What Must Be Done

It's late. I've been sitting here for some time now. Just staring at the wall. The dog is asleep in the chair next to me. My wife is asleep upstairs. I think it's time to go.

I've been ready for this for a while. Today, when I left work, I made sure everything I needed was in the car. When I go out the back door I can just walk around to the driveway where I left the passenger side door unlocked and grab my bag. It won't take me long, and then I'll be on my way.

I wanted to tell her I was leaving, but she'd just make me stay. I'm not strong enough. It has to be done anyway. I can't just leave things like this, not and live with myself. I know she keeps saying that what's done is done, but I can't help feeling that I can fix it. Or at least make everyone hurt the same.

So I kissed her goodnight and went downstairs to read. She doesn't like it when I don't go to sleep with her, but I've been reading downstairs a lot lately. I knew this night was coming, and I didn't want her to think it was odd when I was late getting to bed. She'll figure it out eventually of course, but by then I'll be gone. Who knows, maybe by then, I'll be back.

I'm planning on coming back, but I don't really think I will. Honestly, I've given this a lot of thought lately, and as much as I'd like to go out, take care of this, and be home and in bed before morning, I don't really think that will happen. So I kissed her goodnight and went downstairs to read. And I tried to drink in her face and her smell so that I'll never forget it, even if I only have one night left to remember.

Instead of walking down the street away from my home, I cut through the neighbors' yards and work my way past businesses and cross streets. If I just walked to the corner I could turn around and walk back and give up on this whole thing. This way, even though my home may be less than a mile a way still, I feel like I've left it far behind. It isn't hard once I concentrate on it. All I have to do is keep telling myself I don't care and keep walking away. It's so far away now I can't even see it when I do turn back and look.

It has to be done anyway. It's not like I could just pretend this didn't happen. Ever since I had to come home that day and explain to her what had happened I've known I was going to have to do this. At first I told myself that we couldn't afford the risk. Then I told myself that it was too dangerous. Eventually I tried just telling myself to let go. But the reality is I've never let it go. I've carried it in my heart like a stone, and I can't put it down until it's finished.

So now I'm walking along dark streets at two in the morning with a bag over my shoulder thinking about her. She wouldn't want this. Neither do I. But I can't have a life with her without taking care of this one last thing.

The door's locked of course, but I never intended to go in that way anyway. It's a warm night, and no one in this neighborhood can afford real air conditioning. There are some window units that show me where the bedrooms are, but they keep the living areas cool by opening the doors and windows during the day. The windows are shut now of course, but they wouldn't have bothered to lock them just so they could unlock them in the morning. No one ever does. A closed window is always assumed to be locked right? And they never ever are.

It isn't until I'm standing there, next to an old couch with a torn cushion and a stain down one side that it all becomes real to me. In that moment I take a deep breath, hold it for a second, and then slowly release it. All of my fear and apprehension and compassion is released in that one breath. The next breath I take is filled with hate.

I breathe that hate deep until I'm ready to do what I must. It has to be this way. It can't be any other. If I can't fix things, I can at least break them. It's all that's left to me.

I breathe that hate deep into my lungs until it fills my vision. I'm blinded by it, and my lungs burn with it. Doing this thing isn't the hard part, I learned how to break things a long time ago. Making myself that person. Giving up the thin veneer of civility I use to protect myself from the world each day and becoming that animal is the hard part.

But in the end, it's not really that hard. Once you accept that a thing must be done, all that's left is doing it. So I breathe that hate so deep it becomes a part of me. It becomes me. And I reach into my bag.

It's just a picture. One picture. A young man and woman, sitting between some trees on a blanket spread out on the ground. The blanket has little red firetrucks all along the edges, the kind of blanket a little boy would have. The man is smiling down at a small child sitting on the blanket between them, its legs bowed out in front of it as it leans towards some toy, indistinguishable in the foreground. The woman is looking over at her husband and smiling, with one of her arms slightly raised towards him with her wrist bent and her hand open as if to say “Look at what you've given me, this wonderful thing I'll always cherish.” Behind the family you can just make out blurry shapes of other people at the park that day, neither knowing nor caring that they would become, in some small way, a part of this memory. The picture is cold to the touch, but looking at it, you can feel the warm sun that was shining on that family that day. It isn't hot, just comfortably warm. If you let yourself be taken by the image, you can feel the gentle breeze in the air, as though it just tossed the woman's hair, or was about to. A picture that looks almost like it was taken on accident. As though seconds before or seconds later, the people in it would have posed or smiled at the camera, but for one instant, they simply exist as people in the picture, living completely for that single moment in time.

It's too dark to see the picture, and I don't even bother trying. I don't need to see it, I just needed to bring it. It's the picture that I needed to accomplish what I came here for. I know where the bedrooms are of course, I saw the window air conditioning units outside. It isn't hard to imagine what I'll find when I open the door to the larger room down the hall. An old bed with worn sheets. A man and woman asleep. Perhaps some discarded piece of their day cast aimlessly to the floor amongst a sock or slip of paper. The whole room oriented around a television set placed against the wall. Nothing more or less than you would expect in any bedroom in any home.

I spent many hours wondering how I could make this perfect. Now I realize that it can't be. I wasn't ever meant to get away with this, no more than he was. Does it matter if it's an accident or not? In the end, it's the same. Getting away with it isn't the point. It simply must be done, and so I'm standing here, looking down at him, lying in his bed, ready to do what must be done.

If I still had compassion in my heart, I'd pray for her forgiveness.

If I still had mercy in my heart I'd pray for him to awaken and stop me.

If I still had hope in my heart I'd pray to awaken myself and find this all a dream.