look at my mom and started to cry.
She brought me into her arms, hugging me tightly and said, "I know." I believe she began to cry then as well. "I know, I know," she kept saying, aware, as some people are in these situations, that sometimes there is nothing else to say.
After a moment, when we had both calmed down a bit, she gripped my arm within her small hands and said, "Wyatt, I have something I need to tell you. But first I need to say that I know I haven't been very emotionally available."
"Come on, Mom, you've been--"
"No, just let me say this now. There have been times when you've wanted to talk about something and I've been distant with you, because whatever you brought up was making me encounter my own problems and I didn't like it. You want an example of selfishness--well that's it. All I can tell you is that I'm sorry."
"You don't have to be sorry for that, Mom."
She shook her head. "Yes I do. You won't change my mind. Wyatt, the last time we talked about your career was before it ever started--your senior year of college, over the winter break. You had some considerable doubts, and I told you to stick to it. I don't think I really said anything else. It destroys me because..." She paused and looked for a moment like she was about to cry again. She let go of me and straightened herself up. "It destroys me now because I had doubts about my own career back then, but made up my mind to ignore them. My only way to hold onto that conviction was to tell you to do the same. I feel responsible in that way, and it's very painful for me."
"It's not that simple," I told her. "I respected what you told me then. I still do. And besides, you aren't the only factor when I make those decisions. You must know that."
"I do know that. But I still feel responsible. I'll get over it eventually, but right now I just need you to know that I'm sorry. I put myself before you at that time. It's the worst thing a parent can do to their child."
