Falling Apart

1

She stood alone at the edge, unable to understand why gravity no longer existed. Her life and the whole world it seemed, had been turned upside down. She felt as if she had some great weight hanging heavy in her chest and stomach. But at the same time an emptiness within made her feel insubstantial and light, like something windblown and tumbling. Looking over she recognized a sensation like vertigo that made the world seem to try and tip her over towards the two hundred foot drop that would end in her death at the foot of the old quarry. But that feeling was almost reassuring alongside the one that told her should she step off the cliff she would simply float away. The dreamlike image of herself floating gently upwards to bump her head softly on the upturned Earth alarmed her. She wondered if this was what losing your mind felt like. But of course. Why else was she here? She was unafraid, strangely peaceful, simply curious almost, to see which reality would pertain when she jumped. She leaned forward until she overbalanced and began to fall.2

He woke just after dawn. Without moving a muscle or opening his eyes, he knew instantly that he was alone. Nevertheless his hand swept across the double bed parting the coolness of the undisturbed sheets where her familiar warmth should have been. Her absence chilled him. He rose quickly and checked the spare room. On the rare occasions they had rowed in any serious fashion she sometimes used it – or made him do so. It was empty. So was the couch. She hadn’t come home.3

He found his mobile phone and went to her number. It rang but she didn’t answer. Her voice finally greeted him on the messaging service. Maybe it was the hangover, the familiar reduction in brain function associated with that condition that sees grown adults staring into a cupboard for minutes at a time wondering what they went to get. ‘Ah yes! The tea-bags! But what to do with them?. He found himself listening to the extended bee-eep that announced he’d run out of talk time and he hadn’t said a word.4

The affair had started a year ago and it had been over for a month. The moment they’d shaken hands at the conclusion of a routine business deal they’d both known it would happen. And that it shouldn’t. That it couldn’t. Which made it a certainty. With noble intentions they had avoided each other but the world conspired repeatedly to bring them together. They tried to be friends but the world won’t allow that between certain people. So they ended up in bed. The lust that brought them there quickly turned to guilt and it soured. The bitterness gave it a chance to die and it began to do just that. 5

Claire had known about it in the way all women know when their partner strays and she had denied it to herself the way all women do until there is no choice but to confront it. Maybe she had it wrong. Maybe this would all go away. For a month or so things had been better. Much better. She and Michael were laughing together like they used to. His love-making was warm and frequent. They’d had a week-end away at a wedding scheduled for some months. She bought some new underwear and they flirted for the day and got drunk. In bed that night he’d been asleep before she got into bed as she took some trouble over her appearance at the bedside mirror. When she’d reached across to wake him he’d called her by the other woman’s name and told her he loved her but they mustn’t. And her world caved in.6

They say your whole life passes before your eyes just before you die. Claire watched with interest as her particular ‘replay’ made its dramatic presentation. Her eyes and other senses seemed busy with the fall. She was turning slowly in mid-air as she plummeted. So the vista before her was changing slowly, inexorably. The uprushing ground and rocks below gave way to the speeding cliff-face, slick with the night’s rain, periodically smudged with green where small patches of grass and vegetation had taken a precarious fingerhold in a crevice or along a ledge. She was amazed to find her brain was approximating how many turns she would have completed by the time she hit. One and a half. Three quarters done already. Half dead. She almost laughed. The rushing air roared in her ears. She thought of a red Toyota she’d once owned and had forgotten about up till now.7

Michael re-dialled her number and this time he left a message. “Where are you honey? I’ll come and get you. You don’t have to talk to me , just let me know you’re alright. I didn’t want to have that stupid fight last night. We can sort this out. Please . Just come home for now. I love you. “ 8

They’d been at a party the night before and Claire had got drunk, something she did so rarely he could count the times it had happened in 15 years on his fingers only. He hadn’t noticed her drinking a lot and he himself was relatively sober. It was two weeks after the bombshell had landed at the wedding. Claire being drunk at all was a rarity but her being drunk and him sober was almost unheard of. It made him uncomfortable. To make matters worse she began to behave out of character. She flirted outrageously with complete strangers. The party was more business than social so most of the people there were relative strangers to him let alone her. He figured he had some payback coming so he let it go. In the immediate aftermath of the revelation of his affair there had been a surpising degree of calm. He’d come clean and been able to tell her honestly that it was over. He’d told her he never stopped loving her and meant it. That he’d never considered leaving. He hadn’t. That he couldn’t help himself. He’d tried. Maybe not hard enough. But he’d tried. All-in-all Claire had taken it well. She’d believed him on the critical points. She hadn’t threatened to leave or to make him do so. She was hurt. But she’d get over it, given time. As her message service beeped ‘time up’for the second time he began to wonder about that.9

The wreck of Claire’s red Toyota stood in the street outside Michael’s parents house, not far from the quarry that was about to claim her life. It was twelve years ago however. Michael was coming out of the house, wide-eyed at the damage to the car which had been perfect condition, parked just behind his old Ford outside the pub a few minutes previously. Claire was wild-eyed and screaming at him. This was perhaps the first time he’d ever seen Claire really drunk and definitely the first time he’d ever seen her ‘lose it’. Until right now, Claire realized, she’d lost or blocked out all recollection of this dramatic episode. Looking on it now as she fell, she found herself somehow a dispassionate but interested spectator as the story revealed itself to her piecemeal.10

She and Michael were fighting – one of the few really big ones their long relationship would witness.One of the greatest strengths of that relationship had always been their genuine friendship and liking for one another. Theirs had never been in any way a love/hate relationship. They’d got along just fine almost all of the time right from the beginning. He had always made her laugh and feel secure. For her part she’d always been able to make him talk and get things off his chest – with laughter thrown in at no extra cost. Why they should have rowed so angrily this night was not clear. But Michael had stormed out of the bar where they’d gone for an after-work drink that night and driven off leaving her trailing after him, apparently with more to say than he wanted to listen to. Too much drink was clearly involved. Certainly neither should have been driving. But drink had wreaked its usual devastation on the decision making processes as well as fuelling the anger in the situation. Michael had made it home. Claire hadn’t been so lucky. She’d given chase to Michael who thought he’d had the last word and that she’d headed home to her parents house (they still lived with their parents in this time frame). Between the bar and Michaels family home there was a notorious series of bends. They’d conspired with the first frost of the year to see Claire’s little car swap ends repeatedly along the inside wall that skirted them. Fore and aft, the car’s panels had crumpled and buckled as its momentum carried it relentlessly forward , the spin bouncing it along the unyielding concrete in a deafening series of bangs, shattering lenses and screaming metal. Luckily there were no other vehicles or pedestrians around. The Toyota had ended up facing the right way up the street , steaming from its torn radiator but with the engine still running. Despite the violence and the drama of the crash, there had no ‘sudden stop’ or significant g-forces involved and Claire was unhurt. She had simply selected gear and driven on. 11

Michael had heard her coming long before she arrived in the quiet cul-de-sac where his parents lived. The rear wheel arches were pressed hard against the tyres and screamed a deafening protest simply overruled by Claire’s foot on the throttle as she pressed on relentlessly to have her say with him. Exactly what that ‘say’ had been about remained a mystery as Claire’s rotation during the fall reached one full revolution. 12

Michael had rung Claire’s mobile number for the third time. He was beginning to panic as the minutes ticked past without a reply to his calls. Claire’s behaviour over the previous few hours had been so out of character. At the party the night before he’d been talking not with his wife but with a stranger who’d somehow taken control of her body. This new woman was out of control. Out of control was something Claire had always hated. Especially where drink was involved. Michael suddenly realized he’d met this woman before somehow and he tried to remember when. 13

He thought of the night she’d crashed her red Toyota. The night they’d had that terrible argument. It had been about sex. It was always about sex. What he called her lack of interest in it and she called his one-track mind. A remark made in the pub, carelessly and in company, had outraged her. He’d stormed out , furious that she seemed to find social indiscretion more important than the undeniable fact that their love-life was stilted and one-dimensional as he called it. Things had come to a head that night. Then the car-crash had made its impact in more ways than one. The woman who’d got out of the wreck that shuddered to a halt in front of his parents house was the stranger from last night. That was the night she’d told him about the abuse. They’d both cried as he held her very tight and felt disgusted with himself for having brought her to this. So many unasked questions were answered that night. He loved her more deeply than ever. 14

They’d married as he’d known they would virtually from the start. But as they stood at the altar and the priest read the vows, Michael had screamed ‘No’ in his head when the vow of fidelity was being read. It was one he knew he simply wouldn’t be able to keep and that the Lord would simply have to make allowances. His new bride would , through no fault of her own, never be able to give herself to him completely. He would have to deal with that in his own way. Claire had found out about some of his indiscretions and forgiven him. ‘Sex’ was somehow a special category in their relationship and the usual rules didn’t apply. But this most recent affair had had a love content. Claire had known it and Michael couldn’t deny it. That’s why things were going so pear-shaped. That’s why he was lying alone in their bed slowly going out of his mind as the previous evening, its conclusion yet to be played out, ran through his head relentlessly. 15

She’d flirted outrageously with hopeful older men who leered openly at her boldness – another piece of behaviour Claire would have particularly despised. He knew he was to blame and that he had to put up with it. But it had scared him. He’d tried desperately to get her to leave and come home with him but she was determined to stay – and make him suffer. Eventually she’d challenged him utter the ‘fuck off’ she knew was on his lips. And he’d been unable to stop himself. That’s when she’d commanded him to go. There had been no talking to her. She had the right after all. Michael had made sure she had money for a taxi and left the party alone, hurt and angry. He’d been sure she’d be right behind him. 16

Now his thoughts were moving beyond the more obvious possibilities. What if she’d gone off with one of the geezers she’d been flirting with? What if she’d come to her senses and tried to back out? What if he’d ‘cut up rough’?17

Then there was that feeling. It wasn’t anything she’d said or even in the way she’d looked. It was just a sense he’d had of her. A sense of being lost. Totally lost. That was when he thought of the quarry. He reached for the phone again and dialed her number.18

Claire was about to start the remaining half-revolution of her tumble before her cataclysmic landfall when she heard her phone ring. As surreal as the memory of the car-crash had been, the intrusion of this ever-so-everyday sound so faint yet so persistent, barely audible through the roar of the air rushing past her ears, seemed shockingly incongruous. She found herself bizarrely aware of the ridiculous fact that with less than a second to live she was wondering how she could answer her phone. She was entering the final quarter turn of the fall when she found herself a spectator on her old life once more. She was in bed with Michael. It was a night about a month beforehand when she had still to discover his affair.19

After a year of uncertainty about his love for her , Claire had begun to feel that somehow Michael was ‘home’. They had been laughing together and making love more often, sometimes at the same time. She felt they’d turned a corner somehow. The brief second honeymoon that had ensued had been brought to an abrupt halt by the events in the hotel bedroom at the wedding a few weeks later. That it should have come in the midst of such happiness made the blow more sickening to her. Yet somehow, at some level, she knew she’d expected it. God , it seemed had decreed she should not have happiness. Having the rug pulled from under her was something she’d become used to in life. She had no idea why. Maybe she was bad. Maybe the abuse by her father had been her fault after all. She’d tried so hard to be good and to make Michael love her. She simply didn’t deserve to be loved it seemed.20

In her vision now she was still happy. That night Michael had gone to bed first and was asleep when she arrived. She had warmed her cold hands on his warm, sleeping form in a way that was flirtatious as well as playful. At the end of the joyous lovemaking that had ensued he had held her tightly and she heard him say ‘Thank you’. 21

“Thank you for what?” she was asking.22

“For waking me like that.”23

“Like what?”24

“Like you wanted me.”25

“But I often do.” She heard the surprised complaint in her own voice.26

“No Claire – you don’t”27

“Ah Michael – you just forget”28

“ No love . I would have noticed . I’ve been waiting for you to wake me like that for over ten years”29

She saw herself cry. Like a little girl might.30

“I’m sorry , Michael. I don’t know why”31

|”Its alright , honey. Just promise me you’ll do it again sometime”32

As the happiness and warmth of the moment flowed over both of them all she could hear was the muffled and persistent ringing of her mobile phone. Its faint song was so out of place now, as incongruous as her feelings of happiness , given the fact that one and a half revolutions had almost been completed.33

Michael’s body jumped as if he’d received an electric shock. His brain’s electronic switchgear was misfiring as he failed to make the transition from REM sleep to deep sleep. The safety device that switches off motor response to stop us ‘acting out’ as we dream short-circuited to make him jump in his sleep. It had always amused Claire when it happened. Such events , it seems are often associated with ‘falling’ dreams.34

Michael’s mobile phone was ringing at his side. He’d fallen into a restless sleep as he waited desperately for her to return his calls. The dream of Claire’s suicide had shaken him badly. He grabbed at the phone and prayed it was her. It wasn’t. But her best friend was calling to say Claire had showed up at her house last night, very drunk and a little upset but that everything was okay. 35

Michael knew somehow that it would be.36