Do I Know You?
Emily Wibberley
1
Eliza
SAY SOMETHING.
I watch my husband out of the corner of my eye, imploring, wishing he would end the silence filling our car. In the window past him, the ocean glitters, unchanging. The California coastline should inspire wonder, with its rippling cliffs and its crystalline expanse, even when you’ve spent hours watching the water through the windshield. Instead, the thing I notice most is how it just keeps going.
Say something.
Graham doesn’t. He drives, his long fingers clamped on the pebbled leather of the steering wheel, his posture stiff. The quiet, interrupted only by the occasional whoosh of cars passing us, prickles over me like the start of a sunburn.
Is this how this week will be?
I told myself it wouldn’t. I’ve told myself that pretty much every day since Graham’s parents handed us an envelope over dinner containing a weeklong, all-expenses-paid romantic getaway at the Treeline Resort to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary. I convinced myself the week would be wonderful instead of awkward or claustrophobic. What couple wouldn’t want to celebrate five years of marriage at a five-star hotel famous for its romantic ambience?
The quiet filling our car says it knows. Determined, I fight off my discouragement. I wish Graham would speak up, would offer something up into the silence—even comment on the weather—but he doesn’t.
It’s not only him not speaking, I remind myself. Screw sitting here waiting. Maybe I need to be less narrator, more main character.
I clear my throat. “We’re doing good on—”
“Just three hours to go—” Graham quickly cuts in.
“Time,” I finish, then wince, hearing the unintentional overlap of our voices. It’s less like cutely finishing each other’s sentences, more like two supermarket shoppers coincidentally reaching for the same shelf. Less unison, more collision.
I don’t blame him for cutting in, for intuiting exactly what I was going to say. Every exchange my husband and I have managed in the past twenty-four hours has consisted of nothing except this one meaningless subject. When we should leave, how long the drive is, whether we should take the 1 or the 5 freeway. Unable to help myself, I glance over, wondering whether Graham shares my desperation to change our conversational flat tire.
He does. He shifts in his seat like someone’s stowed rocks in the soft leather cushion under him.
I remember the way I described Graham Cutler to my friends and my parents fresh off our first dates. He’s tall, I’d said. He’s got blond hair, a cleft chin, intelligence in his eyes. The kind he could use to eviscerate rhetorical weaknesses, but he doesn’t, not with me. We’d met and chatted with each other on a dating app, and when we got together in person, these observations were the first I connected to the personality I’d gotten to know on my phone.
The problem is, they’re what I hear now. Observations. I’ve been married to Graham for five years, and when I look over from the passenger seat, my mind does nothing except reproduce the list of identifying marks I jotted down in my head when me met. He’s tall. He has blond hair.
It hasn’t been this way forever—in our newlywed years, Graham turned, the way spouses should, into swirling slideshows of happy memories, never-ending excitement to catch up over dinner or share something funny one of us found online.
Gradually, though, it’s gotten harder to feel like I know the man seated next to me, despite knowing I love him. It happened not through fights or rifts, but through late work nights, quick conversations instead of real ones. Our starkly different careers don’t help—the high-profile San Diego law firm where Graham is planning to make partner, the many audiobooks and voice-acting jobs I’ve recorded in the past five years. Complacency converted into unspoken questions and discussions never had. Five years into our marriage, I’m left with only my catalog, once eager, now rote. Learned. Repeated.
He’s tall. He has blond hair. He is my husband.
Part of me wonders whether Graham’s mother gave us this gift knowing we’re having difficulty finding the spark. Helen has never been a particularly generous gift-giver despite being a member of a Marina del Rey yacht club. When I got home and googled the hotel, seeing the price per night confirmed her meddlesome motives.
Of course, Helen’s response would be to force us into this situation, which is frustrating in principle no matter how much I might be looking forward to cucumber water in the lobby. The Cutler family way is to walk through fire, while mine is to walk in the other direction. It’s why I haven’t spoken to my sister in months. I don’t enjoy retreating—I’ve just concluded it’s the safest thing for me. For everyone.
No, I chasten myself. Eliza, you will enjoy yourself, damnit. You will not surrender to three more hours of traffic-related small talk.
My internal pep talk surges confidence into me, like I felt when I spontaneously shoved my new lingerie into my suitcase under my running shoes and my e-reader. It’s red, lacy, and designed for exactly one purpose, which is not day-to-day functionality. My best friend, Nikki, gave it to me to celebrate this anniversary. While packing this morning in the bedroom of the house we rent in San Diego’s summer cottage neighborhood of La Jolla, I chose to ignore how out of place the lingerie was in the present context of Graham’s and my marriage, how far we’ve started to feel from spontaneity or surprise. I’m going for it, I decided, stashing the collection of lace and straps in my suitcase.