“Excuse me?”
“I asked who you’re with in the middle of the night, Magnolia. Did your boyfriend bust you fucking around?”
Raymond walks past me, squeezing my shoulder softly. When I turn to follow his steps, he gestures with a thumb over his shoulder that he will be in the hall. I wait until the door is closed behind him before I spin, pacing back and forth in front of the barre.
“Fuck you, Lukas.”
I hate this version of me. The one I’ve become every time we talk.
I’m not the sweet, supportive girlfriend anymore. I’m not his Mags. I’m the bad guy. The one who either nags him that he needs help, or gets mad and hangs up on him. I’m the one who has to curse him out when he’s being a jerk. I’m the one who gets the brunt of his attitude; the one who puts up with the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde split personalities that he decides to grace me with. He’s become the man he swore he would never be, and it’s taken its toll on the both of us.
“You didn’t ask, not politely, anyways, but that was Raymond. Remember, my dance partner, Raymond? The one you met when you came to see me in France? The one that has been by my side through your entire deployment, my injury? That Raymond?”
I pace back and forth, waiting for him to recall Raymond’s name, to muster even a half-assed apology, but when he doesn’t, something snaps in me. “And screw you for even asking, Lukas. How dare you call me in the middle of the night and accuse me ofcheatingon you! I wouldneverhurt you like that. We’ve talked about this very thing, and you should know me better than that.”
But you don’t.
I pause my steps, catching a glance of myself in the wall of mirrors.
I don’t recognize the man on the other end of the phone anymore. And looking at my thin and exhausted frame staring back at me from the mirror, I don’t recognize the version of myself that I’ve become, either. More importantly, I don’tlikethe person I’ve become. “You don’t ask about me, ever. Do you realize that, Lukas? We could call each other daily, and still never actually talk. I don’t tell you what’s going on in my life, and you don’t ask. You won’t speak a word about your deployment, about what you’ve been through. So, we don’t talk. I know you’re hurting, and I know you’re going through something. Or have gone through something, but I can’t do anything about it if you don’t let me help. If you don’t tell me.”
The saddest part of it all is that I’m not sure I want to see the version of him that he’s become. I don’t want to see what the years of stress, of poor sleep, the months of drinking and smoking have done to the happy person I once knew. “You’re killing yourself, Lukas.” My voice wavers, and I inhale, my breath catching in my throat. “I can see it even though I’m halfway across the world. I don’t know how you don’t see it when you look at yourself in the mirror.”
“You don’t think I fucking see what’s going on with me? In the world? Wake the fuck up, Magnolia! I know what’s going on.” He pauses, and I can hear his ragged breathing over the line. “There’s so much shit out there in the world that you couldn’t evenfathom. There are real, terrible things happening every day to real families. Lives are lost every day. You have no idea what I’ve done protect who I can, to do what I can to prevent this from making its way back home.”
“Then tell me!” I wail. “If I don’t understand, thentellme.Makeme understand. Please, Lukas.” Another sob escapes me at his harsh words, and I clamp a hand over my mouth to stifle it, but it’s no use. I crumple to the floor, dropping my spare hand to catch me, and I let him hear it. Every ugly, obnoxious sound thatrises from my throat, one right after the other. He listens to me breakdown without saying a word.
And once I’m done, when I’m lying on my back and hiccuping into the otherwise eerily silent room, I finally say what I’ve been thinking for the last year. “I don’t know you anymore, Lukas … and … and I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I can hear him inhale a drag of a cigarette before blowing it out. I can practically smell the rancid smoke through the phone, thousands of miles away.
A realization washes over me, much like a cold splash of water on a hot summer day. My mind clears, and I think for the first time in a long time, I know what needs to be done. “It means, I think we need a break.”
He’s quiet. Oddly quiet. No exhale from a cigarette. No clink from a bottle. I check my phone once, then twice, making sure he’s still there. And when he talks again, his voice is small. So small that it shatters what’s left of my heart.
“A break?”
“A break … from us. I can’t do this anymore, Lukas. I can’t live like this. I can’t … Do you know that sometimes when you call, I don’t answer? I don’t know what version of you I’m going to get. You don’t know me anymore. You don’t know…” I drop the phone to the floor and bring my hands to my head, yanking free the mounds of bobby pins that have been poking me all night. It’s only when my tangled hair falls freely over my face, and I feel some semblance of relief, do I have the guts to continue. “I have no idea what you’ve lived through for the last two years. You don’t know what I do, where I’ve been, or how I’ve been. You don’t know because you don’t ask, and I don’t bother to tell you anymore. Our phone calls are either fights or apologies for fighting. This isn’t a relationship, Lukas. This isn’t love.”
“So, that’s it? I’m less than six months out from discharging, from being done with all this, and you want to take a break?”
“What difference will it make whether you’re in California or Iowa? You won’t come visit me, you won’t tell me when I can come visit you. You’re keeping me at arm’s length. What else am I supposed to do? Maybe if we take a few weeks, a month apart, maybe it’ll?—”
“Man up, Magnolia.” His voice is rough, angry. “Let’s call this what it is. A break is a breakup, and if that’s what you want, I’ll give you that.”
“Don’t make this all out to be my fault. I know I haven’t been the best, but you’ve changed, Lukas. We all see it. We’re all terrified for you, yet no one can seem to get through to you.”
“Weall? What, you’ve been getting together with my family to gossip about me? Poor Lukas,” he mocks, “can’t handle it when life gets tough.”
I grimace at the thought of that. Of him thinking the people that love him the most would talk about him like that. “Don’t. You know we’d never say that about you.”
“Whatever. Alright. Guess this is goodbye then.”
“Lukas, don’t?—”
“Don’t worry about it. I get it. People change, ya know?” I hear him pause, and it sounds like he lights up another cigarette. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from breaking down, but it doesn’t help. “We were just kids when we got together. Things were different. We’re adults now. We’ve experienced real life, and I guess we weren’t strong enough to make it.”
“Don’t lessen what we have.”
