Fidelity

It was a feeble, ungracious attempt at humour, but she smiled. In the past she might have been offended by the comment.

"I'm fine," she said. "A little dizzy if I move my head too fast, but the doctor says that'll pass in a few days. Otherwise, I feel good." She looked healthy, somehow more robust now that the anxious wildness was gone from her eyes. She'd always been an especially beautiful woman in repose: at nights, when things were good, he would sometimes wake and just lie there, watching her sleeping.

"How did it feel?" he asked. "The operation, I mean."

"Nothing special. I was anaesthetized and I woke, I think it was eleven hours later. I don't remember anything." Then, as though realizing what he wanted to know, she added: "Waking up was the nicest part. It was like coming out of a beautiful relaxing sleep. I just lay there, drifting, no pressures, no horrible thoughts. It was like being a little girl again. Carefree."

"That dramatic?"

"No, not dramatic at all. Quite the reverse, in fact. I wasn't really making any comparisons at the time. I wasn't aware of thinking about anything in particular because there didn't seem to be anything to be that concerned about immediately."

He imagined the molecules of the psycosmetic drugs as solid entities, travelling along the neural network of her brain like safari hunters blasting away at the unruly native life. Here a spark of rebellion. Bang. There an over-emotional tendency. Zap.

"Are you happy now?"

"Happiness is something you can only register after the fact," she said, echoing one of their many conversations on the subject. At least she remembered. "I'm contented. I'm not worried or depressed or confused. I'm just OK. And you?"

"I've missed you," he said, reaching out and taking her hand. She did not reject or encourage him. "I tried to see you. I didn't want you to have the operation."

"I know. That's why I had to make sure you didn't."

"I was afraid they'd turn you into a zombie."

"Well, you can see they haven't. I'm really all right."

His hand was trembling. She took it between hers and held it still.

"I've brought you something," he said, fumbling in his pocket and producing the page from her notepad.

She took it from him, unfolded it and scanned what she had written. Without any expression whatsoever. "It'll be a good poem when you finish it," he said, though he knew that the fragments were far from her best work. "No," she replied. "I don't think so. I really couldn't do any more with it." He wondered if she simply meant she was abandoning it as an inferior poem.

"Are you going to continue to write?" "I don't know." Her exhalation was like a sigh. "Oh, I expect so. I think the urge is still there. Only it's more of a mild desire than a compulsion."

"You can't just let it slip away."

"A lot of my poetry came from the part of me that was sick, Neal. It was cathartic art." She smiled: this had been another perennial dialogue of theirs. "I don't know whether I need to do that any more."

"When you come home you'll get back into it just like before."

The page lay discarded on the bed. "I won't be coming home, Neal. I'm going away."

"Away? Where?"

The words came out like gobbets of glue. Glop. Glop.

"To my aunt on the West Coast. She's agreed to put me up for a couple of months. I need a change and a rest."

"But you'll be back?"

"I don't know. I haven't decided."

"You have to come back. We have to pick it up."

Something that might have been pity crossed her face. "I'm sorry, Neal. There isn't going to be any going back."

"What do you mean? Why not?"

"Since the operation I see things in a different light. You must realize that. I couldn't go back to living with you."

"Why not?" he repeated. Frantic.

"The good times we had were really good, and I'll always remember you with affection for them. But the bad times were equally bad, and I couldn't go through it all again."

"But it'll be different now you've had the operation."

"No, Neal."

He waited, but the silence was too much. "What is it?"

"I just don't feel the same way about you any more."

The anxiety and sense of hopelessness which had been mounting in him ever since he had sat down at the bedside suddenly gave way to a rush of anger.

"You mean you don't need me any more," he said with venom. "You don't need me to play your neurotic games with. You don't need me as your crutch, to come running whenever you scream for help."

"Neal, there's no need for this."

"You've used me all along and now you're dropping me like a toy."

"It's not like that."

"You always were a bitch, Claire. A bloody selfish bitch."

She did not start throwing things. Instead, she was staring at him quite calmly.