The Best of Us (37 page)

Dwight blinked. “Okay,” he said. He folded his arms behind his head and looked at her.

“And I know you slept with Allie.”

It was a bluff of sorts; it was impossible for Pauline to know how far things had gone between them.

He flinched, then closed his eyes. “Oh, Pauline,” he said, and his tone told her she’d hit on the truth.

“Do you love her? Do you want to be with her?” She remained perfectly still, feeling as if she were a passenger in a speeding car that was about to crash head-on into a stone wall. Pain and devastation were rushing toward her, and she was powerless to prevent it.

“No,” Dwight said. “It’s—it’s over!”

“It is not over. You slept with another woman, on the vacation I tried so hard to make nice for you,” she said, leaving a tiny pause after every carefully enunciated word, so her accusation felt like a series of flutter punches.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. He started to reach for her, then pulled back, rightly assuming that she couldn’t bear for him to touch her.

“How many times did it happen?” she asked.

“Once,” he said. “And never again.” She looked at him, and to her surprise, she believed him. Dwight’s emotions had always been transparent on his face, and he’d never before lied to her. At least not to her knowledge.

“But you were in love with her in college!” Pauline cried. “You’ve always been in love with her! Why did you even marry me? Because you couldn’t have Allie?”

“That sound outside the door,” Dwight said. “Was that
you? . . . Pauline, did you hear me tell her I didn’t love her anymore?”

“You told her that?” Pauline said.

“Yes,” Dwight said.

“Then why?” Pauline whispered.
Why did you do this to me?

“I keep asking myself that, too,” Dwight said. He sighed. “She’s worried she might get sick, Pauline. Really sick. And she came to me for help.”

“For help?” Pauline bit off the words. She wasn’t numb, not anymore; now her body felt like it was on fire. “So you decided to help her by screwing her?”

The rough words tasted alien in Pauline’s mouth. She never talked like this to anyone. But it felt strangely good.

“No, no, it wasn’t like that,” Dwight said. “I’m not trying to make excuses, I promise. I just want to explain. P-please.”

“So explain,” Pauline said. She crossed her arms.

“It made me feel, I don’t know . . . like a man!” Dwight said. “That I could help her. That I could help
anyone,
Pauline. No one’s ever needed me to do that before.”

“I’ve needed it!” Pauline shouted.

“No,” Dwight said, and there was a new note in his voice, one Pauline couldn’t easily identify. “You haven’t needed me for anything.”

Pauline felt unease claw at her belly; what was happening? Why did she feel as if Dwight was talking about something else entirely? She tried to think of something to say, to get their conversation back on track, but it was too late.

“You never want to sleep with me,” Dwight said. “Not anymore.”

“That’s not true!” Pauline said.

“We haven’t had sex once on this trip,” he said. “You’ve always got some excuse, or you pretend to be asleep.”

She cringed; he’d known she’d been faking, but he’d misunderstood
the reason. She thought of him reaching to pull her into the shower at the beginning of the trip, and saw herself twisting away. There were so many similar moments before that, too—times he’d started kissing her, and she’d moved out of his grasp or slipped under the covers to give him a quick blow job. She hadn’t known he’d felt rejected; she’d only thought about the reprieve she’d granted herself from failing to get pregnant again.

Was that part of the reason why he’d turned to Allie? Because he thought Pauline didn’t want him anymore?

“And I thought you didn’t want me to see your sister because of
me,
” Dwight was saying, now looking straight ahead, into the darkness, instead of at her. “Because you thought I wouldn’t know what to do. That maybe I’d make her uncomfortable. I know sometimes I don’t . . . whatever. Fit in.”

“No,” she said. Dwight had blamed himself? She’d never imagined that; she didn’t realize he’d even thought about Therese. “It wasn’t that, Dwight. Never that.”

“So I thought I could research things. Figure out how to act,” he continued. “You said she had something like Down syndrome. I decided to read a little more about it. You never told me exactly what she had.” He gave a little laugh. “But if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s computer research. You know that.”

“I didn’t— I just—” Pauline felt panicked. What was happening? She was the injured party here; she was the one who’d been dealt a body blow. So why did Dwight look so upset?

“I looked into the facility, too,” he said. “My accountant pointed out the name to me a while ago. He thought it looked like an unusual expense, and he always shows me those.”

“It wasn’t that much money!” Pauline said. “Not in the grand scheme of things . . . I just—”

“Pauline,” Dwight said. “Do you really think that’s what I care about? The money?”

She fell silent.

“Why didn’t you tell me the truth?” he asked.

Excuses swam through her mind, but she couldn’t grab hold of any of them.

“I was scared,” she finally said.

“That I couldn’t handle it?” he asked.

“Maybe,” she said. Pauline squeezed her eyes shut.
The truth
. “No, that I couldn’t.”

“I wish you’d told me,” he said. He sighed deeply. “And I wish I’d never cheated on you.”

It’s too late for that,
Pauline thought.

“I’d really like to visit Therese with you,” he said.

Too late,
Pauline thought again.

She let her eyes drift back to the sky. She’d learned long ago that only a fraction of the constellations were visible at any given time; the overhead landscape was constantly changing. So many stars were glowing in distant places now, even without anyone to bear witness.

She took a deep breath.

“Her favorite song was ‘You Are My Sunshine,’ ” she began. “Therese’s. Therese’s favorite song. And she liked . . . for her arms and legs to be massaged.”

Dwight didn’t say anything, but he was watching her carefully again. Had he caught her use of the past tense? Pauline wondered.

“There’s a question I need to ask you,” she said. “What are your thoughts on adoption?”

“Adoption?” Dwight echoed. He shook his head, but he wasn’t giving a negative answer; he seemed to be trying to clear it. “Pauline—I mean, I think it’s great.”

“What about a child with special needs?” she asked. “Would you ever adopt one?”

“I . . . guess so,” he said. “I’d have to think about it. I mean, sure, maybe.”

“I think I might want to,” Pauline said.

It didn’t matter if she and Dwight could bear children; this was what she needed to do. She’d been surprised that he had been receptive so quickly. But now she remembered: Allie was adopted. It would be something else to link them, another shared experience.

Maybe she wouldn’t ever be able to escape from Allie’s shadow.

“I kept waiting for you to tell me about Therese,” Dwight said. “But you never did. You just gave off these signals of not wanting to talk about her. Just like you gave off signals of not wanting to sleep with me. Pauline, I didn’t know what to do.”

She nodded slowly.

“I— So I hired someone last year,” Dwight was saying. “A private aide. To check on your sister every few days and give her extra care.”

Of all the things he’d said tonight that had shocked her, nothing had come close to this. Pauline couldn’t breathe for a moment.

“It’s a good facility, but nurses are stretched thin everywhere,” Dwight said. “He’s really excellent, Pauline—I had him checked out first. So this aide comes to, you know, read to her. Things like that.”

To paint her fingernails. To sing to her,
she thought.
Carlos.

He violated my trust,
Pauline thought,
but what I did was even worse. I never truly trusted him in the first place.

“Pauline?” Dwight said. “Please don’t cry. I’m so sorry.”

She knew he thought it was because of Allie, but she couldn’t explain, not now. Her throat was too tight for her
to speak. But she could do something else. She could get up, and climb into Dwight’s lap, and feel him hold her while she sobbed.

Maybe it isn’t too late,
she thought as she held on to his shirt tightly with both hands.
Maybe, for once, our timing is exactly right.

TINA ZIPPED HER SUITCASE
shut and walked over to the private balcony off the sitting area of their bedroom.

She stepped outside and spun in a slow half circle, trying to soak everything in for the last time. She wanted to absorb the sweet-salty smell of Jamaica, feel its warmth on her skin, and hear the unhurried rhythm of its waves.

“Do you think that kid down the street drank all my beer?”

Tina smiled but didn’t turn around.

“Definitely,” she said. “He probably had a few parties at the house, too.”

“That’s what I would’ve done at his age,” Gio said. “As long as they didn’t break the TV.”

He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her, kissing the back of her neck.

“Actually, I guarantee we drank more on this trip than any teenagers,” Tina said, leaning into him. “It’s going to take me a few weeks to dry out from all that alcohol!”

“Ready to go?” Gio asked.

Tina was looking out at the exact spot where the sky blended into the water. She could stare at that shade of blue forever, she
thought. If only she could fix the hue in her mind. Maybe she’d try to match it and paint her bedroom that color someday.

“Just give me five minutes,” she said.

“Okay,” Gio said. She could hear the bedroom door shut behind him, as if he knew she needed solitude.

She sat down on a big wooden chair and tilted her face up to the sun. She needed to hold on to this feeling, she thought. On those days when she was bleary-eyed from lack of sleep and couldn’t find matching clean socks for the kids and had to dig through the laundry basket, searching for the least smelly ones, she’d need to remember Jamaica’s lesson: Everything would get easier in time. Paolo would grow into his puppy feet and Angela would change to a fancy new shampoo instead of one with a cartoon character on the bottle, and Jessica would eventually get a cell phone and Sammy would step onto the school bus with a brand-new lunch box for kindergarten while she stood on the sidewalk, hiding her tears as she waved good-bye.

It seemed impossibly far away, but she knew that day was rushing toward her, as inexorably as the waves.

She reached into her pocket for the perfect shell she’d discovered on the beach yesterday. It was creamy white and crescent-shaped, with a mother-of-pearl sheen on the inside. She was going to turn it into a key chain fob so she’d see it every day. Maybe this talisman would help her remember.

But first, she thought as she ran her fingers over the shell, she was going to sit here and do absolutely nothing but breathe for the next three hundred seconds.

“CALEB?” PAULINE SPOKE INTO
the phone. “We’re over the Atlantic now. We’ll be landing in half an hour.”

“The cars are ready,” the house manager said. “They’re at the airport—one for every couple except Savannah and Gary. I checked ten minutes ago, and their connecting flight to North Carolina is scheduled to depart on time. Gate A-Twenty-Three. Is there anything else, Ms. Glass?”

“No, thank you. See you in a bit.” Pauline hung up the phone and watched as the steward cleared away the platters of cheeses and summer sausages and strawberries from the main cabin. The group was much more subdued than they’d been on the trip down, she thought.

Her eyes slowly traveled over the couples. Allie was reaching for Ryan’s hand, and Ryan was smiling and brushing a strand of hair out of Allie’s eyes . . . and now Allie was leaning back and Pauline could see her lips tremble before she pressed them tightly together. Would Allie ever tell Ryan what had happened with Dwight? Pauline wondered. She supposed she should hate Allie, but for some reason, she didn’t, not any longer.

Pauline looked across the aisle, at Tina dozing against her
seat’s headrest. Gio was reading something on his BlackBerry and frowning, but his other hand was resting on Tina’s knee. Just looking at them, you could tell they were going to make it. They’d be the type of couple who slow-danced at their fiftieth wedding anniversary while their grandchildren cheered.

Then there was Savannah, sitting across from Gary in yet another too-short skirt. Did she buy them in the teen departments of stores? Pauline wondered. Gary was lifting up his glass of wine, and offering it to Savannah because her glass was empty and the steward was busy with the dishes from the snacks. Pauline watched as Savannah looked at Gary for a long moment. She didn’t smile, or thank him, but she finally reached over and drank from his glass.

The only one left was Pauline’s husband, sitting alone in a big leather chair. He was apart from the others, and his chair was tilted toward the window, facing away from Allie.

It still hurt to know what had happened with Allie—it hurt more than Pauline thought possible. She’d imagined that she was the one who brought grace and beauty into his life, that she was the only one he thought about when he closed his eyes at night.

But then again, didn’t all marriages carry thousands of hurts? Didn’t husbands and wives injure each other all the time, leaving wounds both big and small, with snapped words or forgotten anniversaries or emotional buttons deliberately pushed? But thousands of kindnesses existed in marriages, too. The important thing was that the kindnesses triumphed over the hurts.

She’d hurt Dwight, too.

She walked back down the aisle and sat next to him, feeling exhausted. It had been such a very long week.