Left Behind

Hillary watched Brandon from the clear spots of the stained glass window hanging above the kitchen sink—her black hair covering her eyes as she leaned as close to the glass as possible. Whenever he was stressed, which had been a lot these last several weeks, he always ran outside to chop wood. No wood splitter, no friends coming over to help, but quite simply a burly man looking the part of a lumberjack hacking away with an axe.

The last argument they had did not end well, and she knew that was mostly her doing, but she remained quiet with that fact and she would be willing to hold onto to that information until this whole thing blew over. Brandon had been working an endless amount and his presence vanished from their home. Late nights at the office trying to punch out emails and log data to give him a head start on the next morning, but he always came back to more stacks. His red hair no longer ran softly through her fingers when she hugged him. Dark circles beneath his eyes distracted the viewer of ogling over his freckles. I have to do this, he would always tell Hillary. It’s not just hard for you, please believe that.

Brandon needed his time alone, but in her opinion he had plenty of room to do so when he’s not home and working in his cubicle. He’s been absent, and he’ll never admit that either, at least not to her face. He’s always been salary, so he wasn’t doing it for the overtime. “Hillary,” her friend Anna said over lunch last week, “let me tell you something, babe. He’s not coming home because he’s not strong enough to be a partner. He loves to be called a husband, but at the end of the day, he doesn’t like the work that goes into it. I don’t know why you keep wasting your time with him, anyway. You’re a total catch.”

Dusk was slowly approaching and the warming nature of golden hour swept across the old brick Tudor they called home and could only crawl so far to the tree line three acres away. Hillary continued to watch him and he wasn’t slowing down a bit. She never understood how he could still carry so much weight in his midsection with all of the wood chopping Brandon’s accomplished since they’ve been together. His exposed chest from a haphazardly unbuttoned collared shirt shimmered from the sweat it collected.

Maybe Anna was right after all. Instead of being inside, sitting down in the living room or resting in bed sorting out their problems he chooses to run outside and pretend to play farmer. What good is that supposed to do? I just want some space, he constantly said, just a little time to blow off steam so I can come inside the house and leave the rest of everything outside. Hillary was tired of it. The excuses, the lies, the abandonment, the holier than thou concept he always managed to put on display. Fuck this, she thought before storming outside.

She hadn’t realized how loud the wood splitting was until she stepped out the back door. Walking with a purpose, she knew Brandon could see her, which made her even angrier. “Brandon,” she began to shout before finally making it behind him, “Brandon!” He stopped immediately, as she knew he would. Brandon would never do anything to risk her safety, especially swing an axe near her. His stop in momentum finally caught up to him and his upper half was heaving as his body was trying to catch up to the adrenaline.

“You okay, Hill?” He asked out of breath using his shirt sleeve to wipe his forehead.

“I’m okay, are you?”

“Yeah, I’m just—“

“Getting a head start before winter gets here,” she interrupted, “trust me, we go through this every time. And that’s all we’ve done lately, to be frank.”

“I don’t know what you want me to do?”

“I want you stop chopping wood, come inside, and start talking things out. It’s about time you start listening to me instead of running away from your problems at home because you’re only man enough to swing a fucking axe!” Her last word came out with a growl. Brandon stood there in complete disbelief. When it came to his negative triggers, his disbelief was the only emotion that didn’t have a mask. When he was nervous, he had to roll something in between his fingers. Whenever he was sad, he laid in bed for a long while. When he was angry, he closed kitchen drawers and doors around the house a little louder than usual or he worked on the tractor he inherited with the property. Disbelief was always blank.

“What am I supposed to do? I mean, truly? What is me going inside going to accomplish?”

“Well,” Hillary began, “for starters: you’re going to have an adult conversation. Then we are going to figure out why you’ve been such a jerk lately. Then, you’re going to apologize and I’m going to forgive you and things will go back to the way they were before. But,” she pointed his finger at him, “What you’re doing right now, this wood chopping shit—it ends tonight.”

“Excuse me?” Brandon asked with sincerity and an undertone of anger, “What did you just say to me?” Hillary stared at him with one eyebrow raised wondering what Anna would say next. “This wood cutting ‘shit’ is the only way I get a second of peace anymore.”

“Yeah, but you do it almost every night.”

“Which makes sense when I don’t have a peaceful house to come home to, Hillary!” She was taken aback as he was never so quick to sharpen his tongue. He always had a tendency to let things go, roll with the flow, which was one characteristic she missed about him—it made things much easier. “I can’t even come home after a long day of work, kick my shoes off, and grab a beer before sitting on the porch before you crawl out of whatever cave you were sleeping in to tell me my shoes are in the wrong spot or had too much mud on them!”

“How dare you.”

“How dare I? How dare I?” His tone continued to raise until he caught himself. Brandon placed his interlocked hands behind his head and walked around the wall of wood that’s already been chopped. “You don’t get it, Hill, I don’t dare to do anything. It doesn’t matter what I do, right or wrong, there’s always something negative you have to say about it. It’s so much easier to just tuck my tail between my legs and take every swing you throw instead of stick up for myself.” He locked eyes and removed all irrational emotion, “I’m so tired of doing that.”

“Stick up for yourself? Oh,” she laughed, “really? That’s where this is going? That I bully you?” There’s always been this complex society rolled into the dough of life that explains how men cannot be abused by women. Men can’t be explicitly touched because all men love is that one thing, am I right? Men can’t be beaten since a black eye from the hand of a woman is a badge of honor and a funny story to tell the usual crew at the bar in town.  They can’t be emotionally scarred— a provider can’t have hurt feelings. Their bruises heal quicker than women’s. No real man is ever ashamed to have a woman throw themselves at him.

“You can call it whatever you want,” he sat on the large stump behind him, “but I don’t want to be around you either way.” She was stung.

“Are you fucking kidding me, Brandon?”

“What?”

“You’re really going to tell me that to my face and not feel bad about it?”

“Why should I feel bad about being honest, huh?” He had emotion grabbing at the back of his throat, “All you’ve ever asked me for is to tell you the truth, and whenever I do, it turns into this.”

“Because that’s not the truth, Brandon,” Hillary chimed condescendingly, “that’s you being hateful trying to hurt my feelings.”

“So you can say I’m not a man to me, without any sort of repercussion? But, when I’m honest with you? No, no, no! How dare I?”

“You say things out of anger.”

“I say things out of anger, sure, but even when I tell you the truth—the words you want to hear—it gets spun as me attacking you somehow. And I’m so over not being able to say anything under my own damn roof because walking on egg shells is easier.”

“Our roof, Brandon!” He looked at her defeated. He finally admits the truth—that he has no desire to come home. His alarm goes off in the morning and he’s practically running around getting dressed for work because he knows he’ll have 10 hours of filing and calls to make to keep his mind preoccupied. When he runs out of work to do, when he runs out of doing everyone else’s work, he’s screwed. After a long hike, he stands at the base of a mountain and is requested to get to the top by nightfall with four hours of sunlight remaining. He admitted defeat. He admitted resentment. The only thing she’s been willing to take away from this conversation is how it’s not just his home. There’s no reason his family’s name had been stamped on the same mailbox for 64 years.

Brandon whispered, “I’m not happy.”

“But I am!” Hillary interjected without even pondering what to say next. Raw, unfiltered feelings dumped into the lawn that showed her true colors: a sludge of browns and grays and blacks. “I’m so happy with you, Brandon.”

“Just a second ago you told me I’m hateful. Then you tell me I’m not man enough to have a conversation with you—“

“I made the manliness comment first, though.”

“Why does it matter what order it was said in when the issue is that you said it to begin with?”

“Because it’s true.”

“Then why,” he clenched his teeth through tears and anguish, “ why would you want to be with a man like that?”

“Because, I love you.” The response was robotic. There was an entity with grave intentions standing behind her and continued dropping a quarter into the change slot on her back and pressed the same button over again. “You’re the love of my life. I would do anything for you, you know that!”

“Then if I’m so loved why do I still continue to not want to be home?” He kept eye contact with Hillary, but pointed towards the house, “I opened my first Christmas gift ever at one years old in that same dining room we walk through every night to get to our bedroom. My grandpa laughed so hard at the television one time, he lifted off the hard wood floors after accidentally farting in the living while he was sitting on the floor next to me watching cartoons. I watched my grandma cry, alone, sitting on that porch swing you sit on to read because the thought of watching the sunset without my grandpa after he passed away killed her.” Brandon let some tears fall. “And it did kill her. It only took a year—“

“Oh, babe, come here.” Hillary started towards him and reached her arms around his back. “It’s okay, I understand.” Brandon gently removed himself from her grip and he sat back down.

“No, you don’t understand.” He wiped the streaks off the front of his cheeks, dabbed a stray tear that made it to the corner of his mouth, and snorted to clear his sinuses. “My grandparents loved each other until the end of their days in that house. My mother and father did the same. All I’ve ever wanted was to continue the tradition, and now I’m so isolated, frustrated, and alone that I don’t want anything to do with that house. I don’t want anything to do with coming home and getting asked what I’ll be making for dinner before I even get a kiss. Being here means there’s a guessing game of what I’ll be doing wrong to start the morning and hedging more bets on what awful thing I’ll accomplish to end the evening. All I’ve ever wanted was to know the love my parents and grandparents have—“

“And we have that, Brandon!” Hillary interrupted. Her face became rosy from a lack of respect, not a lack of concern. “We have that because I love you everyday. I clean the house, I cook when I’m not tired. I’ve been trying to get us to start a family—have those kids opening their first presents in that same dining room. We can have that future and we have that love right now.”

“How can you say that when you treat me the way that you do?” He was cracked open entirely. His head melted into his hands: his elbows resting on his knees as the stump dug into his backside.

“I’m allowed to tell you how I feel, Brandon! I have the right to do so.”

“I’m not saying that you don’t, but do you not understand how this whole thing started?”

“You mean me having to come out here and be the first one to take a step towards fixing this? Like I feel like I always have to?”

“No,” he found his sense of feeling and slowly stood up, “You didn’t give me time to cool down because I wasn’t relaxing fast enough for you. I’m belittled and told Im not a man, you demanded for me to apologize, and told me we were going to go back to the way things were like it all never happened. Did you ever stop to think I don’t want it to go back to how it was before this conversation?”

“Okay,” she extended the word, “so then we don’t.” Brandon waited for her to finish the thought. “We go inside and it’s a brand new start. What happened before this gets left out here, in this lawn, with all of the wood we’ll pick up and leave tomorrow.” She walked up to him slowly and leaned into him to rest the side of her face in his chest. Brandon didn’t move. “It’ll be like the night we met all over again.”

“Again?…Do you not see how that’s a problem?” Brandon whispered out of respect for ears being so close. “You’re asking me to forget the ridicule. The hurt. The things I have been trying to unhear for the last 8 years. To look in the mirror each morning, not hate my reflection, and have the energy and desire to brush my teeth. To be excited to climb into bed. To not notice the wallpaper you replaced after I watched my grandparents put it up and watched my parents refurbish it because you thought the design was tacky. You are asking for me to let go of everything. Every lesson I’ve learned while being with you. Every grain of confidence I’ve earned by being proud of myself instead of waiting to hear it from you. The friendships I’ve made, the birds I’ve fed each morning for almost a decade, the neighbors cat who sits outside with me on the porch swing when you’re gone Saturday night to meet your friends.” He pulled away from her softly. “I’m sorry,” he said with emptiness, “but I can’t do that.” His tears let loose. “I don’t deserve that.”

Brandon walked towards the house, but turned towards the driveway while pulling his keys out of his pocket. “Brandon! Brandon, you can’t just leave me here!” He stopped and turned back towards her.

“It’s not leaving when I just told you goodbye.” He climbed into his antique square body pickup and slowly crawled out of the driveway. In the rear view mirror he could see Hillary shouting and throwing the logs around he just split. She screamed, but the sound wasn’t haunting. There was no emotion to back the façade. He said out loud to himself, “I’m really gonna miss that damn house.”