always later

By Lilly Rose Barshy

I probably should have taken his anger as a sign. I mean, I get angry too. I once threw a bottle of wine at the wall, and avoided gathering up the pieces for half a day. Because I wanted some kind of proof of my ability to feel. In the first three weeks of knowing him he got angry three times. Once because he was tired, once because the line in the supermarket was too long, and once because his bus was stuck in traffic. I guess this was valid, who likes to be stranded in a traffic jam caused by deserted construction sites? But his anger came wrapped in intricately thought-out explanations.

Me. I get angry when someone pisses me off or when I get stressed. He gets angry because, according to him, that’s how men cope. He responded with anger to everything. He got hurt, he got angry. He was impatient, he got angry. His sadness turned into anger, his grief did as well. His love was anger and so was his hate. I told him once that I thought he was angry a lot. He disagreed. “I just am vocal about it. Everyone gets angry, I just show it.” I said I don’t get angry that often. “That’s because you are a woman. Women get sad.”

I got angry when he said that.

He often cancelled on me, when he was angry, saying that he would be no fun to be around. Always so selfless and always deciding for me. He never let it out on me, but in a way, he always made me feel it.
Telling me about it or texting with an undertone that I could hear through the screen. I wondered if he just wanted to be vulnerable or if he hoped I would feel his anger too. Maybe he thought he would feel less lonely then, if he wasn’t the only one being angry.

We sat on the balcony once, when the rooms inside were a mess. We’d tried cooking curry, pots and pans piled high in the sink, sauce spilled across the counter. Everything was dirty, left with the promise of later, always later. That’s how we worked: let’s clean up later, let’s talk about it later. The sun had already set, leaving behind an echo of warmth that reverberated in the air, just enough to hold us there a little longer.

“I don’t understand,” he said. I know you don’t, I didn’t say. But I thought it, so he read it off my face anyway. He got up and came back with two bottles of beer. One for him and one for me. Because if he has to cope with drugs, then so do I.

He sighed and leaned back in his chair, hitting his head on the brick wall. “Fuck!” he yelled. He shrugged forward, pushing my beer bottle off the little glass table. The pieces shattered on the floor, and I wondered if this was the third broken thing.

He didn’t move. He didn’t make a motion to pick them up, and maybe he needed the broken glass like I once needed it. But wine, I thought, was classier than beer. He probably read that in my face too, or something else he wanted that gave him an excuse to be annoyed with me. Because his eyes darted at me like it was my fault, which he probably convinced himself somehow that it was. I like to do that too. Blame others for my mistakes, but I usually wait until they’re gone or not looking.

He didn’t feel the need to do that.

I think what made him even angrier was that he always had to understand. He couldn’t just feel it; he had to explain it, even to himself.

I don’t mind crying on a random afternoon just because I feel like it. Some days I’m fine, and some I’m not. And sometimes I don’t have to understand why. He always had to understand. But now he didn’t. And that ate at him like he was six feet down, slowly decomposing, and slowly dragging me along with him.

I wonder if I’d already missed the moment to jump ship, or if it had been right then and there.

“Fuck!” he yelled again. “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s just glass, we can clean it up.” “No, your leg.” I looked. A lonely red line ran down my shin. A small piece of glass had ricocheted off the ground and into my skin. It didn’t hurt, and I wouldn’t have noticed that I was hurt unless he hadn’t pointed it out. I knew he didn’t meant to hurt me but he did nonetheless, and I hadn’t even noticed.

He stared at the cut. I couldn’t help but wonder–was he avoiding my eyes? “We need to clean that. Disinfect it. There might be glass in the wound.” His voice sounded clinical. I don’t know why, but I cried. Maybe I didn’t want the red line on my leg to feel so alone, or maybe I was a professional at rubbing salt in my own wound.

He looked at me, confused. “Why are you crying? Does it hurt? It’s just a small cut.“ I shook my head, unable to explain that it wasn’t about the cut at all.

Maybe it was about the mess inside, the broken bottles, the canceled plans, and all the little moments we failed to understand each other. But I couldn’t explain it to him, because I didn’t even know it myself. “I don’t understand,” he said again. “I know you don’t,” I whispered, finally saying it out loud. “And that’s the problem.”

Photo (c) Irina Starkova