Odds : A Love Story (9781101554357) (6 page)

    Later, in the middle of the night, she got up to use the bathroom. She felt better, but still wasn’t quite right. Sitting there with her eyes closed, she could just hear, through the window by the tub, the rushing of the Falls. When she was done, she held the blind aside.

The spotlights were off. Instead of red, the Falls fell a ghostly white. The clouds were gone, and moonlight lay bright on the snow. She turned the bathroom light off and picked her way through the foreign darkness to the sitting room windows overlooking the gorge and stood there watching the Falls and the stars, sharp and twinkling in the cold, silvering her arms.

If he comes to me now, she thought. If I don’t turn around but just think of him, and he comes to me.

That terrible summer she’d wished on a falling star for him to come back to her, and he had, though it hadn’t made either of them happy. Maybe this wasn’t any different, and yet she was ready, if he would come to her, unbidden, to try again. The longer she stood there, the more she questioned whether she truly meant it or just wanted to prove that connection between them still existed—or didn’t. That was possible too, that she was looking for confirmation she was doing the right thing.

It was a childish wish, unrealistic. The cold from the window
made her shiver, and after rubbing her arms to smooth her goosebumps, she relented, turning to find the room empty, only the alien furniture attending her. She went back to bed and lay next to him, wide awake now. She recalled that summer, the stars over the lake, all of his sorry promises. She could have said no then and thrown him out, as Celia had counseled. Beside her, he slept peacefully, which she thought was wrong. When he reached for her, she fended off his hand and rolled away, punching her pillows as if he were bothering her.

Odds of the sun coming up:
        
1 in 1

    The next morning, as if to erase the night before, they made love. He was tentative yet pesky, rubbing against her. She was barely awake.

“Seriously?” she said, since his excitement had nothing to do with her, but gave in, sleepily hiking up her nightgown. “Try not to press too hard on my stomach.”

“I won’t,” he promised, and then paid too much attention to honoring the request, locking his elbows so he hovered above her. The bed was less giving than their pillowtop at home, and his wrists hurt. It had been so long he was afraid he would explode, and proceeded slowly. The heat of her always astonished him, as if deep inside, like the earth, she possessed a fiery core. He was quiet, deliberate, focused on her forehead, her eyebrows, the hollows of her collarbone. She tipped her chin up, and he descended to kiss her throat.

His breath was sour and she turned her head to one side, closed her eyes as if to steal a few more minutes of sleep, murmuring with pleasure to encourage him. His lips on her neck stirred ticklish beginnings. Too soon he pulled away from her throat, but she wasn’t invested enough to correct him. She peeked and found him working intently, his face slightly pained, as if he had a toothache. As he quickened, she arched, squeezing
her arms against her ribs to push her breasts together, a trick that never failed. He seized, clenched, then exhaled, let his head drop.

They chastely kissed, politely traded their most solemn pledge—perilous any other time, yet exempt here, as if this space were sacred—staying together until she patted his side to let him know he could roll off.

Their room faced east, and the curtains were edged with bright sunlight.

“Looks like it’s going to be a nice day,” he said.

“I thought it already was,” she said, and excused herself to use the bathroom.

He lay back in the pillows, dazed and emptied from his efforts, limbs splayed, contemplating the rough popcorn ceiling, his mind wiped clean. Right up until she lifted her nightgown, he hadn’t been sure she would have him. After thirty years she was still inscrutable, and while normally that was frustrating, it produced in moments like this an abject gratitude, a feeling of having been rewarded spectacularly for enduring those long, brittle stretches of indifference. He was pleased enough with his performance—she’d seemed happy with it—and congratulated himself on his persistence. He was convinced there was a lesson in it. No matter what happened, all he needed to do was keep trying.

In the bathroom, cleaning herself, she knew it had been a mistake, undertaken casually, without thought of the consequences, as if this were any other weekend. She had to be more careful. Making love was a way of laying claim to each other, both of them openly agreeing to renew that bond. After all of
their problems, she wanted foremost to be honest—her fear was that after the fact he might accuse her of premeditation—but their habits were so entrenched, and she didn’t want to hurt him. She figured it would hold him till tomorrow at least.

“How’s your stomach?” he asked when she returned.

“It’s okay. Where’s the clicker?”

“By the TV.”

She grabbed it and he lifted the covers to let her back in.

Since neither of them was working, they’d developed the bad habit of sleeping late and watching TV in bed, checking the news and weather, then surfing her cooking and home makeover shows. Here she didn’t feel guilty about it, and indulged herself, seeing what the Barefoot Contessa was making.

“I wonder how late the buffet serves brunch,” he said.

“You’re not serving me breakfast in bed?”

“We could.”

“I’m just kidding.”

He went to the bathroom, then paraded in front of her to open the drapes, letting in the blinding light. He stood there like a hairy cherub, admiring the view.

“People are already out there taking pictures. Hey, they’ve got horse-and-buggy rides.”

All she wanted to do was watch her show, but no, he needed her attention. He was such a boy.

“Why don’t you go take your shower?” she said.

“Want me to holler for you?”

“No, I want to see how this turns out.”

Once he was gone, the bare stage of the room made her excuse
all the more glaring. He was playful after they made love, frisky, yet she felt no residual giddiness, no surge of energy, only fatigue and a vague bitterness. She wasn’t angry with herself so much as at her expectations—that once again she’d fooled herself into doing something she knew wouldn’t help in the long run. She’d felt the same way with Karen at the end, but then she’d attributed it to guilt and the stalemate of their situation. Now there was no one she was trying to be faithful to but herself, and she couldn’t even do that.

In the bathroom he was singing. She muted the TV to hear.

“Try to understand,” he crooned. “Try to understand. Try try try to understand. He’s a ma‑gic man.”

They were seeing Heart tonight, a band he mistakenly thought she’d liked when she was a teenager, because he’d liked them as a teenager. As he did the solos, ridiculously impersonating the various instruments, she lay there listening, clicker in her lap, not understanding how he could be that oblivious, and that happy, both of which, she thought, were at least partly her fault.

Odds of surviving going over the Falls in a barrel:
        
1 in 3

    He met Wendy through the United Way. The two of them were volunteer chairs of their respective insurance companies’ charitable giving, and the second Wednesday of each month drove into United Way headquarters in Cleveland for a board meeting. Before he knew her at all, he remembered her name that way: Wendy, Wednesday. He would have said she wasn’t his type—dark and petite, cool in her navy suits, richly lipsticked, her hair pulled back severely. She was also married, a full carat stone prominent on her finger, though he would have equally had no business with her if she were single. She was younger than he was, in her late twenties, with an MBA from Wheaton. She carried a calculator in her briefcase and made a show of consulting it during meetings, as if someone had nominated her treasurer. The first time he talked to her directly was to contradict her assertion that Children’s Hospital received enough money from public tax dollars, a claim she defended privately via e‑mail the next day with a breakdown of their expenses. He retaliated that afternoon with the latest numbers from their largest suburban hospital, earning him an immediate response:
Apples and oranges
.

If oranges cost more
, he replied,
why would we want fewer apples
?

They chatted before the next meeting. She called him Arthur, a name he’d never liked until he heard her say it. Her hands were tiny, almost childlike, holding her coffee. A delicate silver cross rode the pulse in the hollow of her throat. She had a way of smiling wider when she disagreed with a point he was making, effectively scrambling whatever argument he was formulating. He suspected she knew her effect on him, laughing as they went over their fellow board members’ pet projects. Hers was the Visiting Nurses’ Association, because, she admitted, her mother was a visiting nurse.

“Still is,” she said, nodding with pride. “So why are you Children’s white knight?”

“I used to work there when I was young and idealistic.”

“And now you work for the bad guys.”

“They’re not the bad guys.”

“
We
,” she said. “
We’re
not the bad guys.”

“Right. We’re not the bad guys.”

She laughed, rocking her head back to expose her neck. “Oh my God, you’re still an idealist. How do you do it? And keep your job, I mean.”

“I’m not, really.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said.

He wasn’t used to women flirting with him, married or otherwise, and convinced himself he was mistaken, but then, during the meeting, when the guy from Sohio started in with his Free Trees program, she turned to him and rolled her eyes.

They e‑mailed inconsistently. He looked forward to seeing her, picturing what outfit she’d wear (the gray pinstripe was a
favorite), and became accustomed, once a month, to driving the last few miles of 90 into the city sporting an insuppressible erection. When she missed a meeting because she was on vacation, he couldn’t help but note how dull it was.

You missed me
, she divined.
That’s so sweet
.

After writing and deleting it twice, he replied:
I did
.

Because it was true, and they were both married, and it was just work—volunteer work!—nothing he took home with him. He was flattered and happy to have her as a friend, though even then that was a lie, because he’d begun to think of asking her to lunch, which was personal, and out of his way, since her office was in Lakewood, and he would never ask her to drive into the city. She would know, anyway, that he was proposing more than lunch. He was afraid of what she’d think of him because he’d already thought it himself. She was right, he was an idealist, he had no defense against his desires, only the conviction that, being sympathetic, they belonged together. He had no plan, no goal other than declaring his love for her and hoping she wouldn’t laugh at him.

Fortunately she was more experienced than he was. When he finally mustered the courage to casually suggest, after one meeting, that they should have lunch sometime, she smiled widely and said, “I think you need to think about that, Arthur.”

Driving home, he thought she could have just said no.

I’ve thought about it
, he wrote the next day.

Good
, she replied.

I think it’s apples and oranges
.

It’s not
, she wrote.
And that’s not what I asked you to think about
.

She proposed that for a week they not talk to each other, to seriously figure out what they were doing. Because he cared for her, he tried. He ate without tasting his food, sighed in his car on the way to work. At home he was scattered, unable to follow the dumbest sitcoms. It seemed everyone in the world was making jokes.

Marion asked if he was all right. He was so quiet.

He was just tired, it had been a long day, he had a headache—the same vague excuses she’d used on him for years. He was surprised and disappointed at how easily she accepted them. He thought he must be obvious, since the feeling never left him, and then wondered how well she really knew him. He hadn’t had to say a word to Wendy and she understood perfectly.

Alone, with no one to discuss it with, he was prey to his imagination. He weighed calling her office, but worried that he might frighten her. His great fear was that he would go in next month and she wouldn’t be there. Finally, on the fifth day, he wrote her a carefully worded e‑mail, apologizing, saying he’d resign from the board if she was uncomfortable working with him.

Who would that help?
she immediately replied.

I need to see you
, he wrote.

They chose an Italian place downtown and then didn’t go in. It was February, the ice on the lake just breaking up. They held hands in her car as she drove to the overlook. The beach was deserted, gulls on the shuttered pavilion puffed against the
wind. That was twenty years ago, and he still remembered the way she turned and looked at him before they kissed—despairing, beseeching. She’d warned him beforehand that she had a history. She needed him to be kind. He promised he would be, not seeing, in his newfound happiness, how he could ever betray her.

Odds of a couple taking a second honeymoon
  to the same destination:
        
1 in 9

  They ate the buffet with several hundred other guests, half of them elderly Chinese men, it seemed to Marion, all of them grim and silent, waiting in line and then processing with their trays past chafing dishes heaped with greasy, lukewarm breakfast food. The flip side of last night’s restaurant, this was where the losers came to refuel. The place was set up like a giant food court, formica tables smeared with ketchup, sprinkled with salt. Art went back, fighting against the tide for a handful of napkins to swab theirs.

His plate was brimming, French toast, sausage and bacon swimming in maple syrup. All she could handle was black coffee and a plain bagel. The view, as usual, was the Falls, sharp as a postcard. The sky was cloudless, and the sun bleached the spume bright as the snow, a blinding white curtain, half a rainbow arcing from the misty tip of Goat Island down to the cold blue roil of the gorge. On the American side, dark dots swarmed the railings. She was surprised by the number of people—most of them lovers, she supposed, here to celebrate themselves.