Song for this part: "Satin In A Coffin," Modest Mouse
They walked to the door again, the front door. Ansel, behind her, said “I don’t want you to go, Saoirse. Honey.”
Sshe turned and looked back at him and said “That’s why I have to go.” When he just looked at her, confused, she went on. “It’s because you don’t want me to go that I need to leave. I don’t think you’re you, Ansel. I think you, real-Ansel, is back home in Life or is in his own, your own, After, and not here with me, because real Ansel would want me to be happy.” She pursed her lips and tried to decide how much of that she’d just made up. “You, I think, are just a version of Ansel I apparently wanted. An Ansel who, I don’t know, wants me around all the time.”
“I did want you around all the time.”
“That’s not the point,” Saoirse said, and then wondered what the point was and felt lost. “You didn’t… never mind. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“What?” asked Stephanie. “I don’t get it.”
Ansel turned and looked at her. “She’s talking about the time she almost left me,” he said.
Saoirse was only momentarily surprised that Ansel knew what she was getting at. Then she remembered that this Ansel, just a creation she was sure, an Ansel, would know everything that she knew. She knew again that she would never, ever be able to tell whether he was the Ansel or not because she could not figure out a test that wouldn’t depend on her own knowledge.
Saoirse remembered, and remembered her embarrassment over how headstrong she had been (was?) each time this came up in life. She said: “We had just graduated college. We had just married. We hadn’t had you, yet, Stephanie, or any of you. I was feeling not ready to settle down. I didn’t like, for a while there, being married. I was dissatisfied and I didn’t even know why. I just didn’t want to go to work and come home and eat dinner and watch TV and go out with friends who were also couples and then play racquetball on the weekends. I didn’t want that.
“But I didn’t know what I did want and so I didn’t say anything, for about two months. I just got more and more miserable and more and more depressed and couldn’t figure it out.
“One night it all came to a head and I was lying in bed and not sleeping and had to get up to go to work in the morning, and I just laid there watching the digital clock numbers click over, one at a time, counting down the time until I had to get up and go through it all again and I got more and more upset because at least sleep was one place where I wasn’t miserable and now I couldn’t even do that. I sat up in bed, really slowly because I didn’t want to wake Ansel up.”
Ansel took her hand, the one that wasn’t holding Chuck’s hand. “But you did wake me up. I woke up and I heard you get up and go sit at the foot of the bed.” He was looking at her as he talked. “I heard you sit down and I heard you scuff your feet and I heard you start to cry, muffled and quiet and sad.”
He pulled her in close and hugged her. “Remember what I said?”
“You asked me what was wrong, and I said…”
“You said you were going to leave me. You said I’m leaving you, Ansel. I’m not happy and I’m going to leave. And I didn’t even hesitate. I remember that.”
“You told me if that’s what you need to be happy then you have to do it.”
Ansel bit his lower lip. Just like Ansel always did. “I did.” He said. “I said that.”
“That’s why I have to go.” Saoirse said. “That’s part of it, anyway. You’re not you.” She looked at the rest of them. “I hope you understand.”
She wondered if the After would make them understand.
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