Leaving Z

Time slows as I fumble with the door handle, clumsy. I can’t seem to feel my fingers. I see Z’s lips move in impatience, but I can’t understand him because of the roaring in my ears. I feel an invisible weight holding down my chest. My arm is numb, and I’m suddenly having trouble breathing. I manage to grip the latch in my sweaty hands and push open the car door. A tinny voice calls out a flight boarding in the distance. The ceiling is high, and I notice pigeons near the fans that move in slow motion, not creating any breeze.  I almost close the door and tell him to take me back. I’ve made a mistake.

The baby protests in my arms and I refocus. The sudden sunlight after the air-conditioned car is bothering her. I automatically shade her face with my free hand, dropping the suitcase I’m pulling out with a loud clack. My ears throb, and my chest makes similar cracking sounds, like my heart is throbbing hard trying to break free. Squeezing my ribs from the inside, somewhere between heartbreak and heartache. I gasp, and grit my teeth so tears don’t fall out. I press my palm on my chest, trying to will myself to move forward.

Z hisses and throws the car into park, his brown eyes irritated as gets out. The grey t-shirt I got him last summer flexes over his biceps as he lifts up the suitcase easily and automatically holds my arm as he guides me to the correct gate. He was the first boy to hold my hand, he had just grabbed it as we walked over to the dance floor at Sarah’s party in eighth grade. I remember being dizzy with excitement, trying not to smile to hide my braces as my friends frantically gave thumbs up signs and high fived each other in a smoky corner as I slow danced with him. He was the jock, the most popular boy in school. My heart hammers to be let out again, and I have to look away from his hold.

I catch a teenager elbow her sister as they watch us, his six foot movie-star like handsomeness still attractive. He’s leaning over me, concerned, but all I see are my eyes exaggeratedly big reflected in his aviators. He’s worried because I lost thirty pounds on my already thin five ten frame. It was like post-partum sucked everything out of me, leaving only sadness. My arm feels like a brown twig, ready to snap if I take the weight of the suitcase. My mother had packed it for me last week, her eyes more lined and her hair more grey than I remembered. She had also helped me pack up all my other things, seven years of marriage fitting into ten boxes. I had smuggled them out, one carton at a time, while she sang nursery rhymes to distract the baby.

I hold up the line to enter the terminal, pausing awkwardly adjusting the suitcase to a more comfortable spot on my hand, juggling the baby and my handbag trying to find my ticket. A suited man glares and jostles past me, and I move to the side. Z appears again, takes the baby out of my hands and reaches into the front pocket of my suitcase and pulls out the ticket. I see the crease in his eyebrows and I know he’s annoyed that I didn’t remember to take it out in the car.

He hesitates, and then surprises me by leaning forward, his lips cool against my sweaty cheek. We haven’t kissed since we had the baby ten months ago. We haven’t had sex in over a year. I close my eyes, but my traitorous body responds, and I’m back in the Maldives on our honeymoon, we’re sweating at Male airport and he’s kissing me while we wait in line at immigration. We were so young and stupid, embarrassingly oblivious to everyone around us.

“It feels different this time. It’s hard to see my little girl go” he says. He’s still holding the baby, and I feel a different kind of horror. I quickly snatch her back, the wrap slipping to the floor. Z’s forehead wrinkles in confusion, his lips in a line of familiar irritation. He bends to pick up the cloth. I grip the ticket a little tighter, cold air-conditioner wafting from the freedom of the airport beyond the doorway.

I’m at the doorway, but hesitate before I cross to the other side. Z ignores the protesting security guard and pulls me be back. The suitcase falls unnoticed to the floor. He holds us, ignoring the stares, his face crumpled. For the first time in the lifetime I’ve known him he’s crying. “Don’t go please” he’s holding me, begging in my ear. “I know I don’t have any right to ask after what I’ve done” He clutches me desperately, his voice rasping low and urgent, his neck strained. “Just one more chance. Please. I swear it will work this time”. How did he even know? We’re making the baby protest with our jostling. We pause to look at her, this perfect little being I would fight a war for. I look at him, knowing he doesn’t feel the same way. I notice the tiny wrinkles around his eyes. I want to stay, but time is passing, everything’s growing old and nothing has changed. I disentangle from his arms, step back and turn around, baby still crying.