Chapter 80
80
Evie
After my coffee, I go to the gym. I’m not going to let a little problem like ending my marriage disrupt my normal routine. Teenage me would be astonished about the exercise. I was hopeless at phys ed—devoid of any kind of prowess at ball sports, or patience, particularly for anything with a high chance of failure. I consider the irony of ending up in a marriage that has so spectacularly crashed.
The routine is all I really have these days. I hardly even do anything here, just walk absentmindedly on the treadmill and then adjourn to the coffee shop, usually, to read or to people-watch. Wishing things were different. Filling in another pointless day that’s dragging me further from my dreams.
My anxiety got so bad after I pulled out of the PhD, Oliver convinced me to give up my job. “It only has to be temporary,” he’d explained. “Just while you pull yourself together.”
“I don’t want to stop working,” I told him. “It’s the one place where my anxiety isn’t bad.”
“Find a hobby or something, Evie. You need a break.”
Pulling myself together turned out to be a bigger task than either of us envisaged. I was far more broken than I’d thought. At least, that’s how it had felt. I was bedridden for months. Too scared to face the real world. I think I feared that if a single person I knew saw me—really saw my face—they’d know . About the failed relationship. Failed PhD. Friendships. Family. Everything.
And if they found out, then I’d have no choice but to do something about it, which is where I am now. A deer in the headlights of an untenable situation that can’t be tolerated a second longer but seems equally impossible to face.
I sit down in the café and get my phone out. It’s always on silent and I hardly ever check it lately. Too scared of missed calls and messages. Too overwhelmed by notifications. Too sad, to be honest, about the messages that aren’t there. The calls I don’t get. The way everything went so wrong with my parents and Bree. And Drew.
I always separate him, I realize. It’s always “My parents and Bree. And Drew.” He deserves a category of his own, I guess. I remember when my parents thought it was Drew that I liked. Not Oliver. They probably heard something in my voice that spoke more truth than the bright lights and fanfare of the iridescent romance I was swept away by.
My mind flashes to the day Drew’s mother died. That fraction of a kiss. Of all the thousands of kisses I’ve had with Oliver, not one has occupied as much space in my mind as that one with Drew that barely began. Even now, reminiscing about it, everything plunges inside me in delicious anticipation. And then loss.
I flick open my email app. It’s full of marketing promotions and bill reminders and job-search notifications I never look at because it’s too depressing wondering how to explain the growing gap in my résumé. It’s not like I’ve had kids. We’ve tried. Oliver thinks our failure to conceive is all in my mind, that I’m too high-strung and emotional and that’s what’s stopping my body from just relaxing into motherhood. Perhaps it’s more that I’ve been privately hoping things will change and the relationship will strengthen enough to give me the confidence to bring other humans into it. Every other weekend with Harriet is nowhere near enough parenting for me—she’s the only sunlight in my life.
I’m about to close the app when I scroll back up. I’d skipped over the messages so fast, I hadn’t noticed one buried between a spam message about a bogus phone bill and something from a meditation app I signed up for, thinking I’d start a daily habit about six years ago.
FROM: Drew Kennedy
SUBJECT: Pictures of you.
My heart leaps at our exhibition name.
I open the message.
Evie,
I know we haven’t spoken in a while. I hope you’re well, and Harriet.
This is a short message. And a confession. With a question.
My breaths come erratically. The idea of a confession and a question injects a level of hope into my soul that I haven’t felt in a very long time. Hope that has no business being in my soul at all. Not delivered by Drew Kennedy. But I read on.
Remember I always wanted to enter the World Photography Awards? I told you my photos weren’t good enough and you insisted they were? Well, on a whim a couple of months ago, I threw together a submission in the portrait category. I’d been cleaning up my storage on the computer and found a bunch of photos I’d taken of you over the years. Nearly deleted them, to be honest. But then …
Anyway, I’ve been shortlisted.
Now for the confession part. Before I submitted the images, I was supposed to get your permission. I never really thought I’d get this far, and the idea of reaching out to you felt overwhelming, so I didn’t. I just submitted the entry. Evie, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.
I’ve attached the images here. You probably should have them, anyway. I understand if you’d rather I didn’t go ahead with the competition. Just say the word and I’ll withdraw from it.
Let me know, either way? Thanks,
Drew.
P.S. I had to write an artist’s statement to go with them. For what it’s worth, I meant every word.
I flick through some of the photos—from the first ones he took of me in Year Eleven, galivanting through the city with him that night we used the film camera, wild and exhilarated, to one of me at Harriet’s birthday party, staring out the window, dead inside. I look like a princess trapped in a tower. He may not have meant this, but in chronological order the images strike me as a timeline of how much my life has shrunk. And just how far I’ve fallen.
I put my phone down on the table and stare at it. Suddenly I don’t want to be at the gym while I look through the rest. I don’t want to be listening to the grinding of coffee beans and the clanking of barbells. I need to be outside. And alone.
So I gather together my things—the gym bag at my feet, my towel, keys, phone. My heart is beating just as fast as it had on the treadmill half an hour ago as I rush outside, head across the road, and find a place in the park under some trees, where I will click on the file titled Pictures of You—by Drew Kennedy .