TBT #96: Little Secret Earthquakes

It was soon after he dropped the plate that she stood in the centre of the kitchen and said the words that changed his life. The plate didn’t break; it only cracked. That’s the sure sign of a well-made dish.

“I’m a liar?” she asked incredulously. But not in such a way that indicated she didn’t believe the statement to be true, but rather in a dismissive way, as if she couldn’t even believe he had broached the subject. She stood behind the counter outside the tiny apartment kitchen, looking in. She wore a lot of rings, he thought suddenly — in her hair, around her eyes, on her finger. But he did not give her that one. She had had it since she was young.

He had called her a liar and thrown the plate to the floor. They both stood silently for a moment, waiting for shattering sounds. They never came. Then she waited, mouth agape, for him to say something else. That never came. And then it hit her, and she asked her question, leaning forward on the counter with such force, like she was trying to drive it into the floor, into the ground, to the centre of the earth.

And then she said the words that changed his life: “You love liars. You seek out liars. You find then and know them and love them too.”

He had a theory about relationships that he never told her about. He thought that all relationships were based on a few great shared moments. Those moments were infrequent but intense like little secret earthquakes, felt and shared together, that no one else knows. Rare but powerful, so much so that the relationship continues in an attempt to recapture those moments. To live them again.

“You love liars,” she said again. “And maybe I am a liar. I don’t know. I like to think I’m not, that I don’t lie more than anyone else. But you fucking love the idea of someone lying. It gets you going, it turns you on, it keeps you safe.”

With her, all their earthquakes happened all at once. One night, extending past the dark, into the light, a 22-hour flight from Chicago to New Zealand, and that’s not even a metaphor. They drank vodka from plastic cups, shared a set of headphones, tried to list all the U.S. Presidents and, around the time they were to land, snuggled into one another. He thought two things when the plane hit the tarmac that day. First, that this girl smelled like peaches and second, this never happens to me.

“It’s so you can leave, isn’t it? That’s why you love it. That’s why you push for them. The lies. The little lies. The lies that don’t even matter. You note them all, so one day, when you finally feel like it, you can call her on it, and make her feel bad, and end things, knowing that it wasn’t your fault. It was hers. The lying bitch.”

She did not look hurt until she said the last part. The word bitch broke her, and she slumped her shoulders and sighed. He did not move.

The flight was almost two years ago. A lot had happened since then. They spent more time together. They dated. They kissed, they fucked, they made love. Their lives came together more and more until they simply were together and it was all very much characterized by a painting he once saw, of lovers in a park, and the thought that ran through his head: this never happens to me.

And in other moments, the counter-moments, he believed there was reason for that, as he stared across the table at her slurping milk from a cheerios bowl or watched her pluck her eyebrows in front of the bathroom mirror. He saw a painting about that sort of thing once, too, of beautiful things that just looked like coloured dots when viewed up close.

They drifted together all, he often thought, in an effort to capture moments like the ones on that flight. To reignite the feelings they felt that night.

“Be a man,” she said, playing with that ring. “We’re not children anymore.”

Little earthquakes, secret and shared, boundless and brief. She was right; he knew that. What he didn’t know was how she knew. And so he turned and stepped over the plate with the small crack — the freakishly sturdy plate — and looked at her. Her round face, her green eyes, her short blonde hair that curled where it wasn’t supposed to. She didn’t look back at him. She did not cry. She just stared at her hands and muttered again and again.

“A man,” she said again. “Don’t play these stupid games with me.”

And he felt it, standing in the kitchen with this girl, this trans-pacific girl, who laughed even when he wasn’t funny and feigned interest when he told her his most banal thoughts, like how he didn’t like the word divisive. He felt it more, as she finally looked up at him, shaking her head and breathing like she had just run a marathon.

He felt the ground move and, feeling the ground move, looked desperately for something to hold onto.