Seven Years and a Sunflower

Seven years of marriage, and every morning Reuben James made two cups of coffee.

One for me. One to take to the university.

I always thought the second cup was his own.

Until the day he forgot his phone, and I brought it to him at the university.

I pushed open his office door.

His colleague, Bonnie Locke, took the coffee from his hand like it was the most natural thing in the world, smiling as she said,

"Let me guess. Today's latte art is a little doe just like me."

She looked down. She'd guessed right.

I stood in the doorway, watching the two of them laugh and talk.

And it hit me that these seven years of marriage were a lot like that cup of coffee I was allergic to.

Not worth much at all.

...

"Excuse me, who are you looking for?"

I turned around. Another one of Reuben's colleagues.

Seven years married to him, and his colleagues still didn't know my face.

I opened my mouth to answer.

"What are you doing here?"

Reuben crossed the room fast and steered me to the corner of the hallway.

"I told you, didn't I? Don't come to the university unless it's important. It looks bad."

He turned his face away, barely hiding the irritation in his eyes.

"You left your phone."

He took it and turned to go.

Then he seemed to hesitate, and after a long moment he looked back at me.

"Why aren't you at work today?"

There he went again.

Not one word I'd said had stayed with him.

I'd started my time off three days ago.

He had no classes this month, and I'd saved up a year of vacation. We were supposed to go to Iceland together.

I'd brought it up with him six months ago.

He'd said he knew.

A month ago I reminded him again, told him to clear his teaching schedule.

He was in the study at the time, talking poetry collections with Bonnie.

He didn't even look up. Just said he knew.

Last night I told him the tickets were already booked, that we'd leave in three days.

He froze and asked me where we were going.

To Iceland, I said. Did you forget?

Only then did he scramble to apologize, saying the university had suddenly added a lot of classes, that he couldn't go, that we'd do it next time.

I looked at the schedule posted on the hallway wall.

He had no classes.

None for the entire month ahead.

Right beside his, Bonnie's schedule was packed full.

Before that, Bonnie had called him in the middle of the night to complain.

"I'm completely buried, Reuben. You can't just run off and have a great time on your own, that's not fair. You have to keep me company."

He'd laughed, his voice fond and helpless all at once.

"All right, all right, whatever the great Professor Locke says."

I hadn't called it out then.

Now, standing here, my chest went tight.

Seeing the look on my face, he softened for once, which was rare for him.

"I really can't get away this month. Bonnie's swamped with her project, she came to me for help, I can't just leave her hanging."

I held back the sting in my eyes and said, low,

"But you promised me. How many times has it been now?"

He frowned, an edge of impatience in his voice.

"We've been married how many years now? Why do you have to have this honeymoon?"

"Marie Gilbert, you're thirty-three, not some twenty-three-year-old girl. Can you be a little more grown-up about this?"

My heart dropped to the bottom.

He must have caught the tears in the corners of my eyes, because he reached up and ruffled my hair, then sighed.

"Next time, I promise I'll set aside time just to take you. Okay?"

Next time. Next time. With him it was always next time.

The honeymoon we'd planned when we married was Iceland. Three days before we were supposed to leave, Bonnie got dumped and threatened to jump off a building, so he flew off to be with her.

Three years ago he said he'd make it up to me. A week before we left, Bonnie got sick, and he spent the better part of half a year nursing her at the hospital.

Last year we'd even booked the flights for the holidays. On the twenty-eighth, two days before, Bonnie said her family was pressuring her to get married, so without a word he refunded the tickets and drove over six hundred miles to play her boyfriend.

And now this.

Reuben was a man of principles.

He liked plans. He liked order. He liked everything to follow the proper sequence.

He was never late for a date. If we said seven o'clock and he arrived at one minute past, he apologized.

Every anniversary, he worked late, because the project deadline couldn't be moved.

The hospital where I worked was close to him. I asked if he could drop me off on his way.

He said he didn't want to take the detour.

So I caught the subway and switched to a bus every day, until my heels blistered, scabbed, and blistered again.

Then one day the rain came down hard, and I stood soaked through under the bus shelter.

Reuben's car drove past and sprayed water all over me.

Bonnie was in the passenger seat.

That was how I learned that every day he drove halfway across the city to take her to work and home again.

He was always like that.

Bonnie was the one exception in all his principles.

"Reuben"

Bonnie's voice carried over.

He glanced back toward the office, and his tone went hurried.

"I have to get to it. We'll talk at home if there's something."

I looked at him, and for the first time I saw how ridiculous I'd been.

Forget it.

"Come home early tonight. There's something I need to talk to you about."

I turned and walked away.

Reuben froze, took two instinctive steps after me, then turned back at the sound of Bonnie calling his name.

Downstairs, I dropped the coffee into the trash.

Coffee I was allergic to, a man past his expiration date. I didn't want either of them anymore.

I walked all day with nowhere to go.

By the time I got home, it was dark.

I'd just stepped out of my shoes when a pair of hands gently caught me from behind and guided me to the couch.

Reuben knelt in front of me and bent his head over my ankle.

"Why are you bleeding?"

I followed his gaze and only then saw the raw patch on my heel, the faint stain of blood seeping through my sock.

He dug the little first-aid kit out from under the coffee table and started dabbing at it with an iodine swab.

"Does it hurt?"

He blew on it softly, every motion careful.

Something in my chest went soft for a moment.

I nodded and looked down, meaning to say something.

My eyes landed on my ankle.

On the bandage was a little deer.

The same little deer shape as the latte art on the coffee that morning.

My fingers curled in.

The warmth that had just started to rise felt like someone had poured a glass of ice water over it.

"Reuben, let's get a divorce."

The hand holding the tweezers went still.

"Over the Iceland trip?"

He frowned, his tone disbelieving, as if the idea were absurd.

I met his eyes and nodded.

"Yes."

He raised a hand and pinched the bridge of his nose, like his patience had run out.

"Marie, something this small, how long are you going to keep making a scene over it?"

Small. My things were always small.

Only Bonnie's things were ever big.

Reuben took a deep breath, set the tweezers back on the coffee table, stood up, and stepped back.

"Marie, you're not stable right now. I'm not going to argue with you."

His voice was pressed flat and even, the way you'd soothe a child throwing a tantrum.

"This divorce thing, I'll pretend I didn't hear it. Don't bring it up again."

Then he turned for the entryway and bent to change his shoes.

"I'll stay somewhere else tonight. We'll talk when you've calmed down."

The door slammed shut.

The apartment went terrifyingly quiet.

I slumped there in the dark, and the familiar suffocation rushed over me.

It wasn't the first time.

Reuben and I had fought over Bonnie more times than I could count.

Every time ended the same way.

He slammed the door and left me alone in the empty apartment.

No clearing it up, no explanation, no talking. Just gone, like he'd vanished off the face of the earth.

He'd come back in a few days as if nothing had happened, asking whether I'd calmed down yet.

Every problem between us, he traced back to my moods.

It never once occurred to him that he might be the one at fault.

Bonnie was always innocent.

The only one being difficult was me.

I curled up on the floor, buried my face against my knees, and swallowed down the burning in my throat again and again.

I didn't sleep all night, and by morning I was running a fever.

When I woke, I'd already been carried to the bed.

Reuben stood in front of me, breakfast set out on the nightstand.

Seeing my eyes open, he reached out and felt my forehead.

"Still feeling bad?"

I shook my head. I wanted to tell him to get out.

But my throat hurt too much to speak.

He picked up the bowl of porridge, stirred it, blew on a spoonful, and held it out to me.

I turned my head away and refused to open my mouth.

Reuben sighed and set the spoon back in the bowl.

"Marie, can't you act like an adult and stop making trouble for me?"

Trouble.

Anything to do with me was trouble.

My throat was tight and burning. I didn't want to say anything at all.

Reuben stood there a moment, then set a small box down in front of me.

"I did go back on my word about Iceland. This is for you. Stop making a scene."

Then he turned to get his coat.

"I'm heading to the school. Bonnie has a paper due today, I need to go help her with it."

At the door, he paused.

"Get some rest. Don't dwell on things that aren't real. Once your fever breaks and you're feeling stable again, we'll talk about Iceland."

The door closed.

His quick footsteps faded down the end of the hall.

I opened the box. No surprise. A silver four-leaf-clover necklace.

The exact same necklace. He'd given me seven of them.

The first time, I was so happy I couldn't bear to take it off, even to sleep.

Later I saw the same one on a coworker's desk. She said it was a gift from some restaurant.

That same day, a post showed up on Bonnie's feed: her and Reuben eating at that very restaurant.

Reuben explained that a thesis from a student they co-advised had won an award, and they'd gone to celebrate.

I pushed down that vague ache I couldn't name and told myself that at least he'd thought of me.

Then came the second, the third, the fourth.

Counting today's, that made eight.

Yesterday, after Reuben slammed the door and left, Bonnie posted to her feed.

And Reuben was in every post.

I lay curled in the empty house, crying until my whole body shook.

The two of them, singing, shopping, enjoying every minute of it.

I swiped through them one by one and stopped on the candlelit dinner.

Candlelight on Reuben's profile, a different man entirely from the one who'd slammed the door.

After I'd asked for a divorce, after the screaming fight.

He acted as if none of it had happened.

Cutting Bonnie's steak as if nothing was wrong, holding up his phone to take her picture.

Smiling in every shot. Nothing like the man at home.

Talking about Neruda's poems with her in the bookstore on the second floor.

Picking out lipstick shades for her on the third.

Belting out songs together in the karaoke room on the fourth.

Worn out from it all, a candlelit dinner on the fifth.

And on the way home, grabbing a freebie for me.

It was absurd.

For the first time, I felt cheap.

I threw off the blanket, ran barefoot to the drawer, and yanked it open.

I dumped all eight necklaces into the trash.

In the bottom drawer of the nightstand lay a set of divorce papers.

For years I'd picked them up and set them down again and again.

This time I turned without hesitation to the last page and signed my name.

After that, I started packing.

It was already night by the time Reuben got home.

He walked in and dropped onto the couch without so much as glancing back at me.

Not until I rolled my suitcase past him.

Only then did he frown and ask, irritated,

"It's this late. Where do you think you're going?"

I slapped the divorce papers down on the table and told him to sign.

He flipped through a few pages without much interest, then looked up.

"Could you at least make it more convincing? If you really wanted a divorce, would you ever give up this place?"

I froze.

I had poured so much of myself into this home.

The location, the floor, all of it chosen with care.

When we renovated, I went to every building-supply store in the city.

The color of the couch, the style of the curtains, I compared more than thirty places before deciding.

Even the spice rack in the kitchen, I picked each one out by hand, dragging Reuben along.

The day we moved in, we lay in bed and neither of us could sleep.

I held him from behind, my voice catching, and said,

"We have a home now."

But then Bonnie came by once, and a few throw pillows she liked appeared on the couch.

Then the curtains were swapped for that off-white lace cutout I never liked.

On the bathroom counter, her skincare slowly outnumbered mine.

Now even the slippers had little antlers on them.

I don't know when it happened, but this home was full of her everywhere I looked.

I looked for a long moment, then said quietly,

"It's tainted. I don't want it. Keep it, you and Bonnie."

The second I said Bonnie's name.

His face darkened, and his voice went cold.

"Marie, there's a limit to how much trouble you get to make."

"I've told you a thousand times. Bonnie and I are just friends. There is nothing between us, nothing at all."

"Keep your ugly little theories to yourself. She's done nothing wrong."

The same words, said a thousand times.

He was innocent.

Bonnie was innocent.

The only filthy mind here was mine.

I had no patience left for any of it.

"Sign."

We stood there facing each other for a long time.

He signed with a cold face, threw the pen down on the table, and looked up at me.

"Fine. It's signed."

"Let's see how long you last. Don't come crawling back to me."

My answer was the door slamming hard behind me.

Once I was out of the complex, I flagged down a car and gave the name of a hotel.

On my phone, I started looking into tour groups to Iceland.

I had waited seven years for Reuben. That was enough.

Some roads you have to walk on your own.

That night, I slept more soundly than I had in a long time.

The next morning, I went down for breakfast.

I'd just picked up a plate when someone behind me called out,

"Marie?"

It was Bonnie.

My stomach dropped, and sure enough, when I turned, Reuben was standing in the doorway.

Bonnie glanced at me and said to him,

"Reuben, you brought your wife along to a work conference? No wonder you were murmuring sweet nothings in your sleep last night."

Reuben's expression turned awkward.

"She came on her own."

Bonnie smiled at me, sweet as anything.

"So Marie came to keep tabs on you?"

She didn't wait for me to answer. She turned back to him.

"Then again, can't blame her. A man built like you honestly, what woman could ever relax?"

She made it sound offhand, but every word was meant to remind me.

That she and Reuben shared an ease, a private joke, that I would never be part of.

I stood there and said nothing.

Reuben swept his eyes over me, a cold smile curling at his mouth.

"Marie, couldn't even hold out a single day before running here to beg? Hm?"

He thought I'd been following him.

I gave a small smile.

"We're already divorced. Do whatever you want, lock yourselves together forever, just stop ruining other people's lives."

The color drained from Bonnie's face.

Reuben frowned.

"Marie, can you stop making a scene? Bonnie and I have a conference here, we came to work. What are you so jealous about?"

"Apologize!"

I didn't want anything more to do with either of them. I turned and walked away.

I had just gotten back to my room when Reuben followed me in. He pulled two tickets to Iceland out of his pocket.

"Go apologize to Bonnie right now, and I'll take you to Iceland immediately."

I looked at those two tickets, and the irony of it hit me.

Seven years I'd waited for this, and he was finally willing to give it to me. Still, it was for Bonnie's sake.

"You're out of your mind."

"Marie!"

He lowered his voice, his face dark.

"I've already swallowed my pride here. What more do you want?"

"I don't want anything from you."

The next day, I boarded the plane to Iceland alone.

It was only after I landed that I learned Reuben had brought Bonnie too.

As if to spite me, he'd deliberately booked the same tour group.

The whole way, he kept his arm around Bonnie's shoulders, laughing with her, but his eyes went past her and stayed fixed on me.

When I gave him nothing back, his face darkened by degrees.

That evening we went to see the Northern Lights.

By the time we reached the viewing point on the ice field, the sky had already begun to glow green.

Then it grew brighter and brighter, the whole sky flowing, so quiet it made you want to cry.

It really was beautiful.

So beautiful that I felt these seven years hadn't been wasted after all.

When we first got together, Reuben had said he wanted to propose to me under the Northern Lights.

One thing after another always got in the way, and we never made it.

I turned around.

Not far off, Bonnie rose onto her toes and kissed Reuben.

I stood in the snow, my breath fogging white and blurring my sight.

Behind me, people were cheering, hugging.

My feet were nailed to the snow. I couldn't move.

Reuben must have sensed something, because he looked over at me.

His expression froze. He shoved Bonnie away and ran toward me.

"Marie! Let me explain"

Right then, a dull crack came from the ice beneath my feet.

The whole ice field began to shake.

The guide was screaming for everyone to get back.

I wanted to run, but my boots were stuck in the ice and wouldn't come loose.

Reuben was the closest to me. On instinct, he reached out his hand.

"Reuben!"

Bonnie's voice came from the other side.

"Save me it's cracking open over here!"

Reuben's hand froze in midair.

He looked at me, then at Bonnie.

"Marie, wait for me a second."

His voice was shaking.

"Bonnie's side is more dangerous. Let me pull her up first, I'll come right back for you."

He turned and ran toward Bonnie.

I stood where I was and watched him run farther and farther away.

The crack beneath my feet split wide open.

I didn't even have time to scream before the icy water surged in from every direction.