Not To Us (3 page)

He is undone, overwrought. I am sympathetic, but firm. On this day, he reminds me of how he used to be before we had kids, centered on me, not himself. Those were heady days, those two years before we embarked down the road of parenthood. I had just graduated from the University of Washington and landed my first editorial job and was also trying to write full time. On some days, when Robert was still in law school, he would skip class and we would spend all day at the house in each other’s arms.

I could see that this was what he wanted to do today. For a moment, I wish that the thing with Carrie had never happened. For a single moment, I want to go back in time and start over.

≈≈

We discovered this thing about our marriage ten years ago. As is often true with life, the patterns emerge. Friends marry, have children or don’t, get divorced or don’t…all this angst and turmoil seemed to take place at about the ten-year mark with all of our friends. Our boys were six and three and it seemed everyone we knew was going through a divorce with the exception of us and Michael and Carrie Shaw with their then six-year-old daughter, Elaina.

“Not to us,” we’d said. We were so blissfully happy, then. I felt guilty that our lives were so complete. We watched the split between so many of our friends and both felt this trepidation. It was as if the failing of a relationship were a contagion of some kind and certainly more potent than the flu or a cold.

“Not to us,” Robert said.

He’d given me a secret smile and stared at me, longingly, over the heads of our two children, as they played on the family room floor.

It seemed we had discovered the magic for keeping the relationship alive, to keep it going. I was unsure what it was, but I knew it had to be some kind of unexplainable thing.

“Not to us,” I said back to him.

≈≈

But, I do wonder, now. My capability for optimism is less sure then Robert’s. My own parent’s divorce was proof of that. Of course, they waited until I was eighteen before splitting up. As if, somehow at eighteen instead of, say, fifteen, it made some sort of difference and left a dissimilar impression entirely. It didn’t.

I had vowed to be unlike my mother, yet, here I am trudging down the same path. Infidelity. Is it so easy? I look over at Robert and try to understand this. I think of Michael and our liaison just twenty hours ago. Yes, infidelity is so easy; it seems.

Emily and the boys race down the long drive to their respective rides to school bus. I watch from the window feeling the vague touch of their hasty kisses on my face, where they just kissed me right before they fled down the drive. Robert stands next to me and stares out the window.

“Ellie,” he says. I turn to look at him. “I’m so sorry. I love you so much.” His grey eyes fill with tears. I touch his face and wipe away the tears.

“Bobby,” I say. “I just don’t know if we can make this work.”

This grown man before me cries harder. He is broken on so many levels; I don’t know what to do for him. I should be angry with this man. He has broken my heart and yet, I find myself in his arms holding him, comforting him, assuring him that everything will be okay.

I have no proof of this! What am I saying? Why am I saying it?

Robert calls the office in a subdued tone and tells his assistant he won’t be in today. There go my plans for escaping. In my mind, I have already packed my suitcase and left the home that we have built here and lived in the last sixteen years. Now, Robert looks at me and follows me from room to room. I’m never going to get any work done. His cell phone rings and I watch Carrie’s familiar number come up.

“Answer it,” I say.

He shakes his head and powers off the phone. “No.”

I shrug and go upstairs to each of the children’s rooms, retrieving forgotten clothing off their floors. Robert follows behind me back down the stairs with an amazed look on his face, as he watches me fill the washer with the measured amounts of liquid detergent and fabric softener. I turn around and he pulls me to him and kisses me tenderly.

“I love you so much, Ellie.” I haven’t heard him say that in months, not even on our anniversary in July. I look at him and search his face looking for some sign of the man that I have always loved. His eyes are bloodshot and his face is streaked with old tears. I touch his face and then I kiss him and close my eyes. His lips remind me of the man that he has always been
—
my Bobby Bradford. We are back in time, in college, when our love was fresh and new and wonderful. For a minute, in this laundry room, it feels the same. He holds me now and I feel him wanting me. I feel this overpowering desire. I am all powerful. My body of its own volition heads up the stairs with this man. We are undressing one another in a frenzy and barely make it to the bed as we crave each other.

Why hasn’t it been like this for so many years? I wonder how often he has been with Carrie and I ask him this now in the throes of our own passion. He stops and looks at me, stunned by my question.

“What?” Bobby asks in a wounded voice. His erection withers away. He searches my face while I pull away from him. I get up and walk into bathroom and start the shower. Why am I the bad guy here? He’s the one who cheated. What I did yesterday has now become an aberration of my imagination, although I glance at the clock and begin to anticipate Michael’s call.

I have cancer. I can do whatever the hell I want.

You should go to work I tell him through the streaking wetness of the glass shower door. He wipes himself off and proceeds to get dressed. Ten minutes later, I hear the front door slam, while I dress.

Now, we’re back to where we’ve been. I’m sure he has already reached Carrie on his cell phone.

Downstairs, I pour myself another cup of coffee and congratulate myself on further fucking up my life. I’m such a wonder. My self-loathing is at an all-time high. I begin to cry.

My crying is so loud and painful that I do not hear Bobby re-enter the kitchen, until he is standing in front of me with a wilted bouquet of pink Gerber daisies and a price tag on the cellophane indicating the Safeway flower market. He holds two lattes in the other hand. He is dressed in a pair of sweats and a purple University of Washington Huskies football t-shirt.

“These are for you, Ells.” He holds out the flowers and I take them from him and sniff their mixed fragrance.

“They’re great.”

“Why are you crying?” Bobby could always undo me with that tender voice.

“I’m such a bitch.”

“Nah, you’re great, Ellie. I’m the one who has so much to be sorry for.” He sets the coffees down and takes me in his arms. “I’m sorry, Ellie. And, I will make it up to you.”

The familiarity of his touch is my final fallback position. I’m powerless. We take the coffees with us upstairs and finish what we started less than an hour before.

Afterwards, I lie in his arms and wish that he still felt like he belonged to me, but all I can see in my mind is Carrie’s face. Carrie has always been beautiful and my features are so ordinary in comparison. And, even as Robert traces them with his fingers and kisses my eyelids and my cheekbones and my breasts, I still wish for Carrie’s striking looks in every way. I have, in the back of my mind, always questioned why Robert Bradford chose me over Carrie. Why after their first and only date; he chose me. I ask him, now. This time he is ready for my questions about Carrie and for my questions about me.

“Why me?” I ask. How many years had I wondered?
Eighteen.

“Because you smile like you have a secret,” Robert says, now. “When you smile, that is. For some reason, you haven’t been smiling and I know now that’s what I miss, most of all. So, Ellie, I want to spend the rest of my life seeing you smile and being the reason for it.”

He kisses me tenderly and I intertwine my legs with his. This has always felt so right; and yet, I find myself thinking of Michael
—
his face, his body, his kiss.

I close my eyes and pretend it is yesterday. For a moment, I forget that I have cancer and that everything has changed, including me.

≈≈

It is a week of next mornings. I have packed and unpacked my suitcase a dozen times. It is never the right time to leave.

Robert and I have made love every day since that first day of reconciliation. Michael has called every day at exactly 11:00 in the morning and I have answered every day, except that first day when I was with Robert when he called. I couldn’t reach the cell in time. The truth? I didn’t exactly know what I was going to say.

For the last seven mornings, Michael and I have only spoken. Today is a going to be different.

We are going to do more than talk on the phone. I am taking the ferry from Bainbridge Island to Seattle. We have eight hours of uninterrupted time ahead of us at the apartment that he has set up in downtown Seattle just off the waterfront.

This morning as soon as everyone’s gone, I duck into the master closet and find my biggest suitcase and start packing up my clothes. Consciously, I’ve made my decision. I need to leave. I’m not sure why. I’m not sure for how long. I just know that I need to go. That if I don’t, I’ll completely lose myself in this house, where, no matter where I look, I’m completely alone and changed.