Those We Love Most (27 page)

“You haven’t made much of an effort to visit me.”

“It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see you …” His voice trailed off, his ardor cooling. “It’s just that it’s all so complicated. There is so much … so much need at home.”

Julia was silent.

“And your wife?”

“We don’t need to talk about Margaret,” Roger said evenly.

“You deserve—”

“I know.” Roger cut her off. “But I have my life. And it’s in Chicago. My children, the grandkids. My grandson’s death … it changed things. You can imagine. And I think we need to talk about that a little bit this weekend. I haven’t been what you’ve needed these last few months.”

Julia sighed, moved away slightly, and then rolled back. She wore a new expression, as if she had made a split-second decision to bring in reinforcements. He recalled the early days of their relationship when she used to coyly feign a pout, but later she had always been the one to give in and forgive, to come back. Roger absentmindedly stroked her bare shoulder. The light had shifted, projecting low and blood orange on the wall at the foot of the bed. Roger was suddenly aware of the traffic noises outside, the distant sound of cars on the highway.

“But you came for me?” Julia asked expectantly.

“Yes. For you,” he said, because it was simpler for now.

Julia lay on her back, smiling with satisfaction at the ceiling. For a moment Roger pictured his life back home and wondered briefly where in her schedule Margaret was. He would need to call her soon, perhaps when Julia was taking a shower. A small pang of guilt pierced his mood.

Julia’s fingertips grazed his temples and strayed down his cheek. He could tell she was studying him, searching his features in a manner that felt pleasing and slightly suffocating. He turned his thoughts back to the present as she rose to shower. This would be the last time with Julia. It had to be. He could feel his resolve strengthening again. But he would wait until tomorrow to tell her. They would have this one last night, limbs entwined, her soft, purring snores partially muffled by the white noise machine she favored.

Roger lay for a few minutes in the disappearing light. He too would get up and take a shower. Julia had plans to cook for them here tonight. She emerged from the bathroom, her hair damp and rolled into a towel that always made him think of Carmen Miranda, and he turned on the bedside lamp. She adjusted her robe as she bent to peck him on the cheek and then moved toward the doorway.

“I have this fabulous antipasto and I’m so glad I went to the farmers’ market early. I got some stinky cheese you will just die for.” She rubbed both hands together in delight. “I’ve already cut the fruit for the sangria,” she said over her shoulder. “And I’ll put away those groceries while you’re showering. Ooooh, that ice cream is probably soup by now,” she trilled as her voice receded into the kitchen.

Roger felt a slight dizziness for a moment when he rose too fast, the result of lying down for so long.
Damned low blood pressure
, he thought. Who had that at his age? Weren’t people supposed to be worried about sky-high numbers? Margaret was right. He needed to reschedule that physical. He felt momentarily unsure on his feet as he headed into the bathroom. The room righted itself and his face came into soft focus in the steamed-up mirror.

It was in the shower that he felt it, a burst of light, the explosive stab of an ice pick behind his right eye socket. He closed both eyes and pressed the palm of his hand over the spot, as if to physically block it out. The pain seemed to intensify and radiate through his brain, but still he felt frozen, moving sluggishly, not reacting or crying out. His left arm flopped jerkily to the side, and his other arm, which he had reached out to steady himself against the shower stall, refused to obey. The spray from the showerhead splashed over him, louder now, roaring like a waterfall, as if all of his auditory processing was on overload, his senses heightened in a dreamlike fugue state.

The lines between his physical body and his surroundings were beginning to blur. Propped against the shower wall, he could not feel precisely where his extremities ended and the tile began. As he tried to concentrate, Roger realized that his thoughts, his need to get help, were punctuated by periods of total silence in his brain—the hiccups of nothingness, as if his cognitive powers were shorting out and then blinking back on. Low-level alarm bells were being tripped in his mind.

And then he suddenly felt far away, sucked into a vacuum tube, as if he were watching it all through a telescope. He tried to make a sound that would bring help, but he was incapable, he was mute.

Roger’s legs buckled and went numb. And then he was falling, hitting the shower caddy, sending Julia’s soaps, shampoos, and razor tumbling to the shower floor. Summoning the last of his energy, Roger opened his mouth, and a low moan escaped his lips, its tenor indistinguishable between pleasure and pain. And in the matter of seconds during which all of this happened, the disconnected sense he’d felt was replaced with a bottomless terror and confusion. Before his head hit the tile wall, his right shoulder absorbed the first impact, and he crumpled to the tile floor in plush velvety unconsciousness. Roger Munson’s final, unconnected observation was that the water drops fell in perfect orbs and then froze for an instant, like diamonds, before they hit his face.

Absorbed by her novel, the sudden interruption of the phone startled Margaret in the armchair by the bay window that framed her garden view. Her heartbeat spiked, and then slowed as she placed the bookmark in the spine and rose, making an irritated clucking sound. Why was it the phone always rang just as she had settled into a book, or sat down to watch her favorite news program? She never seemed to remember to bring it with her. It was probably one of the kids, or Roger.

His trip to Florida seemed to have come up so suddenly. She supposed she should be somewhat relieved after all of his griping about wanting more of a role in the corporate deals. He had been closer to home lately, she mused, on the road less than usual. But he was headed back to Chicago tomorrow, and frankly, as much as she had enjoyed the break, she was looking forward to seeing him. She’d heat up a can of soup tonight for dinner and dispense with all the culinary effort required when Roger was at home.

If she didn’t get there in the next ring, it would click over to the answering machine. So what was the harm in that? She reached the receiver with seconds to spare.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Munson? Uh, Margaret?” an uncertain voice began.

“Yes? That’s me.”

“I’m calling from Florida. It’s … it’s about your husband, Roger.”

“Yes?” Margaret shifted her weight onto her left leg, feeling a rising panic. There was something about the nervousness in the woman’s voice that alarmed her.

“He’s in the hospital. Here in Florida. He fell. He might have had a stroke.”

Margaret took a step backward and her hand rose involuntarily to cover her mouth. Her grip on the book gave way, and it clunked to the floor.

“He what? Roger? How is he?” Margaret battled for control. She needed to concentrate.

“He’s in the ER now. That’s all I know.” The woman’s voice sounded tired now and sad. “I, I thought I should call the family.”

“And who are you? Are you a nurse?” Margaret demanded in a much sharper tone than she intended. Things were coming more clearly into focus. Something obdurate and flinty was coalescing inside of her. Good Lord, Florida, of all places.

“I’m a friend of Roger’s,” the woman said softly, and it was at that moment when Margaret’s suspicions congealed with certainty, the click of a padlock giving way. She understood exactly who this woman was.

“Oh. I see,” was all Margaret could muster, and she knew she would chide herself later, replay her missed opportunity with bolder and better responses. She felt her insides crumple, but she worked to keep her voice steady and strong. “Well, I’d like to speak to a doctor.” She sat down.

By the time Margaret had hung up with Dr. Stangland, she was numb. It appeared Roger had suffered a stroke. And there might be a brain bleed, he’d intimated. It was not a life-and-death situation, the doctor had assured her right away in an effort to calm her. He was stable, but it was serious, and she needed to come to Tampa as soon as she was able. Roger was about to undergo all kinds of tests and scans, things that would give them more information. During the fall, or whatever had happened to him, God only really knew, he had also broken his collarbone, and so they were going to need to get that set and pinned.

How fast could she get down there? the doctor had asked her. Roger was not conscious, was in a coma, or had he said they had put him in a coma to keep him sedated? Something like that. Thank God she had had enough of her wits about her to take the number and the name of the hospital.

But it wasn’t until after she hung up that she realized she had not gotten the full name of the woman who had called, or any information about how to reach her. She’d had a slight accent, Hispanic, Margaret thought. It had to be Julia, Roger’s whore, the woman whose loopy, girlish handwriting had substituted a heart for the dot over an
I
in that long-ago note to her husband.

Margaret closed her eyes against images of what the two of them might have been doing when this happened. She realized how much a part of her had believed Roger’s increasing presence at home, their recent intimacies, had allowed her to hope that his dalliances were in the past. Whatever they’d been doing, they’d most certainly been in each other’s company when he’d had this stroke. This brazen woman had most likely brought him to the hospital. The guilt in her voice had been palpable.

For a moment Margaret felt the surge of a fighter and then she stifled the urge to laugh. The situation was so absurd, so ridiculous. This was like those late-night made-for-TV movies when the philandering husband is discovered in bed with his mistress. But this was real life, her life, and this was
her
husband. After all of her efforts to build a close-knit, stable family life, to protect and burnish Roger’s respected image in the children’s eyes, now she was left with this sloppiness on his part, this tawdriness. She might be able to look the other way at Roger’s quiet out-of-town infidelities, but public humiliation was another story. She stiffened in the chair, seething, gripping the phone tightly as her thoughts collided.

Outside a breeze played through the blue spruce in the backyard, ruffling the branches like a skirt. Absentmindedly Margaret reached to rub her forehead. She had to call Stu and the girls, but for the moment this all seemed too complicated, too fraught with ugly details that might begin to unravel.

A stroke. Damn him. She knew enough to understand this wasn’t good. People recovered in vastly different ways. A kernel of panic began to bloom in the pit of her stomach, and she beat it back. She needed to call the kids, the airlines. She would need much more information, but the key was to remain calm. Margaret took another minute to collect her thoughts, to regain her composure and get control of the fury and the fear she now felt. Yes, that was it—fury—at Roger’s sexual avarice, his total disregard for all of them. And now, here she was, headed to Florida to assess the wrecked hull of his life. Of their life. He had done this to them all.

A small wren hung tightly to a branch in the crab apple tree. The bird riveted Margaret as it cocked its head, examining her with one eye and then the next.
Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth
, she told herself. Calming breaths. When Margaret had regularly taken yoga at the YMCA, this is what she had learned. In … and out … she could feel some of her anxiety retreating as she exhaled. Slowly she bent at the waist to retrieve the dropped book, smoothing the pages where it had landed facedown. She sat for just one moment more, staring out the window and reaching for equanimity.

She was struck by the irrational thought that if she simply stayed in the chair, reopened the book on her lap, she could reverse time, pretend that none of this had ever happened. She could go back to life just the way it was before the phone call. Let Roger and his mistress figure this one out. In that moment, she was aware of being precisely in the center of a dividing line between her before and after.

When the girls were little, she had accompanied Roger on a business trip to London. One of the wives’ junkets had been to the Greenwich Royal Observatory, where the official Greenwich mean time clock was located, and the imaginary line of demarcation, the prime meridian of the world, was engraved on a plaque in the ground.

They had visited the museum on a gray English day; the earth was muddy, and she recalled that the main street of the town had been lined with the intricately painted signs of cozy British pubs. At the maritime museum, she had waited for her turn with the other spouses and then straddled the actual line near the clock where the planet’s hemispheres divide, posing for a picture. For those few moments in time, she’d had one foot in each half of the world. Although there’d been nothing physically special or magical about the plot on which she’d stood, she recalled the weight of the moment, the sensation of being in two worlds at once and the distinct but fleeting experience of time standing still.

Her life now hovered on the cusp of change. A terrible thing had happened to Roger, but at this precise intersection in time, contemplating both distant memories and the uncertainty of the future, she knew she was standing on the lip between past and future. She had not yet taken a step forward into her new unwritten life. Margaret let out her breath forcefully, and as if mirroring her, the wind outside her kitchen window blew a sharp staccato gust and the branch swung upward, startling the wren into flight. Margaret picked up the phone to call her son first. Next would be her travel agent.