Move On

Lisa J. Bigelow

The story’s action is: he left her. It seemed to take no more than seconds, though the scene had been building for months, perhaps from the very beginning. It began with that first exchange of interested glances and built to this single moment, the climax. The slamming of the door which seems to end all things. But everyone knows such events are merely the curtain falling between acts. A brief intermission, a night’s crying alone, and life continues.

Yet this moment, as it occurs, seems to be everything. Everything converges to that point. Everything happens at once. Later, they will not be able to sort out the order of events — who said what when, what or who provoked what or whom, when they finally, separately, realized that things must change and created separate solutions to change things. The whole scene will have seemed instantaneous, a chunk of simultaneity in their memories.

Still, clearly the actions happened in sequence, there was an order to them — else they would not make a scene.

§

Timing is relative. Einstein proved this with a thought experiment: in one fell swoop, lightning strikes the very front and very back of a train speeding down the track. To an observer standing on the rain-swept plain outside, equidistant from the train’s front and back, the two enormous bolts of electricity appear simultaneous. But a passenger seated halfway along the train, flying with the train from where it has been to where it is going, sees the lightning strike the front of the train first. The back is struck a split-second later. For in that moment, the passenger has drawn closer to the flash ahead and left the other even further behind.

To us, a day is a day. Only days upon days, years upon years, come close to constituting eternity. But imagine time to a fly, whose life is so short. A week to us may be a lifetime to them. Each second, hours. Imagine a fly, observing from its proverbial spot on the wall, as he leaves her.

§

The ceiling fan whizzes a fraction of a degree, sends a current of warm air to brush his cheek, his hot forehead, which releases the first beads of sweat. He’d kept so calm until this moment, his turn: his teeth press on his lower lip to form that buzzing consonant, vvv, in the word “leave” or “love.” As in, “I need to leave,” or “I don’t love you anymore,” or “I’m sorry I’m leaving, love.” But the sentence, or even the thoughts provoking the words, will not be completed in this turn.

In the tremulous moment before her turn, the floor vibrates from the slightest rotation of truck tires on the street outside their apartment, truck tires sinking in the melting asphalt. A bead of water courses an imperceptibly short journey through the stem of the geranium she sprayed earlier that morning. A dust mote settles on the windowsill. The feet of a wandering ant rest on the banana peel lying splayed on the table, leftover from breakfast. Another droplet wells in the tip of the leaky kitchen faucet; soon it will drip, falling to hit the sink’s porcelain with a splash, over the course of many turns in the next second.

Her turn: her stomach clenches tighter. The neurotransmitter carrying the lll sound he spoke finally registers in the brain, and she wonders very briefly whether he will say “love” or “leave,” and why he looks so unhappy. On her next turn, it will all make sense, but now she can only anticipate. Sweat draws itself up on her brow. The ceiling fan turns another fraction of a degree. It will cool no one, and they will not notice.

A mosquito’s needle barely pierces his neck. The pain will not register for several turns. Water reaches the geranium’s bottommost leaf. The floor vibrates. The baby’s toes sharply nudge the walls of the womb. This has happened a hundred times before. It will be lost in their other memories of this moment. The baby waits its next turn.

A bead of water wells in the rim of his eyelid; soon it will drip.

Their hearts beat, one after another after another.

§

Later, she sits with a sympathetic friend who cries with her, tells her he’s a creep, shoos the flies, and rubs her abdomen. They feel the baby’s kick together. All the time she is thinking, “It happened so fast,” and all the time her friend whispers, “Move on, move on.” Move on.