Pasha Malla - The Withdrawal Method

ONE OF THE last nights before Adriane moved out, Womack came home from volunteering and she was sleeping in the bed, the curtains open. The blankets on the couch were still there, crumpled in a woolly ball from where she had kicked them that morning. It was early, barely nine o'clock. Womack stood between the open curtains, looking down on her lying there, listening for the whistle of her breath. There was silence. Womack knew she was awake.

Hey, he said, getting into bed.

There was no reply, but Womack could feel her shifting, moving closer.

Hey, he said again.

Adriane turned over. Womack reached out and put his hand to her face, felt the wetness of tears on her cheek.

Just sleeping, right? said Adriane. No fooling around.

Womack nodded, avoided saying anything about old time's sake.

He slid one arm underneath her neck, another around her back, his thigh between her legs. Their faces were close. Her breath was salty and hot.

I miss you, he said.

Adriane sniffed.

He kissed her, then, felt her lips against his, but the kiss felt only like a gesture: a handshake, a nod, a wave goodbye. Then she turned and he curled tightly into her back and closed his eyes. After a few minutes like this, he felt her body relax as she fell asleep. Her breath came in deep, restful sighs.

Womack lay there, the tickle of Adriane's hair against his face. Sleepless minutes became an hour. An hour became two. He was hot. He kicked the covers off. Another hour passed. Womack thought, Sleep, sleep. He tried to match his breathing to hers. Eventually, he rolled away, releasing her, and sat up. Legs dangling off the bed, Womack looked at Adriane over his shoulder. Her face.

In the kitchen Womack filled a mug with milk and put it in the microwave, which whirred to life and cast a yellow glow in the dark kitchen. He leaned back on the counter in front of the refrigerator, smiled, then reached forward, opening the freezer. A cold blast of air, and there was the turkey, surrounded by ice-cube trays and Tv dinners and Tupperware.

In the den, Womack sat down with his warm milk on the uncomfortable chair and turned on his computer. He sipped at the milk while things booted up, thinking of the turkey in the freezer: a last sad attempt at domesticity, futile and abandoned and collecting the white fur of frost.

When the computer was ready, he opened up the file on the desktop that was his novel and sat there, reading it over, rolling slightly this way and that. He leaned back. The milk was done. He let the cup rest in his lap, stretched out his legs, and the next morning when Adriane woke, she found him asleep in the chair underneath the window, the computer's screensaver whirling around on the other side of the room.

ON THE BOY's bed are a harness and guardrail to prevent him from rolling out over the course of the night. These Womack once forgot to put in place; he realized the following morning and promptly called the boy's mother to make sure the boy had not cracked his skull open over the course of the night. The boy had not. Sylvia explained that every night after Womack leaves the house, she checks on her son and kisses him goodnight.

NOW IT is the last Saturday before Christmas. Next week the family has told Womack to take the day off. A holiday. But today Womack is scheduled to head out there on his bicycle, to go through his routine with the boy of opening doors and supper and bathtime and bedtime.

In his place that he now inhabits alone, in his place that is not quite loft and not quite apartment, his place that contains just under half as much furniture and two tropical houseplants fewer than it did a few weeks prior, Womack gets ready for his day of volunteering. He eats a sensible lunch of a bowl of soup, a bagel, and an apple. The coffee maker is gone, so instead Womack makes a cup of tea, which he sips while he edits a draft of his novel, not yet complete but still printed out and lying in two stacks on the kitchen table. He works with a blue pen on the stack of paper to his right. The completed pages he turns over and adds to the stack to his left. If he were honest with himself, he would admit that he cannot write anything new; the editing gives him something to do.

When it is time to leave, Womack finishes the page he is working on, stands, puts on his coat and hat and gloves, checks for the key to his bike lock in his pocket. At the door on his way out, he pauses for a moment, looking back across the kitchen, at the refrigerator, at the freezer.

At the family's house Sylvia is waiting, as always, with her son in his wheelchair, but this time the other children are decorating a Christmas tree in the corner of the room. Andrew is hanging ornaments with methodical symmetry; Jessica is wrapping the branches in silver tinsel. A blue macaroni angel looms above. Womack removes his coat and hat and gloves, lowers his backpack to the ground.

What's in the bag? asks the boy's mother.

Ah, says Womack. A little present.

He opens the zipper, and, shaking the backpack a bit, produces the turkey.

A turkey, says Sylvia. Beside her, the boy begins to moan.

I thought we could maybe have it tonight, says Womack, cradling it like an infant, adding, Together.

That's very kind of you, says Sylvia, but I think it's still frozen. It'll take at least a day to thaw before we can even think about cooking it.

Womack wavers at this, feeling vulnerable and foolish.

Hastily, Sylvia holds out her hands for the turkey. But if you're not going to eat it, we'd love to keep it for another time.

Womack smiles. The boy moans. Okay, says Womack.

The rest of the afternoon is spent predictably: the walking about, the doors, supper, the boy's bath. Womack lies the boy down on his bed, lifts the boy's legs up in the air, does his best to get the diaper on. Next: pajamas. Outside the December sky glows a dull orange. Womack closes the blinds of the boy's bedroom, pulls back the covers, starts to lift the latches on the guardrail to secure it alongside the mattress.

When the boy is safely in bed, Womack's duties will be over for the evening. He will cross the hall and knock on Sylvia's bedroom door. He will hear the click of the lock and the door will open and Sylvia will smile a tired sort of smile and say, Thank you, Martin, Merry Christmas, and Martin Womack will say, No problem, Merry Christmas to you too. He will say, See you in two weeks, Sylvia, and Sylvia will say, Yes.

But tonight, Womack realizes, in the den Jessica and Andrew will not be packing up The Game of Life, Jessica having won again, her little car packed with the blue and pink pegs of a successful family, her bank account bursting, her assets bountiful. They will have finished decorating the tree. They might be watching a movie, a Christmas movie, the tree blinking coloured lights from the corner of the room. Goodbye, Womack will whisper, as he puts on his coat. Jessica will say, Your turkey's in the fridge, not turning from the movie, and Andrew will wave and grin.

And so Womack will leave the family. He will head outside and unchain his bicycle and hop up onto it and push off and begin to pedal his way home, where his half-written novel waits for him on his kitchen table. The bicycle will cut down the darkened streets of the suburbs, heading toward the city and the novel. The streets will be black and wet with melted snow and spangled golden with streetlights, and riding back home along them, through the winter night, will tonight feel to Womack a little bit like falling.

ON ONE OF their many dives in the Red Sea, Jacques Cousteau and his crew excavated a piece of rare black coral from the reefs off the shores of the Sudan. Months later, Cousteau sat with Pablo Picasso on the whitewashed balcony of the painter's villa in Cannes, drinking wine of an inconsequential vintage and gazing out over the Mediterranean.