A Close Reading 

I

Adam recognized the paperweight in Dr. Reese’s photo, though he knew with certainty that he'd never physically seen it before.

It was a glass paperweight with what looked like a flame burning inside. Had he seen it in a dream? Adam often had vivid dreams, many of them sexual, few about Leah, his girlfriend since grade 10. Because of their mutual commitment at such a young age, neither of them had had any romantic experience other than each other, which, in his first year at university, with a universe of women exponentially prettier than even the prettiest girl from his high school, was driving Adam insane. The unfortunate part was that he and Leah considered each other soulmates, a common misconception especially endemic to high school sweethearts. There were moments he felt like he was a prisoner in his relationship – which was ironic, considering the university they attended was a hulking, grey, Brutalist heap frequently mistaken for a prison, and was often portrayed as such in various shows and movies.

Evelyn Reese was new at the university, straddling both English and Film departments, and had seen most of these shows and movies, but could never suspend her disbelief enough to see the building as anything but her workplace, which she considered an escape. Evelyn knew better than to believe in soulmates. If she thought too hard about her marriage – something she did her best never to do – Evelyn grew afraid that she and her husband were perpetuating the sins of her own parents, who’d only stayed together for the sake of their children. Born and raised in Ireland, Evelyn Reese was taught to suppress emotions and endure in quiet suffering, and to avoid therapy like the IRA. Writing became her outlet, and though she disguised her feelings as fiction, she still wrote under various pseudonyms for additional security. No one, not even her husband, knew about her stories.

Evelyn had written most of “The Weight” over the course of a month, in the hours after her daughters and husband went to bed. Her family often joked that she lived another life while they were asleep – in fact it was during this other life when she felt most like herself.

The story portrayed an aspiring female writer in the 1800s, who kills her unsupportive husband with a glass paperweight and initiates a romance with the young detective assigned to her case so he would help cover up her crime. It was rejected by several publications, which often disparage writing about writers, before getting picked up by an eclectic, up-and-coming online mag. Then, on a whim, Evelyn decided to share the story with her tutorial group from her Intro to 21st Century Literature class, interested to hear their thoughts and interpretations, and hopefully get some insights into her psyche.

The readings were various and unhelpful. The History majors read it as an allegory for the transition from Enlightenment to Romanticism, while the Gender Studies majors read the husband as a manifestation of capitalist masculinity.

Adam had stayed quiet as they were discussing the story. In class he was always quiet, even when he had a lot to say, for whenever he even contemplated raising his hand his body would go into minor shock. The truth was he didn’t think much of the short story, which, as an English major, he didn’t find much depth in at all. To him, the story was nothing more than the depraved musings of a sad housewife, but what interested Adam was the fact that his professor had chosen it to discuss at all. A search of the author’s name yielded no results except for a vague bio noting residence in the UK. It was an unremarkable story by an author with unremarkable credentials, published in an unremarkable magazine. He watched Dr. Reese lead the discussion from his seat in the corner, quietly judging his classmates for overanalyzing the story while preoccupying his mind with fantasies – some featuring Dr. Reese herself, who’d rightfully earned a red chili pepper next to her name on Rate My Profs.

Two weeks later Adam came during her office hours to discuss his essay on White Teeth, but when Dr. Reese stepped out to take a call, inviting him to have a seat, he saw the photo on her corkboard: a child, playing with the paperweight on a carpeted living room floor, rolling it forward with the persistence of Sisyphus. It took him a minute to pinpoint why it looked so familiar before he recalled its exact description in the short story. Suddenly, everything clicked.

“Sorry about that,” said Dr. Reese as she came back in and sat on the other side of her desk across from Adam. “My daughter urgently needed to tell me about the jellyfish she saw today at the aquarium.”

“That’s okay,” Adam said. Then, seeing an opportunity, he gestured to the corkboard. “Is that her there?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. Six years ago. She’s not crawling around so much these days,” Dr. Reese said, her eyes lingering on the picture. “You wanted to discuss your essay.”

“Actually, I wanted to ask about the story we read in tutorial a couple weeks back.”

“Right,” said Dr. Reese.

“The one about the paperweight.”

“Right.”

Evelyn could see that he knew. On one hand, she felt embarrassed to be discovered in this way by a student, using her tutorial class to massage her own writer’s ego. Still, there was something exciting about it, something sexy. Like being naked in front of an open window.

“I was curious why you picked it,” said Adam, watching Dr. Reese surrender the smallest sliver of a smile.

“I was hoping it would get some discussion going. Which it did.” She paused. “Though it was a shame I never got to hear from you.”

Evelyn liked Adam. He was one of those first years who sat in class only to observe, trying his best to evaporate whenever she asked a question or so much as glanced in his direction. But his disappearing act didn’t work on Evelyn. The truth was that Adam stuck out. He was attractive in this cute, innocent way – like he was completely oblivious to it. And while he was quiet, she could see the gears constantly turning in his brain, could see him always on the verge of mustering up the nerve to finally raise his hand. Now, at the other side of the desk, Adam looked as catatonic as he did in class.

“What did you make of the story?” Dr. Reese pressed again.

“I…can I be honest?”

“Go ahead.”

Adam took a breath and held it in his chest. He knew he couldn't turn back now.

“I don't think there was anything to make," he finally managed. “The writing was flabby, and the plot was clearly inspired by ‘Lamb to the Slaughter,' minus the weird ending. I just…“ he paused. ”I think you could do better. With your writing, and probably with your husband, too."

Now it was Evelyn's turn to freeze up. She hadn't expected this, much less from the timid Adam. She knew he was right. On both counts. Still, she wanted to keep Adam in suspense a little longer. She watched his nervous little eyes, watched him watch her slide open the desk drawer, her hand disappear inside.

Adam was so entranced that he flinched when Dr. Reese sprung out of her chair, holding the paperweight. The flame inside the glass seemed to glow, the colours vibrant; it looked like it might be hot to the touch. She walked around her desk and sat on its edge in front of him. He felt paralyzed, his heart raced uncontrollably. He thought of Dr. Reese’s story – the wife bashing her husband’s skull – and his body shivered.

“I…I didn't mean…”

“Do you want to hold it,” she asked cutting him off, and without waiting for his response, placed the paperweight in his lap. He felt the surprising weight of it against his groin, heavier than he anticipated. Her hands lingered on the paperweight when he grasped it with his own, their fingers touching on top of the glass.

As he took the paperweight into his hands, Dr. Reese hopped off the desk and leaned on the handles of his chair. Then, when she sunk her weight down on top of Adam’s lap, she was suddenly startled by a thud. Christ – was it another student? That’s when she saw the paperweight on the floor underneath his chair, fallen out of Adam’s grip.

“Careful,” she said, pressing further into him, taking his hands into hers and guiding them to her waist. “Better hold on tight.”

II

From their back garden Leah heard Adam’s car pull into their driveway, the quiet shutting of his car door which often turned out not to have been properly shut, a habit that’d been plaguing her for the nearly ten years of their marriage. The only reason this persisted, she guessed, was because no fortunate thief or curious passerby had yet taken advantage of the not-quite-shut door, so Leah was sure he would keep doing it until it blew up in his face.

It was the same with the women. Leah knew there were other women – maybe an office romance at the publishing house where he worked. But Adam never faltered. She’d put the question to him again and again, and he was so convincing in his denial that she thought he must’ve convinced even himself, clearing the cache of his brain. Searches through his phone yielded no results. Even the private investigator had come up empty, returning to her with useless telephoto lens shots of Adam at used bookstores and McDonald’s drive-throughs. Still, she could feel the distance between them, apparent no matter how physically close they were. Adam was barely there, never joyful or angry, just going through the motions of a relationship like a worker on an assembly line.

They had tried for years to have kids, to no result. Then, at some point, they stopped trying. Leah couldn’t remember why.

Adam’s love for her was gone, she knew, but love rarely disappears – like matter, it cannot be created or destroyed, so it goes elsewhere. Over time her own love had slowly shifted towards gardening – her Azaleas and her Dahlias, her blueberries and her basil, growing from the earth what wouldn’t take seed in her womb. Where had his gone, she wondered, as she listened to her husband, the only real partner she’d ever had, walk up the driveway and open the front door.

When Adam entered his home, he made sure to hide the magazine he purchased inside his jacket in case Leah was inside, relaxing when he saw her in the garden through the patio window, lost in a world of growth and decay. Leah probably hadn’t even noticed him coming home, so he decided to slink upstairs first, unable to contain his curiosity about the magazine’s contents.

As soon as he was inside the confines of his office Adam threw down his bag and sat at his desk, flipping through the mag to the short story titled “A Close Reading” by the author Evelyn Reese, who was apparently no longer hiding behind pseudonyms.

It’d been years since Adam last saw Evelyn – not counting his dreams, of course.

They’d met in her office again, just like the first time, which was empty except for the desk and a few dusty file boxes. Evelyn was staring out at the quad through her window as students plodded to their final exams like soldiers marching into battle. Adam remembered trying to guess what she was thinking. He was able to read Leah comfortably, like a book he’d finished a dozen times, but Evelyn was a mystery he had yet to solve. Was she thinking of the weather in Toronto, where she would be teaching in a few weeks at U of T? Was she thinking of her daughter’s Claymation class she would be driving to later, or the groceries she’d need to pick up on the way home? Was she thinking of Greg, her husband, the man she'd regrettably chosen to spend the rest of her life with? Or was she thinking about Adam, about another life she could be living – another window she could be looking out from?

When he relived the memory in his dreams, Adam came up and wrapped his arms around her. He kissed the back of her neck, he told her he loved her. In his dreams, Adam always told her to stay.

Over the years Adam had kept up with Evelyn’s life online. He watched as her hair turned gray and her kids grew tall, and all that time, he watched her husband stay by her side like a specter, a shadow she couldn’t shake. And all that time he read as many mags as he could, searching for another story under another name, a coded message meant only for him. A signal to come find her, to spring her from her prison.

Now that he had her story in his hands, he wondered what she would say to him – if she would say anything at all.

Adam opened the magazine and started to read, every so often furrowing his brow or pausing to take an emphatic breath, as if steeling himself for a shot in the arm.

When he finished Adam dropped the magazine on his desk, turning his gaze to the patch of sunlight stretching out obliviously along the office carpet. Her writing had improved, that was for sure. She'd sharpened her prose like a knife and drove it straight into his chest. He opened the drawer and fished out the paperweight that Evelyn had given him before she left, the same glass flame that had burned for years, feeling its great weight. Adam stood there, thinking about the story, the last few, apparently wasted years of his life, until he couldn’t any longer. He wound back his arm and sent the paperweight flying though his office window.

There was a dissonant crash, and for a moment Adam basked in the aftermath of destruction. Then he remembered Leah, still down there in the garden.

Adam ran to the shattered window, hearing the crunch of glass under his feet, and looked outside. He saw the weight rooted in the earth by Leah’s feet; it had barely missed her skull. There was an indentation in the ground where it fell, like a crater left by a meteor. He saw Leah bend down and stare at the paperweight, not touching it.

To her it looked as if it had come from space, another dimension – from Adam’s secret world, the one the private investigator could never capture. There was anger, but there was also a sense of relief, knowing they would have no choice now but to confront it. She looked back up and met her husband’s eyes through the broken window, noticing the lash scars time had left on his skin.

For Adam it felt as if he’d just woken up from an altered state – like some hypnotist had snapped his fingers and released him from the thralls of a spell. He looked down at Leah through the broken window, her face framed by the jagged glass, and realized he had no idea what was in her head anymore. They were just kids when they met, and over the years he thought they’d dogeared all the corners, cracked each other’s spines and wrote in every margin. He thought he knew her inside and out, but looking at his wife now, Adam realized he knew nothing at all.

He would tell her everything, Adam decided, stepping over the shards. As much as it would hurt her, and as much as it would hurt him. Adam opened the door and started down the stairs, hoping it wasn’t too late to know his wife again.

Leah watched Adam disappear from view back into his office. Where do we go now? she thought.

They would need to repair the window first, Leah concluded. They would sweep the glass and dispose of it carefully. They would call a window repair service – one that wasn’t so cheap that they’d do a rushed job, but one that wouldn’t gauge you either.

She would bury the paperweight where it fell, like a dead pet. No – Adam would bury it, she decided. And after a while they’ll look out through their newly repaired window together, hardly noticing the little dirt mound, the excrescence growing out of the earth.

Or maybe she was delusional, she considered, seeing her husband through the glass door. Maybe she’s been spending too much time alone with vegetables and flowers.

Leah remembered a listicle she once read, titled, “Should Your Plant Go Into that Good Night?” To help decide the answer, the author suggested asking yourself three questions: 1. How far gone is the plant? 2. Does it still bring you happiness? and 3. Are you willing to put the effort into its revival?

Her head jolted up when she heard Adam slide open the patio door. He kneeled down in the earth beside her, dirtying the legs of his khakis.

“I’m sorry,” he said, staring at the paperweight, afraid to look her in the eye.

“Yes,” Leah heard herself whisper under her breath.

“Yes what?” he asked, meeting her glance.

Without meaning to, Leah realized, she had answered the last question out loud.