The One-Eyed Man by Ron Currie

Author:Ron Currie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-12-13T15:04:48+00:00

15

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WANTING AND WANTING

Even with an unambiguously terminal diagnosis there were still moments of hope, cruel interludes when images of Sarah’s insides, murky and meaningless to the layman’s eye, indicated to the experts that the masses in her chest and femur were shrinking. Lesions reduced to the size of chickpeas, and looking every bit as benign. The doctors did their best to toss cold water on our hope, reminded us that while these developments were better than the alternative, they did not mean Sarah’s long-term prognosis had changed at all. Despite their warnings, though, we were granted what felt like a two-month stay of execution, gratitude like a cramp in my heart, an optimism so sudden and buoyant it forever changed the definition of the word for me.

It was toward the end of this time that Sarah asked if I wanted a divorce.

“Do you?” I said, after staring at her in silence for several moments.

“‘Want’ isn’t exactly the word to describe what I’m feeling,” she said.

“Well it’s your word, so.”

“Come on, K. Don’t be a jerk.”

I took a breath. “Okay,” I said. “Talk to me.”

It was fall, the birches and elms at the height of their luminous multihued announcement of winter’s approach, and because Sarah felt better than she had in a long while we’d decided to have brunch at a place up the block, across the street from the coffee shop where months later I would be shot in the trapezius. The restaurant had been a staple of our precancer marriage: close by, reliably good food, friendly servers. We’d eaten there so often the guys in the kitchen knew our names. Then Sarah took sick, and we hadn’t been in since. But here we were again, against all odds, sitting on the sidewalk patio under a strong autumn sun, eating cornflake-crusted French toast and sipping coffee, and in the midst of all this splendor Sarah apparently, inexplicably, wanted a divorce.

“I don’t want a divorce,” she reiterated, pushing a sausage link around with her fork, eyes trained on the plate. “I just think it’s a possibility we should talk about. Now that we’ve got this little window where we’re not totally under duress.”

“Usually when someone brings up divorce, that means they want a divorce.”

“Fine. Have it your way,” she said.

“I don’t necessarily think we should be discussing this on the first day we’ve been in public for months.”

“We’ve been in public plenty, K.,” Sarah said.

“If you call the oncology ward public,” I said.

Sarah put the fork down and sat back with her arms folded across her chest. “Do you resent me for that?” she asked. There was no heat in her words, just naked inquiry. “For all the time we’ve spent in the hospital? For being so sick?”

“Of course not,” I said. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Because it’s alright if you do, K.,” she said. “That would make perfect sense.”

If in this conversation I had been the later version of myself, the one so dedicated to facts that he said

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