Closure
By Liam RJ Tucker
This is a story about an off-key, amicable break-up. I think I wrote this in 2007.
Closure
‘I hated the names you called me.’
He forked a potato chunk and looked around the busy restaurant.
‘The names?’ she asked.
She assumed he meant the insults they traded during marathon arguments. She didn’t feel any concern. She wasn’t defensive. But she wanted to know what he meant.
‘Yeah, the names. You know. Puppy. Muffles. Poppet. All those stupid pet names you called me that amused you. I only put up with all that because you seemed to find it funny and I didn’t want to lose my temper over something so stupid.’
‘I never realised. I thought you liked it.’
‘Being infantilised? No, I didn’t like that very much at all.’
He sniffed at and then pronged a prawn.
‘I hated it’ he said.
It was a relief to talk about it in the past tense.
‘I was never too keen on being called babe’ she replied, wincing as she said it. ‘I just didn’t have the heart to tell you.’
They frowned at each other but as they held the gaze, the shared grimace turned into a smile and then into laughter. Breaking up was more of a relief than either of them had imagined it might be.
‘God we’re stupid’ he said.
‘How’s your starter?’ she asked.
‘It arrived lukewarm’ he replied.
‘Let’s get it sent back’ she said, becoming instantly more alert, trying to gain the waiter’s attention.
‘I didn’t say it was too lukewarm. I don’t want it sent back. Please stop making decisions on my behalf.’
They broke eye-contact and looked at their plates. Then they continued to eat.
They’d agreed to make this last visit to what was once their favourite restaurant. Somehow it seemed right that the food wasn’t up to scratch - indicative of a gradual decline and loss of standards. Something that was once so delicious and rewarding, losing its heat and becoming mediocre. He suggested that they leave the meal after the starter and instead finish the wine. She agreed.
‘So. Tell me what you hate about me…’
She briefly looked nervous but his congenial expression convinced her it was safe to air grievances.
‘So many things, if I’m honest.’
‘Start at the beginning and work through them. Better to get it out in the open. Remember we don’t owe each other anything any more. I’ll do the same when you’re finished... if you want me to.’
‘So you’ve got all night then’ she joked.
He smiled and looked bashfully away.
‘The main problem for me was that you just wouldn’t speak. Sometimes you wouldn’t speak for weeks on end. You just became detached. And that left it to me to deal with the bills and the cleaning. You got confused about money and you’d never feed the cat.’
‘I was depressed. I still am. You depressed me. You made me completely miserable.’
‘You depressed me too though. You always turned it on yourself. You were the one who was depressed. I was never allowed to talk about how low I became just from living with you.’
He exhaled slowly.
‘Well, that’s why we’re talking now I suppose. Carry on, I can take it. I’ll try not to be so defensive.’
‘There was that constant detachment. Obliviousness. But then, perversely there were times when you were so happy. Manic, almost. I couldn’t keep up with the moods. One minute sulking, then the next the life and soul. The first or last to leave the party - never in-between.’
‘You weren’t exactly tee-total yourself, babe.’
He shrank back as soon as he said it. She threw him a sharp look at the b-word, but then instantly withdrew it when she realised he had noticed. Traces of laughter as he noticed his mistake. He grew bold after this acceptance.
‘In fact, you were piss-drunk far more often than me. And you flirted outrageously, right in front of me. I couldn’t work out if you were just completely naive or whether you knew what you were doing. I was caught between wanting to keep you safe and wanting to throttle you for belittling me.’
‘Ah yes. I wondered when we’d get to your jealousy.’
Hearing that word again - possibly for the last time - he grinned and looked around the dining room, shaking his head. It would be such a relief to get away from that accusation. The head-shake turned into a slow accepting nod. He was a jealous man to some extent. It was impossible to deny.
‘Everything out of proportion.’
She didn’t need to say any more.
‘So - we’re still fine with ending it?’
He mimicked signing a bill, catching the waiter’s attention. She resisted pointing out how old-fashioned that was.
‘I’m certain. We have to end it.’ She smiled as she looked around the restaurant. ‘I suppose this will be our last moment together.’
He nodded.
‘Can you believe it? 15 years... and now this is it.’
‘I believe it. And I can embrace the ending. I’m not frightened. Are you frightened?’
‘No. No, not at all.’
‘Fancy a final smoke, out on the roof garden?’
He pulled his cigarettes from his pocket.
‘Sure.’
Out on the terrace, they stood by a potted shrub, overlooking the street below. He offered her a light and they stood in silence, delicately dragging on their cigarettes.
‘Shall we go, after we finish these?’
She watched the end of her cigarette burning down, faster than usual, the sky sucking the smoke from it.
‘Yes.’
He dropped his onto the floor and stamped on it. Extinguishing it in a mess of tobacco, filter and ash. She did the same.
He put his arm around her and they looked down onto the street below, watching the chain of headlights, minuscule below them, fluttering along the road in a parade, either side of painted white lines. That distant cacophony of car horns and revving engines forming a soft white noise as they made their minds up. The traffic lights were red, all the way down below them. He took her hand in his and gripped it tight.
‘When that light turns green, that will be it. We’ll finish it. For good.’
She nodded, unable to look him in the eye and, in a second, the light flicked from red to amber. Then to green, their hearts skipping in unison as they witnessed the change.
‘Go.’
In perfect synchronicity, they stepped off the edge of the building, one foot after the other, holding hands for as long as they could until wind resistance and gravity tore their clasped fists apart.
A moment later they landed twenty-two feet away from one another, crunched into abnormal, oblique positions by the hard embrace of the waiting pavement. Their pulped bodies bathed in the warm, early-evening glow of the streetlights. Their final date was at an end.