How can I think of breaking this? And thinking that, I break. In the bathroom, in the stall, I cover my mouth with my hands. Press the heels of my palms to my eyes. I shake and shake, sickness like a hurricane rising in me, and the world spins.
Outside the stall there’s laughter and the sound of rushing water, so I shake myself until I can stand. I wash my hands. I splash my pale face, avoiding the sight of my own eyes. I press my lips with color, my hand steady and unfaltering.
The best thing, I think, and the hardest thing, are the same.
Chapter Forty
I am the architect of my own unmaking.
I check my email ten times in as many minutes. Refresh. Refresh. My cell phone stubbornly doesn’t chime or ping or ring with an incoming message of any kind. No email, no text, no instant message, not even a fucking “thumbs-up” on my stupid Connex status.
I delete him from my contacts so I won’t check again. I delete everything, every way I’ve ever had of contacting him. I put my phone in my purse, which is on the shelf in the closet, and I close the closet door and walk away from it.
I want him.
I want him so much it makes me shake, as if I’ve had too much coffee or run a race or gone without food for days. That’s exactly how it is, as if I’m starving, only it’s not food I want and need and crave, but Will.
I want him the way I want a cold drink on a hot day or a soft place to sit when I’ve been standing for too long a time. I never took up the habits of smoking or liquor or drugs. I’ve never had an addiction, but I think I understand now what it must be like. I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want him.
More than anything else, I want him to want me.
I know this is crazy, insane. I know it’s wrong. And as I pace, biting my thumb and feeling my stomach roil with tension, I don’t care. The phone in the kitchen rings. I can’t answer it. It won’t be him; he wouldn’t call me at home. I’m sure he doesn’t have the number, though it wouldn’t be difficult at all to look it up, if he wanted to. But he doesn’t, I think, as the ringing stops and the silence is louder than any phone could ever be. But not as loud as the sudden thunder of my beating heart as it fills my ears, and I put a hand on it to make sure it doesn’t beat right out of my chest.
I can’t stop thinking about the taste of his skin. The smell of it. How smooth it was beneath my fingertips when I traced every rib. My fingers curl, remembering the jut of his hip bone and the thickness of his cock. I close my eyes and hear the soft hiss of his breath when I stroked him, up and down. When I sucked him until he came in my mouth.
It’s been two months. Summer’s long gone. Winter’s on its way.
I’ve spent my entire life surrounded by colors, sounds, smells that don’t “match.” But now the world is gray. No color. If there is a song, the notes have all gone sour. The space without Will is immeasurable, and I cannot bear it.
No color. No music. No scent. I’m in a void, formless, nothing even to press against. Nothing to anchor me to this life.
How will I live without my ocean?
There’s nobody to share this with. I could tell Naveen, allow him to be the shoulder on which I weep, but I’m too aware of how he came to me once with this same pain, and how I’d been so harsh. Too, there’s the thing with Naveen that we never talk about, that unfinished business we’ve both agreed to leave forever undone.
No, I carry this alone.
It’s my pain, and I gorge on it, the blood-copper taste of it, the slicing, bitter sting. The venom. I glut myself with it, and I do it all in the stolen moments I have when I’m alone. In a bathroom, washing my hands. In the upstairs hallway as I carry a basket of laundry, and suddenly the floor tips and I stagger so that my elbow bangs against the framed pictures on the wall. Memories captured and held under glass. A trip to Disney, swimming lessons, weddings, graduations, christenings.
Our wedding.
The dress I didn’t love but wore to please my mother. My brother’s wife in emerald-green, Ross’s sister in the same color, identical dresses for very different women. And Ross in a black tuxedo with a vest and tie, his hair long in the back. So impossible now, looking at it, that we were ever so young.
That we were ever so in love.
As the nights come earlier and colder, I go to bed beside Ross at the same time, instead of waiting for him to be asleep by the time I slip between the sheets. Some nights he rolls toward me, hands roaming, and I give up to him. Some nights I crawl toward him over the bed and use my mouth and hands to get him hard. Make him come. So that I can pretend everything is fine, that this has not been undone. We have more sex than we’ve had in years, and yet I never come.
As snow falls outside and the holidays come and go, I make mistakes at work and have to redo everything, over and over again, obsessively fixing invoices and order forms and invitations to shows. I take calls from Jac, who’s increasingly frantic about the planning, and make them to Kat, who’s uneasily silent about the entire process. I watch Naveen moon his way around the gallery, sneaking away for lunchtime trysts I’d be jealous of if I were capable of feeling anything beyond this dull nothing.
“How much longer?” he asks me one day in late February, when I’ve spent the morning arguing with caterers and easing Jac out of a bout of hysteria because the shipping for the monogrammed chocolates she wants for the tables is more than the candy itself. He’s caught me at the coffeepot for my fourth mug of the day. I will never sleep tonight. “Until I get you back?”
It’s the wrong question to ask, but maybe the right time. The coffee I don’t even want sloshes when my hand shakes, and I put the mug back on the counter. I take a breath to give him some lame answer, but all that comes out is a slow, sighing sob.
We’ve been friends for a long time, so when Naveen pulls me close, I let him. I fit nicely against him, my face in the curve of his shoulder. He smells good. His voice, murmuring soothing phrases that don’t make much sense, nevertheless smells of cotton candy and caramel apples. Naveen’s voice is a carnival, and I need one.
“What’s wrong, Betts? Tell me, love.” He nuzzles the sensitive skin of my neck, and I’m done for.
Once, long ago, in a dark dorm room with The Cure playing low, Naveen kissed me. I hadn’t been expecting it then, and can’t say I’m expecting it now, but maybe this time I’m the one who kisses him. I can’t be sure. All I know is that our mouths meet, tongues sliding, his warmth against me where lately I’ve felt only cold. His hands rest on my hips, then slide upward to curl around my ribs just below my breasts. We kiss on the mouth and then he’s sliding his lips to my throat again. There’s the press of teeth.
His hair curls like silk against my palm when I cup the back of his neck.
We do not fuck.
When he looks at me, finally, it’s with an expression I don’t want to see. Regret.
“Betts, I’m—”
“Don’t.” I extricate myself from him to straighten my clothes. The coffee from my mug’s spilled all over the counter, and I look for a cloth to wipe it up.
“I’m sorry,” he insists on saying.
My shoulders sag. I hold on to the counter, not looking at him. “Shh, honey. Don’t.”
“No. No, I’m sorry. That was really shitty of me—”
“I said don’t!” I lower my voice at once, though we’re the only ones in the gallery today and there’s nobody to hear. “I don’t want you to be sorry, Naveen. Please, God. Don’t...be sorry.”
And then I laugh and laugh until I cry, because Naveen is my dear friend and I love him, and more than twenty years ago we almost-but-not-quite fucked and now here we were again. Almost-but-not-quite.
When I cry, he holds me. It’s a different kind of release, but maybe one I needed more. I wish I could let it all go. Ugly snot crying. Sobs. But I can manage only si
lent, trickling tears against the front of his shirt while he strokes my hair.
“What is it, love?” Naveen doesn’t ask who.
I look at him with wet eyes, streaked mascara. He’s seen me worse than this. “It...hurts, Naveen. That’s all. It hurts so fucking much.”
And then he folds me in another hug to whisper into my hair, “Yes, love. I know.”
Chapter Forty-One
I move Ross’s toothbrush to his own side of the sink. His beard hairs are scattered across my washcloth, which I left hanging in its neat and tidy place on the hook next to the hand towel, but which somehow has managed to “conveniently” fall into the puddle of soap leaking from the dispenser he keeps promising to fix.
The sinks drips.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
How many months since I first asked him to fix it? How many times have I suggested we simply fucking call a plumber?
“No,” Ross always says, affronted by the idea that somehow some other man could fix what he broke. “I’ll get to it.”
But he doesn’t get to it, ever. Instead there are business trips and golf games and baseball games on TV. There are excuses. Always excuses, when all I want is for the fucking sink to Stop. Fucking. Dripping.
I am not incompetent. I am not useless. How did I get to this point, where I need to wait for Ross to do something for me?
How hard can it be?
I go on Google. YouTube. There are dozens of instructional videos about how to fix a dripping faucet. I watch. When I can’t find the tools I need in the horror that is the toolshed, I go to the hardware store. And then, armed with a wrench, a pair of pliers, a new washer and rubber gasket, I fix the fuck out of that dripping faucet.
Washing my hands, I catch sight of my reflection. My hair has fallen over my eyes, clings to my cheek with sweat. It was both harder and easier to fix the sink than I expected, but infinitely more gratifying.
At least until I’m giving everything a final wipe down and putting away the tools and leftover supplies I used into the small canvas tool bag I also bought myself. That’s when Ross breezes into the bathroom and proceeds to unzip and pee without so much as a hello. He lets out a long, ripping fart that fills the bathroom with the heavy scent of shit.
If everyone treated their spouse or partner with the same respect they’d give a friend sharing a hotel room, a lot more marriages would be saved.
Then again, there are always people who would tell you how considerate they are. How generous. How they care more for others rather than themselves. They’re the worst ones.
Ross glances at me as he pushes past to the sink, where he washes his hands. Soap drips from the dispenser I haven’t yet fixed. Water splashes the freshly cleaned mirror when he shakes his hands, ignoring the hand towel. Then he uses my washcloth, the one I use on my face, to finish drying his hands. My gorge rises. My face.
He tosses the washcloth onto the rumpled pile at the side of the sink. I snatch it up and throw it into the laundry basket.
He notices me looking. “What?”
“I fixed the faucet.”
I can see instantly that he doesn’t believe me. I’m waiting for the pat on the head. The patronizing smirk. Ross twists the water on, then off. No drip. His brows knit.
“I told you I’d take care of it.”
“But you didn’t,” I point out, reasonably enough, my voice a calm lake, unruffled by so much as a breeze.
“I told you I would,” Ross repeats, as if this will make a difference. As if by saying it again he can...what? I don’t even know.
I keep my focus on the tools I’m fitting into their slots, each into its place. “But you didn’t. And I did. What’s the big deal?”
He doesn’t answer. He turns the faucet again. On. Off. On. The water runs. He turns it off and I stare, triumphant when it doesn’t so much as sneak out a single drop of water.
“Make sure you put all my tools back where they belong,” Ross says.
I overlooked the splattered mirror, the disgusting use of my washcloth. But at this, my fingers twitch and clench. “They’re not your tools. They’re mine.”
“What do you mean, yours?” He moves as though to touch the tool bag, but I back up a step, holding it close. Protectively.
“I mean they’re mine. I went to the store and bought them.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I couldn’t find what I needed,” I explain, patient on the surface. Churning underneath.
“I have all of that stuff in the shed.”
“I looked in the shed. I couldn’t find anything I needed.” It’s my turn to repeat, though I know it won’t make a difference. Ross won’t hear me. “So I went out and bought them.”
He puts his hands on his hips, fingers touching his leather belt. I bought him that belt. That yellow polo shirt, the khaki pants. I bought him the shoes on his feet, the briefs I’m sure he’s wearing. All he ever had to do was reach into his closet and pull out the clothes I bought for him. Washed and dried and ironed and folded for him.
“That was a stupid waste of money,” Ross says flatly. “In case you didn’t notice, we have weddings to pay for. Two of them.”
Two weddings he’s done nothing to plan. That burden falls solely to me, like the years of science projects, dance rehearsals, dentist appointments and boyfriend drama. And I’m more than aware of the cost of things, since I’m the one who pays all the bills.
“I didn’t have what I needed.” I repeat the words slowly. Carefully. “So I went out and got it.”
My husband, the man to whom I have pledged my life, gives me a look so full of scorn it stings like a nettle caught in tender flesh. “It’s not like you’ll ever need them again, Beth. I mean, you are kind of useless when it comes to fixing things.”
If there’s ever been a moment in my life when I’ve come close to killing someone, this is it. Love, when it goes, can sometimes burn to ash.
And sometimes it can leave nothing.
Chapter Forty-Two
I’ve lived in this house for twenty-two years, and don’t think I’ve ever known the full length and width of the kitchen before. Not this way, as I pace and try to occupy myself with cleaning crumbs from toast I didn’t make and splashes of coffee I didn’t drink. I empty the fridge and freezer, scrub away spilled blobs of ice cream, and toss packages of brussels sprouts I have to admit I will never cook. I organize the condiments by the size of their bottles and think, stupidly, There. Now he’ll never be able to find the ketchup.
Ross isn’t coming home tonight, or tomorrow, or the night after. He might be home sometime the day after that, if he comes to the house instead of going to the office from the airport, but I didn’t ask him his plans, because I don’t care. He could stay a month and I won’t miss him, and this, like the bag of brussels sprouts, is something I finally have to force myself to admit.
I stand in my kitchen and look at everything around me, and I wonder how in the hell I got to this place. What happened to me? To my life?
I turned around, I think. And there he was.
And nothing has been the same since, and it will never be the same. It doesn’t matter that I ended it in the backseat of his car with his fingers against my thigh and his tongue in my mouth. It doesn’t matter that I have a responsibility to my daughters, that they deserve a mother who can keep her shit together. It doesn’t matter that it’s over, because it happened, and I am forever changed.
The pain and weight in my chest aren’t new; I’ve felt this stab before. For a period of a few months several years ago, I was convinced I was having a heart attack. The good part was that it convinced me to stop smoking, to eat better, to start working out, so I wouldn’t be that woman people talk about in hushed tones, the on
e who keeled over in her thirties from an unexpected heart attack.
No, now I’ll be the woman they talk about behind their hands, the one who up and left her husband after twenty-two years.
The pain is from costochondritis, an inflammation of the cartilage connecting the ribs and sternum, and there’s no cure for it except rest and sometimes anti-inflammatories. It hurts more when I breathe and less when I stop, an irony I do not miss. I press my fingertips to the underside of my left breast, my eyes closed, and wish away the pain. The fact is, it feels as if someone’s taken a spear and stabbed it through my chest and out my back.
Through my heart.
And then I am folding like a house of cards, onto my knees on the hard kitchen floor, one hand still trying to make my heart stop hurting and the other pressed to my mouth to keep myself from sobbing out loud. There’s nobody to hear me but myself, but I don’t want a repeat of the day in the shower. I don’t want to lose myself that way again. Yet here I am, lost.
I am lost.
I am selfish. I am greedy. I’m incapable of being anything else, and I get myself off the floor. I get my phone. My spear-stabbed heart leaps when I see the tiny red “1” indicating a message, but I can’t make myself see who it’s from because it’s still Schrödinger’s cat. At this point, it’s both from Will and not, and I will never know until I check it.
In the bathroom, I set my phone on the counter and wash my face. I touch up my makeup, which is stupid because it’s six o’clock in the evening and I’m alone. I turn my face from side to side, studying features so familiar they’ve become alien, like saying a word over and over again until it no longer has meaning. I force myself to count to ten, then twenty, then again. To a hundred. To a hundred and fifty while I clean the toilet and shower and tub even though Maria does a fine job and they’re not dirty. I refold the towels. I organize my cosmetics drawer.