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The room he breaks her heart in is painted brown. She used to think it was a nice enough brown. Warm. Like whole wheat bread or cinnamon bagels. But even as he’s talking to her, the warmth drains from the walls, leaving them almost colourless. The colour of tanned flesh that’s grown cold. As she watches his mouth move clumsily around its dreadful subject, she thinks back to the buying of this paint. He stood beside her in the hardware store, the two of them yellowed under the lights above the paint chip display. He pulled out blue chips but she said she didn’t want to sleep underwater. She wanted a red or maybe a purplish colour. Something like tenderized meat, something like a womb, something like love. He said he didn’t care either way. It was only to make him care that she chose the brown. She said, “we’ll compromise” and she said it sweetly too. She didn’t want brown. He didn’t want brown. But she cared too much and he didn’t care enough. It was always turning out that way. He started painting while she was at work one day. She called him in the afternoon (she always called him in the afternoon) and asked him how it looked. He told her it looked okay. Okay wasn’t what she wanted from him, but it was the best he ever got around to giving her. Sometimes when she’d think about it long enough (like she did after she put the receiver down and went back to her work) his goddam apathy, his frigging carelessness would really get to her. She’d start wondering when he was ever going to wake up, realize she was there, show a little joy. Participate. As she climbed the stairs toward their apartment door that evening, she was playing with fantasies of leaving him. Or telling him to leave. She saw herself, flushed and proud and strong, saying to him, “I need more than this.” And she didn’t imagine him finally realizing how absent he’d been, exclaiming, telling her he would change. No. She accepted that he would probably shrug and gather up his things. She would watch his back go down the stairs she was climbing up now and she would think, “thank god that’s over.” But when she rounded the corner and put her key in the lock, she smelled the acrylic and she got all full of love again. She forgot about leaving him or asking him to leave and instead, she took her shoes off and called out “Hello!” She went into the dark bedroom where it smelled the most of paint and flipped on the lights. The brown looked nice she thought and she smiled warmly when he walked into the room behind her. She turned and put her arms on his shoulders and leaned up to kiss him. “You did such a good job,” she whispered as her fingers traced his chest through his paint-splattered shirt. Truth is, he’d done an okay job but he’d really been sort of careless about the edges which is what she noticed when he padded off to the washroom and left her lying on the bed, his come slipping out onto her thighs. That was years ago and she’d had that fantasy a few times since then. But honestly, she only played it to make herself feel better. More in control. Maybe it was a way to get around the fact that she knew she’d never do it. That she knew, in the end, he would be the one to leave. She knew it as she looked up at that ceiling the first time. And she knew it now as he started talking for what seemed like the first time in years. He would, was, is, leaving. These are things you just know and some people will stand up for themselves in the face of such gross certainties and they’ll make a preemptive strike. Just like she did in her fantasies. And now that he’s actually doing it, talking his way toward leaving her, she’s wondering why she couldn’t have been that strong. He begins by telling her that he feels he’s never really had a life of his own. She transcends her body and watches from a distance with the pained but knowing smirk of a clairvoyant who’s seen it coming all along. He says he’s not in love with anyone else, but that he feels he should try to be. She stares at his forehead from her place miles away and acknowledges that he really is awfully handsome. He mumbles something about caring about her and not wanting to lead her down any garden paths. She eyes his hands and notes that they are tucked under his arms defensively. He complains that she expects too much from him, that he’s worried he can’t keep her happy. She licks her lips and nods but he’s not looking at her anyway. He asks to understand that he’s afraid. Without a moment lost, she’s back in her body and she speaks over him.
No, she says. I can’t understand that. Because you’ve never mentioned it. Well, he says, I didn’t know how. Maybe I’m not over my last relationship yet. Maybe that’s what it is. She looks at him, more angrily now than she’s ever been able to before and with rising bile in her stomach she says, “I think you should go.” She doesn’t watch him go down the stairs. She sits resolutely in the brown room and tries not to cry. After all, this is only the inevitable. She wonders how she’ll go to sleep tonight. Or get up tomorrow. Or go to work. Or come home. After this, the brown room is just dreadful. It rots and flakes and it’s never the same again.
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