Shuffles

I am fixated on a man I never really knew. My husband and I used to call him Shuffles. He is an old stocky man, built like a block, a Lego figurine. He walks with his head bent forward, his eyes on the concrete in front of him, a cane in his right hand. Shuffles walks every morning and every afternoon in the neighborhood. If we time it right, we see him on our walks with the dog. When we sit on the stoop of our apartment building, he passes by, stops, faces us, and gives a thumbs-up. Then he teeters back and forth leaning on his cane until his body faces the direction he wants to go. He takes a moment to steady himself, revs up his feet and moves along. We watch him make his way down to the corner of the block in his own rhythm: Two steps, cane. Two steps, cane.

I wonder if the thumbs-up is his way of saying hello or a sign of approval. As in, you two seem like a nice couple, keep it up. Maybe he sees that we are a young couple, that we have only been married for a few years. There is something in his acknowledgment that makes me feel secure, something in the way we are seen by him. Hopeful, blissful, bonded.

Can we try

I can’t say when I first recognized this tension between us, this silence we began to breathe. I know my husband feels it too, but we don’t talk about it. We’ve been married for six years, together for twelve years. For the entirety of our twenties, we have been a couple. We have developed a shorthand where I can tell how my husband feels by the squint of his eyes, how far his hands go into the pocket of his black jeans. He can tell how uncomfortable I am by how much I hunch my shoulders forward, make myself smaller in a crowd of people.

I find this article online that says hugging for twenty seconds a day lowers your heart rate. If you hug someone, it releases oxytocin, the “love hormone.” I ask my husband if we can hold each other for twenty seconds. He doesn’t really want to, but he sees me standing in front of him with the look of, please, can we try?

We stand in the center of our living room. I wrap my arms around him instinctively. He is only a couple inches taller than me, just the right height to rest my head on his shoulder. This is the way we hug and slow dance when we do. We count aloud together to twenty, doing our best to keep an even rhythm, holding each other. This holding feels familiar and warm, and we relax into each other’s bodies.

After we reach twenty, we pull away from each other and I ask, “Do you feel better?”

“I guess so,” he answers. “It just feels like a really long time to just stay like that.”

We keep up the twenty-second embrace for two more days.

I don’t know if he knew that we already had a ritual. Every morning before we left for work, we would kiss and say, I love you. Maybe it was just another thing for him, like making sure to brush his teeth, but it became a superstitious thing for me. The way that I used to lay in my pastel-colored bed as a girl and pressed my palms together and plead that my father fly safely in the air on his business trips, that his plane wouldn’t crash and that he’d come home safe. This was like that. If my husband didn’t kiss me and say I love you, I thought something bad might happen to him, to us. Every morning I thought, what if this is the last time we can do this?

Then he grabbed me

It is spring. The air is fresh and awake, after a long cold winter. Although I enjoy sleeping in, my body is very attuned to the circadian rhythms of a day. There is only so much sleep my body can handle before it wants to get up, use the bathroom, and breathe in fresh air.

My husband can, however, sleep for hours, past noon even without stirring. On Sundays, I ask him to get up and take the dog for a walk with me. The dog is always up and ready, but patient if we all want to lay in bed a little longer. A Sunday walk is something we all enjoy, together.

He says he is too tired and to go on without him. He has been working late hours and on weekends. When he is home, he is often asleep or drinking beer and smoking cigarettes.

I put the leash on the dog and head down the street towards the park a few blocks down from our apartment. On the way I see Shuffles ahead of me. It doesn’t take long for me to catch up to him. Shuffles is technically walking, but he doesn’t exactly lift his feet. Each push is barely an inch forward, each movement the sound of sandpaper smoothing out a rough piece of wood. Every step is an effort. Every step is an accomplishment.

I slide by Shuffles, careful not to startle him. I nod and say hello. When I step forward, he grabs my arm. He has a surprisingly strong grip, the way babies do when they latch onto beards and long hair. He starts to speak. I have never heard his voice before. His words are fast but I can’t understand them. He assumes we speak the same language because we are the same color. If we were to walk down the street arm in arm, someone might assume that he was my grandfather or father, and that wouldn’t be so odd. I say apologetically with my hand on my chest, “Oh, Japanese.” He utters, “Ah…” and we wave goodbye to each other.

In that moment, I wish I could speak every language in the world to understand him. I can’t help but think he has something important to tell me.

Maybe it is that I am searching for answers. I don’t understand this feeling of uneasiness. I don’t know how to ask about it, how to talk to my husband about it, because it is something new and unknown. A darkness I am not ready to open the door for. I convince myself that this is all in my head, all my problem.

When Shuffles speaks to me, he sees me. We lock eyes and in this intimacy, I am startled. How rare this closeness is in my life now.

Holding on

In the summer, I see my husband less and less. In the mornings he rushes out the door without our ritual. No I love you. No kiss goodbye. Sometimes at night, he texts me that he is home but smoking downstairs on the stoop. It feels like he needs time to compose himself before entering our apartment. One night I get dressed and walk down the stairs to sit with him. Through the glass of the front door, I see the silhouette of his head, hunched over in the dark, puffing away.

I sit and put my arms around him. He keeps saying over and over that he is a selfish person. I assume he means because he hasn’t been home. He is always telling me not to wait for him to come home for dinner or to go to bed without him. I try to console him. I tell him it’s okay, he’s been busy, and I’m okay. I just miss him.

I think maybe he’s depressed. That would explain all the sleeping and drinking. I start to hope that is the problem. He’s depressed and I can help him get better. This will get better.

Clap for me

I have never enjoyed running. I think because I was always the weak link in relay races in elementary school. I could never keep up with the fast girls. But my thirty-seven-year-old body needs something, a distraction. On Sundays, in the heat of the summer, I start running with the dog. I choose the small park down the street to do laps in. I like feeling my heart pumping faster, my throat burning, my face flush, and the dog breathing with me, staying beside me at my pace. Shuffles is there, too, sitting on a bench. Each time I make a loop of the park, he claps his hands cheering me on. His face bright with a smile. I keep running, waiting for his gentle applause.

I see the words I love you     

Over the years, people have asked me, how did you not know? Wasn’t it obvious? Maybe out of their own fear that this could happen to them. It is not easy, none of it is easy to explain or to live with. Of course, I was suspicious, yes. But there is trust, a trust you do not believe someone that loves you will break. And there is a protection for yourself, the way your eyes shut when the light is too bright.

One night my husband begins to tell me about a woman at work, how odd it is that they are so alike.

“It’s weird. It’s like we’re kindred miserable spirits or something,” he says.

I tease him and ask, “Is she your girlfriend now?”

“No,” he says exhaling with a slight laugh. “She’s not my girlfriend.” And then he adds, “We just get each other.”

It is months later when I see the words, I love you, on his phone. It is a message to this woman. She writes back, I love you, and my hands are shaking.

The long walk home

I wonder how long my husband has been seeing this woman. How long he has been lying. Living two lives. I think that maybe I should wait to see if he will tell me himself. If I can keep this secret, a secret. If I can pretend like he has.

I don’t last ten minutes, still trembling with his phone in my hand, I say to him, “You should really lock your phone.”

He doesn’t try to pretend anymore and says, “I knew this day would come.”

It seems almost like a relief for him, like I’ve done the hard work.

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“I think part of me wanted you to find those messages. I mean, why didn’t I delete them?” he asks.

None of this is making sense and he won’t tell me how long this affair has been going on. He says it doesn’t matter, that it’s irrelevant how long it’s been going on.

“I thought something might be going on with you and her, but I didn’t think you’d actually sleep with her,” I say.

He doesn’t answer. We talk for hours until we are both exhausted and order food to eat. The next day I leave to stay at a friend’s house for a week. I ask my husband to give me space, not to message me, but he does. He says he is worried and wants to make sure I’m okay.

At the end of the week I go back home. I don’t want to talk to him inside of our apartment. I want to be on neutral ground. I ask my husband to walk to the park with me. The same park I have been running in. There is light rain. My husband and I sit on a bench. A man from the church next door walks by and asks if we’d like to join their barbecue. There’s free food. We smile and say no thank you. The man doesn’t notice that I am crying, that he is witnessing the end of a marriage. The last words between two people who still love each other.

My husband asks, “Isn’t it possible to be in love with two people at once?”

“No,” I say. “You need to choose.”

Silence. More light rain.

I say, “I can’t believe you’re just going to throw away twelve years of our lives, of a life we built together.”

“I know,” he says.

The rain gets harder. It’s unexpected and we are unprepared without umbrellas. We get up from the bench, our shirts dotted with droplets, our heads bent. We take our last walk home, side by side, the space between our bodies growing more distant with each step.

***

A whole year has passed since the day Shuffles stopped me on our walk. It has been too cold for long walks in the winter. Months have passed with wind and snow, and no Shuffles. And then one spring day, I am walking the dog down the block. The morning sun is blinding, even with my sunglasses on. At first, I see only a silhouette, shifting side to side, the sun on his right shoulder, then on his left. A cane firmly in his right hand. It is Shuffles. He is wearing sweatpants and a hoodie, nondescript gray sneakers on, sliding across the pavement of the sidewalk. He looks more frail, his hair shaved close to his scalp.

I wonder if he will recognize me with my sunglasses on, my hair longer than last year. For a moment, I think maybe that’s not Shuffles. His face is still in the shadow of the morning glare. But he waves to me first. He must have seen me staring at him, walking towards him, me in the spotlight with an absurd smile on my face. Excitedly, I say hello. There is so much I want to tell him, I want to ask where he’s been, if he is okay. I want to tell him that I’ve missed him. I want to say thank you, thank you for being there, for making me feel less alone, for encouraging me to keep going.

Before I can try, he continues forward, passing me. His eyes are focused on a small tree on the sidewalk. The city has been planting young trees, digging rectangular plots a few feet from one another, all along this block, most of them cherry blossoms that won’t bloom until next spring.

I turn to watch him. He stops in front of one small tree, still skinny and green. His feet and cane planted on the concrete. He tilts his torso back to look up at the tree. He holds his left hand up to cup the leaves hanging from the slim branches. I wonder if he has been doing this every morning, checking on the growth, the progress. Watching the tree age day by day, until it becomes too cold and he must retreat inside.

That is the last time I see Shuffles. It’s been years now. I still walk the dog every day, hoping that I might see him again. That I’ll hear his feet shuffling down the street, see him smiling. That the morning sun blinding me will reveal him there, standing beside a tree, willing it to grow. If I saw him again, I would tell him that the cherry blossoms grew and bloomed. And were beautiful.

—

Jessica Kashiwabara is a writer and editor from Southern California. Her essays have been published in Black Renaissance Noire, Midwestern Gothic, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn. She is currently at work on a collection of essays.