Lost in Hotels (40 page)

Then the door closes behind me as I take the first few steps back into my life. The narrow hallways retreat to the dark elevator that conceals my tears and into the lobby that’s buzzing with laughter, conversations, and music. The walls strewn with rich artwork appears monochromatic in my misery and seems to boo my soul as I retreat. My head turns in every direction hoping to catch a glimpse of him anywhere in the lobby, but alas, nothing. As I stand on the curb where it is I belong and queue for a taxi, I begin to contemplate what is yet to come. The second front of this campaign of betrayal awaits my contrition.

The taxi driver arrives with a full holiday garland strewn across the dashboard. He’s wearing a Santa hat that he holds on tight during speedy turns, even in the ice. The buildings seem to weep as they rise around me, and I contemplate what is to come at home and how I’ll probably have to find a place to at least temporarily stay until I sort out exactly what’s happening and where I’m going. I close my eyes and wonder if perhaps this is all a dream. I imagine the hate I will see in Matt’s eyes, the hurt as he screams in our Christmas-tree-filled apartment as Billy lingers in rare silence watching his young world fall to pieces. I imagine the hurt Matt must feel as he sat at home maintaining our life while I was with this David the entire time during all those weeks away.

The city is immersed in Christmas. Lines form outside shops, even in the Lower East Side. Gramercy Park feels farther and farther away crossing the East River.

As the driver takes my exit and rounds our street, I yell for him to stop. I notice a light snow begins to fall once again.

“This is fine,” I say.

“Are you sure? It’s pretty cold out there,” he says, looking at me with his black Italian eyes through the rearview mirror.

“No, I’ll be fine. I don’t mind,” I say with as much of a smile as I can muster.

“And messy with that bag of yours,” he continues.

“No, I really don’t care … plus, I feel like walking.”

I open the cab door and stand on a deserted street corner where wiser people have long since retreated to their happy homes. I need the time to figure out what exactly I will say to Matt, if he’s even there. Should I be honest and explain how I feel, or should I be sensitive and just let things be the way they are as we come to some sort of agreement to separate?

I begin walking into the snow that falls against me. I take each step carefully as the wheels of my bag struggle between the ice and softer snow. There’s a magical stillness to the air upon snowfall; sound no longer travels freely, and we hear the mechanical sounds of our own morality from our heartbeats to our own inhale and exhale.

I approach the front of our building with its iron fence and a scattering of padlocked bicycles that surround a concrete garden, which is where David must have stood in the last days looking up to wonder which one of the lighted cutouts was mine. I pass up the outside steps like a ghost of my old self, my heels slide on each slippery step with my filthy wheeled bag in tow. He would have taken these same steps and stared at the nonfunctional security box before pushing his way through the scratched red door and into the metal elevator that always smells like some sort of curry on the way up to the fourth floor. He would have seen the stained industrial carpet that lines our hallways as well as the occasional tricycle and uncollected newspaper on the way to our humble door that lies at the end of the hall.

My heart pauses in anticipation of what is to come. I don’t know whether it’s better if Matt is here ready for our collision or long since left me and gone to his parents. I wonder if our neighbors heard when the conversation became more intense, what David or Matt called me, and who will remember. I approach the door that will open to unleash the final effects of my selfish ways as I close in on the steel-gray handle, close my eyes, and push it open.

There’s a sense of life inside as bacon hangs in the air. Maybe Matt made one of his breakfast dinners thinking he’d be alone for at least another day. There’s a laundry basket piled on the dining room table that looks as if it’s been there for a few days in some sort of contempt, and chairs pulled in all directions. Blankets lie on the couch as if it’s been a refuge for a night or two, and homemade snowflakes hang from the windows that now frame real snowflakes outside. I take the three steps that are our foyer and recognize the more stylish furniture pieces from my single life hidden among an IKEA canvas selected for functionality and storage.

As I step farther into the living room, there on the other side of the door are Matt and Billy on the floor playing with cars in front of the Christmas tree and the TV booming a PBS cartoon. They pay no notice to me at first, as I hover in the background unsure of what the immediate reaction means. More than a minute seems to pass before I interrupt.

“Hi, guys.”

There is no reply.

“Matt?” I say again.

As their faces turn, I prepare for their eyes of judgment and pain that will begin the final cycle of my demise for which I am ready to face and hope to come out anew.

“Mommy is home!”

Matt says this and jumps to his feet and walks in my direction with ignited eyes. His eyes piercing through his month-long beard hold no anger, no disappointment as he walks across the room, and I wait for the moment when his anger will emerge. He comes closer as I question what it is I’m seeing. I fear his closeness while wondering if he might grab me or do something entirely out of character given the extremity of the situation. He grabs me abruptly, and I stutter backward. He shocks my cold face with a kiss that stuns my soul and confuses my wind-chapped lips ready to begin in a scream of apologies and the inevitable story of David from the beginning. I can feel the loving hands of my son along my knees and around my thighs as he shifts his weight into me in the purest of affection.

The affection does anything but soothe my indicted heart. The misery and mourning inside me wants nothing to be normal again. This is the moment where I come clean, that I tell Matt how I feel, and what it is I really want for my life. This is where I tell him there’s no longer a connection between us, and I’ve felt so displaced for the past few years.

Matt holds my body as the manly scent of his flannel and sweats uniform grabs me like the foreign touch of an unwanted advance that I don’t know how to fight. I imagine what David thought of him on first sight, imagining me with Matt, living in this place, and in this life that couldn’t be farther from his own.

“You’re not supposed to be back until tomorrow,” Matt says in more of a statement than a question, but with no hint of anger or pain that part of me so craves.

Tears begin to flow. Billy holds on so tight that for a moment everything seems okay, painfully okay as if nothing had happened, and we are all simply returned to where we were a year ago, a week ago, a day ago. I pick Billy up and hold him close, his soft baby hair dries my eyes as he flails to get away, and I struggle to hold up his weight with my knee.

“No, I came back early,” I reply tepidly, still unsure if this too is a trap. Matt takes a seat at the dining room table and hides the basket of laundry underneath the table.

“Did you get everything you needed for your story?”

There’s no question as to why I returned early, what my days entailed, or how I made my way through a treacherous snowstorm, as David would have asked. He has no curiosity for what I am feeling or have experienced in the days since we’ve parted as with those homecomings that have come before. Matt gets lost in his own immediate thoughts of holiday plans and dinner with no inquisitiveness for what happens beyond these walls, whom I met, or what he might have experienced had he joined me on this trip that didn’t exist. My reality sets in; there is no other life than this for me now. There is just this.

“Wait, you’re crying. Are you crying? Are you all right?” Matt asks as I try to hide my face.

“No, I’m okay,” I reply, wiping tears from my face that simply continue to fall.

“Show Mommy what you made, Billy.”

Matt points to the snowflakes that line all of our windows, their sills caked over in a mix of dirt and generations of paint. Billy wobbles about like a little man, a mini-version of his dad with almost identical gray pants and a sweatshirt. He returns to his toy cars next to the Christmas tree trimmed in a popcorn garland and a homemade star on top.

“I’m just going to put this away,” I say with a finger pointed at my bag covered in salt residue and dirt that looks nothing as it did sitting on the floor of the hotel. My bag alone shares the secret of my broken heart.

I retreat to our bedroom and see our unmade bed. Glasses of water cluster on the side table with its LCD alarm clock and photos of happier days. My heart tells me to leave, to walk out the door and to a hotel for a few days as I manage to sort out the unwinding of this life. However, after a year of selfishness, I also know I need to be a better mother starting right now before it’s truly too late. I tuck the bag in the back of our closet as I mutate into my home uniform of running pants and a sweatshirt, which I wouldn’t have even worn to work out in when with David.

My hair is a mess, and I haven’t showered in days. I glance down and reach back into my bag to finger the little box open, my last reminder of him as I return to this life. I untie the ribbon in haste as my fingers reach through the velvet packaging to feel the shiny stones and coldness of metal before me. I dare not look as I touch it to my face and lips, and my eyes open to catch shiny emerald stones wrapped around a single band of warm yellow gold. My eyes look closer to an inscription written inside: “Never further than right here inside.” I repeat the inscription to myself and then again, as tears stream down my face. I fall to my knees as if life has forsaken me.

After hiding the ring back inside my bag and temporarily away from my thoughts, I return to the living room where Billy and Matt are curled up on the couch watching
Finding Nemo
. I join them as the reluctant third on the edge as I stare out the window contemplating how to go forward. They watch in an almost hypnotic gaze even though they’ve seen the movie a thousand times. The previous day spins like a filmstrip in my mind, and I wonder if David even came to the house or met with Matt at all. I truly can’t figure out how he knew all that he did, even details like how many bedrooms we have.

“So did I miss anything while I was gone?” I ask.

There’s a silence as if Matt is trying to wait until there’s a lull in this child’s film before engaging in conversation.

“No, not really. Just did some Christmas shopping. Oh, and we had a playdate,” he says with brief eye contact and a passing smile as he reaches for my hand that stays limp. Then he returns to silence as I wonder if maybe he is just acting as if nothing happened, and he’s simply trying to hold on to whatever it is we have. My agitated heart wants a confrontation with him; I want to tell him that this is no longer working for me and that I can’t stand another day of this life with him. I gently pull my hand away.

“So I didn’t really miss anything?”

“No, not really,” he says.

“It’s amazing that you can have this long journey and then return as if you were never even gone,” I say in resignation.

“Oh, but we have a new neighbor. If that counts.”

Yet another conversation that ventures no farther than this building’s gossip and this apartment that suddenly feels like a cell. I imagine Christmas immediately before us that will be free of work, shopping, and friends to distract my broken soul as I’m forced to wait out the endless hours of these days that will pass in a dawdling pace.

“Do they have kids, pregnant wife?” I ask.

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask,” he says in typically Matt fashion. “But he’s a real sharp guy, probably gay, or maybe it’s just that he’s English or Irish or something.”

With those words and the naivety of his impression, my heart sinks as I realize that David was actually here. I want to know more, but I hesitate, before the sheer desire to know all is too much to bear.

“What apartment? Where’s he from?”

“He didn’t say; he just asked my name and said he was introducing himself to his new neighbors.”

“Did you ask him in?”

“He came in for a minute as Billy was being a terror, but that was it. He was real dressed up, kind of a snobby kind of guy. Didn’t mention his own kids.”

My soul collapses as I imagine his steps on the floor just feet away from where I sit. His eyes gazed on these endless taupe walls and rental innards littered in family life like the unkempt closet of my soul ripped open. I try to imagine the conversation in an instant, his face upon realizing this great lie that I’ve been living. Did he touch the table? Did he lean against the wall? Despite the hurt and pain he must have felt, he sought no comfort in the tale that would yield my demise.

I repeat the story through my head, trying to imagine why he did not spill the pain that’s been caused to him by a woman who seems to fail all the men in her life. Instead, he simply left as he left me, unwilling to stoop to the level of confrontation or more disruption to his life than has already been caused. There was no manly brawl or fight of words; not even something subconscious that lingered with Matt to warrant a mention. There was nothing, saving me shame and instead, leaving me to rot in this life of my own making.