Apart at the Seams (15 page)

“Because it was you, Gayla. It's always been you. Let's not throw away everything we've done and been to each other because I'm a fool. Let's give each other another chance.”

I pressed my hand to my head, shielding my eyes from his gaze and the memories that crowded too close.

“I just don't . . .” I sighed and looked at him. “I don't know how we get past this. Honestly, what is it you expect us to do? If you think I'm just going to come home and pretend everything is fine, think again.”

He pressed his lips together for a moment and then launched into it. Clearly, he'd given this some thought.

“I think you should stay here awhile, maybe until the end of summer.”

That was his big plan for saving our marriage? That we should live in different cities?

“It's just that I know you're not ready to come home,” he said, reading the skepticism on my face. “I don't want to push you. You need some space. Maybe I do too. I think we need to hit the reset button on our relationship. You said yourself that you feel like you barely know me anymore. Maybe we need to spend some time getting reacquainted, just listening to each other like we were meeting for the first time. Not that I'm suggesting we forget what has passed,” he said, holding up his hands in anticipation of my next objection. “Obviously, we're going to have to deal with all that, but first I think you should have a chance to decide if you even like me now or find me the least bit interesting.”

“Or you me?”

“Oh, there's no question of that,” he said with a smile. “I've always found you interesting. Fascinating, really.”

Was he flirting with me? He was. And he was pretty good at it. Where had he picked that up? And then I remembered what he'd said about her, Deanna, the woman he'd slept with—
we'd been flirting for weeks—months, really.
. . .

“Let's cut to the chase,” I said irritably. “What exactly is it that you're proposing?”

He cleared his throat and adopted a more businesslike tone. “Three things. First, that we take a break and live apart until the end of summer. I think we both need some time to clear our heads. Second, that we promise not to make any moves toward divorce during that time. Third, that we do see each other at regular intervals, spend time getting to know each other again. In short,” he said, “for the next three months, I think we should date.”

“I'm sorry?” I said, giving my head a little shake, certain I hadn't heard him correctly. “Did you just say you want to date me?”

“Yes.”

I blew out a long breath. This was crazy. “Brian, you can't seriously—”

“I am completely serious. You don't have to answer right now. All I'm asking you to do is think about it. Wait,” he said, once again interrupting my objections before I could voice them. “I brought you something.”

He turned toward the back door and picked up a bag he'd left on the floor when he first came inside. I hadn't even noticed it until now. He pulled out a notebook with brass-colored rings on the binding, covered with wheat-colored linen, and brought it to me.

“What is it?”

“A photo album. You bought it in that little shop in Soho about ten years ago—don't you remember? I've been going a little crazy since you left, haven't known what to do with myself, so I started cleaning out closets,” he said, looking a little sheepish about his admission.

If only he knew.

I opened the album to the first page, saw a picture of Brian and me eating gelato in Turano; another of us sitting on the stoop of our first apartment in New York, a studio with a toilet that ran constantly and so small there wasn't room to change your mind; another picture taken in the hospital when the twins were born, Brian holding a flannel-wrapped bundle in each arm and beaming.

I remembered now. I'd spotted this album on the sale table in a cute little boutique in Soho years ago, probably more than ten. I'd started going through our family pictures and pasting the best of them in the album—started but never finished. We'd had company coming for dinner, so I had to clean everything off the dining room table. The album and photos ended up in a box under the bed. Every now and then, I'd drag out the box and toss in a few more pictures, telling myself that I was going to sit down and organize them as soon as I had a little spare time, but I never did.

“I found this in a box under the bed along with a ton of loose photographs and decided to go through them, put them in the album. Why don't you hold on to it for a while,” he said. “And then let's talk in a few days, after you've had some time to think.”

I closed the album and laid it on the table.

“Okay.”

There was a moment, a silence, an awkward pause.

“I should get going,” he said.

I didn't disagree with him, just walked him to the door.

“By the way,” he said, “what's going on in the yard? Are we putting on an addition?”

I shook my head. “A garden. Dan Kelleher is helping me with the design and putting in a hardscape. That's why all those boards and rocks are out there.”

“Dan Kelleher?”

“Our neighbor,” I reminded him. “Drew's dad. He owns a landscaping business. Very nice guy. He fixed the furnace and didn't charge me for anything but parts.”

Brian's eyebrows shot up. “The furnace broke down? Why didn't you call me?”

I put one hand on my hip and shot him a look, making it clear that we both knew the reason for that.

“I'm not saying I could have fixed it,” he muttered. “But I'd have called the repairman for you, somebody legitimate, somebody who's been trained. How do you know he's done it properly?”

“Because I didn't have heat and now I do.” I opened the door. “Anything else?”

“You might want to ring Maggie up. She's called twice. I told her that you'd decided to take some time off, come up here for a few weeks.”

“Did she believe you?”

He shrugged. “Call her when you have a chance, will you?”

He leaned forward as if to kiss me good-bye, but I turned my head, dodging his lips. When he went out the door, I locked it behind him. It was stupid, a petty gesture, but I did it just the same.

I stood at the living room window, half-hidden behind the curtains, watched his rental car disappear behind the hedge, and wondered if there was any chance of this turning out well or if I'd ever be able to see him drive away without having to fight back the urge to run after him.

 

After I finished putting away the groceries, I made myself a cup of tea and sat down at the kitchen table to drink it—slowly. I knew that Maggie had been trying to get hold of me before Brian said anything about it; she'd left two messages on my cell phone in the previous week. I'd listened to them but put off calling her back. I couldn't do so any longer.

She wasn't fooled by my casual tone of voice or by my repetition of Brian's explanation for my sudden departure from the city—that the spring admissions season had worn me out and I was spending a few weeks at the cottage to rest and relax—but I didn't really expect her to be. Maggie is the more sensitive of the twins, also the more forthright. And she can read me like a book.

“Are you and Dad separated?” she asked.

“We're taking a break.”

“Before getting a divorce?”

I took in a breath and held it for a moment, then told her the truth.

“I'm not sure. Probably.”

She didn't say anything for a few seconds, but her breathing was ragged and when she spoke I could hear the tears in her voice.

We didn't talk for long. There really wasn't much to say. But I did assure her that I truly hadn't made any final decisions yet, promised I would think it through carefully before doing so, and asked her not to call Nate in Edinburgh and tell him about this, not until there was really something to tell. After I hung up, I just sat there staring at the wall. After a few minutes, I grabbed the photo album and my cigarettes off the counter where I'd left them and carried them to the back porch.

I lit up and flipped through pages filled with pictures of birthdays, trips to the beach and the zoo, photographic recordings of special days and ordinary ones, each summoning up a memory, almost all of them good.

You might suppose that seeing this evidence of all that we had and all we stood to lose if we divorced would have softened my heart toward my husband. Clearly, that's what Brian had intended when he brought it to me.

But it didn't.

As I looked through those photos, I was angry all over again. We had a beautiful family, a beautiful life—the pictures proved it. And he had tossed it all aside, carelessly and thoughtlessly ripping out my heart, tearing our family apart at the seams. And why? Because he'd had a bad week; because he'd lost the Dyson-Marks deal. That bastard! He destroyed all we'd spent our lives building on a whim and without so much as a warning.

My nose was running and my eyes were blurry with tears. I got up to get a tissue, but stumbled on an uneven floorboard and dropped the album, which landed faceup on the porch. Wiping tears away with the back of my hand, I bent down to pick up the album and saw a picture of Brian and me sitting on this very porch.

I knew exactly when that photo had been taken: nearly three years before, in early October of 2010, the same day we put in our offer on the cottage.

Sniffling, I picked up the album, returned to the chair, and looked at the photo more closely, examining our expressions. We were both smiling, but mine was a smile of surprise with a bit of confusion, perhaps even shock, mixed in. Brian's smile was one of relief, as if he'd just found the solution to a problem that had been weighing him down for some time.

And I'd never even noticed.

I hadn't noticed a lot of things. I said I'd never seen this coming, but as I studied that picture, I realized that maybe I should have. The signs were there all along.

T
he thing you need to understand is that we are not impulsive people. Never have been. Not for a long time anyway. That's why I should have suspected something was amiss when Brian called from Indianapolis on a Wednesday in the fall of 2010 and informed me that he was whisking me off for a weekend getaway.

“This Friday? I have a mountain of work. What about next weekend?” I tucked the telephone tight between my ear and shoulder and started flipping through my day planner. “Wait. That's no good either. Maybe next month?”

“Next
month?
Gayla, I am trying to be spontaneous. Isn't that what women are always saying they want?”

“We do. I do. But maybe you could be spontaneous when I'm not quite so swamped? And Nate said he might drop by on Saturday if he has time.”

Brian let out one of those half-sigh, half-growl noises he makes when he's impatient with me.

“Surely our son can keep us waiting around on the off chance that he might drop in and empty our refrigerator on another weekend, can't he?”

“But where are we going? What am I supposed to pack?”

Another sighing growl came from the westward end of the connection.

“Fine. I wanted to surprise you, but if you must know, we're going to Connecticut. You can pack a dress for dinner, but otherwise, I'm sure it will be very casual. Jeans and sweaters should do it.”

I looked at my in-box and the stack of personal essays that I'd promised myself I would read through before Monday, then ran my finger down a pad of paper with a scribbled to-do list that now numbered twenty-eight. It was sweet of Brian to try to be spontaneous, but I
was
swamped. If we pushed it off for a month . . .

“Your schedule won't be any less crowded next month than it is right now,” Brian said, as if reading my thoughts. “If anything it will be worse.”

“I know, but if I—”

“Gayla, just spend the weekend in Connecticut with me, will you? We haven't spent three consecutive days together in the last thirty.”

“Well, that's not my fault,” I snapped. “I'm not the one who travels all the time.”

“I'm not pointing fingers. I'm simply saying I'd like to spend a weekend in the country with my wife. Is that so unreasonable?”

“I'm sorry,” I said, regretting my waspish response to what really was a very sweet invitation. “You're right. A weekend in Connecticut sounds like fun.”

“Right! Excellent!” he enthused. “Pick me up at JFK, the United terminal, at three fifteen on Friday. We'll leave from there, get out of town before the traffic.”

 

If you want to beat the traffic out of New York on a picture-perfect Friday in fall, you have to leave the city earlier than three fifteen.

Brian got miffed when I refused to get off I-95 and try to find another route. He kept pushing his phone to his chest so whoever he was talking to wouldn't be able to hear as he pointed frantically at various exit signs and hissed, “Here! Take this one!”

I paid no attention. If you want to drive, then drive. If you want to backseat drive, then ride with somebody else.

When my cell rang for the first time, Brian glared at it as if he'd rather I
didn't
have a business to run. But since his own phone started ringing about a minute into my call and didn't stop for the rest of the trip, he didn't dare comment. And not all my calls were business related. Well, one wasn't. After we left the snarl of I-95 behind and headed west on Route 8, Maggie called me.

Maggie had graduated from Smith in the spring but stayed on to take a job in the admissions department. She called a couple of times a week, that day to tell me that, for the first time since she'd broken up with her boyfriend in May, she was going on a date.

“A date! That's great, bunny!”

I glanced toward Brian, hoping to get his attention, but he had his eyes closed in concentration, deeply embroiled in a conversation about payables with somebody named Mike. I turned my attention back to my daughter and driving.

“What's his name? How did you meet him?”

“He works in the finance department. Or maybe it was accounting? I can't remember. Something about helping manage the college's investment portfolio.”

Investment portfolio? That sounded promising.

“Is he nice?”

“I guess. We were standing in line at the cafeteria and started talking about how epically vile the vegan lasagna is, and then, just like that, he asked me to the movies!”

I heard a little clicking sound, like plastic tapping against ceramic, and knew she was chewing her nails. She does that when she's nervous.

“This is probably a bad idea. He seems kind of geeky.”

“Is he cute?”

“Meh. Nice eyes. But he wears hipster glasses. His hair is good, though. Brown and sort of curly, kind of flops over his forehead, just a little bit.”

“Never underestimate the power of good hair,” I said, glancing at Brian. “It can lead to all kinds of things.”

Maggie made a gagging sound.

She knew all about the bohemian existence that followed our whirlwind marriage, our adventures in Italy that came to an end after my pregnancy precipitated our return to New York, and how we became grown-ups almost overnight, as dull and predictable as any of her friends' parents, so predictable that she sometimes accused us of making up the whole thing, inventing a backstory so we would seem more interesting than we really are.

I knew she was teasing us when she said things like that, but it bothered me a little. Sure, it was a long time ago, but it really did happen—all of it. We used to be interesting.

“So how is the aging rock star? Can I talk to him?”

I glanced at Brian. He had his eyes closed, his cell phone pressed to his ear, and was using his free hand to rub his forehead.

“Not a good time. He's on the phone and seems to be having a serious discussion about due diligence that wasn't conducted quite as diligently as it might have been.”

“Well, tell him I said hello. I'll call you tomorrow and let you know how the date with Jason the hipster geek went. Seriously, did every second woman who gave birth to a boy in 1987 just wake up from the anesthesia and decide to name her baby Jason?”

I laughed. “Give the man a chance. Jason is a nice name.”

“Do you think I should wear a dress? Or does that look like I'm trying too hard?”

“Do you want to? Personally, I always feel prettier in a dress.”

“So do I,” she confessed. “And I found a cute one at the consignment shop. It's got these little orangey flowers on the skirt and there's a sweater that goes with it. Twelve bucks! Okay,” she said, finally sounding like she was beginning to look forward to the evening. “I'll wear that! Thanks, Mom. Gotta run. Call you tomorrow!”

She rang off without giving me a chance to say good-bye. I smiled. Even though she was grown up and on her own, I loved it that she still called to ask my advice.

Brian finished his call. “Was that Maggie? How is she?”

“She's got a big date; somebody who works at the college. Jason. He helps manage the college's investment portfolio.” I gave him a meaningful glance.

Brian laughed. “Do you realize how like your mother you look right now? The idea of a financier son-in-law has you all aflutter.”

“It does not!” I protested. “It's not like Maggie's going to marry this boy. I'm just happy she's going out. It's been too long.”

“Right that. Well, good for her. I'm going to call her back and tell her so.”

He pressed Maggie's number into his cell and waited for her to pick up. After a moment he frowned and took the phone from his ear.

“Maybe she's in the shower,” I offered, slowing slightly and hugging the curves as hills on each side of the road grew taller and closer, becoming a canyon as the road serpentined its way between the rocky cliffs and alongside a small but fast-moving river, mirroring the twists and turns of the rushing water.

“No,” he said, still frowning, now staring intently at the screen.

“It's not that. There must be some kind of. . . Wait . . . there's no coverage. No bars.”

“No bars? Are you serious?”

“Not a one.” A slow smile spread across his face. “Isn't that fantastic?”

Just as I was about to remind him that he had absolutely promised I would be able to keep in contact with my clients this weekend, the road took a final twisting S and the rock-faced cliffs gave way to a wider and lusher valley, with rolling, painted hills, and trees ablaze with yellow, orange, umber, sienna, cinnamon, and crimson.

“No,” I said, “but this is.”

 

I've been to plenty of little villages in New England but none as charming as New Bern. Perhaps because New Bern wasn't
trying
to be charming; it simply was. That's how it seemed to me—unpretentious and natural, self-satisfied without being smug.

The Green was a little overgrown, the streetscape signage on the smallish side. The doorways of the shops stood open to let in fresh air and customers, but there was no urgency about the latter. No one stood on the corner passing out flyers to passersby, and there were no placards advertising year-end clearance sales sitting on the sidewalks.

A child in a green sweater spun around a lamppost, hanging on with one arm. Two women with spiked hair and tattoos on their arms stepped off the curb and into the street without looking. A silver sedan stopped to let them cross. An elderly couple wearing hiking boots and olive-green fishing hats leaned on the windowsill of a shop that sold sweaters and wide-wale corduroys, licking ice cream from cones. A black lab, leashed but untethered, lay near a bench in need of paint, waiting for its owner to return. It thumped its tail in greeting when I stooped down to say hello but didn't bother to rise.

It seemed to me the whole town had an attitude a little bit like that dog.
I'm glad to see you, of course, but I hope you'll forgive me if I don't get up. I'm good where I am.
Welcoming but not fawning, comfortable in its skin, feeling no urge to impress anybody.

That was New Bern, and I liked it. I liked it from the first.

 

The innkeeper, an attractive woman in her midfifties whose face looked strangely familiar, escorted us to our room.

“Is she who I think she is?” I whispered after she left, just in case the innkeeper had supersonic hearing. “Come on,” I said, snapping my fingers a couple of times as I tried to summon up a name. “You know who I'm talking about . . . that singer . . . the famous one . . .”

Brian gave me his best “are you daft?” look and loosened the knot on his tie. “Gayla, what would a famous singer be doing running a bed-and-breakfast?”

“Okay,” I said, conceding his point. “Maybe not a famous singer, but I know I've seen her face before. She's definitely somebody.”

Brian tossed his necktie onto the bed. “Isn't everybody?”

“You know what I mean!” I said, exasperated because I could tell by the teasing look on his face that he
did
know. We've played this game before.

Manhattan is one of the best places in the world for celebrity sightings. I'm always on the lookout and spot them pretty often, but amid the adrenaline rush of discovery, I can never remember their names. But Brian always can, even though he is completely unimpressed by the goings-on of the rich and famous. Once, he and Nate shared a cab with Robert De Niro, but I didn't even hear about it until Nate came over for dinner a week after it happened. Brian hadn't thought it was important enough to mention.

“Who is she?” I demanded. “Somebody famous, right?”

Brian slipped his loafers from his feet and settled into a chintz-covered easy chair. “She's Madelyn Baron, Sterling Baron's widow, the man who ran the big Ponzi scheme and then killed himself in prison, remember?”

“Oh, that's right. Gosh, I guess the papers weren't lying about the feds taking all their assets. She used to live in a penthouse; now she's running a hotel.”

Brian shrugged. “She looks happy enough. Maybe she prefers New Bern to New York. Seems a nice place.”

I took off my jacket and undid my hairclip, shaking my head so my hair fell loose around my shoulders. “It does. Want to take a walk into town and look around?”

He got up from the chair, crossed the room, and put his arms around me. “I kept thinking about you all during the flight out here.” He kissed me on the lips, then the neck—he knows I can't resist that—and twined his fingers in my hair. “You should wear your hair down all the time.”

I laughed. “It's too much work.”

“I love it this way,” he murmured, brushing his lips against my neck again.

I sighed and let my head fall back, arching my body against his ever so slightly, thoughts of walks and dinner driven from my mind.

“You've been traveling all week; are you sure you're not too tired?”

“Not too. Not for you,” he said, raising his head and kissing me on the lips.

I pulled away, heading toward the bathroom. “I'll be right back.”

He stretched out on the bed with a pillow propped behind his head and his arms crossed over his chest. “I'll be waiting.”

When I emerged from the bathroom five minutes later, he was still there on the bed, snoring lightly, fast asleep.

 

In spite of a somewhat rocky start, we had a lovely weekend.

Brian stirred in the bed next to me the next morning, pulled me close, and picked up where he'd left off the night before. It was a nice way to start the day. With him traveling so much, it had been weeks—actually more like months—since we'd made love.

After breakfast, we drove to Washington Depot, bought some books at the Hickory Stick, a wonderful little bookstore housed in a squat and unusually curved brick building, then went on a hike in Steep Rock Preserve and had a picnic on the riverbank, serenaded by chirping birds and rushing water.