Only You

leaving

Cate just got divorced. She says it's all over now. I hate myself for not being there for her.

Watching her, wrapped up in her coat with her knees pulled up to her chest and snuggled against the seat, she doesn't seem like a goddess anymore. She's so close I feel like she is burning into me even though we're not touching. But she is even more beautiful now that she's no longer watching from the clouds; she looks like a fallen angel, a woman from a Renaissance painting that someone painted because she was too exquisite for history to forget. 

I look at the sea outside the window, and wonder how we look from a wanderer outside. A lone car parked beside the edge of the world. Two lost souls putting each other together again. 

"At least it wasn't messy like I thought," she says, and laughs. She laughs even though her eyes bleed shattered glass. "No, it was simple. I have the house, my daughter...everything. It's all done. I just..." she looks at me with a sigh. "I just need to get out of here, Jude."

Her daughter. Ruby. I can picture her, toddling around Cate's parents' house, so unaware of the tragic beauty her mother is, a watered-down picture of Cate. I can picture the wispy pale yellow hair, the small plump hands clutching at anything. I can't picture Cate with her, though. They seem to be of two separate worlds, the daughter a mere reflection. And her ex-husband...I can't see him at all.

"We can leave," I say. "There's nothing stopping us." I grab her hand, she looks up with happy surprise. "We can leave right now, Cate."

We decide to stop at Cate's house first for her to gather some things, and then mine. It's well past eleven when we arrive. 

"He might be here," she tells me. "He's taking his sweet time moving out."

Her husband Richard is a scrawny, watery excuse for a person. He reminds me of a mouse, and I keep expecting him to whisk around and scramble back to his hole, nose twitching and his little body shaking pathetically. I hate him almost immediately but for Cate's sake I am cordial. 

He's sitting on the couch, sprawled out with a can of beer as if he owned the place. "I was just leaving," he says quickly as Cate comes in. He has a whiny, petulant voice. He stands up, and notices me. "Who's this?"

"This is Jude," Cate says.

I force on a small smile reserved for people of little importance, and hold out my hand. He shakes it. "Pleasure," he says. I see his eyes rove up and down my body. I withdraw my hand. 

"We're going out again pretty soon," Cate tells him, her eyes fixed on a lamp. 

"So late?" Richard says. He walks closer to Cate and I resist the urge to shove him far away. Cate stands a whole head taller than him. How did she ever marry him? Did she ever love him?

"Jude," Cate says, and looks at me. "I hope you don't mind if I ask you to stay down here while I get my things."

"No, of course not," I say. "Is it okay if I...?" I nod at the bookshelf. 

"Oh, you're welcome to it," she says. The way she acts around Richard, as if she's treading fearfully around a sleeping beast, burns a hot anger in my head. But I say nothing else, and walk towards the bookshelf while Cate goes upstairs, Richard following her.

I page through some of her books, aimlessly, reading nothing. The house is full of her scent, and it makes me dizzy with the thought that I am actually going to run away with her. Who knows where we'd end up? Maybe...

Heavy footsteps thump back down the stairs, and I look up with a start. Richard walks past me, grabbing his jacket. "Nice meeting you," he throws the words at me briefly, and I don't bother to catch them. I watch him leave, slamming the door behind him, and an image of me grabbing him by the throat and bashing his head against the side of the house flashes across my mind. 

Cate comes down soon after. I don't look at her face, but focus on pushing the book gently back into its place. 

Suddenly I feel her arms wrap around me from behind, and she buries her face in my hair. "I'm sorry," she says. "That you had to see that."

"Cate...."

"I'm fine," she says, and releases me. The movement is so sudden I only have time to taste the sweetness of her perfume on my tongue before she is light years away from me. She opens her suitcase and I watch her long, slender fingers brush lightly over the spines of the books, settling on one or two to pack. 

"Let's go," she says, taking up the bag and putting her coat on again. "I'm alright."

"Will he come back?" I ask. I don't like the thought of him roaming Cate's house while she isn't home.

"I doubt it," she answers. "He's got a place in California. He'll probably go there. Oh--let's not talk about it anymore."

I reach up and tuck a stray lock of her hair behind her ear. "Okay."

My house is dark, as always. Either my parents are back in the city, or they're asleep. I doubt the second possibility, though. They never sleep. 

"I'm gonna go through the window," I say. "Maybe you'd better stay in the car. I'll only take a minute."

But she comes out anyway, to watch me nimbly climb the tree by my bedroom window and swing to my windowsill. "Don't fall and break your neck," she calls up.

I give her a little salute before pulling myself inside. 

My room, like the rest of this town, looks like it's been frozen in time. The thin film of dirt covering the books and the empty fish tank are only some of the relics of what looks like the set of a horror movie, gray and lifeless. I haven't bothered to make my bed, since I'm never in it anyway. 

I take a suitcase that belonged to Arden and begin to swiftly pack things into it. For one, I'm rushing because I don't want to keep Cate waiting out in the night air, and for another I'm terrified one of my parents would walk in on me packing for a trip I have no destination for. But a part of me almost wishes my mom or dad would walk in. Maybe they'll try to stop me from going. Maybe I can feel like I'm their daughter again. 

But they don't come in, even when I bang my drawer shut and knock over a snow globe in my hurry to get out. So I sling my bag over my shoulder, take what stray bits of cash I can find, and lower myself back down.

Cate is leaning against the car, smoking a cigarette. "Listen," she says, dreamily. "Everything's so nice and peaceful on winter nights."

"Is it still winter?" I say jokingly as I push my bag into the trunk next to Cate's.

"It's always winter," Cate says. She holds the cigarette out to me, and the smoke from our mouths spiral up into the sharp cold air, evaporating in the clear darkness.