Monday came by with the perpetual blues of the weekend that had disappeared before she could register the start or the finish of it. Dev had called and had given aplenty an excuse that he could conjure with a click of his fingers. None convinced her, but there were no longer words in her reach to contest them either. In general she'd gained a listlessness over everything from food to groceries and Meera took that as her cue to keep her occupied and charted a cleaning spree for the entire house. As Sunday night drew to a close, she'd little energy to think of dinner, much less go over the long list of emails that needed her attention.
After two days of neglect, her emails were the first thing she attended to the next morning before she could leave to office. When she got to her personal emails, there was one from Dev. Though there was a feigned indifference at first - which made her want to delay getting to it, seeing that it was dated as of the evening he was expected in New York and she initially assumed it to be his penned down excuses - her husband managed to grab the better of her curiosity in no time given that he rarely wrote to her.
The email opened with an endearment which was out of habit for her husband's prose and that came as a surprise to her, for she had only read, over the years, his terse, unadorned writings.
Dear Geet,
This has been long due. One that has been put-off owing to anguishing concerns with your future in mind. And perhaps you had always sensed what I'm about to affirm from the long extended silences that we have shared once too often.
Since there is no right way or right place or right words for delivering such news, I'm taking email as the means to do so.
She held her head with both her hands and took a breath before she continued. There was no telling what she expected from the eerie undertones of his email.
We have tried our best to co-exist in this relationship and have failed numerous times.
Geet, its time to let go...
We could smother ourselves blindly into each others lives for a few more years and share one roof for that time, but we won't arrive at the place that you seek. For my heart is not here and that is as much I will share at this moment.
She read on without blinking, her hands clammy as she sat in the corner of her bed, clutching the laptop for fear of having that taken away from her too before she could finish his farewell note.
My job and you have kept me tied to Toronto for a while, but I wish to travel and now that you are in New York, I believe this is the time to reflect on our marital situation, before we move onto permanent arrangements at our relationship front.
You have a job to support yourself and with time you will find good friends in that new place. You will do good and I'm sure that you will overthrow the miserly expectations I have for you - both professionally and personally.
I will forever remain in awe of the patience you had harbored for things between us to see new light.
I agree, that for no fault of yours I drew you into a marriage that never could have been realized beyond its legal existence on paper and leave you with a mark of rejection. But it isn't so. I wish, Geet, that you would see it as anything but a rejection. You are being asked to pay the price for the follies of a man without a will; who did not stand up for his dreams. And its not fair...Not fair that I ask you of this, but it has to be done; for your own good; for the love that isn't lost between us; for all that has been denied to you, we have to let go of this without chasing a non-existent future - a mirage.
I'm leaving to Mexico on Tuesday for a few weeks and will reach out to you once I'm back in Toronto to know your decision.
I understand there is little choice in the matter. But, I'm sorry, Geet, and I won't beg for your acceptance of the years that is lost to you. Because only some deeds in life qualify to be forgiven and this certainly isn't one.
Take care,
Dev
PS As delicate a matter as this is, to be discussed over email, I still want to give you peace of mind in regards to questions concerning my promiscuity that might plague you later. I can assure you that the implications of my wanton ways, from the time prior to our marriage, will never affect you and I have ascertained the same through blood tests over the years. I want you to know that I have never been unfaithful to you since our wedding, although the same cannot be said of my soul. And for this, I'm making the only amends possible at this time.
There was one more unread email from him - which she'd overseen while opening his first email - timed right after their phone call on Saturday night.
Damn! Geet...Seems like you still haven't read my earlier email. I pray you find it when you are at home. Your continued wifely inquiries - fussing over my food and well-being without cognizance of the matter at hand - are crushing my insides. I wish you weren't this nice.
If only we could be friends, but I will not dare ask anything that will trouble you in the least or keep you from moving ahead in life.
Please take care,
Dev
Friends? Her back slid against the wall and her head sunk into the pillow.
Somewhere between his mention of permanent arrangements and her patience that commanded his awe, the tears had begun, but she didn't feel them over her cheeks as they persisted and wet her prim office attire.
It was a knot of tightening numbness that took over her body and she balled herself in bed, drawing her knees as close to her chest as possible.
Friends? His cursory asking was one that remained with her all along as the silent tears spilled when she closed her eyes.
"Let's leave Geet," she heard Meera call out from the living room, but she'd lost her voice to muster a response.
A shiver covered her from head to toe and that was perhaps the breaking of the last synapse of her sane head. Her eyes stared into the vast white of the popcorn ceiling of her room. How small she was, when everything around her loomed over the periphery of her vision taking on a frightening size and form. The tears in her eyes banked there, filling up to the brim, collecting as a pool of her woes, dancing there while she mindlessly rocked her body; her lips whimpering without a word or a sound.
All that she'd thought to be a lie during those five years had been made true with his one note; an over-simplification of practically everything that she'd endured and she is to endure in the coming days. But, that was a reckoning in access to those of a sound mind and body and she was eons away from it.
Close your eyes! she screamed without letting a sound escape her throat, Close your eyes! and she rocked on...
"Everything will be fine when you wake up," and she chanted again, "Close your eyes!" Her each whisper lessening in fervor than the one preceding it.
All until an unfeeling descended into her limbs just as her swaying faded and her voice quietened to a mewl, her mind a black abyss that wouldn't let her fall to the ground or be pulled to the ascending light and she remained stagnant, listening to the murmurs of the necrosis that spread slow to the only parts that were alive in her.
"Close your eyes!"
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