glyph theory

Any news yet? No, he said. No news. It could be hours still, they said. Just wait and try to relax. Yeah, right. And he touched her face, traced her cheek slowly, softly with his thumb, using his good hand, the one that wasn’t bandaged. He noticed the first inroads of lines around her eyes. He saw the sadness permanently etched there — and everywhere in her face, every centimeter of skin. He’d seen it before, but it had never seemed so profound and real, this sadness, and he knew that he was responsible for it in ways he couldn’t even begin to fathom, because she hadn’t always been this way; that his desperation had somehow become her desperation, and he wanted to rub it away like smudged lipstick, make it disappear so she would no longer be sad, no longer be who she had become. When had the sadness begun? Or had it always been there, waiting, dormant like some disease? Sadness as a disease? Sure, we’ve all got it. People are sad, no matter what they tell you. We’re all haunted by who we are and who we aren’t, by how nothing ever satisfies the way we think it will. And the older you get, the sadder. Made sense. And they were getting older. They had aged each other, he realized. It was true. Funny because they’d been thinking of possibly having another child, because it might be the salve they needed, the missing piece that could perhaps fill the ache that had afflicted them both. Because things weren’t right, hadn’t been since — well, who knows? They were only getting worse and worse, and after a while you reach that point: Let’s have another kid. Sometimes he thought, Yes, that would do it, but other times he thought, No, what the fuck are we thinking here? It would only make matters worse. Another kid would double everything. Karen nuzzled closer, so close he could smell her tears. The two of them wrapped themselves around each other tighter and tighter, rediscovering the fit of their bodies. What was happening? The fluorescent lights buzzed, and the dreadlocked man launched a new series of improvised karate kicks at the uncooperative vending machine. And just like that there were a couple again. A real couple. How could they ever have doubted that? How could they have let themselves get to such a sorry-ass state, so distant and unknown to each other? One day you intimately know the curve of your wife’s back, and the next you don’t. He stumbled through his snowy thoughts, groping: OK. Anabelle would pull through. She would pull through because of what was happening here, their unspoken reunion, and they would become a family, a real family, not the cheap imitation they’d been before. And, yes, they would have another child, and they’d fix up the house so they could finally sell it and move somewhere else and start to live the sort of life where you lie down at night and reach out to touch the other person, and they’re already reaching out to touch you. He held his wife even tighter and mapped out their newly bright future and told himself to remember this feeling and not to give it up, not to let things go back to the way they’d been (only minutes ago, true, but how much had changed since then!), not to resign themselves to the sadness of living together yet living apart. And if it is true that we’re all terminally sad, and there’s no getting around that basic fact, then at least they could be a little less sad, right? He would try. He would really try. If Anabelle came through this, then they would begin again. Whispering in her ear, he said, Everything’s going to be all right. Everything’s going to be all right. She’s going to be fine, and we’re going to be fine. Shhhh. There, now. Shhhh. It felt good to say the words, to make the sounds. This was what a husband, what a father did.