Just After Sunset by Stephen King

And he looked at her reproachfully. It would be a little while yet before she picked up the book and threw it at him, but that was what really tore it. That reproachful look. She could no longer stand it. Given his rather long face, it was like having a sheep in the house. I married a Dorset gray, she thought, and now it’s just baa-baa-baa, all day long.

But she tried one more time to be reasonable about something she knew in her heart had no reasonable core. There was magical thinking; there was also magical doing. Running, for instance.

“Marathoners run until they fall down,” she said.

“Are you planning to run in a marathon?”

“Maybe.” But she looked away. Out the window, at the driveway. The driveway called her. The driveway led to the sidewalk, and the sidewalk led to the world.

“No,” he said. “You’re not going to run in a marathon. You have no plans to run in a marathon.”

It occurred to her—with that sense of brilliant revelation the obvious can bring—that this was the essence of Henry, the fucking apotheosis of Henry. During the six years of their marriage he had always been perfectly aware of what she was thinking, feeling, planning.

I comforted you, she thought—not furious yet but beginning to be furious. You lay there on the bed, leaking, and I comforted you.

“The running is a classic psychological response to the pain you feel,” he was saying in that same earnest way. “It’s called avoidance. But, honey, if you don’t feel your pain, you’ll never be able to—”

That’s when she grabbed the object nearest at hand, which happened to be a paperback copy of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. This was a book she had tried and rejected, but Henry had picked it up and was now about three quarters of the way through, judging from the bookmark. He even has the reading tastes of a Dorset gray, she thought, and hucked it at him. It struck him on the shoulder. He stared at her with wide, shocked eyes, then grabbed at her. Probably just to hug her, but who knew? Who really knew anything?

If he had grabbed a moment earlier, he might have caught her by the arm or the wrist or maybe just the back of her T-shirt. But that moment of shock undid him. He missed, and she was running, slowing only to snatch her fanny pack off the table by the front door. Down the driveway, to the sidewalk. Then down the hill, where she had briefly pushed a pram with other mothers who now shunned her. This time she had no intention of stopping or even slowing. Dressed only in shorts, sneakers, and a T-shirt reading SAVE THE CHEERLEADER, Emily ran out into the world. She put her fanny pack around her waist and snapped the catch as she pelted down the hill. And the feeling?

Exhilaration. Pure pow.

She ran downtown (two miles, twenty-two minutes), not even stopping when the light was against her; when that happened, she jogged in place. A couple of boys in a top-down Mustang—it was just getting to be top-down weather—passed her at the corner of Main and Eastern. One whistled. Em gave him the finger. He laughed and applauded as the Mustang accelerated down Main.

She didn’t have much cash, but she had a pair of credit cards. The American Express was the prize, because with it she could get traveler’s checks.

She realized she wasn’t going home, not for a while. And when the realization caused a feeling of relief—maybe even fugitive excitement—instead of sorrow, she suspected this was not a temporary thing.

She went into the Morris Hotel to use the phone, then decided on the spur of the moment to take a room. Did they have anything for just the one night? They did. She gave the desk clerk her AmEx card.

“It doesn’t look like you’ll need a bellman,” the clerk said, taking in her shorts and T-shirt.

“I left in a hurry.”

“I see.” Spoken in the tone of voice that said he didn’t see at all. She took the key he slid to her and hurried across the wide lobby to the elevators, restraining the urge to run.

–2–

You sound like you might be crying.

She wanted to buy some clothes—a couple of skirts, a couple of shirts, two pairs of jeans, another pair of shorts—but before shopping she had calls to make: one to Henry and one to her father. Her father was in Tallahassee. She decided she had better call him first. She couldn’t recall the number of his office phone in the motor pool but had his cell-phone number memorized. He answered on the first ring. She could hear engines revving in the background.

“Em! How are you?”

That should have been a complex question, but wasn’t. “I’m fine, Dad. But I’m in the Morris Hotel. I guess I’ve left Henry.”

“Permanently or just a kind of trial balloon?” He didn’t sound surprised—he took things in stride; she loved that about him—but the sound of the revving motors first faded, then disappeared. She imagined him going into his office, closing the door, perhaps picking up the picture of her that stood on his cluttered desk.

“Can’t say yet. Right now it doesn’t look too good.”

“What was it about?”

“Running.”

“Running?”

She sighed. “Not really. You know how sometimes a thing is about something else? Or a whole bunch of something elses?”

“The baby.” Her father had not called her Amy since the crib death. Now it was always just the baby.

“And the way I’m handling it. Which is not the way Henry wants me to. It occurred to me that I’d like to handle things in my own way.”

“Henry’s a good man,” her father said, “but he has a way of seeing things. No doubt.”

She waited.

“What can I do?”

She told him. He agreed. She knew he would, but not until he heard her all the way out. The hearing out was the most important part, and Rusty Jackson was good at it. He hadn’t risen from one of three mechanics in the motor pool to maybe one of the four most important people at the Tallahassee campus (and she hadn’t heard that from him; he’d never say something like that to her or anyone else) by not listening.

“I’ll send Mariette in to clean the house,” he said.

“Dad, you don’t need to do that. I can clean.”

“I want to,” he said. “A total top-to-bottom is overdue. Damn place has been closed up for almost a year. I don’t get down to Vermillion much since your mother died. Seems like I can always find some more to do up here.”

Em’s mother was no longer Debra to him, either. Since the funeral (ovarian cancer), she was just your mother.

Em almost said, Are you sure you don’t mind this? but that was the kind of thing you said when a stranger offered to do you a favor. Or a different kind of father.

“You going there to run?” he asked. She could hear a smile in his voice. “There’s plenty of beach to run on, and a good long stretch of road, too. As you well know. And you won’t have to elbow people out of your way. Between now and October, Vermillion is as quiet as it ever gets.”

“I’m going there to think. And—I guess—to finish mourning.”

“That’s all right, then,” he said. “Want me to book your flight?”

“I can do that.”

“Sure you can. Emmy, are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said.

“You sound like you might be crying.”

“A little bit,” she said, and wiped her face. “It all happened very fast.” Like Amy’s death, she could have added. She had done it like a little lady; never a peep from the baby monitor. Leave quietly, don’t slam the door, Em’s own mother often said when Em was a teenager.

“Henry won’t come there to the hotel and bother you, will he?”

She heard a faint, delicate hesitation before he chose bother, and smiled in spite of her tears, which had pretty well run their course, anyway. “If you’re asking if he’s going to come and beat me up that’s not his style.”

“A man sometimes finds a different style when his wife up and leaves him—just takes off running.”

“Not Henry,” she said. “He’s not a man to cause trouble.”

“You sure you don’t want to come to Tallahassee first?”

She hesitated. Part of her did, but—

“I need a little time on my own. Before anything else.” And she repeated, “All this happened very fast.” Although she suspected it had been building for quite some time. It might even have been in the DNA of the marriage.

“All right. Love you, Emmy.”

“Love you, too, Dad. Thank you.” She swallowed. “So much.”

Henry didn’t cause trouble. Henry didn’t even ask where she was calling from. Henry said, “Maybe you’re not the only one who needs a little time apart. Maybe this is for the best.”