I can hear his heart beating in the dark. It’s less the low thrum of my own heart of muscle and flesh, and more like the grandmother clock he brought with him when he moved in. The clock is still on the mantle where he put it that first day, but it’s silent now. Days of that tick-tick-ticking that filled up my head and rattled my bones almost made me lose my mind. When it became clear the choice was my sanity or a functioning timepiece, we stopped winding it.
But there’s no simply letting Ivan slow and die. The ticking now is coming from his heart.
In the daytime I don't notice it so much; there are so many other noises that I can't pull them apart. But at night, when all is still and I am lying close to him, there it is, an endless and steady rhythm that is as much a part of him as breathing.
He showed his heart to me once, its curves and whorls made elegant with its polished wood. If you look closely, you can still see the cracks in it, even though he was careful with the glue, not using too much, sanding it flat after it dried, revarnishing it to restore the sheen. I think of it every time the noise gets too much and my thoughts start spiraling into wondering if I should go. But I don't want to be the cause of another split in the grain of that wood.
Ivan works on one side of the front room, and I work on the other. Our computers are set up like bookends corralling our Ikea chairs, our dusty TV, the mantle with the silent grandmother clock. Ivan sits and fixes his eyes on his screen, working as steadily as his heart beats. There is almost no wrenching him away until the alarm on his phone tells him it's time for his twenty-minute lunch. Then, back he goes, earbuds shutting out what his unbreakable focus does not.
I flit, checking email and then checking the weather. Delivering a deliverable and then folding the laundry. A dashed-off message, and then up to get a drink. So many things clamoring for my attention, and I can't seem to ignore any of them. I do get a lot done this way, though not a lot of it is work. But it was just as bad in the office, except that the laundry didn't get folded and the dishes didn't get done and we got our packages stolen because I was not there to run to the door the moment the delivery guy walked away. There were more sounds in the office, too, back when I went there every day and was surrounded by people all breathing and drinking and chewing and talking over each other, all the time. And the clothes I had to wear there were too tight in some places and too loose in others, bringing even more distraction.
I broke more often then. Now it is rare. But it still happens, sometimes.
Today, the deliverables keep coming, and few of them are explained well enough to make sense to me. Everything is harder, and I am always tired from these nights of eternal ticking. The wind is blowing outside, making the tree branches beyond my window toss and sway.
When my manager sends an urgent message to the team to watch a promotional video and "let me know your thoughts ASAP! :P" I feel the first crack. When the messages with that ASAP feedback start rolling in, each coming with their own ping in my ears, I can feel the pieces dislodge.That gives me just enough notice to turn away from my screen and cup my hands under my lips to catch the shards of my mind that tumble out of my mouth.
There are very few things that can wrest Ivan's focus from him, but he is there in a second, and his hands are cupped under mine to catch what mine can't hold. The pieces of glass that make up my mind have broken and been reassembled so many times there aren't very many large shards anymore, and putting myself back together is going to take hours and leave me with fingers bloodied from the sharp edges.
"I'm sorry," I mumble through pieces cool and hard on my tongue.
"Everything is fine," he says. "Is that all of it?"
My mind is in my hands, and his, so it can't spiral now to wondering if I shouldbe alone, if I'm meant to be alone. Everyone I've been with, after all, has something about them that's bad for my fractured mind—the guy who chewed with his mouth open, the Tinder match who couldn't make it through our first movie together without shouting, "Can you please just stay still for five consecutive seconds," the one whose texts seemed to only be subtext that I couldn't grasp. I shouldn't be leaving Ivan over his ticking heart; he should be leaving me over this, and my attention span as fragmented as the glass, and everything else I do that is a burden to everyone around me.
I spit out a final piece and nod, and he slides my notebooks and pens and mouse and three empty mugs aside with his elbow so there is a clear spot to put all the pieces of my mind. I remember then the last time this happened, and his fingers were even bloodier than mine from helping me reassemble myself. The spot is also in a sunbeam, and the light casts rainbows everywhere.
"I'm sorry I'm broken," I say.
"It's kind of beautiful," Ivan says, and then holds me close and I can hear the tick-tick-ticking, but for once it is comfort—not just the comfort of knowing his heart still beats, but like that wooden heart is saying, "it's all right, it's all right, it's all right."
