LitWit Challenge 2.9: The end of the affair (Updated daily with Yucch-meter)
This week two winners will each receive a hardcover copy of Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje.
In the last LitWit Challenge, we asked you to write the scene in which you meet the beloved for the first time. You like that stuff, huh? Alright, let’s fast-forward to the breakup. One of my favorite partings takes place in another Ondaatje novel, The English Patient.
He untugs himself from her and walks away, then turns. She is still there. He comes back within a few yards of her, one finger raised to make a point.
“I just want you to know. I don’t miss you yet.”
His face awful to her, trying to smile. Her head sweeps away from him and hits the side of the gatepost. He sees it hurt her, notices the wince. But they have separated already into themselves now, the walls up at her insistence. Her jerk, her pain, is accidental, is intentional. Her hand is near her temple.
“You will,” she says.
This bit is rendered brilliantly in the film adaptation by Anthony Minghella: Kristin Scott-Thomas turns away from Ralph Fiennes and there’s a loud crack as her head hits the post. Oww.
Your assignment in the Weekly LitWit Challenge 2.9 is to write the scene in which two lovers decide to part. Unlike in the previous challenge, you do not have to be one of the characters. This way you can observe your subjects from a safe distance and spare us the schmaltz.
We don’t have to know why they’re breaking up, but we have to know what they’re thinking at that exact moment.
Post your entries in Comments; the deadline is at 11.59 pm on Saturday, 1 May 2010.
My copy of Divisadero, signed by the author. Bonnie went to Michael Ondaatje’s reading in Paris and lined up to have a copy signed for me.
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LitWit Challenge 2.9: The end of the affair is now closed. The last entry is #58, which we’re accepting even if it came in two minutes past deadline. Thanks to everyone who joined this challenge, stay tuned for the next one.
May 1st, 2010 at 13:42
They were in a hospital lobby sitting in one of the bench; both are preoccupied with their own thoughts. After an hour of silence, she managed to speak although her voice was in pain.
“I will try to understand and I will respect your decision”
He holds her hands and squeezes it tightly and remains silent for a moment.
“Thank you and I hope you understand and remain my friend and you will not despise me after.
She only manages to smile.
After a while she walks away and wonder if is she wasn’t fooled by the man she loves.
He watch her go, his eyes moist but he knows that he will never regret his decision.
After a while he sees his doctor where he will discuss the schedule of his sex change operation.
May 1st, 2010 at 17:42
I really liked Evan’s work. Just saying.
—–
“You see, for the past few weeks, I’ve been-” he paused, fidgeting in his chair, “uhm, I’ve been kind of busy. At work. With all the-” he scratches the back of his head. “-uh, well it doesn’t matter…”
She eyed the waiter, then her watch, then back at him. She noticed he was still talking.
“… what I’m trying to, uh, say is…” he pinched his nose as if milking it, inhaling suddenly. “…you’re a wonderful person, and I like you a lot…” he was gesturing to her, like he was pushing her away.
She winced.
“I’m breaking up with you.” She blurted out.
He was stunned. He looked as if he was beaten to the punch line of some joke. His hands fell on the table with a thump.
“There.” She said with a straight face.
The waiter cut in with their order. She ordered steak, he ordered salad.
“…but, but I, I’m supp-” he stuttered. His jaw clenched, the muscles strained, his teeth began to numb.
“Let’s eat. I’m very hungry. I can pay for myself”
She began carving the steak while he was stuck in a stupor.
“…you sh-should’ve let m-”
“Finish?” she caught her self. “Oh.”
He glared at her. He stood up indignantly but she grabbed his hands.
“Sit down, please, let’s not do that. Plus your salad’s here.”
But he just stood there in defeat
“I’m sorry for-” she motioned her eyebrows at him “-for interrupting. Go ahead, continue.”
“Okay, well…” his eyes moistened with frustration “I’M breaking up with you.”
She pursed her lips trying to stifle not a laugh but something more threatening. She swallowed hard.
“Okay. Oookaay.” She cleared her throat. “YOU broke up with me.” she said with a guffaw.
He sat down slowly looking at her hand still holding his. She finally let go and grabbed a fork. She ate heartily, she was hungry after all. What an excellent steak she thought.
An audible exhale was heard.
She looked at him but he started with his salad already.
She shrugged and went back to her steak.
May 1st, 2010 at 18:12
Danah usually prepared dinner at this time of the day, but there she was at the kitchen table trying hard to find the right words. For the nth time, she pulled the sheet out of the pad, crumpled it and aimed at the bin. It did not even touch the lips on the bin and fell on the polished wooden floor. Her OCD kicked in and compelled her to pick up the paper lying on the floor, threw it at the bin. “If it were his mess, he wouldn’t even bother to pick that up. But then again, he would most likely shoot it at the bin and it would have perfectly fall into the bin at first try.” Thoughts of Jon’s glorious days in the basketball court rushed to her mind and she tried to fall in love with her college boyfriend once again. After remembering the events of all the years that passed, she picked up the pen and tried to write again. But something bright caught her eye.
He finished his report with the clients early. By this time, Jon would be at the nearest sports bar to catch the latest basketball game, but not today. He sat straight and positioned his hands on the keyboard, as the marriage counselor’s voice resonates in his ears. “You can still save this marriage. Just tell her what you really feel. She likes writing you notes and letters, right? Why don’t you return the favor this time?” He said to himself, “”She would have probably written me a full length letter since last week for this exercise. But then again, she might have just written me a simple note, like the first one she ever gave me.” Thoughts of the bright neon pink post-it note on his binder rushed to his mind and he tried to fall in love with the bright eyed girl from English class. He moved the mouse to remove Danah’s smile on his monitor and poured his heart out to the keys in front of him.
She had been staring at the phone for several minutes now. After several rings, a familiar voice spoke and advised her to leave a message after the beep. The beep came but she did not utter a word until another voice said that she had to repeat her message.
With the letter in his right hand, Jon opened the door and picks his brief case from the floor. He called his wife’s name.
She heard somebody call her name. She opened the door and saw the man she really loves; the man she would refer as her friend if anybody asked how they were related.
He called out Danah’s name again. He decided to go to the kitchen but he stopped at the sight of the neon pink post- it note at the fridge. He recognized his wife’s handwriting on it. He pulled the note and saw her set of keys on top of the fridge. He crumpled the note along with the letter and threw it at the bin. It touched the lips of the can but fell on the floor. He was about to bend down and pick it up when a sudden rush of bliss came upon him. He smiled, picked up the phone and ordered a meal for one.
May 1st, 2010 at 18:20
He almost smiled as he climbed the stairs. He took the handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his face and neck. He felt that the collar of his shirt is wet. Ordinarily, the hot weather would tick him off. Not today though. He had a good feeling about something.
As he reached the top of the stairs, he saw her outline. She was gazing out a large window from which light of the noon day sun entered. His eyes adjusted before he could see more than the outline. She had her lab gown hanging from her right arm. She must have heard his footsteps because she turned.
He saw that her blank expression turned to a puzzled one. He approached her and they gave each other a kiss on the cheek. She smelled faintly of phenol. He handed her the flowers, a dozen of red roses, that he brought.
“You didn’t have to bring me flowers.”
I’m in such a good mood, he wanted to say but instead, “I just thought they’d cheer you up. You’ve been spending all your time in the lab.” He resisted mocking, Isn’t that why we couldn’t meet somewhere decent?
She looked at the roses and smiled a smile he knew was forced. She bit her lips then she said, “Listen, um, I can’t be your girlfriend anymore.”
He didn’t respond. He remembered how she cancelled their dates because she was “too tired”. His friends’ jokes about it. The fact that she put a password on her cellphone. How the people he knew in this building avert their eyes when they see him. The hurt he felt when he sat and thought about them and how he recovered quickly because he met someone.
His mood didn’t change. It’s about time, he thought.
May 1st, 2010 at 21:05
first time din.
–
The two of them lie on bed. With his usual socks and her usual nighties. With his broadsheet in the middle of the night. Her paperback. The pair of reading glasses that sits on her nose. The light: the bedside lamps, dim.
“You know that thing about relationships? They’re irrational, crazy and absurd … but we keep up, you know, we stay in them no matter what because … we need the eggs.” he says as he flips through the business section of a broadsheet that he pretends to be reading. He’s not that kind of guy.
“You do realize that that line doesn’t really make any sense without the joke right?”
No reply.
For a long time.
Twenty minutes.
And twenty seconds.
“How about this: Sharks are like relationships. They either move forward or they die. We have a dead shark.”
“You’re misquoting a line and you’re ruining Annie Hall for me,” she says not bothering to look at the other.
“You know if you want to break up you can always write a poem about it.”
May 1st, 2010 at 22:50
She opens her laptop as she mutters about the greatest despair of the day and how she gave in completely on the day’s loose trap. She has yet to do the un-thinkable for a seven goddamn year relationship and the so called, the-envy-of-the-many-relationships.
She opens her YM typing the “now-cursed” e-mail address because it ends with number “24” that could have been the number permanently stuck on their bodies as they agreed on a commitment tattoo when time comes.
She keeps on waiting that maybe he’d still drop by on her pad because he definitely knows how a crappy day, or more so, how she wished she was dead by now, and she would just take back the thought of doing this big of a risk. To her surprise, he was indeed online having an ecstatic status message shit. He was again playing the most insensitive person in the world. She decided that this was the last of the thousand times of those taken-for-granted and the martyrdom of understanding the ill treatment.
“BUZZ!!!!!!!!”
“I have something to tell you…” she said.
“Ano yun?”
“Let’s break-up before I completely hate you.”
It took a while before he came up with a word.
“Sorry. Sorry sa… (enumerating those rubbish reasons why he wasn’t been the boyfriend he could have been for her)”
“No need to say sorry. It’s over.” As she is still trying to mend the feeling of a cutting throat while pushing back her cry and still maintain a regular breathing.
That’s all he could say. He never said, “I agree, we must totally break-up” but his apologetic responses made it clear that it was the end of them. She wished he might have changed his words into something that is contrary to what she was purporting, like he could have stopped her from doing this instead, he said otherwise.
She opens another window and went to Facebook, edited her info changing the status to single. She now feels the most elusive emotions– more of worrisome of what kind of hell awaits her now that the most dependent part of her, which is her heart, has been broken like she would be heartless for no defined span of time; perhaps, forever.
She logged off on YM and her un-thinkable and the un-thinkable for many, for a seven year relationship has become a reality.
May 1st, 2010 at 23:34
“You never really did get better at using those…” she told him. It was obvious to her that the young man was struggling to finish his rice bowl with the chopsticks.
He shook his head and blushed a bit. “I’m always going to end up looking like an uncultured brute in these places”
“Don’t be silly.” She reached out across the table towards his hand. “The trick to remember is to keep the ends always even and parallel”
It was their last dinner together before he went overseas for a lucrative contract job in Dubai. This was something made possible by the woman partially supporting his education for the last year. Below the red lights of the Chinese lanterns their faces contrasted: she was smiling and relaxed while he was tense and distracted.
He finally decides to let something off his chest. “I hope you don’t feel used”
“I don’t” she assured him. “I was the one who offered the help and it would’ve been stupid for you to refuse.”
“I’ll pay you back” he quickly retorted.
“Of course, but in due time. Take care of your family first, especially your mom.”
He gave out a big sigh. “Why do you have to be such a saint about this? It makes it so much harder. AT LEAST send me an angry text or something.”
“Right” She laughed. “That would reflect well on a woman my age”
He laughed too as he tried to pick up the last morsels of rice.
“I’m going to miss you.” He told her.
He finally gave in as his cramped hand let go of the chopsticks.
I know Raymond, same here” she said as she motioned for waiter to get a fork.
May 2nd, 2010 at 00:01
Friends see them as that perfect Facebook couple: profile pages proudly proclaiming “In a Relationship With _______” and photoalbums dedicated solely to the moments they spent together, with appropriate titles like “The One and Only Love of My Life” and the like. They call each other “Babe”and they celebrate their monthsary religiously. One night, he called her up and together, they walked towards the motel they frequent during the first few months of their relationship, bodies touching and holding hands- standard protocol for a couple of almost ten months.
They undressed with eyes not meeting the other’s. On the bed they groped around mechanically, knowing exactly where the other wants to be touched and when. He stuck his tongue inside her mouth and she responded with soft moans- more out of the need to ward of the feeling of ennui than genuine passion. Touch, kiss, moan- in this manner did they proceed with their love-making; it was after an hour and a half when they discovered that he could not get it up. They took that as a sign to sleep, with backs turned from each other and as far away on the bed as possible.
The next morning they left without saying a word.
May 2nd, 2010 at 00:53
He looked at her. He wanted to feel her skin on his lips. Her shoulders, the curve on her waist, her lips as she parts it for him.
He didn’t want to think. He knew if he dwells long on his thoughts, it would make him see. He knew no matter how he craves for her, all he could find are memories. It is she, suspended in his mind. An image. That would not look back at him with the same fervor when on the brink of making love.
He looked at her once more as she lay there. She opened her eyes and saw him standing beside the bed. They gazed into each other’s eyes. There was a slight surprise on her face. It was as if she knew this moment would come. But not as soon. Yet she never moved.
As he stood there, his eyes slowly moved from her brows to her eyes to her nose, to the soft angle of her jaw to her bottom lip. That would be all she would be. All broken images. Then their eyes met again. When there is nothing more, he turned and left.
May 3rd, 2010 at 12:13
I watch you,
Plow the depths of your sadness
And mine, Grieving for the love lost
Angered by tempestuous fate, bitterness
Written in boiling spirits
Ranting in wild abandon, incensed
Seeking solace only in soiled emotions
Strewn on the cold, hard ceramic tile
Waiting to be thrown a bone
Only to be disappointed and crushed
Not being spared even one tiny morsel!
You beg
But this time, “Sorry” doesn’t seem much
of a fare.
Not even consolation.
May 7th, 2010 at 09:18
silog: YUUCCCH!
May 7th, 2010 at 09:23
polbunyan: If you’re going to be a music snob get the names right. It’s Malcolm McLaren.