The Unraveling

Annie Meitchik

It was the kind of morning where Ingrid’s feet stung as she swiveled out of bed touching the wooden floorboards tentatively, the way one might dip a toe in a swimming pool. 

She wrapped the duvet around her shoulders and made her way down the stairs. The grandfather clock in the hallway said it was 6:17. Morning or evening, it didn’t matter. The clock had been wrong for years. 

Ingrid rounded the corner and entered the kitchen. Even though she saw Richard’s back before seeing his face, it was like it’d gone the other way around. From the way his shoulders caved in on the sides and the furrow in his neck where his hairline ended, she knew exactly what he’d look like when he eventually turned towards her. His green eyes would be red around the edges from his habit of rubbing them when he was trying not to cry. 

“I’m putting up water for tea, do you want any,” she asked. 

“No, I’m fine,” he turned, “Actually, yes.” 

She was right. His face was as she knew it would be. 

“Please,” he added. 

“Mmhmm.” 

Richard was emotionally unavailable. He’s a man. It goes without saying. But with Richard, the case of unavailability was especially acute. Watch: “Why are you upset?” asked Ingrid. 

“I’m not.”

See. 

Richard knew he was depressed. There was no particular external reason for it. He loved Ingrid. They’d been together for five years, lived together for the last two (Or was it three?? So hard to remember with the pandemic). He had a close relationship with his parents and his younger brother, they’d drifted apart the natural amount since he’d gone to university, but that only added to the normalcy. He had a decent paying job that didn’t follow him home at night. Life was life. 

Ingrid knew she wasn’t in love with Richard. Maybe she never had been, but it’d be better to say “not anymore.” I’m not in love with you anymore. Much kinder. It implied that there had indeed been a time when she was in love with Richard and that time was simply no longer. Good. In the five years they’d been together, and the last three they’d cohabitated in this tiny apartment, he’d complimented her twice. 

Once on their first date. 

Ingrid and Richard went to the ice cream shop, Three Sisters, that she’d been going to since she was 10 years-old. They were juniors in college. The college was in Ingrid’s hometown, and about 3,000 miles away from Richard’s. He ordered a cup of black raspberry and she had a cone with cookies and coffee—loads of crushed oreos spun into a rich espresso flavor. They sat on the white wooden bench in front. With his dollhouse scaled plastic spoon he took a taste from Ingrid’s cone. 

“Yours is better than mine. You made the better choice.” 

The second time was later on. Maybe two years into the relationship. They’d reached the point on their timeline where the sex had shifted entirely into something comforting rather than passionate. It was an unusually sunny day in February and they both happened to have the day off from work. It was the sort of day where they’d normally jump at the opportunity to be outside, to be doing anything better than shivering. It was the first day of the year that brought with it the hope of spring. Ingrid rolled over into Richard’s arms in bed. The improbable sunlight fell in diagonal brushstrokes over Ingrid’s face and hair and shoulders. He kissed her with a forgotten intensity. Something so forgotten it was a lot like remembering. 

“I like you better than the sunshine,” he said.

Maybe she had loved him then. Or maybe, more realistically, she loved herself then. She certainly loved him as an outlet, creatively. Ingrid would come up with ideas—ideas for the conversations they would have, the questions she wanted to ask him, the things she wanted to do together, the whole trajectory of the story she wanted him to be a part of. On the pages of her notebooks, the margins of library books, and the Notes app on her iPhone she would rehearse. She wrote out texts she would eventually send him in response to texts she imagined him sending and she wrote down the things she was too afraid to communicate in hopes that someday she’d feel secure enough to be vulnerable. She never wanted to misplace her thoughts. She really truly did want to trust him. But, if the past had shown Ingrid anything it was that it was a lot easier to love than to trust. So, especially in the early days, she did as much as she could to control. The number one rule of self-preservation? Never let yourself care more than the other person. Ingrid knew that the foundation of a story was always the most important. It didn’t really matter to anyone how things unraveled if the beginning was something extraordinarily designed. And mastery takes a certain level of distance between you and the work. What’s lost in authenticity is made up for in structure. 

They knew each other at a distance since freshman year orientation. They followed each other on Instagram but never interacted with each other’s posts. Ingrid’s account has been deleted for years now, and although she hardly remembers anything she’d ever posted, she remembers the only photo that Richard had ever liked before they really knew each other. Hundreds of people had liked the photo, but if she had to name names, the only one she really remembered seeing the notification from was Richard. It was a good photo of Ingrid. She looked genuinely happy in it. The caption was lyrics from the song “Caring Is Creepy” by The Shins. 

It's a luscious mix of words and tricks 

That let us bet when we know we should fold 

She wondered, whenever the memory occurred to her, why her brain had perspicaciously held onto it when she could have interpreted the notification like any other and moved it to the trash bin in her mind. But the like from Richard stuck as though their consciousnesses were already connected, planting seeds for the future. 

She never brought it up to Richard. Hey, I remember you liking a photo of me over five years ago. Do you remember that? It made absolutely no sense. Nobody’s brain worked like that. 

When Ingrid and Richard properly met in their South African Art elective class, she felt that their initials, R and I, were a sign. They were in Rhode Island afterall. She noted it on her phone before they’d even talked outside of the lecture knowing that she’d eventually find an opportunity to take him to the park where she would carve their initials into a tree with her car key and make a day out of the thought, maximizing on emotional velocity.

It was actually Richard who first had the thought that their initials R and I held a special synchronicity with the fact they’d met in Rhode Island. He kept it to himself, enjoying it for the simple coincidence it was.  

Ingrid still thinks the realization was hers alone. 

Richard had gone by Richard since he was in Kindergarten. Named after his grandfather, his parents preferred to call him Richie. Richie sounded more youthful, more playful. But Richard knew, even as a kid, that he wasn’t really the playful type. When he was 19, during his sophomore year of college, his younger brother texted him a link to an SNL clip “Wells for Boys.” 

“This is so u lmao,” he’d typed. 

The video featured a sensitive boy playing with a toy well as he contemplated his existence and whatnot. Richard didn’t think it was very funny. 

He texted back, “hah.” 

The electric kettle clicked. The water was ready. Ingrid grabbed loose leaf strainers and two mismatched mugs from the cabinet. She put Moroccan mint tea in hers and black tea in Richard’s. With the duvet still draped over her shoulders, she filled both cups with water and watched several small tea leaves dance around in the golden liquid. She took her mug off of the counter and started to walk away leaving Richard alone with his cup of tea. 

“Wait,” he said, “Can you come back?” 

“Yeah,” she said. 

They stood awkwardly in the tiny kitchen which smelled of dying tulips Ingrid had forgotten to take out with the trash. Richard took a sip of his tea but it was too hot and he put it down trying to conceal the fact he’d burned his tongue even though Ingrid obviously saw him do it. 

“Okay, I’m gonna sit on the couch.” 

Richard followed Ingrid the couple feet from the kitchen to the living room. They set their mugs on the coffee table. Ingrid sat on the couch, repositioning the duvet so that she could share it with Richard. He sat down, entering the cocoon. He felt like he was sinking. They sat side by side and then Ingrid shifted so her back was to the arm of the couch, her long legs crossing over Richard’s lap under the blanket. He instinctively put his hand on her knee and ran his finger tips up and down, tracing imaginary constellations, mapping out possible universes on her skin. 

“I turn 26 next week.” 

He said it almost like a question. Like he wanted Ingrid to say Oh, no you’ve got much more time than that. Instead, she just nodded. It was true. 

“And, I just feel stuck. I mean, I know none of us really know what we’re doing, but I felt like I at least used to. But when I did, like back when I was 16, 17 years-old, it didn’t even matter. I could have afforded not to know then. But fuck. That was almost 10 years ago now and I lost it.” 

“I think we’re doing everything right. You’re doing everything right. We did the school thing, your job isn’t awful, you like fixing bicycles, right? Your family loves you. You have friends.” 

“I studied sculpture,” Richard said. 

“And you’re sculpting bikes, in a way, every day,” offered Ingrid, “I feel like we’re always talking in circles. Wheels if you will.”

Ingrid smiled to herself and reached for her mug. Her tea was the perfect temperature and she took greedy sips, the mug warming her palms. “Funny. I’m being serious. Ingrid, I don’t want to live in Rhode Island anymore.” Ingrid didn’t expect this. As much as she knew she didn’t love Richard, she loved the familiarity and stability of her life. She’d written the whole thing herself. She guided every conversation, every date. She’d been in control of everything. The first drafts, the edits, the rewrites. Richard was her character. She had been in control. This made no sense. There was no outline that had Richard leaving. He couldn’t be the one to end what she started. This life was her greatest masterpiece. It was the project she’d devoted herself to the longest and most consistently. 

“And us?” 

“I mean, what’s keeping you here?” 

This wasn’t an entirely uncalled for question. In fact, it was one Ingrid had asked herself a few times. Her family would be an easy answer. It just wasn’t a very honest one, and Richard would know that. Even though they lived 20 minutes away, Ingrid and Richard had only seen her family once in the last several months. 

Ingrid was writing, but she and Richard both knew she could be doing that from anywhere, and Rhode Island wasn’t even the best place for her work. The question echoed. It was a deadend. She knew the answer was “Nothing,” but she couldn’t say that. She couldn’t say that she knew she wouldn’t move somewhere else, let alone with him, not wanting to be with him anymore and all. 

“Nothing,” she said anyway. 

“I’ve already started looking at places in Los Angeles,” he said, “Closer to my family. I think the sunshine would do you good. What do you think?”

“You already started looking?” 

“Well, I talked with my mom about it a few weeks ago, just how I was feeling in a funk, and she sent me some links to apartments.” 

“Why didn’t you talk with me about it?” 

“Because it wasn’t your idea.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked. 

“Moving to California. It’s not your idea. It isn’t something you conjured up for us in your notebook. I knew you wouldn’t want to.” 

“But you’re asking me to?” 

“Just because I don’t think you’ll want to doesn’t mean I don’t want you to want to…” he trailed off. 

“I never know what you want,” said Ingrid. 

“Because you don’t ask.” 

“Because if I did, you wouldn’t tell me. I tell you every fucking thing in my head, I’m so frustratingly knowable. You have every opportunity to do the same. For every time I’ve said something nice to you, complimented the way your sneakers matched your sweater, or told you how sexy you look while you’re sketching, you could say something, anything, nice back.” 

“I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong impression.” 

Ingrid stayed quiet. Trying to work out what she just said and how Richard’s response fit in with it. Wrong impression. Wrong impress-ion. Wrong im-press-ion. The words stopped making any sense by the time Richard started speaking again. 

“My brain doesn’t work the same way yours does. I don’t need all those words and if anything, it makes me uncomfortable. The way you see me, sometimes accurately,

sure, but sometimes more like a canvas you can paint on to suit the image you want to see,” he said. 

“That’s not true,” Ingrid was crying, “I want you to be who you are. As you are. I don’t want to change you.” 

“You can’t help it.” 

“I can’t help it.” 

Ingrid rubbed the white blanket against her salty eyes making little wet spots that she rubbed with her fingers. 

“I can’t help it,” she repeated, “I know exactly what I need and I don’t ask for it. I give the kind of love I want to receive to everyone else, but I don’t tell anyone how I want them to love me. And I don’t pay much attention to the way anyone else wants to be shown love either. Maybe we’re all a little guilty of that.” 

“You don’t write yourself into your stories?” 

“As an object of desire. Or in relation to other people’s choices, perceptions, of me, maybe. I think a lot about how I want to be treated, how I want things to go, and less about how I want to be with people.” 

“And how do you want to be?” 

“I’m scared.” 

Richard squeezed Ingrid’s thigh. He kissed her neck and leaned back, reaching for his tea on the coffee table in front of him. It was a drinkable temperature now. He couldn’t really taste it because of the burn, but it was nice. He reminded himself that it was nice to be drinking something that someone else had provided him with. He looked to Ingrid for her to continue. 

“Ugh. You’re really set on California, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know.” 

“Okay. I want to be confident. I don’t want to fear being abandoned or forgotten. I don’t want to become a name you have on a list of everyone you’ve fucked. I don’t like feeling like emotions between people are as ephemeral as seashells on the beach. That something as simple as water can wash them away. I want something that evolves. If everything romantic dissolved between us, I would never stop being your friend. My heart is incessantly loyal. I don’t know if I believe in monogamy anymore. I envy people, well people like you, who don’t seem possessable. I know I can be had. Would willingly choose to belong to someone else.” 

“But you have me,” he interjected. 

“Not in the way you have me,” Ingrid said. 

Richard nodded. He understood. 

“I can’t go to California with you,” Ingrid said. 

“We don’t have to go there,” Richard said. 

“Did you finish your tea?” 

Richard picked the mug up off of the coffee table. There was about a sip or two left. 

“No.” 

“Finish it.” 

He did as he was told and held the mug out to Ingrid. A sort of ritual. An offering. She handed her mug to him. They turned each other’s mugs in their hands, looking at how the escaped tea leaves formed shapes on the bottom. Squinting and turning. “I think I see a—” Richard began. 

“Don’t.”

“But we always do.” 

“I think you should get back with your ex,” said Ingrid.

“Right,” he laughed, “Yeah, I should text my high school girlfriend. Sorry we haven’t talked since we were 18. Would you like to date me again?”

“So, you’ve thought about it?” 

“You’re the one who brought it up!!” 

“But you’ve thought about it,” Ingrid set Richard’s mug down on the table, “It’s okay. I think everyone does.” 

“Do you?” 

“I’d deserve it.” 

“What do you mean? He was awful to you.” 

“That’s the point.” 

Richard placed his hands on Ingrid’s legs and moved them off of his. He folded the blanket over and got up from the couch. He walked to the bookshelf and got the worn copy of a tea leaf reading book they’d found at a used bookstore in a city he couldn’t remember on a roadtrip they took the summer after graduation. 

“Windham, New Hampshire.” 

It was like she could read his thoughts.

“Thanks,” he said. 

He sat back on the couch, further from her. It made her uncomfortable. She knew from how she was behaving that Richard would think she wanted the distance. But she didn’t. She wanted him to ignore all that and move as close to her as possible. It reminded her of when they first started going out. Infrequently at first and without labels. She wasn’t sure if they were just friends (friends who were nonetheless fucking occasionally) or something more. It wasn’t that Ingrid had even wanted it to be something more. She was indifferent to the specifics, she liked being wanted and would have gone along in any direction to remain wanted. But, if he did have feelings, she wasn’t sure she could handle them. She was usually the one feeling. A few months in, he texted her plans for what seemed a lot like a date. And after the ice cream, their hanging out had been confined to her dorm room. She changed the plans at the last minute. Instead of the date, Richard met up with Ingrid and her friend, Thom, for a long walk. 

The not letting herself have him is what did it. Before, Richard had felt so accessible. It was all becoming inevitable and easy. Predictable. And as much as Ingrid preferred routine to spontaneity, she couldn’t gain clarity on what she really wanted when it was so easily available to her. If they’d been alone together, the night would have ended in sex and kisses on her shoulder blades and neck. Maybe Richard would have even stayed the night. She’d never really know how that night could have gone if she’d let it happen how he had imagined. 

The tension was palpable but she felt less anxious with Thom there. And she looked forward to having someone to discuss Richard with. She hadn’t been around him in any social settings yet—just class and bed. But, as her feet blistered in her shoes and they reached the point in the evening where they were speaking their thoughts more to the sky than to each other, she, Richard, and Thom sat down. And Ingrid wished Richard would reach out and hold her hand in his. They were sitting inches apart but it felt like 3,000 miles between them—and maybe that’s how it’d always be since their hearts had been born into this world 3,000 miles apart. 

This felt a lot like that. 

“I wish she would tell me to come back closer,” thought Richard.

“I wish he’d come back under the blanket with me,” thought Ingrid. Richard shuffled through the pages of the book. Ingrid stared at his hands. They were so familiar. They looked like the hands of a sculptor. Broad and sturdy. His fingernails were always short and even but sometimes clay would stick to his cuticles. “The anchor,” he said. 

“What’s it mean?” asked Ingrid. 

“Um, good luck in business and a stable love life,” said Richard, “What did you see in my mug?” 

Ingrid picked Richard’s mug off of the coffee table again, even though she already knew what she’d seen only minutes ago. She passed the mug from one hand to the other, once, and then twice. 

“A mushroom.” 

Richard thumbed the pages to get to the M’s. 

“It says a sudden separation of lovers following a fight,” said Richard.

“We weren’t fighting,” said Ingrid. 

“Maybe that’s part of the problem, we’re not fighting for this.” 

“Also, lovers is a gross word.” 

“It’s a gross word.”