10. Eliza
— ? —
Eliza
Two weeks of flowers outside my door that I don’t open.
They started my first week here, and they haven’t stopped.
Roses at first, then peonies, then arrangements so elaborate I don’t even know what half the flowers are.
I leave them in the hallway until they start to wilt, and then I drag them inside and throw them away because I can’t stand the way the neighbors look at me when they walk past. Pitying looks, curious looks, looks that say they’ve already made up their minds about what’s happening in my life.
Two weeks of boxes from stores I’ve never heard of, wrapped in tissue paper and ribbon, piling up in the hallway until I have no choice but to bring them inside.
I don’t open those either. They’re stacked in the corner of my living room now, a pile I keep meaning to return but never do.
One of them has a customs label from Paris.
He’s shipping apologies across an ocean now.
I tell myself it’s because I don’t have time, but the truth is I don’t want to deal with whatever’s inside them.
I don’t want to see what he thinks I want, what he thinks will fix this.
Two weeks of texts I delete before I finish reading them.
His name pops up on my screen and my thumb moves to delete before my brain even registers what I’m doing.
It’s automatic now, a reflex. Two weeks of voicemails I don’t listen to.
I see the notification and I swipe it away and I don’t let myself wonder what he’s saying, whether he’s apologizing or begging or making more promises he won’t keep.
Two weeks of building a life that doesn’t include him, one day at a time.
The internship is everything I hoped it would be.
The hours are brutal and the pay is insulting, but I’m learning things I never could have taught myself.
How to drape fabric so it moves with the body instead of against it.
How to read a design and understand not just what it’s supposed to look like but how it’s supposed to feel.
How to take criticism without crumbling, how to push back when I think I’m right, how to admit when I’m wrong.
Charlie is a demanding teacher, exacting and precise, but he’s also generous with his knowledge in a way that surprises me.
He doesn’t hoard his expertise or make me feel stupid for asking questions.
He answers seriously, thoughtfully, like my curiosity matters.
He challenges my assumptions and makes me defend my choices and treats me like someone with potential instead of someone’s wife.
The other interns are young, most of them fresh out of design school, and at first I felt out of place among them, the oldest person in the room, the one who took eleven years to get here.
But they’ve been kind, and curious, and after the first week one of them told me she wished she had my eye for construction, and it landed on me that maybe those eleven years weren’t wasted after all.
Maybe they taught me things that can’t be learned in a classroom.
I’m exhausted every night when I come home, exhausted in a way I’d forgotten I could enjoy.
My fingers ache from hand-stitching and my vision swims from staring at seams under bright lights, and my back hurts from hunching over cutting tables for hours at a time.
But it’s a good ache, a productive ache, proof that I’m actually doing something that matters, building something that belongs to me.
Tonight I’m later than usual because we had a deadline, a sample that needed finishing before the client meeting tomorrow.
Charlie kept us all past eight, checking and rechecking every seam, every hem, every button placement.
By the time he finally signed off on it, my hands were shaking from fatigue and my stomach was growling loud enough for everyone to hear.
I drive home through the dark city with the radio off, my sore hands light on the wheel, and I try not to think about anything at all.
I turn the corner to my apartment and stop.
Gordon is on my landing.
He’s sitting on the floor with his back against my door, and he’s holding something large and awkward, wrapped in a moving blanket.
He looks terrible, unshaven and hollow-eyed, like he hasn’t slept in days.
His clothes are wrinkled, the same shirt I’ve seen him wear before, and there’s a coffee cup on the floor next to him that looks like it’s been there for hours.
When he sees me, he scrambles to his feet, and I can see the hope light up his face before he manages to control it.
My stomach drops and my heart starts pounding. I can feel my body preparing for a fight even before my brain catches up.
“How did you find my apartment?” I ask.
He has the decency to look at the floor. “I followed you. From school. The first week.”
“You followed me.”
“I needed to know you were okay.”
“That’s not okay, Gordon. That’s stalking. You get that, right? Flowers on the door of an address I never gave you. Boxes from stores I’ve never shopped at. There’s a word for that.”
“I know.” He doesn’t argue it. He just shifts the weight in his arms, adjusting his grip on whatever he’s carrying. “I know it’s not okay. I know I’m not handling any of this right. But I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You could respect my boundaries. You could give me space. You could sign the papers.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Both.” He meets my eyes, and his expression is raw, desperate and broken. “I can’t give up on you, Eliza. I don’t know how.”
I should tell him to leave. I should call the police, or at least threaten to. I should not be standing here in the hallway having a conversation with the man I’m trying to divorce, my keys digging into my palm, my heart pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat.
But he’s holding something, and the shape of it is familiar, and despite everything I’m curious.
“What is that?”
He looks down at the bundle in his arms like he forgot he was carrying it. Then he kneels down and sets it on the floor, carefully, and pulls back the moving blanket, and it’s my sewing machine.
It’s the one I pawned, the Singer from the studio apartment, the one I cried over, the one that was supposed to be the start of everything before it became the price of keeping us afloat.
I recognize the scratch on the side where I dropped it moving into the apartment, and the sticker on the base that I never peeled off, faded now but still there, the edges curling up at the corners, and the slightly crooked tension dial that I learned to compensate for, that little quirk I knew as well as my own handwriting.
“How-” My voice breaks. “How did you find it?”
“Three weeks.” He’s out of breath from carrying it up three flights, and his voice is rough.
“Three weeks of pawn shop records, tracking down receipts, finding the woman in Pasadena who’d owned it for nine years.
She didn’t want to sell. I showed up at her door and told her the whole story.
” He pauses. “She cried. I cried. We made a deal.”
I’m touching the machine before I can stop myself, the cool metal under my fingertips, the familiar weight of the wheel under my palm, the worn spot on the base where my hand used to rest while I guided fabric through the needle. It’s real. It’s really real.
“Gordon-”
“I know I can’t buy you back.” He’s talking fast, like he’s afraid I’ll stop him if he pauses.
“I know money’s not the answer. You’ve told me that a hundred times and I never listened, and I’m trying to listen now.
But I remember what this meant to you. I remember the day you pawned it, how you wouldn’t cry in front of me and I heard you through the bathroom door after, and how I said we’d get it back someday.
” He takes a breath. “I wanted to keep that promise. Even if I’ve broken all the others. ”
I’m crying. I hate that I’m crying in front of him, hate the way my throat closes up and my eyes burn and everything in me betrays me at once, but I can’t stop it.
“You used to show me your sketches,” he says quietly.
“Back in the apartment. You’d sit on the floor with your sketchbook and you’d draw these designs, these incredible things, and you’d explain them to me even though I didn’t understand half of what you were saying.
” He has to stop and swallow. “You showed me a drawing once. Something about asymmetrical draping and custom boning. You said it was impossible to execute without the right support structure, but you thought maybe you’d figured out a way. ”
I remember that drawing. I remember sitting on the mattress on the floor, my back against the wall, explaining my ideas to him while he sat across from me with his legs stretched out and his head tilted, nodding and asking questions and pretending to follow along.
I remember how he looked at me while I talked, like I was the most interesting person in the world, like he could listen to me forever.
“I didn’t understand it then,” he says. “But I remembered it. I remembered how your face looked when you talked about it. How excited you were. How alive.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I want you to know I was paying attention. At least sometimes. Even when I wasn’t showing it.”
I wipe my face with the back of my hand, angry at the tears, angry at him for making me feel this way when I’m supposed to be done feeling anything for him at all.
“Thank you,” I whisper. “For the machine.”
He looks at me like I’ve given him something precious, like that’s enough.
It’s not.
“Eliza.” He steps closer, and I can see the hope building in his face, and I know what’s coming before he says it. “Come home. Please. You’ve made your point. Everyone heard it, everyone knows. Just come home and let me fix this.”
The warmth in my chest goes cold.
“My point?”
“You know what I mean. You wanted me to see what I was missing, and I do. I see it now. I understand what I did wrong, and I’ll change, I’ll be better, I’ll-”
“This isn’t a point, Gordon.” I scrub my sleeve across my eyes, furious that he’s watching me do it twice in one night. “This isn’t a tantrum. I left because our marriage is broken, and you can’t fix that by tracking down a sewing machine.”
“Then tell me what does fix it. Tell me, and I’ll do it right now. I’ll do anything.”
“I don’t know.” It comes out ragged. “That’s the worst part. I don’t know if anything fixes it. I don’t know if I can trust you again, if you’re even capable of really changing, if-”
“I am. I swear to God, Eliza, I am capable of changing. I’ve already started. I fired Sloane, I took leave from the company, I’ve been trying to figure out how I became this person who-”
“You’ve said that before.” I cut him off, and my voice is harder than I mean it to be. “A hundred times. You’ve said you’ll change, you’ll do better, you’ll be present. And then a month later, you’re back to eighteen-hour days and missed dinners and forgetting I exist.”
“This time is different.”
“It’s always different. Until it isn’t.”
I bend down and pick up the sewing machine. It’s heavy, heavier than I remembered, and he moves to help me, but I step back before he can touch it.
“I’m keeping this,” I say. “But it doesn’t change anything between us.”
I unlock my door and carry the machine inside. Before I close it, I turn back.
“This is what I mean, Gordon. This is exactly what I’m talking about.
” I hold his gaze, making sure he hears every word.
“I tell you what I need. Space. Time. For you to respect my decision. And instead of listening, you follow me home from school. You show up at my apartment with gifts. You decide that your feelings matter more than my boundaries.” I take a breath.
“That’s the problem. That’s always been the problem.
You decide what’s best for me without ever asking what I actually want. ”
He opens his mouth to respond, but I don’t give him the chance.
“Don’t come back here,” I say. “I mean it. The next time you show up uninvited, I’m calling the police.”
I shut the door in his face.
The sewing machine sits in the corner of my bedroom.
I can’t make myself use it yet. It feels too loaded, too heavy with meaning.
Every time I look at it, I think about him kneeling on my landing, pulling back the blanket, watching my face for a reaction.
I think about the woman in Pasadena who cried when he told her the story.
I think about him keeping track of pawn shop records for three weeks, driving all over the city, refusing to give up.
That night, I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling and try not to think about any of it.
I try to think about the internship instead, about the sample we finished today, about everything I’m learning and building and becoming.
But my mind keeps drifting back to him, to the way he looked at me in the hallway, to the way his voice cracked when he talked about my sketches.
I roll over and bury my face in the pillow and tell myself I’m not going to cry again.
For the first time since I left, I dream about the studio apartment.
About the mattress on the floor and his hands on my skin and the way he used to say my name, soft and reverent.
I dream about being young and broke and so in love I couldn’t see straight, about falling asleep in his arms and waking up to his face and believing with everything I had that we were going to make it.
I wake up crying, and I don’t know if it’s grief or longing or both.