The Distance Between Us

She exploded violently...it had been a long time coming.

She rose furiously from the table and hurled the napkin at him. “Goodbye,” she said, her anger vocal and visibly blazing in her blue eyes. Flinging a defiant glance, she turned and stormed out, vanishing into the night.

He didn’t move. The intensity of her outburst had momentarily stunned him into inertia, and he thought, “Where did that come from?” He quickly recovered and became defensive, thinking, “Well, two can play that game. Besides, what did I do?” But he knew. Her wine glass, with a perfect, red crescent imprint of her lip, seemed to mock his hypocrisy.

She drove home, longing to clear her conscience of the creeping guilt of such impulsive action. The music seemed only to intrude upon her confused thoughts and she found no solace in it. “Why had she not been more diplomatic,” she wondered. Did he deserve it? Yes, but then again, maybe she’d been too hasty, her timing off. She was conflicted in her conclusions, wondering about the distance between them.

He remained frozen at the table, riveted by the wine glass with her lipstick. The uneaten remains of their dinner set a gloomy tableau. It had been a strange night. He’d noticed lately the awkwardness in their conversations. Was it he, or she? Had their relationship run its course?

His thoughts were blurred, indistinct. He scanned the usual causes of his reticence. True, business could have been better, it always could. And yes, his hip had been painful, he lamented. What had caused the estrangement? Questions without answers, he concluded, but not without consequences, her red lipstick staring at him from the glass.

Still seething when she arrived home, she moved through her bedroom, took his picture and flung it into the trashcan. “Good riddance,” she said aloud. Swiftly she ripped the remaining pictures of him ~ of them ~ from the wall, leaving noticeable scars. One was the vacation in Aspen, another in Paris, another in St. Barths, and she reflected on the fun and love they’d shared. A flood of emotion swept over her as tears fell. “Dammit,” she said, “what happened to us, what caused this distance between us?” She sat bewildered upon her bed and wept.

In the days following he became pensive, detached, moving meaninglessly through life. He kept the wine glass with her red imprint on the kitchen island, hoping it might offer a clue to what went wrong. She later retrieved his pictures from the trashcan, thinking, “Well, no reason to discard perfectly good frames.” The pictures lay flat on the cabinet, not yet relegated to a drawer. Nearby the phone remained, silent, unused.

Hours passed, then days, and afterwards weeks. Both remained recalcitrant in their decision, neither quite knowing what to do. After all, their relationship had been intimate for over three years without incident. Occasionally they saw one another…the beach, the supermarket, the gym. Secretly their hearts yearned for reconciliation in these awkward encounters, but somehow the situations did not present opportunities to speak.

Often he thought, “We’re acting like stupid kids,” and several times he considered texting. Once he did, typing in “Hi, whatcha doing,” but reconsidered and deleted it. On several occasions she dialed his number, hoping he would not be there, but apprehensive should he answer. He never answered, and she never left a message. After all, a lot of time had passed, and the distance between them grew.

They busied themselves in their individual pursuits…he with business, she with friends and some light travel. But always nearby was a phone, a safe means of breaking the ice, if for no other reason than to satisfy their curiosity that the end had really come. Yet neither could find the courage to make that call. The distance between them persisted, and the vanity of their conceits consumed their days.

The longer the standoff, the more congruent became their individual assessments of the breakup. Until at last, unknown to each other, they reached the same conclusion. Emotions had lost energy and faded into oblivion. What once were inconsiderate slights and occasional neglects became trite and meaningless, and their latent feelings stirred.

A wind blew down from the North, auguring a change of season. It seemed to be the very thing that was needed to revive any fire that remained in their relationship. The wind spoke to their hearts, and they felt it, unable to define its voice. But now they could define that unspoken breach in their relationship. And always the phone remained nearby, silent, unused.

Who would be the first to blink, to reach out and cross the fragile threshold of reconciliation? The thought tortured them in this season of change. And they gazed in grief at their silent phones, thinking, so near, yet so far, the distance between us…..


Bud Hearn
August 12, 2009