The First Husband (27 page)

“And Jude Flemming?”

“Jude Flemming is currently proud of me for being offered the associate professor position in the Department of Physics and Applied Physics at UMass,” he said. “And we’re going to work out the rest.”

He turned and looked at me.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean for it to come out like that.”

“No, I get it. I have no idea . . .” He turned back to the road, and sighed. “The calm continueth not long without a storm,” he said.

“You lost me there.”

“The origin of the expression, the calm before the storm,” he said. “From an unknown source in the sixteenth century. But it started a little different than how it’s evolved. I like it more. The original idea that the calm can’t last, not if you’re really living. If you’re living fully, the storm’s coming to get you.”

I gave him a look. “Now, you’re showing off, Professor,” I said.

“Someone has to,” he said.

I started to laugh.

“It wasn’t easy convincing her, though,” he said. “To try again.”

“Cheryl?” I asked. “How did you?”

He smiled sheepishly. “The pregnancy gave me the chance to finally sit down with her and tell her. That, in her absence, I figured out the secret.”

“To what?”

He shrugged. “You know,
love
.”

“Oh, that,” I said.

“That,” he said.

But before I could ask what he thought he had figured out, Jesse was pulling over to the side of the road and stopping the car. He was stopping the car behind a small building I knew very well. Griffin’s restaurant.

“This is where we’re going?”

“Yep,” he said, turning off the ignition.

“Why?” I asked.

But I was pretty much talking to no one, because he was already out of the car, walking around to open my door for me.

“Follow me,” he said, as I stepped outside.

And I did.

I followed him to the front of the restaurant, where I saw the large, red sign—the one matching the red door, the one previously resting beside it, nameless—now hung up, and ready for the world to see. No longer blank. A name on it. In lovely black, block letters. Just one word, just a one-word name:

I looked up at it, taking it in. “Home,” I said. “I like it.”

Jesse just nodded, giving me a small, unrecognizable smile. Then he unlocked the door and held it open for me.

I walked inside, and I was at a loss. How could I explain it? How could anyone begin to explain it? The moment where everything becomes unstuck: the world around you suddenly moving both slower and quicker, until you are completely and totally present in it. Your everything.

The empty walls of Griffin’s restaurant were now full. They were completely full of the most beautiful frames you’d ever seen: black and metal and wood and mirrored frames.

My photographs inside each one.

All of my photographs, like nothing had happened to them. Like they didn’t meet their demise among blueberries and little boys and barbeque sauce. Like they were here, like they’d always been right here. Exactly where they belonged.

I touched the wall in disbelief. A grand Flemish town house beside an even grander Nantucket Craftsman; a modern Cape Town flat next to a converted Prenzlauer Berg church.

“How did he do this?”

Jesse was standing right behind me, his hands folded in front of him. “It’s amazing . . .” he said. “When you’re willing to do the work, it’s amazing what can be saved.”

I was overwhelmed, though
overwhelmed
felt like too small a word to hold what I was feeling.

I turned toward him, tears filling my eyes, falling down my cheeks.

“So is that it? Is that the secret, or something?” I asked.

He tilted his head, looking at me. “What?”

“Is that your secret to
love?
”

“Oh! ” He nodded, understanding. “No, but that would’ve been a good one too.”

My tears turned to laughter as I reached out and hugged him, drying my eyes on my sleeve. I held my sleeve there, against my face, more tears spilling out. And from over my shoulder, I was looking at the walls again—my walls—taking in all I could see.

“Mine was simpler,” he said.

“What’s that?” I said.

“Sometimes,” Jesse said. “We just pick right.”

W
hen we got back to the hospital, Gia was heading out of the revolving door. Gia and Emily, more accurately, were heading out the revolving door
together
—right toward us.

Jesse started to change direction, heading toward the side door.

“Where are you going? They see us!”

“Don’t care,” he said. “Not going to deal.”

I grabbed his arm, talking in a fierce whisper. “Jesse! Don’t leave me alone here,” I said. “Haven’t we done this already?”

He disentangled himself from me, squeezing my shoulder. “Sure,” he said. “It’s our thing.”

Then, with barely a wave, Jesse moved toward the side door, but not before he leaned into me and whispered into my ear.

“Oh, by the way, Gia is the one who found Griffin,” he said. “Just so you don’t feel sideswiped.”

“What did you say?” I asked.

But he was already gone, and Gia and Emily were in front of me. Emily and Gia, standing close to each other, standing seemingly united, in their matching black coats and cashmere sweater sets—and matching in that they each looked the exact opposite of me: my hand reaching up to touch my disheveled hair, to pull at my ripped sweatshirt.

I gave them a smile. “Hi . . .”

They gave me one back. “Griffin said you were back,” Gia said. “Welcome back.”

“Thank you.” I looked right at her, trying to figure out what to say about her finding him, knowing none of the details. “And thank you,” I said.

“For what?”

“Finding him.”

She gave me another smile, this one more meaningful. “Thank yourself for coming back. He’s doing better,” she said. “He’s looking more like himself.”

“I’m glad to hear you think so,” I said, feeling something loosen something inside of me, feeling it starting to let go.

Then I turned toward Emily. “And I just saw the restaurant,” I said. “I just saw Home . . .”

I started to add that it looked incredible. But
incredible
felt tiny in comparison to how I felt about it. So I had to hope Emily heard it, in my silence.

Amazingly, Emily seemed to. “He did a wonderful thing there, didn’t he?” she said.

“He did,” I said.

And she nodded, further agreeing with herself. Which wasn’t the same thing as complimenting—or even commenting on—my photographs now lining the walls. As commenting on why. But it wasn’t
not
the same thing either. I chose to focus on that part.

“I should probably be heading home,” Gia said. “Brian’s been waiting for me.”

Then Emily pushed Gia’s hair behind her ear. “Okay, sweetie,” she said. “Thanks again for checking in.”

“Tell G I’m here if he needs anything.”

“Of course,” Emily said.

G?
She called him G. No big deal. Just something I didn’t know. She called him G, and she knew, maybe even better than I did, what it meant for him to look like himself. They had history—a lengthy, deep history—and that was never going away.

But now we had some history too, far more critical to deal with. Our first marriage. The first time through. When we were starting to figure out what it meant to get things right.

Life is messy
, Aly had said in London.
The calm continueth not long without a storm
, Jesse had said just a few hours before.

Looking at my mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law she’d no doubt prefer—there was no denying that.

But still, we could let it be the other way too, couldn’t we? At least some of the time? Especially when the most important thing was just almost lost for us.

Couldn’t I—right now—let life be incredibly, incredibly . . . simple?

In the spirit of that, I gave them another smile, a fearless one. “It’s really good to see you both.”

Then I reached out and hugged them both to me, like it was the most natural thing in the world to do. It was a triangulated hug, with two sides of the triangle standing there as stiff as could be. Just waiting for it to be over.

Finally, Gia awkwardly pulled away.

Then Emily followed, straightening her skirt, trying unsuccessfully to hide her bafflement.

“Well,” she said. “Okay, then.”

I don’t care. Still. It was so worth a shot.

I watched Griffin sleep from my vantage point on his hospital room windowsill: his mask now off, the tubes starting to disappear.

He’d been sleeping for hours as I sat there, the sun coming up behind me. I watched him and tried to figure out how to do it. How to begin to say thank you for the restaurant. How do you thank someone for having that kind of sure-hearted belief in you, that kind of faith in your future? At the very least, by being honest, I decided.

Which was when Griffin woke up.

He turned toward me, covering his eyes with his arm, at first, to block out the little bit of sun coming in toward him. Then, adjusting to it, he put his arm behind his head. And gave me his smile.

“Hi there,” he said.

“Hi there,” I said. “How are you feeling?”

He felt around for it, the real answer.

“I’m feeling a little better, I think . . .” he said. “Somewhere between a little better, and a lot.”

And he looked it. Gia had been right about that. He wasn’t there entirely, not just yet. But I could see the seeds, just below the surface. Pushing their way out.

“Good,” I said. “And maybe this will help. The doctors are saying you can go home.”

“Today? ”

“Not today, but soon,” I said. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“I’ll take soon. . . .” He nodded. “I’ll take tomorrow. Maybe.”

I gave him a smile and got off the windowsill, moving to the edge of the bed, dragging the hospital room’s one chair with me. Straddling it, the high part between us.

He reached out and took my hand, held on to my fingers, between the chair’s beams.

“Tell me something . . .” he said.

“What?”

“I want to know about London.”

I looked down, looking at our hands, as if they had the answer. “I’m not sure where to start,” I said.

“The beginning is usually a good bet,” he said.

I nodded. “Well . . .” I said. “When your brother called me, to tell me what was going on with you, that you were in here, I had just quit my job. . . .”

Griffin gave me a confused look. “So how’s that the beginning, exactly?” he asked.

I smiled. “I was leaving London anyway,” I said. “I was leaving before all of this.”

“Why was that?” he asked.

“It was a dream job,” I said, giving him a small shrug. “But it turns out that you were right. It was someone else’s dream.”

Griffin nodded. But he stayed quiet, watching me, and waiting for the rest of it—waiting to hear where I was planning to go.

“But, the thing is, when your brother called, I was actually calling Nick to tell him that,” I said. I took a deep breath, and shored myself up to say the rest of it. “When your brother called, that’s what I was doing. I figured out what I wanted, and I was calling Nick to tell him.”

“Tell him?” Griffin said.

“Maybe I should go back to the beginning. . . .”

Griffin squeezed my hand, laughing a little. “Now,” he said. “Now she wants to go back to the beginning.”

“I had to go to London, Griffin. Because I didn’t know it before then,” I said. “I didn’t know the whole story yet.”

“Which is what?” he said.

“Why I picked you.”

I paused, meeting his eyes, so he could feel it. That I meant it, exactly what was coming.

“It wasn’t on a whim. My whole life I’ve been searching for things that felt good enough. Looking out there, as far out there as I could get, for what might make me happy. I even managed to make a career out it. But then I found you. And you were only interested in
me
feeling good enough for me.” I paused, trying to fight the tears in my eyes. “And you made me a restaurant so I would.”

Griffin gave me a smile, and then he tried unsuccessfully to pull me toward him, through the chair. “I think you should come here,” he said.

I nodded, and got into bed beside him, lying down on my side, the two of us facing each other, like that.

He kissed me on the forehead, then on both cheeks. “So . . .” Griffin said. “What about Nick, then?”

I tried to figure out how to say it, what I had figured out about Nick—what had taken me five years, a brutal breakup, and a belated marriage proposal to figure out: we loved each other. (I can be a slow learner, I know.) We loved each other in the difficult, unusable way where you took turns doing it, instead of ever managing to do it at the same time. You can’t always do it at the same time, but you have to be able to sometimes. Because, ultimately, wasn’t being good at it, together, the most important part?