The Marriage Intervention (31 page)

What could she say?
Yes, Scott. I do. For some reason, I can’t keep myself from wanting you. Which is the real reason I can’t work with you anymore. Yes, Scott. Which is a completely inappropriate answer. Shit.
 

“It doesn’t matter,” she said instead. It wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t the truth. But it was a truth. And she could live with that.
 

He followed her to the front door, and she opened it. Instead of walking out, he stopped so they stood side by side. He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him.
 

Without warning, he pulled her to him and crushed her mouth to his. For a split second, her body went limp against his. Her mouth responded without her even being aware of it. Her mind took over then, and she started like he’d slapped her instead of kissing her with all the thirst of a man who hadn’t had any water in weeks. She put her hands on his chest and pushed him away gently. She could see so many things in his expression—questions, heat, passion, even anger. But then she saw surprise.
 

Scott’s eyes flicked over to the driveway, and Josie’s gaze followed his. Paul had just pulled up. He was early, and there was no question he’d seen Josie kissing Scott.
 

For the next week, Josie avoided the world. She spent most of her non-working time in the house, either under the covers in bed or on the couch staring at the TV as soap operas played, but not taking in a single word of what the actors said.

When Paul arrived home the previous Friday, Scott retreated. He scuttled to his car like a tiny crab and Paul advanced in an angry march towards the house. Before she knew it, Josie was standing in the kitchen with her husband as if the two men in her life had been swapped out, interchangeable.
 

Only, Paul wasn’t looking at her in the same way Scott had been. Josie felt more than a little scared.
 

“What the hell is going on here?” Paul said. “I come home early, to surprise you, and I find you kissing that skinny weasel in our entryway?”
 

For once, Josie didn’t have a witty or scathing comeback. “He kissed me. I wasn’t expecting it. I pushed him away.”
 

Paul nodded. So he knew. That was a relief. Josie exhaled.
 

“I saw you push him away,” he said, his tone still angry. “But I also saw him at our house. What the hell was he doing at our house, Josie? Where the hell did he get the impression it was okay to kiss you?”
 

Josie opened her mouth and then closed it again. Fortunately, Delilah chose that moment to come tearing into the kitchen, her legs going triple-time on the tile floor, her tongue hanging madly out of her mouth. She ran up to Paul and put her front paws on his legs. Her entire body shook with the thrill of meeting someone new. As Josie expected, Paul couldn’t resist her charms. He laughed and bent down to scratch her behind the ears.
 

“Meet Delilah,” Josie said. She wondered if he could hear the relief in her voice.
 

“Delilah,” he cooed, letting the puppy lick his face. “What the hell was your mommy doing letting a strange man kiss her in the entryway of our house? Do you find that as symbolic as I do? ‘Welcome home, Paul. But before you step through the front door to move back in, you’ll have to get past me kissing another man.’”
 

The dog, of course, only became more delighted, and began running in tight circles around Paul.
 

“Get your toy,” Josie told her. She was surprised when Delilah stopped running, looked at her with clarity and darted off into the living room. “Who knows if she’ll actually come back with it.”
 

“So what was Scott Smith doing, kissing you in the entryway?” Paul said.
 

Josie hung her head. “Saying good-bye.”
 

Paul snorted. “Do you always say good-bye like that?”
 

“No. No, we don’t.”
 

She told him the story of how their trainer-trainee relationship unfolded, how she hadn’t known he was “the new guy,” and how she only went through two appointments with him and had brought him to the house to cancel future appointments. How this little meeting had been like a final meeting, and how Scott had just kissed her—unexpectedly—in the doorway as he went to leave.

“Why didn’t you just fire him at the gym? Why did you need this intimate setting?”
 

“I don’t know, Paul,” Josie said. “I knew he’d be disappointed and I wanted to give him privacy.”
 

“So his feelings are more important than mine. How did you think
I’d
feel when I drove up after being gone and found him here with you? Because I’ll tell you something. Disappointment doesn’t even cover it.”
 

“I—I don’t know. I didn’t expect you to be home just yet.”
 

Delilah raced back into the kitchen, the whites of her eyes showing and her toy clamped between her teeth. Paul laughed. “You got her a police officer doll to chew on?”
 

“I thought it would be funny,” Josie said.
 

Paul took the toy from Delilah and threw it for her. After her little legs scrambled on the floor, she finally gained traction and took off after it.

“It is,” Paul said. “At least, it would have been ten minutes ago. Now I think it’s a sign, a statement about your wishes for my future.”
 

“I’m sorry, Paul. I really am. I thought I was doing the right thing by inviting Scott here to let him know I needed to get a new trainer. The last thing I expected him to do was to kiss me.”
 

“I believe you,” Paul said. “But I saw the way you kissed him back. Even if it was just for a second. That wasn’t a good-bye kiss. That was an I-wish-we-were-just-getting-started kiss. And then you pushed him away. But it was there, for a minute.”
 

Denying it would be pointless. Paul specialized in translating the code of her own personal body language. So she waited.
 

***

“You’re not denying it.”
 

Delilah was back, wiggling so hard she couldn’t hold onto her police officer chew toy. She dropped it and picked it up several times before finally clenching it hard between her teeth. Paul laughed and shook his head at her. “You’re pretty cute. I’ll give you that.”
 

He picked up the doll and tossed it back into the living room, sending the puppy into a frenzy. She dashed off and Paul looked at Josie again. She wanted to look away, but didn’t.
 

Her mom had taught her to look problems straight in the eye. Too bad she didn’t have a mirror, though, because Paul wasn’t the problem. She was.
 

“Josie.”
 

She sighed, and instantly thought of her third graders, trying on adult behaviors like sighing and eye-rolling, especially when she chastised them for sloppy handwriting or talking during spelling tests.

“What.”
 

“I really want to stay married. I really do,” Paul said.
 

“To me?”
 

“Don’t lash out at me,” he said. “Obviously. I’m not the one kissing someone else in our doorway.”
 

Heat crept into her face.
 

“I just don’t know if you’re ready to really work on this marriage,” he said. “I mean, you can’t seem to disengage yourself from that skinny, long-necked asshole, and—”
 

“He’s not an asshole,” Josie said.
 

Delilah wandered back in, sniffed Paul’s shoes, turned in a few circles and plopped down with her chin resting on one of his feet.

“One of you is,” Paul said, and Josie felt her mouth snap shut. “Anyway. I feel like I’m all in and you’re, well, not. I don’t know what’s going on, why you feel the need to keep seeing Scott Smith the giraffe. But I do know that I can’t feel good about working on things if you can’t tear yourself away from him. I’m going to keep staying at Terry’s, I guess. I’m not sure I even want to work this out anymore. I need some time to think.”

He walked out the front door, got into his car and drove away. Her vision went blurry and her hearing seemed to go into overdrive: the sounds of his shoes on the tile floor, the front door creaking open, the chugging sound of his car’s engine turning over and the tires rolling off the cement of the driveway and onto the asphalt of the road.
 

The sound of him getting farther and farther away until she couldn’t hear him any more.
 

Delilah either sensed something was wrong, or was completely worn out from playing so hard. Her head resting on her police officer chew toy, she didn’t move from the spot where Paul’s foot had been just a moment ago, even when Josie went into the silent living room and sat on the couch.
 

***

It was Friday again and for no reason at all, Josie kept expecting Paul to return home.
 

For the past hour, as the bright blue daytime sky faded to a dusky purple and then a deep blue, she’d stood at the front window watching the driveway. He was late, and the spot where he parked remained empty. Finally, headlights illuminated the window, sweeping over her stakeout spot. She jumped, not wanting Paul to know she had stood on this spot for hours, frozen with fear.
 

Before she walked away, she noticed it wasn’t his car parking alongside hers. Worse, the driver’s door and the passenger door were opening. Her heart rate increased, and black swirls converged on her vision.
 

A pair of officers came to your house for only two reasons. The first: to inform you if your police officer husband had been hurt. She closed her eyes when she thought about the second reason. Maybe if she didn’t answer the door, they couldn’t tell her. She walked quickly over to the front door, locked it and leaned back against it. She couldn’t breathe. Fear wrapped its bony fingers around her throat and squeezed. As the officers approached her door, she heard them talking in voices so low the actual words sounded muffled. Only sad people talked like that. Or people keeping a secret.
 

One of them knocked, and in her crazed state she analyzed the speed and force of the knocks for meaning. Maybe Paul was just in the hospital, like he’d been a few weeks ago. He couldn’t be dead. She had so many things to say to him. She hadn’t had the chance. With an ever-growing sense of dread, she turned around and unlocked the door. Her body swayed as she pulled it open.
 

The men on her doorstep looked apologetic. One of them was an older guy with a close cropped haircut and steely blue eyes. The other was a mushy-looking forty-something whose forehead scrunched with sympathy.
 

“Josie Garcia?” said the older guy.
 

“Yes?”
 

In that split second before he spoke again, she felt the floor tilt beneath her. She grabbed the doorknob for support.
 

“I’m serving you with court documents.”
 

Everything stopped.
 

Court documents? With a shaky hand, she took the envelope from the police officer and opened the seal.
 

She extracted the sheaf of papers.
 

Official Summons

“Divorce papers,” she whispered. “He’s filed for divorce.”
 

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the crinkle-browed officer said, nodding in a way that made him look guilty. As they turned to leave, Josie heard herself say, “Thank God,” before her vision went completely blank and she crumpled to the ground.
 

***

Paul wasn’t dead. But he wanted a divorce. He was gone. And Josie didn’t know if he was coming back. For the first time since her mom died, Josie felt the kind of loneliness that made it nearly impossible to go on. Paul was right. She couldn’t seem to stay away from Scott. But why? Why did she keep going back for more?
 

Her mom would say romance attracts women like car accidents attract passers-by. You know you shouldn’t look but you can’t turn away. Actually, that’s something Paul would say.
 

Mama would say romance attracts women like kids to an ice cream truck. There’s a creepy guy on the inside, but as soon as you hear the music, your ears perk up and you start looking around for it, your feet moving before you even realize it. Then you’re forking over the money, keeping the creepy guy in one-dollar tacos from Jack in the Box. The only thing is, you never know when the creepy guy is going to give you an ice cream with a razor blade inside it.
 

Practicality? That’s a one-gallon carton of ice cream from the grocery store. Get ice cream for your entire family for the same price as you’d pay for a single ice pop out of the truck. No razor blades, no creepy guys. Scott was the ice cream truck, the creepy guy, and the one-dollar taco. Exciting. But definitely not steadfast. Paul was the grocery store. He was ever-present, stable, and could keep her nourished.

So what the hell was she thinking? Why had she even considered it an okay idea to invite Scott to the house? Why had she not thrown the personal training sessions in the trash like she would any other advertisement for crap that would get you skinny and make you feel great … only, you knew it was a total lie?
 

The answer came to her then, with clarity so startling she felt like she’d stepped outside on a winter night and was having trouble catching her breath in the freezing air. Because keeping both men in her life was like having a conversation with her mother. It was holding up the options, one in each hand, weighing them for suitability, measuring them for adequacy.
 

It was hearing Mama read off the weights and measurements, compare them like two apples at the farmer’s market. If she let Scott go, let him disappear completely, that conversation was over. And her mother was gone.