Prompt: “What is it about me that makes you hate me so much? ” and/or “ Why can’t you look at me? ” (Edgar/Olivia)
“Nothing about this is what I imagined it would be,” Edgar heard himself say. He and Liv weren’t the kind of couple who fought. More often than not, they failed to see eye to eye, but butting heads wasn’t fighting. Semantics, some would claim, but Edgar knew what it was like to fight and the kinds of disagreements they had hardly counted. They didn’t have the explosive blow outs that some couples had, the kinds that ended in wounds inflicted by painful fists and even more painful words.
So, the fact that they were currently having something that could only be classified as more intense than their usual disagreements was enough to unsettle him. “I’m not saying I expected marriage to be easy.” The sentiment was punctuated by a scoff.
“What exactly were you expecting,” Olivia asked, as he knew she would. It would be too much to expect her to sit quietly while he worked through whatever it was that was floating through his mind, whatever it was that he couldn’t quite get his mouth to say as yet.
“I don’t know, Olivia.”
Edgar turned on his heel, hand running through his hair, tangling in the longer strands that now hung disheveled in his face. He’d come home, gut a twisting, rioting storm of anxiety. He’d buzzed as if he’d been electrocuted and as the hours had passed, the sensation had gotten worse. Now, barefooted, and dressed in nothing more than an old pair of sweats, Edgar could hardly get himself to settle for bed. He hadn’t been this twisted up since his teenage years when he’d fallen for a boy with eyes that sparkled when he smiled and a laugh that brought sunshine to the darkest room. Since then, Edgar had learned to compartmentalize, to meditate until the world made sense and feelings could be controlled. Not that any of that mattered, he thought, as he paced a path around their bedroom.
“Why can’t you look at me?”
At her question, Edgar threw a look over his shoulder, sarcastic, unamused, daring. She was asking questions that he wasn’t quite ready to answer, asking without asking for him to be vulnerable with her, and he wasn’t quite there. It made him testy. Enough so that he was almost sure that the look on his face was more challenge than acquiescence. You want vulnerable, it said. I’ll show you vulnerable.
“I just wasn’t expecting this.” Edgar waved his hands in front of him, gaze locked with Liv’s, as he launched into what he hoped was a coherent explanation. “You. In my stuff.”
“I’d hardly say I’m in your things, Edgar.” Liv’s voice remained soft and patient, as if she was talking to their daughter, and maybe that was the worse part of it all. He was coming apart at the seams and somehow, through it all, his wife remained the picture of calm. “Not physically,” he explained, almost spat out. “Metaphorically. Emotionally, even. Being married to you is like standing in the middle of an oil spill. It doesn’t matter how much I try, it touches everything. Contaminates everything. And there’s no way to get it out.”
“What is it about me that makes you hate me so much?”
The words caused Edgar to stop short mid explanation, if what he had been doing could even be classified as such. It was as if he’d taken a gutshot, quick, unexpected; it knocked the wind out of him and caused his gaze to snap down to hers. Edgar was sure that he’d never seen that look in his wife’s eyes -- that torn look. He’d seen it in his mother’s eyes countless times before, but never, in the time that they’d been married, had he seen it in Olivia’s, and certainly not in response to something he’d said.
“I don’t. What would make you think that I hate you?” His voice was incredulous. He was shocked that she’d even think such a thing.
“Most people would take offense to being compared to an oil spill that contaminates everything, Edgar.” There was a matter of fact edge to her voice punctuated by a slight shrug of her shoulders. He watched as Liv made her way over to the side of the bed where Amelie slept in her bassinet, blissfully unaware of all that was happening around her.
“That’s not what I meant.” Even to his own ears it sounded like a paltry excuse. “I didn’t mean to compare you to an oil spill. Or a contaminant, for that matter.”
Liv’s eyebrow was raised and Edgar could see the question in her eyes. “I’m sorry, okay? I was careless with my words.” Careless wasn’t a word that usually described Edgar, but in that moment he knew that it applied. He’d been careless with his words, and by extension, his wife’s feelings. “I’m sorry,” he repeated as he took the few steps to the other side of the bed so that he was now positioned behind Olivia, close enough that she could touch him if she reached out, but far enough away that his energy wouldn’t disrupt her or Amelie.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he continued. “I just feel… off.” His voice was hushed, gaze resting on his daughter. From the moment he’d learned of her existence, she’d changed his world. She’d quickly become the most important thing to him. Amelie had given him purpose unlike anything else in his life, but being a husband and a father had unbalanced him. It had taken his neatly laid out life and upended it, and Edgar was still reeling in the aftermath.
“Try to get some sleep,” he finally said. Edgar took a single step forward so that his chest brushed against her back and dropped a kiss to the top of her head before turning towards the door. He’d order her flowers in the morning. She’d know what they meant. “I’ll be in my office.”
