Turn 10 of 11

Ask Marguerite what the thing about Geoff's wife was

The question sits in your mouth for a long moment before you let it out. The hoover has stopped. The building is holding its breath, or you are, and the difference does not matter.

"What was the thing?" you say. "About his wife. The thing he removed."

Marguerite's hand finds the edge of the desk. She grips it, not leaning, just holding on, the way someone holds a railing when they are about to say something they have carried up a long flight of stairs. The pen is beside her on the desk, untouched. She does not reach for it this time.

"She was a woman who worried," Marguerite says. "Not the ordinary kind — not whether the bills were paid, not whether the kids were alright. She worried about him. Specifically, constantly, the way some people check the locks. She would call him at work to make sure he had eaten. She would wait up. She would ask him what he was thinking, and she would not accept 'nothing' for an answer, because she knew it was never nothing. She worried the way water worries at a stone — not harsh, not cruel, just persistent, and over years it had worn him smooth in places he did not want to be smooth."

She looks at you, and the guard is not down but it is thinner, translucent, the face behind it visible in a way it has not been.

"He loved her for it. He also could not bear it. He said it was the thing that kept him known — that she would not let him disappear into himself, would not let him go quiet, would reach in and find him even when he did not want to be found. And he pressed the key because he thought — if she stopped worrying, if she stopped reaching, he would have room. He would have the room he needed."

The room is very quiet. The desk lamp hums, a frequency lower than the ventilation, almost subliminal. Marguerite picks up the empty mug, holds it, sets it back down without purpose.

"She stopped reaching," Marguerite says. "That is what he removed. The reaching. And without it she is a perfectly pleasant woman who does not call, does not wait up, does not ask what he is thinking. She is fine. She is entirely fine. And she does not know him, Dara, because the reaching was the thing that kept her knowing him. Without it he is just a man she lives near."

You are thinking of Thursdays. You are thinking of Ellis turning to you and saying you have been quiet today, and asking if you are alright, and making the Friday suggestion, and the way the suggestion sits in the air between your desks like a hand extended and retracted, extended and retracted, eleven years of it, the reaching that is also the not-quite-touching, and you understand suddenly and completely what load-bearing means and you understand that you are standing in Marguerite's office at nearly seven o'clock and the keyboard is on the desk between you and it is warm.