Apart at the Seams (19 page)

“I remember once—I must have been about five—that I wanted to go see
Mary Poppins
at the local cinema, but my parents wouldn't let me. I think Father may have objected to a classic British book being brought to the screen by an American company. In any case, I wasn't permitted to go. We were eating lunch, and I was very angry about that, so I started kicking the table leg, harder and harder. I suppose I was trying to get some sort of rise out of my parents, but it didn't work. After a few minutes, Mother simply removed me from the table and made me go sit in a chair in the hallway. I was still angry, so I started to sing as loud as I could.”

He screwed his eyes shut, a smile on his lips, and said, “Can't remember all the lyrics anymore, but I remember that the chorus said something like . . .

He opened his eyes and laughed to himself. “Not much of a rhyme scheme, eh?”

“Pretty good for a five-year-old,” I said. “Was that the first song you wrote?”

Brian tipped his head thoughtfully to one side and dabbed his lips with the edge of his napkin. “You know, I think it may have been. If my parents would have realized what they were unleashing, they might have just let me go see the damned film.”

“Then I'm glad they didn't. Otherwise, you might never have found your musical voice.”

“Perhaps not,” he murmured, the bow of his lips flattening to a line. “Though it wouldn't have been any great loss to the world if I hadn't.”

I was about to say that it would have been a great loss to me, but given the circumstances, it didn't seem quite an appropriate comment.

The waitress had quietly and discreetly cleared our salad plates at the end of my monologue. After that, aside from continuing to make sure our wine- and water glasses remained full, she let us alone, either out of respect for the intensity of our conversation or perhaps just because it was Saturday night, the restaurant was full, and the kitchen was running behind. Finally she brought the entrées—rack of lamb for Brian and diver scallops for me—and then disappeared.

Brian picked up his fork, looked at my plate, and frowned. “She brought you the wrong entrée.”

“No, she didn't. I ordered scallops.”

“You don't eat scallops.”

“It's not that I don't,” I said. “It's just that I haven't. Until today. As long as I'm up here, I thought I might try an experiment of my own.”

I explained about the sabbatical, how the phrase I'd tossed out as a smokescreen to overly inquisitive locals had, upon further reflection, started to seem like a pretty good idea.

I told him about my ill-considered and blessedly brief attempt to master trampoline Zumba, a story he enjoyed, and my newfound quilting circle, which he approved of, saying he thought it would be good for me to make some new friends. For a moment, I thought he was about to add “some friends besides Lanie” to that remark, but if so, he restrained himself, which was probably a smart move. And I told him about the quilting itself, which he seemed to find interesting.

“What a great idea,” he said. “You really need an artistic outlet.”

I couldn't have agreed more, but something about the way he said it seemed a little patronizing. Of course, I reminded myself, he was just trying to be agreeable, but maybe that was the problem. Maybe he was being a little too agreeable, trying a little too hard, and I thought, maybe things were going just a little too well. Was it really supposed to be this easy? Was a nice dinner together, or even a few, and the unearthing of some nearly forgotten memories supposed to make up for the fact that he had slept with somebody else? Maybe in his mind it did.

He said that the encounter, the affair—no, let's call it what it was—the sex with that woman, that Deanna, meant nothing to him. And I could just about believe him, but it didn't mean nothing to
me,
and wasn't that what counted? I was the injured party here. I was the one called upon to make the magnanimous gesture of forgiveness, but really, was that fair? At the end of the day, what was this costing him? Not much. Not in comparison to what it had cost me—the humiliation, the heartbreak, my lost sense of self. And what it would continue to cost me if I stayed in the marriage—the fear that it could happen again, a fear that might fade in time but that I doubted could ever be erased completely.

Was that a fair trade?

My mood darkened alongside my thoughts, but Brian didn't seem to notice. He was talking, cutting his lamb into bites and dragging it through the sauce, ruining the careful design of curlicues and dots that artfully decorated his plate, a design that someone in the kitchen had spent a long time creating, and saying that he thought it was good I was getting a rest, that I had been working too hard ever since I'd opened the business, and that a sabbatical was a brilliant idea.

He was trying so hard to be nice, to be agreeable, to
appease
me.

Did he think it was that easy? From the look on his face, I could see that he did. A few more dinners like this, a call to the florist, maybe a trip to the jeweler's, and all would be forgiven.

Screw him.

That's what I wanted to say—to scream, really. Screw you! And then, quite possibly, to flip over the table, scattering the cutlery, breaking the dishes, and shattering the glasses, giving him a chance to experience chaos firsthand, to figure out how to handle the embarrassment and aftermath of an irrational act he'd never seen coming.

Crazy, right? That kind of impulse? Completely crazy. Completely unlike me. An impulse that no one who knew me, not
even
me, would ever believe I was capable of giving in to. And I didn't. But I
imagined
doing it, and that was frightening enough. What was wrong with me?

It was like I was right back at the beginning, feeling just as irrational and out of control and broken as I had on that first day. I felt like I wanted to punch someone, him, her, or even the strangers sitting around us in the restaurant innocently enjoying plates of lamb chops and rubbery, fishy scallops that tasted just as nasty as I'd always thought they would.

I hated them. I hated everything. I hated Brian most of all.

Stop! Stop right now. You're acting crazy. And unfair. He's being nice; what's wrong with that? He's apologized—more than once. What more can he do? What more do you expect him to do?

I didn't know. I really didn't. But . . . more. More than he was doing now, though I had no concept of what more looked like or when more would become enough. But after a moment and with superhuman effort, Rational Me, the Gayla I recognized, wrestled the reins from Crazy Me.

I got out of my head and came back to earth just in time to hear Brian say that, while he missed me and the apartment felt too big when I wasn't there, for the first time in a long time, he had taken his guitar out of the case and played a little music. It felt good, he said.

“Who knows?” he joked. “Maybe we should both take a sabbatical.”

“Maybe,” I agreed. “I have to say I'm really excited about my garden. I planted the lavender this week and a whole flat of purple salvia. I put in some hydrangea bushes too.”

“Oh, yes?” Brian asked, making a miming motion with his hand, like he was signing his signature in the air, so the server would know we were ready for the check. “That's wonderful, darling. Good for you. That's something you've always talked about, isn't it?”

I nodded and touched my napkin to my lips before laying it on the tablecloth, ready to wrap up the evening and head home. “Of course, it turned into a bigger project than I would have imagined. I got a little carried away.”

Brian paused in the middle of calculating the tip. “You? Carried away?” He chuckled and turned his attention back to the bill.

“I'm so grateful Dan lives right next door. It'd be too much for me to manage on my own. Don't know what I'd do without him. He comes over practically every day.”

I hadn't planned on saying that. It just popped out, an unnecessary, immature, and somewhat untrue utterance by Crazy Me, a pathetic attempt to rouse my husband's jealousy. I knew I was being ridiculous, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy his reaction. Rational Me's grip on the reins still wasn't as tight as it should have been.

Brian looked up. “He's there every day? Why every day?”

“I told you—because it's gotten to be a big project. It's too much for me to deal with alone, especially installing the hardscape. Lifting all those huge rocks and shoveling all that dirt? I'd never be able to manage it. But Dan is incredibly strong, picks up those rocks like they're nothing. It's fascinating to watch. Dan comes highly recommended, and fortunately for us,” I said with a sweet smile, “he's right next door. How lucky is that?”

Brian frowned as he slipped his credit card back into his wallet. “I don't like the idea of him coming over to the house all the time, not when I'm not there.”

“Well, he's not in the house, Brian. He's in the garden. Oh, for heaven's sake. Take that look off your face. I needed help with the garden, and Dan turned out to be the perfect man for the job.”

I almost said,
It just happened; it doesn't mean anything,
but managed to stop myself.

Brian slid out of the left side of the booth. I slid right.

“How much is he charging? Whatever it is, I'm not paying for it.”

I picked my handbag up from the banquette and looped it over my forearm.

“Well, then. Isn't it fortunate that I am perfectly capable of paying my own way?”

 

The ride back to the cottage seemed even longer than the ride to town had been. Our earlier silence had been awkward, as we struggled within ourselves, trying to think of what we ought to say. This silence was more smoldering, as we struggled to keep from saying what we ought
not
to say.

Even so, when we got to the cottage, Brian once again exited the car first and jogged quickly around to the other side to open my door for me. I appreciated the gesture, his effort to move us past our moment of mutual pettiness, and so when I stood up I leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the lips and said thank you for a lovely evening.

He kissed me back, but not lightly.

He put his hand on the back of my head, running his fingers under my hair, which I'd worn loose because I knew he liked it long. He cradled my head in the bowl of his hand, making it impossible for me to pull my lips from his.

But at that moment, pulling away from him was the last thing I wanted.

My mouth fell open like a sigh, and I let go of all the tension and my right to be right because, at least for that moment, I didn't care about who was right or who had been wronged, or the balancing of scales, or the paying of debts. I just wanted him to kiss me, to feel his tongue tracing the curve of my lips, the ridge of my teeth, his body shifting mine to the right with the unyielding metal of the car at my back, so he could press his hips hard against mine while his lips moved from my mouth to the soft flesh of my neck, to that sensitive spot just at the top of my collarbone, the place that makes me melt, that made my arms lift of their own accord, fluid and thoughtless, like water birds in flight, to drape over his shoulders and around his neck, while I arched toward him so my buttons would be easier to undo, my skirt easier to raise. I opened my mouth again and closed my eyes. At any second, I was going to cry.

Because it had been so long, so long since he touched me like this, weeks upon weeks that added up to months upon months, and I didn't know, not until that moment, how much I missed this and how very much I wanted him.

He moved his lips lower, and I dropped my head back, making that small sound that I don't make at any other time, the utterance that has no exact translation, a sound that is part yielding, part possession. Brian lifted his mouth from the curve of my breast, leaned close to my ear, and whispered, “Let's go inside.”

And when he said it, I knew he meant forever and for always, that if I let him come into the house, he was
in;
he would stay. Allowing him entrance would be my pact and promise to let go of all he had done, and not done, and left undone. And for a moment, I wanted him so much that I thought I could say yes. I wanted to.

But then he did something I didn't expect.

He lowered his head again, brushed his lips across the top of my breast, his lips and then . . . his teeth. Not a bite, not precisely, but more like a bite than a kiss, something new, something he had never done before, not in the twenty-six years of our lovemaking, and I knew that this thing, this new thing that made my skin shiver and my nerves go taut, was something he had learned, and practiced, and done with her, for her, and maybe she had liked it.

I turned hard to the left, pulled my body away from his, buttoning my undone buttons and said, “I don't think so. It's not a good idea.”

I ran into the house. He walked quickly after me, taking big strides, calling my name like a question, wondering what he'd done. How could he not know?

I closed the door and locked it, standing with my back pressed to the hard wood and cold glass until he gave up, walked back to the car, and drove away. As the headlights swept over the driveway, rippling across the windowpanes like water from a crystal fountain, I sank to the floor and buried my face in my hands.

T
he next day, I brooded. And that night I had a dream. The kind of dream I haven't had in a long time, a very sensual dream.

Brian and I were walking down a street in New York—I think it was somewhere in the Village because the streets were narrow and the buildings pressed in on us closer than they do in the wide avenues of midtown. Anyway, we were walking and talking. I don't remember what about, just that it was nice and that we weren't mad at each other. I think we were window-shopping because, at one point, we stopped in front of a big display window filled with guitars, all painted red, and looked at them for a while, trying to figure out how much they cost and if we could afford one.

And then he grabbed my hand and said, “I want to show you something,” and pulled me down the street and around the corner and into an alley with brick walls that had thick green grass underfoot instead of concrete. It was strange.

We walked down this alley for a little way. Brian was ahead of me; I could see only his back because he was actually pulling me and telling me to hurry. I was struggling to keep up with him because, for some reason, I was wearing these very high black stiletto heels, and they kept sinking into the grass and tripping me up. He kept pulling me, so I was sort of mad at him, but at the same time, I thought it was funny, and I started to laugh, telling him to hold on a minute for heaven's sake, hopping on one foot and then the other while I tried to take off my shoes, half bent over with my hair coming out of the clip and falling down into my face until I finally pulled out the clip and let my hair fall loose to my shoulders.

I kicked the shoes off, too, at about the same time the alley opened up into a beautiful wide meadow with a tree in the center, covered in lovely white blossoms.

Somehow I had lost Brian. He wasn't anywhere to be seen, so I started walking toward the tree, calling his name. I wasn't worried. I knew he was there somewhere. I remember how good the grass felt on my bare feet and that there was a teasing little breeze blowing, making the edge of my skirt flutter against the skin of my legs.

I got to the tree. Still no Brian, so I decided to wait for him there.

The dress I was wearing was turquoise cotton with a pattern of little green leaves. The fabric was light and thin, almost transparent, and when I leaned against the tree the rough bark felt good on my back, a gentle scratching of fingernails filed smooth. Wondering when Brian would return, I slid slowly down the length of the tree, the bark catching on the fabric of my dress as I sank toward the soft grass, my skirt inching above my knees. It was warm, and I started to feel drowsy, so I closed my eyes to doze, breathing slowly and deeply, my limbs heavy, quickly falling into the half-life that lies between slumber and consciousness.

A moment later—or it might have been an hour—someone was next to me, kissing me. I felt a hand on my shoulder, another at my waist, pressing me down, and I lay back willingly, yielding to his touch, my hand covering his as he slid the silky folds of my skirt high on my bare thighs. There was a lifting and rising and shifting sensation as he moved above me, his head so close to mine, his breath warm and sweet in my ear as I opened myself to him, and he whispered, “Let's go inside.”

I stopped, confused because the voice asking for the entrance that I had been so eager to allow had an American accent. I opened my eyes, saw his face, and pulled back. The voice, the face . . . it wasn't Brian. It was Dan.

I woke in the dark and sat up in bed, confused by my surroundings, flooded by terrible sadness and a profound disappointment. Knowing there would be no more sleep for me that night, I went downstairs and made tea. I carried my cup into the living room and sat staring out the window into the black night, feeling more alone than I'd ever felt in my life. I didn't know what to make of that dream. I didn't know what to make of a lot of things. But one thing I did know was that I couldn't deal with this by myself anymore.