Shelter Us: A Novel (26 page)

“Josie called last night,” he says, drawing out her name. He looks at me, waiting for me to say something. Sensing I’ve been struck dumb,
he continues, “After you went to bed, your cell phone rang. I saw it was from the Bay Area, and I thought maybe it was Carolina and I’d say hello. So I answered it, and this woman started talking to me like she knew me, she knew all about Oliver and Izzy. She told me how wonderful you were to take her to Oakland to find her brother.”

The floor falls away from under me.

“Then she says, ‘I hope someday I’ll have a marriage like you two,’ and I’m standing here in my own kitchen, telling a stranger who seems to know a hell of a lot more about my wife than I do, ‘Yes, she’s wonderful. We’re so lucky.’” He has built up momentum, and I have nothing to say to stop it. I’m caught, and guilty of worse than what he’s angry about. “Can you please tell me what the hell is going on, Sarah?”

We hear Oliver sneeze, and I turn around to see him standing in the doorway of the bathroom behind me, peeking his head out warily. He has never heard us talk this way to each other. His face says he does not like it.

“Oliver, sweetie, you forgot to flush.” I was counting on the sound of the toilet to alert me to his return. “And you didn’t wash your hands.” I leave Robert’s questions hanging in the air and go with Oliver into the bathroom to help him reach the sink, the soap, the towel.

Standing on a wooden stool in front of the sink, Oliver asks, “Why is Daddy mad?”

“Oh,” I say, “he’s upset about something at work—that’s all, honey. Don’t worry.” I feel sick; I have made our house a shouting house. I never once heard my parents fight. Now Oliver cannot say the same. I catch Oliver’s eyes in the mirror, looking at mine, searching for a sign that I’m telling him the truth, that everything is okay. I smile at his reflection, kiss the top of his head.

“Don’t worry, sweetie,” I repeat. “Nothing’s the matter. Uh-oh, I think I hear Izzy.” I listen again, making sure it’s not the neighbors’ dog barking.

“Maamaaa!” Yep, it’s him.

“Let’s go say good morning to your brother.” Oliver hustles out of the bathroom, hands still damp, eager to be the first person to greet
Izzy and to leave the scene of the shouting. He bounds ahead of me into their room. I follow him up the stairs, and Robert’s stern voice catches me from behind.

“Sarah, we are not done talking.”

I turn, grabbing hold of the banister to keep from falling. Trying to remain calm, I say in a whisper, “I know that, Robert.”

Izzy renews his call for me with increased intensity. “Maaaamaaaa!”

“I have to get Izzy,” I say, as if that settles something. Robert shakes his head and storms off toward the kitchen.

I take a breath and try to calm down. I go into Izzy’s room, grateful for the distraction. All I can do is handle this moment, and then the next, one at a time. I imagine what a movie camera might capture of our scene: a woman in a pink bathrobe picks a child out of a crib, kisses his round cheek, carries him to a changing table, and lays him down. She leans over him, and they rub noses. They share eye contact while her hands complete their messy assignment. The almost-five-year-old brother dances around the room, singing a made-up song. He picks up a toy airplane and zooms it in a turbulent sky. What the camera can’t see, what only the woman can feel, is the turbulence churning inside her heart. Downstairs, the front door opens and closes, the sound of a husband and father going to work.

T
he call
comes at 4:30 p.m. I am making dinner. Corkscrew pasta with butter and parmesan. Steamed broccoli for good karma. I gird myself for anything. “Hello?”

“We are going to talk tonight,” Robert says. It is the first time we have spoken all day. “My mother will be there at five to watch the kids. I’ll be home by five thirty.” He stops talking and allows me the first chance to say anything since I answered the phone.

“Okay.”

“Okay.” He hangs up. He’s never spoken to me this way, so authoritarian. All day I’ve worried about how to explain the call from Josie. I finally decided that this was a good development, Robert’s finding out about her. I tried to talk with him about her, after all, and he shut me down. I knew he’d object to my taking her to lunch. I didn’t know how to explain it to him, that she was my only friend, and I didn’t want him to tell me I couldn’t. When her brother went missing, of course I offered to help her. True, I shouldn’t have lied—I will apologize for that. But if he’d only been more open, if he’d listened to me, I wouldn’t have had to lie. Yes, that’s how the conversation will go. There will be no mention of Brian.

Joan arrives precisely at five o’clock, of course. I open the door and scan her face for signs of what she knows.

“Hi, Joan. The boys are playing. They just finished dinner.” I pick up clothes and toys off the floor as we walk, as though apologizing for
the mess. Her home is always immaculate, and I have the sense it was even when Robert was a child. “Olly, Izzy, look who’s here!”

“Hi, Gramma,” Oliver says. “Wanna play?”

“Oh my goodness, look at you,” she exclaims. She walks to the sink and wets a clean towel, then goes to Oliver and washes his face, which has been dirty since I picked him up from school a few hours ago.

“How about I read you and Izzy a nice book on the couch?” Joan is not one for playing on the floor.

“That’s okay,” he says, and resumes playing. She picks up their empty dinner plates and cups and brings them to the sink.

“That’s okay, Joan,” I protest. “I’ll do that.”

“No, it’s fine, dear. I’m here to help,” she says with exaggerated articulation.

I’ll bet you are
. “Okay, I’ll go get dressed.”

Oliver stops playing. “Where are you going, Mommy?”

“Your mother and father are having a date,” Joan answers for me.

I let her explanation stand, exercising extreme restraint by not pointing out that he was asking me, not her. I need to conserve my strength.

I go upstairs and close my bedroom door. Fifteen minutes later, I hear a key in the door and the boys scurrying to greet Robert, followed by “Daddy! Daddy!” I hear his familiar, deep voice say, “Hi, Mom.” Then something quiet is spoken that I can’t make out. I open my closet. I choose my long gray skirt, a black shirt and sweater, and black boots. I brush my teeth. I brush my hair. I put on mascara and lipstick. I make an effort. I go downstairs to greet my husband.

We kiss Oliver and Izzy good-bye, promise to kiss them again when we get home, even if they’re sleeping, and close the front door behind us. I get in the passenger side of the car and try to deflate my anxiety. With my right hand, where Robert won’t see, I pinch my earlobe. I need to ace this test.

“Where to?” I ask.

“I made a reservation at Joe’s, in Venice.”

Hmm. I had pictured a stark cell in which to be interrogated, bread
and water withheld until I confessed my crimes. Joe’s is warm, and pricey. Joe’s tells me he’s not impossibly furious, that he’s hopeful, that he wants to try.

“That sounds wonderful.” I smile, try to melt the tension.

“I thought we deserved something special. We haven’t been out in a long time. And it’s quiet, so we can talk.”

I wonder if someone counseled him, talked him down from the heights of anger. But who? His mother? Unlikely. Bibi? Could be. Or maybe he found some calm on his own? I watch his hands on the steering wheel. It occurs to me to put my hand on his. I could bridge this chasm that separates us. I can almost feel his body’s warmth, his skin’s softness. Maybe he would look over at me in a way that says, “I accept your imperfections.” Or maybe he would ignore the gesture of contrition. That possibility terrifies me. His hands grip the wheel more tightly than usual. I would have to lean forward to reach his hand. I lean back in my seat, grasp my own hands, squeeze my fingers.

A valet takes our car. It’s too early for the hip crowd on Abbot Kinney. The sidewalks are mostly empty. The valets wait for more business. We enter and are seated. A waiter brings a basket of bread, asks us which kind we want. I point to a plain roll; Robert does the same. I’m not sure I’ll be able to eat. After the bread guy moves on, Robert starts our conversation.

“Sarah.” He stops to clear his throat. “I know we have a lot to talk about. Not only this situation with Josie. I do want to talk about her, but I wanted to start by saying I’m sorry.” I look at him with confusion. Why is he apologizing? “I’m sorry for not being there for you more.” He pauses, as though he is mustering a mound of courage. “The past three years, since Ella . . . I’ve been busy establishing myself at work. That’s been my way of coping. I thought you were coping in your own way, being busy with the boys. Maybe I missed something, maybe I was wrong about that, maybe you needed more. But when I’m home I just want to focus on being with Oliver and Izzy and you, and not think about being sad. I do get sad; I just try to concentrate on happy things. Maybe that’s not the right thing to do, but . . . I don’t know.”
He reaches out for my hands and holds them. Relief floods my veins and pumps through my heart like an infusion of fresh blood. I never expected our conversation to start this way. I have no idea where it will end up.

“Robert, you have nothing to apologize for.” The door opens and a wavelet of cool outside air settles on my shoulders. Our eyes follow a younger couple being led to the table next to us. Their energy—light, anticipatory—is so unlike ours. We turn back to each other, to the concentrated, powerful heat at the center of our joined hands.

“I do, Sarah. I’m sorry for letting you down. I mean it. And I want you to know that you’re doing such a great job with them, you’re a wonderful mother, and I know it’s not easy. I’m gone a lot.” The new couple settles in. The lady fidgets with her jacket until it hangs just so on her chair, then turns toward her date with a beaming smile and a plunging neckline showing off a recent sunburn. Robert lowers his voice for privacy and leans closer, still holding my hands. “I guess what I want to say is, we should spend more time together. We’ve felt so distant. It feels like we’re getting farther apart, and I don’t want that. I want to do better. I want us to be happy again.”

I am stunned. Listening to Robert talk is like being in a good dream you didn’t expect, and could never describe, but you understand to be filled with pleasure. I wait to hear what lovely words he will speak next. “But,” he continues, “we have to be open with each other. I have to trust you. You can’t lie to me.” And so the colors of my dream darken. He is gathering steam. “After that phone call last night, I felt so horrible, so distant from you all day today. It’s like you’ve been living this mysterious life, keeping secrets. I hate how that makes me feel.”

“I’m sorry, Robert. I really am. I shouldn’t have kept that from you. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I want us to be happy again, too.”

He turns my hands over in his, like he is looking for more answers to his questions in my veins and pores. “I still don’t understand why you hid your friendship with Josie from me.”

I try to remember my state of mind at the beginning of all this. “Maybe it’s because when I first told you about her, that day of the car
show, you said I shouldn’t do anything to help her. But I kept thinking about her and I felt compelled to do something. I didn’t want to argue about it, and I didn’t want you to worry. Honestly, I didn’t know it would become so big. And then I was ashamed to tell you I’d been keeping a secret for so long.”

He sits back, defensive, letting go of my hands. “I never said you couldn’t help her!” His sudden increase in volume prompts the man at the next table to turn toward us. “I never said you couldn’t help her,” he reaffirms with a quieter voice. “I just said I didn’t want you to bring a stranger into our house. I didn’t say you couldn’t help her some other way.”

Is he right? Is that all he said? So why did I feel that I had to keep our entire friendship secret? Maybe I heard his words as a total ban because what I wanted most was to take them in. To share our roof and walls. To increase the life force in our house. Right now I need to repair our fractured trust. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I should have told you.” Admitting my fault lifts bricks off my back.

Robert takes my hands again. Our confessions, apologies, and absolutions lay a span of bridge toward each other. Our connection may even become stronger than before. Taking advantage of the shift in mood, Robert says with a joking tone, “So, now that we’re coming clean, is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”

My heart folds in half, trying to hide its darker secrets. I want it all gone, as if it never happened. My body tenses and my palms sweat. My stomach aches. The waiter approaches.

“Need a few more minutes, folks?” he asks, knowing the answer. “May I get you something to drink? A glass of wine?”

“None for me,” Robert defers.

“Yes, please.” I pick up the wine menu and peruse the selections, hoping to derail the track the conversation just took. “I’ll have this pinot grigio,” I say, pointing to the least expensive one.

“Excellent choice,” he says, but his tone reveals his disappointment that we will not be his big spenders of the night.

I press my palms on my lap to dry them on the napkin. I have to
make a decision. Do I change the subject and let everything that happened with Brian fester in my core forever? Do I tell him everything and risk our whole marriage? Or do I confess just a little, that I spent some time with Brian, and hope that that’s enough to let me move on, discharged from my mistake? I am an inexperienced prevaricator. I don’t know if that will work, but some intuition tells me that I shouldn’t haul this secret around in our marriage forever. It will break us. There’s no good solution, just the least worst. So I decide: I will tell Robert a little more. Not everything, but enough to diminish the heavy load I’ve been carting around since that night.

“Actually”—I try to sound nonchalant—“when I was in Oakland, I saw Brian Kennedy.” I wave my hand to indicate how insignificant it is.

“Really? Brian Kennedy?” He smirks, shifts in his seat, and puts his hands in his lap. When we lived in Berkeley, Robert teased me that Brian still carried a torch for me. I didn’t disagree. “How did you happen to see him?” he asks, his face reddening against his will.