The Stuff That Never Happened (26 page)

“Oh, Grant.”

“And so I’m glad for you. Really, really glad. Because you need to grab on to whatever you can in this life, whatever makes you—whatever makes you happy. There’s so little of that in life. That’s grace, you know. A concept that, by the way, I didn’t know I believed in.”

There was a lump in my throat. He saw me trying to swallow, and he put his forehead against mine and held it there. “It hurts like hell,” he said. “That it’s him—I mean, I’ve lost both of you, I know that. But I’m not so dumb that I don’t think things happen for a reason. And maybe my place in all this was, you know, to
introduce
you to the person you’ll always love. How’s
that
for shitty irony, huh? Grant loves the girl but hands her over to the guy he admires.” He shook his head and closed his eyes. Then he pulled his hands away from me and said in a different voice, a sterner voice, “Okay. So go. And don’t call me, okay?” He opened his eyes and looked right at me again. “Don’t,
do not
, come back, either. If for some reason this doesn’t work out, I’m sorry, but you can’t come back.”

I tried to hug him, but he pushed me away, and then we said good-bye. I wasn’t crying. I couldn’t cry; I was dry as dust. And then, before I knew it, I was out in the hallway with the suitcases and hauling them down the stairs, thinking, in my shell-shocked, dramatic way,
Good-bye to all this!
and then I was down on the street. I hailed a cab, in slow motion, and went to Grand Central.

Jeremiah’s face. Jeremiah’s face
. My new life was beginning. I walked away from the old, and I didn’t let myself look back, even at the building. I was so afraid Grant might be at the window. I could practically feel his hand there on the glass waving good-bye, and I couldn’t bear it.

It wasn’t for another week that I realized that Grant hadn’t even lifted a finger to try to make me stay. He had just released me the way you might whisk away a rogue feather that landed on your shoulder.

I GOT to Grand Central at a quarter ’til six, which gave me time to lug my two suitcases to the ladies’ room. I went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face. I stood for a long time looking at myself in the mirror and tried to smile. My hair was in a bun but the ends were falling out, so I twisted it up again and shoved the bobby pins back into it. My eyes looked scared. Someday, I thought, I’ll remember this moment just before my new life took shape. Maybe someday Jeremiah and I will tell our grandchildren about this day, the day we ran away, knowing that we were meant to be together. But for now I looked drained and sickly. I put on some lipstick, tried to pull myself together. I was going to be with the love of my life, and I didn’t want to look so tragic.

When I finished, I took everything back upstairs to the clock. We’d agreed to meet at the clock, which is where everyone always meets at Grand Central, so all around me people were standing, waiting, or else flying into someone else’s arms, kissing, hugging, laughing, yelling, clapping each other on the back and then walking off together. I was so young and alone, standing there with that frozen smile on my face, that look of expectancy, waiting to be chosen.

And he was late.

First he was only five minutes late, and then it was six minutes and then seven. I told myself I couldn’t look up at the clock until at least fifteen whole minutes had passed. I concentrated on staring at the floor, at all the trash that had been so carelessly tossed about: old tickets, gum wrappers, gum. Then I stared at shoes. Men’s shiny wingtips, children’s sneakers, high heels clicking on the hard floor, loafers scuffed from age, sandals. Even boots, some idiot wearing boots though it was clearly and obviously springtime, a time for new beginnings, time to put away all the stuff of winter. I felt sorry for the boot-wearer.

Twelve after six.

Maybe I should buy our tickets.

No. It was better to wait.

I allowed myself to look up and search the crowd of faces coming toward me—all blank, unknown faces, filled with hurry and pain and thoughts I couldn’t read. I shivered. I could not think of what would happen if he didn’t come, although once that thought had appeared, it was difficult to chase it back to the corners. It bloomed then, pulsating and radiant in capital, bold-faced letters, with asterisks around it. It was a headache of a thought.

What if he does not come?

But then—was it?—yes! Someone with Jeremiah’s hair color was coming from the area of the stairs, and thank God THANK GOD it
was
Jeremiah; the relief that flowed through me was almost like oxygen. He was loping, not running at all, even though we were late, and the thought sprang into my head that maybe we wouldn’t make the 6:37 after all, but who cared,
really?
We had the rest of our lives; we could catch any damn train we wanted. We could just go somewhere dark and cloistered and kiss and drink and tell each other about our getaways. Mine was taking shape as something I’d probably be able to live with and talk about. I was not too disappointed with the way I’d handled things; I was already forgiving myself, filing away the grief of a broken marriage … and then through all that self-forgiving I was doing, it hit me that Jeremiah had no suitcase. And then when he was still far away, his eyes met mine, and he made the smallest of gestures, a slight, ironic raise of his eyebrows, a pursing of his lips, and on such flimsy evidence, I knew everything I needed to know—that I was alone, all alone in the world. He hadn’t told her, he hadn’t left, and it was me he was coming to say good-bye to.

I remember everything about that time, of course, everything from the texture of his shirt that I cried into, looking down at the scuff marks on the floor of Grand Central, the hum of noise all around us buffering what he kept saying over and over again: “I love you so much. I love you so much.” The reeling inside my brain, my thoughts swinging around inside like a tetherball coming unhinged. Bright flashes of light.

He couldn’t tell them. The children. The children’s eyes and faces, their little hands … Brice was stuttering, Lindsay was bossy; they needed him so much. And today—his voice choked—today they were playing a loud game, loud but innocent, so innocent, and Carly was screaming at them, so how could he leave them to her? To her anger? And yes, he knew she wasn’t
always
angry, but she was often angry enough, and because of that he had to make it work with her. And make no mistake, it would be work. He had to stay and be the buffer between her anger and those children. He loved me and he was sorry, but we couldn’t run away. He kept biting his lip. We had to stop, we had to stop seeing each other, there was no hope for us, no hope for love in a world gone mad with regret.

He actually said those words, “a world gone mad with regret,” as though he were the narrator of the coming attractions at the movies,
intoning
them, and after that I stopped listening and prayed that I would stop loving him, immediately. If I just paid attention to his body language, to the look on his face, I could see that he was relieved and proud of himself, and when he closed his eyes and said in a fake agonized tone of voice, “Oh, I’m so confused,” I wanted to hit him, wanted to scratch his eyes out. I screamed, “You fucker! You
fucking
fucker! And
this
is the first time you’ve thought of all this?
Now?
You didn’t know this before?”

He tried to say something. I could see his mouth moving, see his eyes wide and black and sorry, but I couldn’t hear him through the pounding in my head. Blackness was starting to fill in all the white spaces around his head. I was about to fall down, I couldn’t feel my legs anymore, and the next thing I knew I was running, and then I was somehow in the ladies’ room, where I lost everything I hadn’t already lost, and I could hear the floor shaking from the trains that were leaving the station.

Would it be too melodramatic for me to tell you that I never saw him again? But it’s the truth. I did not. I was angry for such a long time—and that fury was good. I fed it breakfast, lunch, and dinner and rocked it at night and nurtured it along because I understood it was all I had.

[fifteen]

2005

“W
hat’s the matter?” says Sophie when I get back to her apartment. “You look drained. Didn’t you have a nice time?”

“I had a very nice time. I’m just tired,” I tell her, draping my coat over the back of the chair in the bedroom. I
am
tired, now that I think of it, tired and shaky. I had caught a glimpse of myself in the tiny oval mirror in the downstairs hallway and was shocked at the two bright circles on my cheeks and how wild my eyes looked.
Holy God
, I think,
today I stood in public, kissing Jeremiah. I am now officially lying to my husband, and even worse, I don’t know what is going to happen with me
.

I want to just get straight into the bathtub and sit there staring at the white tile until I can figure out how I feel about what I’ve just done. But Sophie is sitting up in bed with the light off, with the lavender comforter wrapped around her, sniffling and looking mournful. “So … was it depressing to talk to your old friend? It was, wasn’t it?”

“Depressing?”

“Yeah. You know, with how run-down he seems.” She blows her nose into a Kleenex. “Didn’t he say his wife died? So I bet he’s all depressed and pathetic and just wants you to cheer him up.” She hiccups.

“Are you crying?”

“No … yes. A little bit.” She pulls at a thread on the bedspread and puts on her little-girl voice. “Could you just come and get in bed with me? Pleeease.” And now she really is crying.

“What’s wrong?” I sigh and take off my shoes and climb in next to her. The room feels overheated and stuffy, and all I want is to leave again. But she throws her arms around my neck, and we lie there while she sniffles softly. “What is it, baby?” I say. “Should I not have left you alone?”

“No, that part was okay,” she says into my neck, which I realize is getting wet. She pulls away and blows her nose on the tissue I hand her. “It’s just that I now know the truth. I found out the real truth.”

My heart stops. She
knows?

“He—he’s sleeping with Juliana. I know it for sure now.”

“Wait,” I say. “Did I miss something? First, who is Juliana?”

“She’s that woman in the picture. The one Whit was practically making out with.”

“Not making out with. Smiling in the general direction of.”

“Whatever. You know the one, which is significant right there. Anyway, I found out her name today, and also that she’s the daughter of the contractor at the orphanage. And she’s
always
there with him.”

Maybe there’s something wrong with me, that faithfulness doesn’t have the ring of golden reassurance that it seems to have for others. There are so many ways a marriage can implode, is what I think; sexual infidelity is just one of them, and actually, not even all that interesting. More often, I feel, being unfaithful happens when about five hundred other safeties have failed. But I know I’m alone in this assessment. Ask the faculty wives. No one agrees with me.

“He told me her name!” she says. “In fact, practically the whole e-mail is about her—how her father is building the place, and she’s nineteen, and they’ve been playing double solitaire and so far she’s beat him by about six hundred and forty-five games to two, and so now he’s teaching some kids to play so he can brush up on his skills and
avenge his honor
.”

“So what?” I say. “He loves
you
.”

She reaches over and pulls her laptop off the bedside table. “Just
look
at this, will you? Read this and tell me you still think that!”

Nearly every day now I am required to read and decipher things in Whit’s e-mails, all of which seem to me to be deeply personal, loving e-mails that he would
die
if he knew I was seeing. I have to say, he writes great, sexy notes to her, each one like a big, wet, erotic kiss. He can’t wait, he writes, to be with her again, rolling around in their bed, to feel her nakedness underneath him … he goes on and on. Fascinating though these are, I should not be seeing them.

“Juliana!” she says. “If he’s telling me her name, that means she’s important to him. And look! Just look at her big eyes,” she says.

“So she has nice eyes. So what? And his mentioning her doesn’t mean she’s important to him. I think if he were cheating on you with her, he’d be less likely to tell you the woman’s name, wouldn’t he? He’d keep it a secret.”

“He’s playing
double solitaire
with her, Mom.”

“Sophie, honey, double solitaire is just a card game.”

“
I freaking know it’s a card game!
That’s not the point! The
point
is, why can’t he just wrap up the filming and come home, if he’s got so much free time he can play double solitaire with another woman?”

I look at her and purse my lips. “Don’t do this to yourself, sweetie. Why do you want to torture yourself with this?” I say. “I think you’re the luckiest woman in the world. You have a monogamous man, and you and he are having a child, but for some reason, you’re letting yourself turn into a paranoid maniac. You mustn’t let your imaginings get the best of you. You’re just tired. Have you drunk enough water today?”

She gives me a pitying look. Yes,
pitying
. “You probably don’t realize this, I know, but Whit is actually a very sexy man,” she says.
“You
think of him as a kid, but trust me: women look at him and they want him.”

I laugh. “You think I don’t know that about him? I can recognize a sexy man, even at my advanced age.”

“I didn’t mean that,” she says. “It’s just that you and Dad … Well, he’s not exactly … 
on fire.”

I look at the ceiling and the thought comes to me that I have somehow turned out to be just the opposite of my mother. My mother brought her sexual opinions and needs and wants freely into the daily conversations we’d have, even at the breakfast table. Maybe it’s because I was so allergic to these conversations that I have never once strayed into that territory with Sophie. I don’t think I have ever said the word
orgasm
around her. I’ve never alluded to any sexual thoughts whatsoever. What was wrong with me? I probably should have. And now, in her mind, it’s clear I have no sexuality whatsoever.

So I say very carefully and evenly, feeling as if I’m venturing into delicate territory, “You know, I think every generation thinks it invented sex. Your father and I—”

“Oh, don’t tell me he was ever wild!” she says, and laughs.

“He was … is … amorous,” I say.

“I mean, you and Dad seem like …”

“What do we seem like?” I say when she trails off. “Tell me what it was like being our daughter. What did you see?”

“I saw … lots of consideration, and good manners, and … fun, and, I don’t know, a traditional division of duties, I think,” she says slowly. “You were very much the head of the house, making sure everything ran smoothly, and he came home to play games and do things with us, but—well, he was distracted, too. And strict, always wanting us to do exactly the right thing. You were always the one paying attention, but it was like you had to keep reeling him back in. He did the peripherals, I guess. But he was the one we had to please. You were the easy one, the pushover.”

“Really,” I say. “So you’re saying then that I was the
mom.”

She laughs. “Yeah, you were the mom, and he was the rock, I guess. The one who loved you and held you up, and you were the softhearted person who ran around trying to make sure everybody was happy.”

“And”—I pause, try to phrase this just right—“I take it we didn’t exactly radiate a kind of, I don’t know,
married passion
for each other. Like people who couldn’t keep their hands off each other.”

“I remember coming into the kitchen once and you were kissing,” she says. “I mean, really kissing, not just one of those peck-on-the-cheek things. But when you heard me, I remember, Dad sprang back and did this whole pantomime like he’d been caught at something. It made us all laugh. Do you remember that?”

I don’t. I have no memory of that at all.

“Know something? Whit told me that about a year or so ago, he walked in his parents’ den and they were—I shouldn’t tell you this. I’m awful.”

“Oh, no, go ahead. I insist.”

“Well, they were, you know, actually
doing
it. Like, ewwww. And it was such a weird thing, he said, really the last thing he was expecting to see, that he couldn’t even register it at first. He said he just stood there staring at them, kind of in shock, like his eyeballs had gotten burned or something, and finally his dad turned around and said, ‘Do you
mind?’
and so Whit backed out of the room and closed the door and that was that.” She wrinkles her nose and giggles. “You’ve got to admit, it’s a disturbing image, the Bartholomews
doing it
. The other day when we were with them out for lunch, it was all I could think about.”

“Thanks a lot,” I say, laughing. “Now when I see them next, it’s all I’m going to be able to think about, too.”

“And his dad with that saggy belly—ugh!” She shudders.

I’m about to say something like, “Sex is not just for the young and beautiful, you know,” when she looks down and starts picking at the tufts on the bedspread and says, “You know what I wonder? I just wonder if Whit can be a father like Dad, when he didn’t get to experience, you know, the whole pregnancy thing with me. I’m going to be a
mom
when he gets back, and … Well, is he still going to love me?” Her eyes well up with tears.

“It’s an adjustment, that’s for sure. It is for everyone. But you just do it. You’ll both figure it out as you go along. That’s what marriage is.”

“But …”

“But what?”

“He’s such a
passionate
guy, Mom—more like a boyfriend than a husband, you know? There’s this way that he’s not domesticated yet, and now he’s been free and when he comes back … Oh, I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”

I know what she’s trying to say. I tell her the thing I truly believe—that sex and love and parenthood and complications can coexist, that you can be happy even when sex is something you steal away for once you’ve gotten the last of the dishes washed and the kid with the fever to finally go to sleep. But then my throat is suddenly clogged up with so much sadness and longing and regret that I think I will choke. It’s because of today, because of all the jumbled stuff Jeremiah stirred up in me—memories of that raw, yearning sexuality that Sophie is talking about, that youth and passion that she has no idea I even know about.

I won’t have that again.

That’s the truth of it. It will not come again, not in this lifetime. I was standing there on the street just hours ago, and I was laughing and free, kissing Jeremiah on the street like we were a couple of teenagers—and why did I feel the need to run away? When maybe what I was being offered was a chance to feel something again. To feel something that has to do with me, just
me
—not in relation to Grant or Sophie or Nicky. Just me, Annabelle Bennett McKay. Don’t I deserve to feel that again?

I had this, I lost it, and what I got instead was … what? The right to be in this room listening to my daughter. And that’s
good
. But why can’t I have it all—passion and motherhood and family?

After a while, the shadows lengthen in her bedroom, and I get up, stretch, and go in the kitchen to cook some spaghetti for our dinner, and she comes into the kitchen, too, wearing the bedspread like a giant cape that trails on the floor, and she sits on the stool wedged in by the brick wall, and when I look over at her, she smiles.

I’M IN the market a few days later, holding a cardboard container of blueberries—Sophie’s latest craving—and trying to make up my mind about whether I’m really willing to spend five dollars on a half-pint of them, when my cell phone vibrates in my pocket.

I see that it’s Jeremiah. For one difficult moment, I consider not answering it. But by the time I make up my mind to press the button, my heart is beating faster.

“Oh!” he says. “You answered. I was just getting ready to leave a voice mail.”

“I can hang up and you can call the voice mail back if you want,” I say, and he laughs.

“No, no. This is better. I’m actually calling to see if I can tempt you to come see me. I have something I think might be of interest to you.”

I laugh. “I’m sure you do, but I thought we made it clear that we’re not doing that anymore.”

“Ah, yes. So you claim,” he says. “But I notice that you’re still taking my calls, so that gives me hope.”

“Well, a sane person probably wouldn’t take your calls, it’s true.”

“Most sane people don’t,” he says. “Um, where are you right now?”

“I’m out buying blueberries.”

“Is this a pregnancy craving, by chance?”

“It is. But they’re outrageously expensive, so I’m standing here debating whether they’re worth it.”

“Unless they’re four thousand dollars, they’re definitely worth it. Pregnancy cravings have to be indulged. Don’t you remember?”

I love this, the way he has always been able to make me laugh, the sly manner he uses to bring me back to myself. So when he says, a moment later, “Of course I never knew you pregnant, but as I recall, even as a non-pregnant person, you had some pretty strong, awesome cravings,” I am almost light-headed.