The Man Who Can't Be Moved

“Max?” Em’s voice is tentative as she lingers hesitantly at the side of our bed; with my back towards her and my eyes screwed tightly shut as I pretend to sleep, I can hear not only the sound of her feet shuffling on the carpet as she nervously -and repeatedly- switches her weight from one to the other, but the way her hands incessantly wring the bottom of my t-shirt she’d slipped on earlier.

I’d spent the first thirty minutes of her middle of the night conversation with Sid not only ranting and raving and stomping around the house but struggling profusely to keep myself from either picking up the extension in the kitchen and listening in on the call or parking myself on the basement stairs to keep tabs on what was going on. When it became clear that talking to her ex boyfriend took precedence over keeping the peace in our marriage and that he still has an incredibly powerful hold over her, I’d retreated upstairs and attempted -in vain- to keep myself calm while waiting for her to realize that she had a husband and an entirely new life now and that she owed it to me -to us- to put everything and everyone else behind her. I’ve been trying to come up with a rational way to handle thing for the last half an hour; I’ve been silently fuming over Sid’s selfish, immature behaviour -what kind of guy calls his married ex girlfriend at one thirty in the morning? Or at all?- and his uncanny ability to bring about drama when things seem to be going so well.

This time around, Emma-Leigh deserves just as much blame for the mess and my volatile, shitty mood as Sid does. Instead of just telling him off and hanging up, she’d humoured him and all but kissed his ass by engaging in an hour long conversation. I can’t help but feel slightly betrayed; no wife that possesses any shred of respect for her husband would choose their ex boyfriend over the man they’re supposed to ‘love, honour and cherish all the days of your life’. My initial plan had been to wait up for her and then throw the mother of all shit fits; I was fully prepared to wage World War Three against her. I was going to accuse her of still having feelings for Sid and tell her that she’d only married me because he wouldn’t have her and because she’d suffers from some sort of twisted sense of obligation because of everything I’ve done for her.

And now…well now I want nothing more than to just temporarily avoid the entire situation. It’s shortly after two thirty in the morning; no one’s brain is functioning well enough at this time of day to carry on a decent, valid argument and we’ll both end up saying things out of fatigue and frustration that we’ll ultimately regret. In the past hour, I’ve rationalized my anger and jealousy a million times over; I have every right to be pissed off and to feel disappointed and hurt that she’d chosen her ex boyfriend over me. Yet at the same time, freaking out on Em isn’t going to solve anything; she’s still in a relatively fragile and scary place in regards to her illness and she’ll only view my arguments surrounding her lingering relationship with Sid as a personal attack. My fear is that if I get to confrontational with her, it will cause her to either shut herself completely down or send her into some kind of blind, uncontrollable rage. Or worse, it will destroy everything that’s amazing between us and send her running to what -or who- she views as a ‘safe haven’.

My biggest worry is that that one person will turn out to be Sid.

I’m tired of having to make concessions to her illness; of having to shove my own wants and needs and feelings to the back burner simply because the smallest thing just may set her off and cause her to relapse. I can’t spend the rest of our lives together constantly walking on eggshells around her; I can’t pretend as if everything is perfect and that nothing bothers me simply to keep the peace and to avoid ‘setting her off’.

“I know you’re awake,” Em whispers as she cautiously moves closer to the bed. “You’re not snoring. And you always snore.”

“I’m tired,” I lamely retort. “It’s two thirty in the morning and I’m exhausted and sore and I just want to sleep. So if you’ve come in here just to talk my ear off…”

“This is my bedroom too,” she meekly reminds me, and then reaches out to tug at the heavy, down filled duvet I’ve wrapped around my body. “And you’re lying on my side of the bed and hogging all of the covers and…”

“Jesus fucking Christ…” I mutter, and relinquishing my hold on the comforter, wriggle my way across the bed to what has become my designated side -she has a paranoia about sleeping near a window because a babysitter had forced her to watch the movie Poltergeist when she was six and she’s never forgotten the part where the haunted tree busts through the window and gobbles a kid right up- and flopping over onto my stomach, bury my arms under my pillow before settling the side of my face against the cool cotton. “Happy now?” I mumble. “Everything is right with the world again? You had a nice long talk with your boyfriend and now you’ve got your side of the bed back. Everything is just peachy fucking keen with you?”

“Please don’t start,” she pleads, as she climbs into bed alongside of me, stretches out on her side and then draws the duvet all the up to her chin. “Max…don’t be like this…” she combs her fingers through my hair and presses a kiss to my shoulder.

“Be like what?” I attempt to tone down the venom that drips from every word. This is a startling contrast the what our ‘roles’ in our marriage are usually like; I’m normally the cool, calm and collected one that attempts to diffuse potentially volatile situations with humour while my wife is the one that flies off the handle easily and is perpetually nervous and on edge ninety percent of the time. Right now everything about her from the tone of her voice to the touch of her hand as it wanders my back and shoulders, is remarkably soothing. I want to be pissed off; I want to flip out on her and cause a big fucking mess between us. I have that right.

“Don’t be like…this,” she replies. “Please don’t.”

“What am I being like?” I inquire.

“I know that you’re upset,” her breath is deliciously hot and sweet against my skin as she rests her cheek against the space between my shoulders, and I struggle to suppress a shiver as her fingertips glide over my bicep and trace the sections of tattoo that stretch towards the back of the muscle. “I know that you’re angry that Sid called her and I know you’ve got issues dealing with the fact that I was with him and that…”

“Do you really think that that’s what’s got me pissed off?” raising my head from my pillow, I prop myself up on my elbows and shoot her a furious glare over my shoulder. “Do you really think that’s why I’m upset? Because I have ‘issues’ dealing with the fact you and Sid were together? You honest to God think that?”

“A lot of guys would feel the same way,” she reasons. “A lot of men get jealous about other guys. Especially exes. I don’t know why you feel the need to pretend like it doesn’t bother you. Why…”

“I don’t have issues with the fact that you were with him,” I growl. “If I had a problem accepting and dealing with it, I would have spared myself a whole lot of aggravation and grief and never hooked up with you in the first place. It doesn’t bother me that you were with him and it doesn’t bother me to be in the same room with him. You don’t think I realize that you had a sex life long before you met me? I don’t care who you’ve slept with. Even if it is some guy I have to work with day in and day out. This isn’t about me being jealous of him. It’s about me…”

“It’s about you being threatened by him,” she finishes for me. “And I’ve already told you that there’s no reason to feel that way. I don’t have those kinds of feelings for him anymore and I don’t want to be with him in that way. I love you. I married you. He has no bearing on my life anymore. At all. And I can’t control the fact that he called here and I can’t…”

“Don’t give me that fucking bullshit,” I give a derisive snort and roll over onto my back, essentially breaking all physical contact between us. “He has tons of fucking bearing on your life,” I say, as I place my hands behind my head and stare up at the ceiling, focusing my attention on the shards of moonlight that dance across the intricate cove work. If I look at her I’ll crumble; I’ll fall victim to the way her lower lip and chin tremble when she’s about to cry and I’ll buckle to the pressure of trying to constantly keep her happy. I need to stand my ground; I need to hold onto my convictions that I have every right in the world to be pissed off and that I deserve answers. Even if I won’t necessarily like what I hear.

“No he doesn’t,” she frowns, as she crosses her legs Indian style and sits next to me. “He has nothing to do with my life now and…”

“You were going to marry him. You were having his baby. And if you hadn’t have had the miscarriage, you would have married him. All your problems with Sid started after you lost the baby. He took off that night at the hospital, he fucked someone else behind your back, you got depressed, the two of you fought constantly. On and fucking on things just spiralled out of control, Em. And it all started when the baby died. Don’t you realize that? Can’t you put two and fucking two together? Had it never happened, had you had the baby, this…us…we wouldn’t fucking exist. You’re not a stupid woman; I’m sure you figured all of that out a long time ago.”

“But I did lose the baby,” she points out. “I did have a miscarriage so it makes all of this hypothetical shit completely irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what would have happened if I hadn’t lost the baby because it did happen. What point is there in talking about all of this when…?”

“The point is that you and Sid had a lot going on. You had your whole lives ahead of you. And if things hadn’t have gone down the way they did, you and I wouldn’t be together.”

“But we are together,” she stresses. “I chose you, remember? It was either you or him and I picked you. What more do you want from me? What more do you need to hear to know that I love you? I don’t understand why you insist of dwelling on things that never happened. I don’t understand why you just can’t accept Sid as part of my past and move on. Why you can’t…?”

“Is he part of your past, Emma-Leigh?” I inquire. “Is he? Is he ever going to be? Are you ever going to be able to just push him out of your life and leave him in the past? Because so far it seems as if you’re just clinging on to what little of the two of you is left. It’s like you can’t let him go; you’re holding onto some shred of what you had to him because you’re too afraid to have him out of your life completely.”

“That’s not true,” she argues. “I have let him go. There isn’t anything left of Sidney and I. At all. He is out of my life and…”

“If he was out of your life, he never would have called here,” I point out.

“That wasn’t my fault. I had no control over that, Maxime. I didn’t know he was going to call here, did I? I had no clue that he was going to do that.”

“We were in the middle of something and he calls her at one thirty in the morning and you practically trip over yourself to accommodate him. He says jump and you ask, ‘how high, Sidney?’. Did you really have to answer, Em? You knew it was him that was calling. Did you really have to answer?”

“I thought maybe something was wrong,” she feebly reasons. “I thought maybe…”

“You didn’t have to answer,” I interject. “What the hell could have possibly been wrong that he would have called you about? Come on, don’t treat me like I’m a fucking idiot.”

“I’m not treating you like anything. I’d never treat you like that. I’d never…”

“You barely even treat me like a husband half the time,” I mutter. “What kind of wife does something like that? What kind of wife talks to her ex boyfriend? You’d be having a fucking shit fit if I was on the phone with one of my exes. You wouldn’t like it too much if I spent over an hour talking to one of them, would you.”

“He just wanted to apologize for Autumn calling here,” she explains. “He just wanted to say he was sorry that she caused so much drama. He just wanted to…”

“That couldn’t have waited until tomorrow? He couldn’t have called back at a better time? It was one thirty in the fucking morning, Emma-Leigh. Who the hell calls someone at that time of the day? And who the hell calls their married ex girlfriend?”

“I guess he just wasn’t thinking,” she shrugs. “I guess he just felt the need to apologize right away. I guess he just…”

“He just thought about himself,” I state. “Same old fucking story. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anyone but him. Did he give a crap that he was causing all kinds of problems between us? He must have known that phoning here would cause issues. He must have known that I’d flip out about it. Obviously it didn’t matter to him, huh? I guess he doesn’t respect you enough to not cause problems between us.”

“He respected and cared enough about me to apologize for what Autumn did,” she protests. “He respected and cared enough about me to…”

“Maybe the real problem with him is that he respects and cares about you too much,” I conclude. “Maybe he wants to cause issues between us because he knows that if things ever went south where we’re concerned, you’ll go running back to him.”

Sighing heavily, she stares down at her hands clasped tightly in her lap.

******

“I notice you didn’t deny that,” I smirk after several minutes of uncomfortable, tension filled silence. “I notice you didn’t say that you wouldn’t go running back to him.”

“I wouldn’t go running to anyone,” she says. “I wouldn’t need to because no matter how bad things got between us, I’d stick around to make things right. I wouldn’t just abandon you…abandon us…like that. I love you too much, Maxime. I love you too much to give up like that. And I know you’re angry that Sid called here and I know I should have handled things differently, but I…”

“You didn’t need to talk to him,” I stress. “You didn’t need to answer the phone. You didn’t know…”

“He only wanted to apologize for what Autumn did,” she insists. “He just wanted to say that he was sorry and that…”

“And it took over an hour to do it? It took him over sixty seconds to say it?”

“Of course not. He said he was sorry and then we got to talking and…”

“And you ‘got to talking’? Despite the fact that you had a husband upstairs that was waiting for you? Who you knew would be pissed off that you were talking to your ex boyfriend? All of that you still talked to him? You couldn’t have just accepted his apology and that’s that?”

“I guess I never thought about it like that,” she admits. “I guess I never thought about…”

“About me,” I finish for her. “You never thought about how I’d feel about you talking to Sid. You’ve already said that a lot of guys would get pissed off and jealous about their girls talking to their exes. You didn’t bother to think about that while you were on the phone with him? It didn’t occur to you at the time that it wasn’t pissing me off?”

“Some things got said,” she attempts to explain. “It should have stopped at the apology. I know it should have. But then I said some things and he fought back and…” she sighs heavily and gives a forlorn shrug. “…and I really don’t know what else I can say.”

“How about you tell me what got said? How about you tell me what the two of you talked about? How about you…?”

“It’s not really any of your business,” she boldly states, and gives me an apologetic smile. “It was things that we needed to say to each other and…”

“And? And what?” I fight to control the rage boiling inside of me as I scramble into a sitting position. “Don’t you even pull this fucking shit that it isn’t my business. You’re my wife, Emma-Leigh. That makes whatever you talk about with other men, especially ex boyfriends of yours, my fucking business. Did you tell him that you’re still in love with him? Did you talk about how you made a huge mistake when you slept with me behind his back? Did you cry about how guilty you feel and about how you wished you’d picked him? Did you…?”

“Of course not!” she cries. “Of course I never said any of that! I’m not in love with him! I’m in love with you! And I may feel guilty for the way I handled things back then, but I don’t wish that I’d picked him instead of you! How could you even think all of that? How could you sit here in our bed and accuse me of those things? How could you…?”

“Did he tell you that he was still in love with you? Did he finally get the balls to admit it? Did he finally…?”

“I told him that he needed to let me go! I told him that it was time for him to move on! I told him that I needed him to let me go on with my life. He’s not a part of it anymore, Max! He hasn’t been a part of it for months now! And it doesn’t matter how he feels or if he still wishes we were together! Because none of that is never going to happen! The past is the past! I want to leave it there and neither of you will let me do that! He won’t let me go and you won’t let me let him go. It’s this vicious circle that just keeps going around and around and around and it’s driving me insane! It’s driving me insane and I can’t…” her voice cracks with emotion and she draws her knees up to her chest, buries her face in her hands and commences rocking. “…I can’t take this anymore…I can’t take what he’s doing to me…what you're both doing to me.”

“And I can’t come second in your life,” I inform her. “I can’t come second to him. And that’s exactly what you did when you talked to him for that long. You chose him over me.”

“I never meant for it to seem that way!” she sobs. “I never meant for you to feel like that! We just got talking and things were said between us! That’s all that happened! And I said things that I’ve been needing to say for months! I finally got it all out and you…all you can do is accuse me of doing things and saying things that I never, ever would! I wouldn’t hurt you like that! I would never pick anyone else over you! I’m sorry that you felt that way! I’m sorry that I’m not a good wife! That I’m not perfect! That I make mistakes and that I…”

“Emma-Leigh…” reaching out, I pry her hands away from her face and then wrap both arms around her slender, trembling body. “I don’t expect you to be perfect,” I assure her, as I gather her into my chest and stroke her hair and back soothingly. “I don’t expect you to be anything but yourself. This marriage thing is new to both of us. We’re both struggling. We’re both having a hard time thinking of people other than ourselves. But I can’t live the rest of my life like this. I can’t spent the rest of my life wondering if you’re going to drop everything whenever Sid snaps his fingers. I can’t worry constantly that you’re going to wake up one day and want to be with him. I can’t…”

“I don’t want to be with him!” she cries. “I want to be with you! Only you! Why won’t you believe me? Why won’t you…?”

“I want to believe you,” I whisper. “I want to believe that you’d never do that to me. Because I do love you, Em. I love you so much I can barely breathe or think straight most of the time. And I want to believe that you love me that way.”

“I do love you that way!” she insists. “I wouldn’t do something like that to you! I wouldn’t hurt you like that, Maxime! I wouldn’t…”

“I’m sure you told Sid once or twice you wouldn’t hurt him either,” I point out. “And we all know how that turned out in the end.”

“I never meant to hurt anyone. It was way beyond my control! I fell in love with someone else! It happens! I never meant to hurt him. And I never meant to piss you off tonight. I just didn’t think. Please don’t hate me for that. Please don’t hate me for being a dumb ass. Please don’t…”

“You’re not a dumb ass,” I press a kiss to her temple and then release my hold on her in order to smooth her hair away from her tear streaked face. “And I could never hate you. Ever. I love you. Too much for my own good sometimes.”

“I’m sorry…” she whimpers. “I never meant to…”

“I know,” I say, and cover her lips with mine in a tender, feathery kiss. “But this has got to stop, Emma-Leigh. We both have to stop living in the past. We both need to start concentrating on what we have. Or we’re never going to make it.”

“Please don’t say that,” she pleads. “We’ll make it. We have to make it. Tell me we will. Tell me that everything’s going to be okay. Tell me that this is just a bump in the road and tomorrow we’re going to wake up and everything’s going to be fine okay. Tell me that we can get through anything.”

“We’re going to be fine,” I promise her. “Tomorrow we’ll wake it and it’ll be like tonight never happened. Everything’s going to be okay and we can make it through anything.”

I hope I sound more confidant than I actually feel.