***
We were that couple. Just like in the movies. Sitting with our backs to each other on either side of the bed, feet on the floor, staring at opposite walls, in silence. I was looking at the picture on the wall, remembering how Alice and I had seen it at one of the shops in town. It was a night scene, painted from the inside of a window. The blinds of the window were painted in black, and through those slits, there was a tall fence, on top of which a black cat sat, and in the sky, there was a plane flying. The colors were black and indigo, shadow and deeper shadow, and the sole sources of light were the yellow of the cat’s eyes, the white of the plane’s lights, and the glowing ember of the cigarette being held by the shadowed hand inside the window.
“Something I saw once. Back home.” The Earthean man who owned the art store had told us, and I could have sworn that he spoke sadly, though Alice told me I was just being dramatic.
“He was being vague,” She had said with a roll of her eyes, “Mysterious. An enigma. He’s an arteest! This is what they do.”
Now, a lot of things about that seemingly insignificant day left me feeling sad: First and foremost, the picture, because it churned up this nostalgia for the Old World in me that I sometimes felt randomly and always unwelcomely. Nostalgia means something like “the pain of something lost,” or at least that’s what my favorite character on this old TV show said in this awesome episode. I had tried to tell Alice about that episode a million times in the years leading up to this art boutique incident but each time she told me she “didn’t get it.”
Shit, I’ll explain it right now. On this show, the guy spends the whole season messing around on his wife, and neglecting his family, because he’s a working man in the 50’s, and he’s making the big bucks. So in the last episode of the season, he makes his bid for an advertising job by making this epically sad and beautiful speech about how nostalgia means the pain of something lost, or something like that, and how the slideshow device he is selling isn’t a wheel, it’s a carousel. It takes us around and around and then back home again “to the place where we know we are loved.”
Mad Men. That was the name of the show. We watched it in my History of Television class. Yes. That was an Elective at my school. We reflected back on a time in pop culture history that had long since passed. It had been called “the Golden Age of Television” because apparently, during that time, TV was better than the movies.
So I told Alice all about this moment in this show, and granted, I took forever to tell her the whole thing, because I basically had to recap the entire first season, and talk about the intricacies of Don Draper’s character. I could see her growing bored, so I tried to think of something relating to war and violence that might pull her interests back in. As I was talking to her, she was engrossed in a map of Pangaea, fastening it to a desk she had bought at the antique store simply because the desk was big enough for her to spread out the entire map on its surface and the wood was flimsy enough that she could tack the map down. She was in the process of doing that, and as I talked, she responded with the “Right’s” and “Yeah’s,” and “Uh-huh’s,” and yet I still didn’t think she was listening. So when I finally got to the end of telling her about this epic episode (which my teacher told us had solidified the show’s first Emmy win, mind you), she looks up at me, and I thought, “She hasn’t been listening this whole time.” Except it was worse. She had been listening, and instead of being moved by the story, and by what had started the story (I had been telling her about how I had been plagued with nostalgia in the recent days), she burst out laughing.
“Oh, Quinn…” She had said finally, when her laughter died down, “I’m sorry, baby, I know it’s hard, when you’re thinking about Earth, and being sad and reflective, but God, you’re such a navel-gazer. I’m actually impressed, though. All of these thoughts came from just seeing that picture in Poem Without Words?”
That was the name of the art shop.
I had gotten mildly irritated that she hadn’t been moved by my story and that she seemed to be scoffing at how sad and nostalgic I felt. I had started to fight with her, but as usual, she interrupted me curtly and said, “I’m a little busy right now,” and I had stormed off, irritated.
But later, she had bought the picture and even hung it up in our room on my side of the bed. I had seen a flash of her old self that day when she had run to get me at the gym, taken my hand, and dragged me back to the house, making no mention of our slight argument the night before.
“Come on, come on, come on!” She practically sang as she pulled me up the stairs, and like a typical guy, I thought she was in the mood for one of our totally random midday flings, but when I saw the picture hanging there, I realized that not only was this her way of apologizing, but that she had been listening to me the night before, and she sympathized. Granted, a random midday fling would have been nice, too, but the picture was amazing. She was so excited to show me, beaming with her usual impossible brilliance, and when I said, “Awww, baby, you shouldn’t have!” she giggled hysterically, threw herself into my arms, and kissed me hard.
“I was a bitch last night, and I’m sorry. I get weird when I see how big this stupid planet is.”
I told her it was alright, and we kissed again, and truly, I hadn’t felt so happy in a long time. It was rare for her to show that old, bright, bubbly side of herself to me. It was rare that I saw the girl I had fallen in love with. Don’t get me wrong, I loved her when she was a bright and bubbly teenager, when she was a battle-hardened, distant warrior woman, and everywhere in between, but when I saw flashes of who she had been all those years ago, it gave me hope that she could be that person again, and from there, I had hope that I could be the person I had been back then.
So as I sat with my back to her, staring at the picture, contemplating how we had literally just told each other that we wanted to get divorced, I could not help but think of how my two Alice’s had spawned two Quinn’s. When she was bright and bubbly, I was the old, sarcastic, funny, carefree, romantic Quinn. When she was battle-hardened, bitter, and distant, I was more clingy and emotional, which I knew made her feel smothered. But I couldn’t help it, and I couldn’t blame that change on anything. Most people could blame their pasts on some wound from an old relationship. But my parents had never spurned me, which then made me feel a need to try harder for their love and affection, which then would make me try harder for Alice’s love and affection, and Alice was the only serious girlfriend I had ever had, so I wasn’t jaded by an ex. I didn’t want to blame her completely for how when she pushed me away or paid no attention to me, I automatically started needing her to reiterate her love for me or whatnot. But I did a little bit.
All of this makes me sound very insecure, but I was. I always had been, but I hadn’t known it.
“I didn’t mean what I said.” She told me very quietly, “About the divorce, I mean. But I’ve been thinking a lot about taking some time apart, and I think it might be the best thing for us, Quinn.”
“No.” I said, “We promised we would never do that. Remember? Back home…”
“This is our home.” She interrupted me, “How many times do I have to tell you? This is home now.”
“Fine.” I snapped, but I stopped, took a breath, and started again, more calmly. “Alright. Back on Earth, do you remember when Lane finally decided to date a guy instead of just banging him, and they were together…”
“For two months, and then went on a break, and we said we’d never do that, because we were children who thought everything would be rainbows and sunshine and fucking fields of daisies in both our relationship and the rest of the world, but Lane was a skank, as you’ve said yourself, so why the hell would we use any facet of her two-month relationship as some sort of indicator of how we should run ours, and also, the world ended and things inevitably got harder between you and me. So what we swore when we were kids on Earth is irrelevant, Quinn.”
“How we should ‘run’ our relationship. Like it??
?s fucking boot camp, Allie. Like you’re standing in front of me, barking orders. Like I’m some new recruit.”
“You hate that I am a Commander and you’re just a Sergeant. You hate it, Quinn. You have always hated it. You want to talk about the past?” She turned to me, and her voice seemed to be laced with even more poison, “Remember when we first came here, and we got separated in the woods after the attack on the campsite? You found me ripping apart that guy who had been tracking me, and you flipped out.”
“I was young and stupid. I was overreacting because I was freaked out about turning over into what the natives were, and…”
“I’m sure that was part of it, but the bigger reason was that you knew you wouldn’t be able to do the same thing. Sure, you’ve killed people since, but in that moment, you realized that I was already where I needed to be in order to be the most effective survivor, and you weren’t. Plus, I didn’t need you to protect me. You are a coward. Through and through, you’re a coward, and I’m…”
“You’re a raging, fucking psychopath, Alice!” I had stood up and turned to her, and now, I was yelling, “You are so pissed about Lara and Brynna and Violet and Penny and James that you don’t even see it! You don’t see what you needing revenge for what happened to them has done to you! You are not who I married! You are not who I met all those years ago! I don’t even recognize you anymore! This has nothing to do with you being higher up the chain of command than me. I don’t give a rat’s ass about that! I don’t want any parts of it anymore. I want to be done! Done with fighting, and done with watching people on both sides die! But you will never be there, Alice. You will never be done!”
“No, I won’t! You’re right. I won’t be done until every person responsible for their deaths is dead, too, or imprisoned. Not until our people don’t have to live in fear of the Old Spirits showing up here and tossing Light Bombs at them! Not until any Old Spirit who can feel alright about murdering innocent men, women, and children is destroyed! I’m sorry that you think that makes me a psychopath, but if I can tell you one thing, it’s that I’d rather be a psychopath than a coward, Quinn!”
“What do you think?” I asked her, and I sounded somewhat desperate now, “Do you think that this is going to bring them back? Do you think this is going to make your grief go away? It is never going to go away, Alice. You’re always going to hurt for them and miss them and want them here. But nothing we do is going to bring them back. Has taking any of these asshole’s lives relieved that pain, even a little bit? Don’t even lie and say ‘yes,’ because you have told me before that it doesn’t help at all.”
“If you knew the answer, why did you ask the question?” She snapped at me.
“So you can see that it is time to stop. Brynna is dead. James is dead. Violet and Penny are dead. Lara is…”
I had never been slapped before a day in my life. In some ways, it hurts worse than a punch, and I had taken many of those in my fights against Old Spirit rebels and in my training to take on Old Spirit rebels. Maybe it hurts worse than a punch because with a punch, I could punch back, but with a slap from my girlfriend, I was powerless.
“Don’t you dare say that Lara is dead!” She hissed, her voice and body shaking violently, her hands clenched into fists, “Don’t you dare, Quinn!”
I spat a clot of blood onto the floor.
“Well, what would you prefer, Alice? That she’s chained up in Tyre’s basement, getting fucked by him and lashings from him five or six times a day?! That she’s going through what she went through before John got her out of there?!”
“Of course I wouldn’t prefer that, but I’m not going to pull the wool over my eyes and tell myself, ‘She’s dead, so she’s not suffering’ when she might be out there, alive, suffering exactly what you just described, waiting for us to find her! You’ll forgive me for not wanting to leave her behind the way we left James and Brynna behind. You’ll forgive me for not wanting to think she’s dead like Violet and Nick! See, once again, I’m not a coward, but you are.” She had closed the space between us. She was spitting her words at me right in my face now, slowly, almost calmly, but with so much venom. If looks could kill? No, if words could kill, I’d have been long gone.
“I can torture myself every day thinking of all that he’s doing to her, and it drives me to get out there, to hunt all of them down, to find her and bring her home again. She gave her life for us, Quinn! She didn’t die, but she walked right back into imprisonment, knowing what he would do to her after not having her for almost seven years. She did that so we wouldn’t be taken, and you’re going to give up on her just like that? Because you’re tired?! Because you want this to be over?! Because it’s easy to forget the scars all over her body when you haven’t seen them for almost seventeen years?!”
“It is not like that.” I tried to reason with her.
“It is like that. I am never going to stop. I told you that, and I thought you understood. All those years ago, when we saw that they were dead. I told you I would never stop, and I won’t. So here’s what we’re going to do. Here’s me ‘running’ the relationship like the Commander I am: I am shipping out tomorrow, and you can stay here and have your distance from the war, and I can have my distance from you. At this point, I think you also need distance from me. I ask that you wait until I get back if you truly do want a divorce, and we can discuss that option more before we go through with it. But if you can’t wait, then go for it, Quinn. I know you well enough to know that there is nothing I can say to stop you.”
There was plenty she could have said to stop me. A simple “I still love you” would have stopped me. A simple “let’s see somebody, try to talk this out” would have stopped me. But she didn’t say any of those things. She just used that old line, that old line that was a fucking cop-out. “I know you well enough to know I can’t stop you.” Really, she was just too lazy or she cared too little to even try.
I wanted to come up with some harsh, icy parting words. I wanted to reclaim my masculinity by barking some orders back at her, but I couldn’t. The words that came out of my mouth were so pathetic, and as I was saying them, I felt the sickening revulsion in my gut that was aimed not at her but squarely at me.
“Alice, I love you.” I said, “I love you just as much as I did all those years ago, when we were kids. I want this to work. Please, just tell me we’re hitting a rough patch, but we’ll be able to make this work.”
Her eyes softened, and I thought (and hoped) that maybe she would cry like she used to, when we were young and had stupid squabbles over what to have for dinner or who would go into the Square in Shadow Village and do the grocery shopping. When she would tell me, “I’m just being an idiot, Quinn. I’m just emotional,” and I would hold her and kiss her and tell her I was sorry, too, and that we were both just worked up but we would be better the next day.
God, it’s sad to say, but we were better at handling our conflicts when we were stupid kids.
“I love you, Quinn.” She said emphatically as she squeezed my hands, “But your expectations of me have gotten to be a little too much. I’m sorry, but they have. My sole priority right now is fighting and winning this war. You think that’s this dishonorable mission, but it’s not. It’s the only mission that matters.”
“It matters more than our marriage?”
“See.” She said, “You even asking me that question proves you just don’t get it.”
She grabbed a bag I presumed she had packed while I was storming back to the house but for all I knew had been packed for weeks.
“I’m going to stay at Eli’s or John’s. I’ll see you when I get back. We’ll figure this out more resolutely then. Okay?”
She didn’t wait for me to say anything back. She just left.