4. Delia
DELIA
I went into the study on Friday morning to work on the carnival budget. The folder was sitting on top of my purchase notebook.
House listings. All of them properties closer to the tower. I picked it up and opened it. Eight pages inside, printed from a real estate site, each one flagged with a sticky note in handwriting that wasn’t mine.
I’d locked that door.
The notebook underneath was closed. The tax forms were still in the drawer where I’d left them. Nothing else had been moved. Just the folder, placed exactly where I would see it. He’d been in here. He’d put this down on top of three years of savings and walked back out.
I set the folder on the chair and left the room.
By seven I was at the rink with a bucket and a mop, working my way across the rubber matting in the lobby. Walt had the plant humming and the ice was good and I didn’t need to be doing this at all. The matting was clean. I got down on my knees anyway and scrubbed the seams where the sections met.
The folder. The Thursday message he never answered. The kitchen at three in the morning and the question I’d asked twice in seven years that got me a wall both times.
I kept scrubbing.
The kids asked where you were. He’d read that and said nothing.
I moved the bucket to the next section and started again.
At nine-thirty I was at the boards watching the intermediate group work their approaches. A girl named Lily came down the line and her edge wobbled halfway through and she caught herself but the exit was wrong.
“Lily,” I called. “Shift your weight earlier on approach.”
She came back around and did it again. This time the edge held all the way through and the exit was clean.
“That’s it,” I said.
She didn’t even know what she’d changed. She just did it and skated off.
Nobody in the building was surprised. This was just what I did. I could look at a twelve-year-old’s approach and tell her what was wrong. She’d get it right the next time. I could do that every single day without even thinking about it.
My work succeeded. My marriage was failing. I didn’t know what else to call it.
I checked my phone at ten. Nothing. No reply to Thursday’s message, no acknowledgment, nothing. I pulled up the thread anyway and stared at it like something might have appeared in the thirty seconds since I’d last looked.
The node was closing in eleven days. He was in back-to-back sessions with the national rollout team and sleeping four hours a night and I knew that.
I knew it. He wasn’t ignoring me because he didn’t care.
He was ignoring me because he didn’t have time to care.
That was supposed to be different, except it didn’t feel different at all.
I just wanted him back.
Roz showed up at ten-fifteen with two coffees and took one look at my face.
“What happened,” she said.
“Nothing.”
“Delia.”
I wrapped both hands around the cup she’d given me and pressed them flat against my cheeks for a second. Then I told her. The folder on the notebook. The locked door. The message on Thursday morning that he still hadn’t answered.
She didn’t ask if I was sure. She didn’t ask if maybe I was reading too much into it. She just got angry.
“He put a folder of apartments on top of your savings and you’re still calling this nothing?”
“He doesn’t know what’s in the notebook,” I said. “He was just leaving something where I’d see it.”
“Right. Because that’s better.” She set her coffee down hard enough that it sloshed. “Delia, I love you, but you’re doing the thing where you build him a defence he didn’t ask for and wouldn’t use if you handed it to him.”
“He’s not trying to hurt me.”
“I didn’t say he was. I said he’s not paying attention, and you keep making excuses for that like if you’re just reasonable enough about it he’ll wake up and notice.”
I didn’t have an answer for that. She was right.
“How long has it been like this?” she asked.
“A year. Maybe longer. I don’t know. It got worse when the national deal started, but it wasn’t good before that either.”
Roz was quiet for a minute. Then she said, “When did you last have skates on?”
I stared at her.
“Delia. When?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes you do.”
“I don’t remember the specific day.”
“But you remember the year.”
I didn’t say anything.
“That’s what I thought,” she said. “And he wasn’t the one who took them off you, was he. That’s the bit that’s going to make you crazy.”
My throat went tight.
“Where are they?” Roz asked.
“In the office. Under the shelf.”
“Show me.”
I didn’t move.
“Delia. Show me.”
I took her into the office and pulled the bag out from under the shelf. The skates were still sharp. I’d had them done every season for seven years even though I hadn’t put them on once.
“Put them on,” Roz said.
“I don’t need to.”
“I didn’t ask if you needed to. I asked you to do it.”
I sat down on the floor and pulled the skates out of the bag. They fit the same way they always had. I laced them up and Roz stood there watching me the whole time and I hated her a little bit for making me do this.
“Go,” she said.
I stepped onto the ice. It felt like nothing and it felt like everything. I pushed off and did one lap and then another. By the third one I couldn’t see where I was going. I got off at the gate and sat down on the bench and pulled the skates off and shoved them back in the bag.
Roz sat down next to me.
“Okay,” she said. “So here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to stop asking him to come to your life. You’ve been doing that for seven years and it hasn’t worked. You issue invitations and he doesn’t accept them. So you’re going to take your life to him.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you go to his building. You take the thing you love and you put it in front of him and you ask him to let you teach him. One hour. That’s all.
You’re not asking him to fix anything or apologise for anything or admit he’s been wrong.
You’re asking him to show up for one hour and let you show him what you do. ”
I looked at her.
“He won’t say yes.”
“Maybe not. But you’ll know you tried. And you’ll know it wasn’t because you didn’t ask right or didn’t ask enough or didn’t give him a good enough reason.
You’ll know you walked into his world and handed him the thing that matters most to you and asked him to take it.
And if he says no to that, then you’ll know. ”
I didn’t ask what I’d know. I already knew.
I sent the message at eleven.
“I’m not angry about Thursday. Really, I’m not. But I’m scared and I think I’ve been scared for so long that I don’t even know how to tell you I am except like this. One hour, Grant. That’s all I’m asking for. Anywhere you want, anytime you want. But all I want is that hour. Please. For me?”
I watched the screen. One minute. Two. Five. Ten.
At eleven-seventeen, he replied.
“Delia, I can’t. I have a working session with Corinne tomorrow and a call with Frank on Monday and the close is in eleven days. I’ll call you when I can.”
Four lines. No apology. No counter-offer. No acknowledgment of a single word I’d written.
Corinne’s name was in it. Just sitting there, like it belonged there, which I guess it did.
I read it three times. Then I opened a browser on my phone and looked up the national rollout.
The deal coverage was public. The close on the sixteenth was just the beginning. The rollout was a three-year programme. Three years. He’d known that the entire time and he’d never said it. Not once.
I’d been holding on, thinking that after the sixteenth things would go back to normal, that I’d get him back, and there was no back. This was the shape of it. This was the shape of my life.
I kept scrolling. Corinne Sayer was named as the operating partner. After the close, she’d be taking a permanent role. Not temporary. Not just for this phase. Permanent.
She wasn’t going anywhere. This wasn’t going anywhere. There was no end to it.
I locked the phone and set it down.
Then I picked up my keys and drove to the pro shop on Linden Street. I pulled the skate bag out of the back seat and carried it inside.
The guy behind the counter looked up.
“Can I get these sharpened?” I asked.
“Sure. Twenty minutes.”
“Thanks.”
I walked around the shop while I waited. There was a pair of men’s skates on the wall, mid-range, nothing fancy. I pulled them down and checked the size.
“Can I get these fitted?” I called.
“What size?”
I told him. I didn’t have to look it up. I just knew.
He brought out the size and I held them and they felt right. Not for me. For him.
“I’ll take them,” I said.
He rang me up and sharpened my skates and put both pairs in the bag. I paid and walked out and put the bag back in the car.
On Monday I was going to walk into his building with these in my hands. I was going to ask him for one hour. And he was going to say no, or he was going to say yes, and either way I’d know.
I started the car and drove home.