Happy Monday!

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

By: Leslie Li Hikida

            Sandy sat on the couch diligently trying to split up the DVD collection she and Paul had acquired over the last fourteen years of their relationship.  There are so many she has to strain to remember whether it was she wanted to have “Memento” and then laughed at the irony of that thought.

            The back door suddenly opened and Paul came in.  He dropped his keys on the kitchen counter, loudly disrupting the task she was trying to accomplish.

            Sandy looked up and asked, “Do you want ‘Memento’ as you know...a memento?”

            “Are you really doing this right now?” he asked, visibly uneasy about the situation.

            “Yeah, I am actually.  My mom is coming to help me move tomorrow and I want her to see that we’re at least making some progress.”

            Paul nodded sullenly and paced back and forth for a minute.  Suddenly he turned to her and said, “But do have to do that right...now?  I mean, she’s coming tomorrow and it’s only 3:30 in the afternoon.  Can’t we talk about splitting up stuff...later?”

            Sandy’s eyes started to well up with tears.  “No, we can’t wait any more,” she said quietly.  “I know it hurts you, but we have to.”

            Paul turned toward the wall silently thinking, plotting, and planning.  Sandy went back to sorting the DVD’s in two piles.

            She held up “The Notebook” and said, “This one, I know, is mine.”

            At that, Paul pounded the wall in frustration.  “Damn it, I don’t want to do this, Sandy,” he said.

            She put “The Notebook” on top of her pile and stood up.  “Well, what do you want to do then?” she asked.

            As she comes closer to him their eyes meet and the hurt is apparent between the two of them.  A tear has already started to fall from her eye.

            “Hey,” he said softly, always hating to see her cry, “do you think that maybe instead of all this good-bye stuff, maybe we could maybe say hello...again?”

            Between sobs, all Sandy could say was, “What?”

            He placed a hand on each of her shoulders.  “You know say hello for the first time again...like the first day we met.”

            “You’re crazy.”

            He took her by the hand and led her to the kitchen.  He sat her down at the kitchen table and grabbed a notepad by the telephone.  As he handed her the notebook he pulled a pen from the mug full of pens, then handed her that too.

            “You were at Epic Café on Coldwater,” he said.  “You were sitting outside on the patio writing furiously.”  She looked at him completely confused until he gestured for her to start writing.  “You were writing furiously,” he repeated, but she sat stiff as a board.  “Come on, Sandy, please.”

            As much he couldn’t stand to see her cry, Sandy could not stand to see Paul beg and so she snapped to attention and started to write on the yellow legal notepad in front of her.  He looked over her shoulder to see she’d written, “This is stupid.”

            “Then what?” she asked.

            Paul thought for a moment and then snapping his fingers, he said, “Then I came up and I was---.”  He dumped the mug full of pens on the counter.  “I was holding a hot cup of coffee.  I remember the steam because it was an unseasonably cold day in April.  Do you remember the steam, Sandy?”  Without realizing it, Sandy started to nod that she remembered.  “Good,” he said.  “And then I said---.”

            “’Hello!’” Sandy chimed in.  “The patio was packed with people and you asked me, ‘Is anyone sitting here?’”

            “And what did you say?”

            “I said, ‘No, I’m alone---.’”

            “Thank God!  And then I said---.’”

            “’Aren’t we all?’” Sandy recalled, finishing Paul’s sentence for him.  They were both getting excited.  “What happened next?”

            Paul took the seat across from her at the table.  “Then I sat with you,” he said.  “I asked you what you were writing and you said---.”

            “’The greatest story never told.’”  Sandy laughed.  “Then what?”

            Paul tilted his head back pretending to drink the rest of his invisible coffee before he slammed it down on the table.  Without saying a word he took her by the hand and led her back into the living room.  He pushed the DVD’s she had separated off the couch and sat her down.

            “Then I took you to a movie,” Paul said, taking a seat next to her. 

            “Yeah, that horrible Evil Dead movie.”

            “Right and I covered your eyes to protect you from the scenes I thought could give you nightmares.”

            “But I got them anyway,” Sandy replied.

            “Hey, at least I tried.”

            She decided to cut him some slack.  “Okay, and then what?”

            “Don’t you remember?” he asked, arching his eyebrows.

            It is clear she does not remember and so he again took her hand and led her to the bedroom.  She lightly pushed her so that she lay on her back, her legs dangling off the edge.  He lay beside her and said, “Then I charmed the pants off of you.”  He tugs at the belt loops on her jeans.  “Quite literally, I’m afraid.”

            Sandy nodded as all the memories of that night and the last fourteen years come back into her mind.  “Then what?” she asked already knowing all that came after.

            “Then we fell in love and it was easy, Sandy.  It was too easy.”  He wiped a tear from her face.  “And then we moved in together and we lived here in this house for fourteen years through earthquakes, through nightly helicopter traffic, through company downsizing, through two pets and through...”

            “Three miscarriages,” she said, finishing the sentence she knew he wasn’t able to.

            He shut his eyes tightly, letting his tears fall freely while nodding, “Yes.”

            Sandy got up off the bed and left him lying there. 

“I can’t do this anymore, Paul,” she said.

She went back to the living room.  She knelt before the couch and started to split up their DVD’s again.