Chapter Eight
The restaurant has been our favorite for a long time, since we moved into this neighborhood, which makes it close to twenty-two years. Demetri and his wife, Anatola, make the best gyros I’ve ever had, along with a homemade Greek dressing so good it should be illegal. I come here for every birthday. It’s tradition.
While we wait for our food, Ross slides a box across the table toward me. “Happy Birthday.”
I’d not-so-subtly hinted to him that I wanted a pair of black riding boots. Not for riding, of course. For fashion. I’d sent him links, told him the size. This box is too small to be a pair of riding boots.
It’s a pair of quilted, ankle-high boots. Not red or even rust, but an off shade of dusty orange. They are not my size. They are hideous. I will never, ever wear them.
“You said you wanted boots,” he says, clearly pleased with his purchase. “I picked these up when I was in Chicago.”
I slide the lid closed and smile. Big and bright. “Thank you.”
Over dinner, Ross talks about work and golf and something his buddies did, the outrageous things another friend’s wife was doing, but I’m concentrating on my salad. I chase a black olive around the plate with my fork; it’s hard to catch because it has a pit in it, and I can’t dig the tines in deep enough. I don’t really even want it. I like my olives pitted. But I’ll eat it anyway, because it tastes so good, and I’ll spit the pit into the palm of my hand and be uncertain about where to put it.
“...She wants the dog,” Ross says. “Can you believe that bitch? You don’t take a man’s dog.”
This snags my attention. Lifts my head. “What?”
“She wants the dog,” Ross repeats, with a stab of his fork toward me. “Can you believe it?”
“What makes it
his
dog?” I know the friends he’s talking about. Kent and Jeanine Presley. We aren’t that close, though we’ve been to their house for parties. I remember the wife. She had round cheeks and a pixie cut that somehow flattered her anyway, and everything about her had made me think of ponies. Not because of the thing in my brain that turned sounds into shapes and colors into flavors, but just because sometimes people remind you of things that have nothing to do with who they actually are or what they do.
Ross stops with a bite of salad halfway to his mouth. “What?”
I’ve captured the olive, but now I really don’t want it. I rub it through a smear of dressing as though that will convince my mouth to take it, but instead of sour olive flesh and the hard pit, my mouth has words. “I said, what makes it his dog?”
“Of course it’s his dog.”
“Why isn’t it her dog, just as much?” I think of the parties we’ve gone to at their gleaming and spotless house. The hors d’oeuvres on special plates designed for just that purpose. Him at the grill outside, flipping burgers, but leaving all the rest for his wife. “I’m sure she’s the one who took care of it most of the time, anyway.”
“What difference does that make?”
I put my fork down. “Probably a lot.”
“Not to the dog,” he says.
I laugh. “But it’s not the dog who gets to decide, is it?”
“You don’t take a man’s dog,” Ross says pointedly, and stabs more salad. “You just don’t.”
“I didn’t even know they were getting divorced.” I sip water to clear the taste of the dressing from my tongue. It’s delicious, it always is, but tonight everything seems to have a bit of sour taste. “What about the kids?”
Ross shrugs, clearly more concerned about the dog than the rest of the details. “He’s letting her have the house.”
“How generous.” Not all words have color, but
generous
has always been a soft powder-blue. It doesn’t match the sarcasm with which I’ve imbued it.
“They’re upside down. He’ll get out of it, find something better. In this market, he can snap something up.” Ross snaps his fingers to demonstrate.
“He can afford to do that?”
Ross pauses in the steady back-and-forth of his fork from plate to mouth. “Well, yeah. She has to buy him out.”
“So then he’s not ‘letting’ her ‘keep’ the house.” I don’t know why this irritates me so much. I barely know Kent and Jeanine, and they were always more Ross’s friends than mine. “She’s paying him for it. And I’m sure she did the lion’s share of taking care of it. So he’s not
letting
her do anything, he’s getting out from under a debt and starting fresh.”
Ross stares. “Why shouldn’t he?”
“Does she work?”
Shrug. “Sort of. Part-time, I guess.”
“So how can she afford to buy him out of that house?” It was twice as big as ours, and in a more expensive neighborhood.
“Look, I don’t know all the details, okay? It wasn’t really my business. I guess she’s going to make payments to him or something. And forfeit her share of the retirement. Whatever, Bethie, what do you care? You don’t even like Jeanine.”
That’s not quite true. I don’t know her well enough to not like her. I wince a little at the spurs of burnt umber spiking my name the way he says it. I’ve never liked it when he calls me that, but he still does no matter how many times I ask him not to. “Why are they getting divorced?”
“People grow apart,” Ross says stiffly, in a way that tells me he knows more than he’s letting on, but won’t share it.
I let it go. I don’t really care. My stomach’s in knots, and it has nothing to do with the end of the Presleys’ marriage.
“So she’s saddled with the kids and the house and having to figure out a way to not only get back into the job market to pay for all of it, but she sacrificed her future retirement in order to do it. That’s what it comes down to in the end? Money? After how many years together, two kids...” I pause. “A dog.”
Ross doesn’t notice the layer of sarcasm I put into the word. “Money matters, Beth.”
“Only when you don’t have enough.” The words slip out of me like puffs of black smoke.
He laughs at that. Takes my hand. Strokes his thumb over the palm in the way I told him once, years ago, turned me on. It doesn’t anymore.
“You don’t have to worry about money, honey. I’ll always take care of you.” He laughs again. Making light. “Unless you leave me, of course.”
Nothing about this feels light to me. Not the birthday hitting me harder than I was expecting. Not the way my world has tipped on end and I don’t know how to stand up straight. My fingers curl inside my husband’s to squeeze his hand tight.
“What would happen then?” I ask.
Ross kisses the back of my hand, his breath warm and moist and sending a shiver through me that’s not from arousal. “Oh,” he says with a smile, to show me he’s joking, though I know him well enough to know he’s serious, “I’d make sure you get nothing.”
Chapter Nine
If there’s ever a person who tells you in all their years of marriage they’ve never wondered what it would be like to walk out, you’re talking to a liar. I’d thought it before, when the girls were infants and Ross traveled so much and worked such long hours that I was made a single parent by default. He’d embraced fatherhood with the enthusiasm he had for his golf game. He loved his daughters with everything he had. He simply wasn’t there.
Things got better, as they do when children get older and the constant stream of diapers and feedings eases. Ross was still gone a lot, but the girls and I found our rhythm and routine. I was the taskmaster, he was the guy who came around and treated them to ice cream instead of dinner and brought exotic souvenirs for them to squeal over. It wasn’t so different from the lives of most of our friends. It worked.
My children are grown, getting ready to graduate from college, moving on to jobs and internships and adult lives. The house that had seemed perfect for the four of us now seems too big, too quiet. Too empty. My husband still travels, still works long hours, still spends his leisure time in pursuits that have nothing to do with me. And...what have I done?
I fucked another man. Without a second thought and, so far, without remorse. I’d have done it again, if Will hadn’t so ungracefully extricated himself from the future possibilities.
I’d thought about leaving my husband before. But am I thinking about it now? Sitting at my kitchen table and staring out at my perfectly manicured yard, then around the room at the nearly new appliances, the cabinets we’d just had redone, the pictures of fruit on the walls, I don’t think so.
Ross slides a mug of coffee in front of me. He takes his black, and that’s how he always serves mine even though I don’t. “Morning. What are you up to today?”
“Work.” I’ve worked for over ten years, and he still asks me—when he remembers. As if I have a long social calendar full of mani-pedi appointments and tennis lessons instead of a job.
“Here or the city?”
“Philadelphia’s a city, too, you know,” I tell him.
“You know what I mean.” Ross looks out to the backyard. “The grass needs to be mowed.”
“The service comes on Thursdays.” For the seven years we’ve used the same service, they’ve always come on Thursdays. Lawn on Thursdays, housecleaning on Mondays. Laundry on the weekends. Always the same. Always.
“Have them take care of the flowerbeds this time, too. Maybe order some mulch.”
The flower beds look fine to me, and we mulched in the fall, and why is it my job to do this when he’s the one who wants it? I don’t say I’ll do it, but I don’t say I won’t. I don’t say anything at all.
“You want some more?” At the counter, Ross lifts the coffeepot in my direction.
I haven’t done more than take a sip or two of what he brought me. “Not yet. Can you bring me some sugar?”
He turns from side to side, looking around the kitchen as if he’s never seen it before. “Where is it?”
“In the cupboard behind you. No, directly behind you. Turn around,” I say, when he opens every cupboard except the one I mean. “There’s a basket with sugar packets in it.”
“I don’t see it.”
I want to put my face in my hands and cry, or laugh until I cry, I’m not sure which. “Ross. Come on.”
He scowls. “Why can’t you just tell me where it is?”
“You might have to move something to the side or look behind something.”
He turns, triumphant. “Ha! How many do you want?”
“Two.” My coffee will be cold by the time I sweeten it. I didn’t really even want it, but he brought it to me so I’ll drink it. I empty the packets Ross hands me into the coffee and sip it. Not sweet enough. “Can you grab me another?”
He looks up. “Huh?”
“Never mind.” I get up to help myself.
He’s made himself some toast. At least he was able to find the bread and figure out how the toaster worked without too much trouble. I’ll find a trail of crumbs along the counter and embedded in the butter. Now I’m being mean. Ross hands me an envelope from the pile of mail he must’ve brought in yesterday and left on the counter.
I got all the birthday cards I was expecting last week, and I haven’t ordered anything that might come in a mailer like this—rigid but padded, protecting something inside. There’s no return address, and my name is printed in careful block letters that have no personality.
“I’ll be late tonight. Just letting you know.” Ross puts his plate in the sink, though the dishwasher is empty and right beside it. He dusts his fingers and tosses back the last of his coffee. The mug goes in the sink instead of in the dishwasher while I watch, saying nothing.
There’s really nothing to say.
I leave behind the crumbs and dirty dishes and irritation, and I catch my husband at the door to the garage. I snag his sleeve, turning him.
“Wait,” I say. “Kiss me.”
It’s perfunctory at best, and it’s not good enough. I haven’t let go of his sleeve even when he tries to take a step away. Ross, caught, gives me a curious look.
I stand on my toes to kiss his mouth again, taking my time. I cup my hand to the back of his neck, his hair brushing my fingers. I press my body to his and kiss him like I mean it. Like I want to. Like a lover.
His lips part, finally, to allow my tongue, but only for the time it takes him to pull away. He studies me for a second or two. Shakes his head.
“I have to go, Beth.”
Spiky brown, orange. Jagged edges. Not smooth.
Of course he has to go. I watch him pull out of the driveway, giving me a wave as he closes the garage door. He always has to go.
And what about me? I think as I go back inside the kitchen, where I leave the dish and mug in the sink without washing them, because I want to see how long it takes before he thinks to put them in the dishwasher himself. If he ever does. Do I have to go?
The envelope on the table comes open with a tug of the small red thread. Inside is bubble padding and two cardboard flats protecting two items. The first, black words in a scrawling hand on a plain white card.
Happy Birthday.
The second, a photograph. It’s an 11 x 20 print, scattered stones on a bed of velvet. Oh, and there’s my heart-shaped rock, set off from the others. It’s more than just a photo. He’s added lines and color to it, little hints here and there. With ink and pen he’s transformed a beautiful shot into something unique. Special.
Will has given me art.
Chapter Ten
A handwritten thank-you card seems old-fashioned and intimate and therefore an appropriate response to Will’s gift, but I settle for an email instead. Making my reply casual yet polite, pixels and bytes instead of the intimacy of my fingers clutching a pen and moving it along paper. Without leaving an indelible mark, something permanent in the world.
His response pings my in-box only a minute or so after I’ve sent the message, and though my heart leaps at the sight of his name, I don’t open it right away. I minimize the email window and concentrate on researching a specific fabric Naveen wants for the gallery. Gauzy, pale yellow, embroidered here and there with red and orange roses. Green vines. He wants it for one of the back rooms he plans to rent out for parties, to hide the unfinished beams. It’s hard to find it by the bolt, and though I’ve come up with several alternatives, he’s insistent on this particular one.
Other than business, Naveen hasn’t spoken to me since the day in his office. It’s been a week. He’s waiting for me to come to him, to apologize, and I haven’t yet been able to make myself do it.
Finally, when I’ve checked off five of the ten tasks I’d planned for the morning, I give myself permission to look at Will’s message.
You’re welcome. There wasn’t anyone else I could think of who’d appreciate it more.
My fingers type. I could stop myself, but I don’t want to.
You shouldn’t have. It wasn’t necessary.
His response is almost immediate
. I wanted you to have it.
I have no reply for that but another thank-you, and that should be the end of it. But another message comes through in a few minutes. It’s an invitation to a gallery show, not Naveen’s, in two days. Will’s listed as one of the artists.
I don’t answer, but I don’t delete it, either. The message should get lost in my in-box, but every time I look it’s still there as bold and bright as a neon sign. The next message comes in a few minutes before I’m getting ready to leave for the day.
Please come.
To this I have no ready response except the leap of my heart, the pulse and throb of my blood in soft and tender places. My fingers move, typing a reply I’d never be able to voice aloud.
I’ll be there.