Once More With Feeling (34 page)

He looked like he was biting his lip. Biting back words. It made me wonder what he thought would qualify as
too harsh
in this scenario.

‘It isn’t your fault,’ he said, but there was a chill in his voice and I suspected he wanted to defend Carolyn.
See?
I told myself.
He’s still the man you married, the great defender of the innocent and protector of all he can. That just doesn’t
include you any longer
. ‘I shouldn’t have done it the way I did. I can’t pretend I’m not the shithead here.’

‘I don’t think anyone’s pretending that,’ I agreed. I was not biting back my words. Clearly.

‘We weren’t happy,’ he said quietly, and I could see he meant that. That he wasn’t confused. That this was his truth, however unfair or unpleasant I thought it was. ‘I think on some level, you know that.’

I wanted to throw something back at him, but instead, I thought about the photographs I’d seen of Prague in my guidebooks last night, and on the postcards I’d collected from various bookstores over the years. The fairy-tale city, that beautiful bridge bristling with artists and statues and a different kind of life than anything I’d find here. It was only one of the magical places I’d wanted to go to, but I’d given that up as one of those childish daydreams that real adults like me didn’t get to hold on to any longer. I’d given up everything because I’d thought that’s what I was supposed to do.

I thought about what
happy
really was. I’d thought for so long that it was a choice between
temporary
and
permanent
and Alec had been such a clear, self-proclaimed temporary situation, and he’d hurt me so terribly when he’d left. When I’d been too scared to go with him, because I’d known that I wanted things he couldn’t give. I’d known better than to force that issue on a different continent. I’d been right back then, for a variety of reasons and because I couldn’t possibly have handled
him, but that didn’t change how badly it had hurt.

And I’d thought that the permanence Tim offered could save me from that. From the hurt, from the part of me that wanted to ignore the things I felt and follow Alec around anyway. I’d believed Tim knew better than me – that he had a reason to be confident enough to propose
forever
on the third date. That he was
right
. And I’d done whatever I’d had to do to make sure that forever worked. Drunk-driving cases in my safe suburban hometown. Cutting off Brooke, who challenged me and my brand-new fascination with the status quo, to preserve that sense of safety. Whatever it took.

But what would happen if I decided I could … be happy? If I let that take whatever form it took? If finally, once and for all, I just let go and let whatever happened, happen?

How fucking revolutionary.

‘Say something,’ Tim urged me.

‘I don’t see why,’ I said after a moment. When I could speak without all that emotion in my voice. He didn’t deserve to hear any of that. Not any more. It was mine, I realized. Not his. ‘There’s not really anything left to say, is there? It’s not like I’m going to debate you into being happy with me if you weren’t.’

I pushed away from the wall. I scooped my bag up by its strap.

‘I wish I hadn’t handled all of this so badly,’ he whispered. ‘If I could have done this without hurting you, Sarah, I would have.’

‘You’ve said that before, Tim.’ I shrugged. ‘That’s actually kind of a meaningless and shitty thing to say, if you think about it.’

‘That’s not how I mean it,’ he said, rubbing at his face. ‘Really.’

I inclined my head as if I understood, and maybe some part of me did. But none of it mattered. I finally got that.

We looked at each other then, for what felt like a long time. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel. I knew how his mouth tasted. I knew what noises he made when he was sick, when he was being silly, when he was about to come. I knew what he liked to eat on Sunday afternoons in front of the game, and how he liked his toast. I knew what he smelled like without a shower. I knew what he was afraid of, and what he regretted from his childhood years. I remembered how he’d held me close on our honeymoon, and the things he’d whispered in my ear. I’d soothed him as he sobbed over the deaths of his parents. I’d stroked his forehead through fevers, even held him when he’d woken from this coma and had known no one in all the world but me.

Did all of that disappear now? Did it matter less because it was over? I didn’t know how this worked. I didn’t know how to shift into a space where we weren’t intimate, where we weren’t close, because we knew too much about each other. Maybe that was what I’d been fighting all this time. I didn’t want to give this up. Because whatever else it was,
whether it was as happy as it should have been, as I’d thought it was, it was ours. It was real.

‘I really did love you,’ I whispered. ‘Whatever you might have decided since then.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know you did. As much as you could.’

And when I left, when I finally turned and walked away the way I should have done in September or maybe long before that, he let me go. He didn’t even say goodbye.

But then again, he’d been saying goodbye for a long time. I had only just learned how to listen.

It was snowing again when I got back into my car, and it annoyed me.

Snow was lovely and picturesque in December, when everything was some kind of extended, interactive Christmas card, and there were whole radio stations dedicated to playing endless loops of carols telling us all how wonderful winter was.

Snow in January was nothing more than cold. And spoke of the endless, gruelling, impossible winter months laid out before us, with spring the barest hint of possibility in the far-off future.

But that was fine, I told myself now, glaring at the flurries that dusted my windshield, because I had a plan.

My
plan.

It was funny how clear everything had become. How much sense it all made all of a sudden.

I didn’t want this. This marriage. These choices. This
life. I didn’t want any of it. And I certainly wasn’t going to fight for it any longer.

I was going to do something much better. I was going to go home and buy a plane ticket to somewhere far, far away. So far away it was already summer, like in Australia. And then I was going to very carefully pack up that backpack of mine, and I was going to simply … go.

I was going to open my hands as wide as they could, and I was going to let all of this flow through them and disappear. I was going to stop looking back. I was going to let life find me, instead of imposing my plans on it out of fear and heartbreak and a knee-jerk reaction to what I
ought
to do. I was going to let go, starting right now. I was going to make room for whatever came next.

I drove carefully through town, and then started up the hill towards the house. I would have to make some phone calls. There was the question of what to do with the stuff I actually wanted from this old life of mine, and what to do with it while I was travelling, but that was what storage facilities were for. There were also the legal issues to work out – the divorce and all our assets – but I didn’t really think there would be a fight. Tim had a baby on the way, after all. I suspected he would want it all over as quickly as possible.

And I wanted to be free. I wanted to see what I found out there, and then, when I was done with that, I wanted to spend my life helping people who needed help – not tending to the kind of people who risked others’ lives in
so cavalier a fashion and then complained about it afterward. The Benjy Strattons of the world were not my problem. Not any more. Not ever again.

I went down lists in my head. Tim and I had always maintained three bank accounts: his, ours and mine. I would be more than fine, and if he bought me out of the practice and the house as I expected he would, I would be even better. In a way, I thought a bit ruefully as I turned down our street, it was as if we’d been planning for our divorce since the day we met. I hadn’t thought that then, of course. I’d thought we were so practical, so clear-eyed and unemotional about things like assets and worst-case scenarios. I wasn’t sure that meant the things Tim thought it meant, but there was no denying the fact that would make all of this that much easier now.

I had come full circle. I understood my life in a way I hadn’t before – because I’d been actively hiding from myself. All my depositions had led me to one inescapable conclusion: I’d created my own prison. I’d put up these bars and locked myself away in
safe
and
easy
. And that was sad, but the good news was, I was the one who could walk free of it whenever I wanted. Maybe Tim had always known that, on some level.

And now I did, too.

I pulled into the driveway, frowning at the car that was already there, engine running and wipers slapping back and forth. What now? My money was on my mother, the only one who hadn’t weighed in recently on my life choices.
That was very unlike her. I braced myself for her eternal woundedness, her martyrdom, as I climbed out of my car. I even cautioned myself to be kind. After all, who knew what her prison looked like? Who knew what she was hiding from herself?

But it wasn’t my mother who swung out of the driver’s seat and faced me across the snow flurries. It wasn’t my mother who made me stop still and stare.

It was Alec.

‘Impossible,’ I said flatly, as if I thought he were an apparition brought on by stress. Which he very well could have been. ‘You flew out yesterday.’

‘I was supposed to fly out yesterday,’ he agreed, the familiar kick of temper in that low, commanding voice of his. ‘I made it to JFK for the New York to London leg. I was all ready to go. It’s a long flight, Sarah.
Flights
, in fact. London to Johannesburg and then on to Windhoek. It takes forever. And I didn’t get on the damned plane.’

‘You don’t change your plans,’ I said, like I was arguing. ‘Ever.’

‘No, Sarah, I don’t,’ he muttered dangerously. ‘Yet here I am. In your driveway. In the snow.’

He looked surly and delicious, all dark eyes and his bone-deep crankiness. He wore a ridiculous fuzzy hat with a pompom jammed down on his head, no coat and those same ancient jeans that
did things
to his legs. He should have looked foolish. Or at least cold.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said. But I’d seen so many movies. I knew what I wanted this scene to mean. Was this where he swept me off my feet and carried me away? Was this where the curtain fell over a happily-ever-after kiss? There was a part of me that wanted that – him – desperately. Maybe I always would.

But I didn’t want that
now
. I didn’t know if I believed in happily ever after any longer, and I had only just realized all the things I had to do.

It didn’t matter that he was here. It couldn’t.

I opened my mouth to tell him so.

‘I’m not the marrying kind,’ he gritted out at me, shocking me into silence. ‘I don’t see that changing. Why should a piece of paper or a religious ceremony mean more than what two people know they feel? That doesn’t make any sense to me, and I don’t think it ever will.’

‘I didn’t propose to you, Alec,’ I pointed out, rocking back on my heels as if he’d accused me of clinging to his pant leg. ‘And I don’t need a run down of your objections to something I don’t even—’

‘Please shut up,’ he said, through his teeth. He waited for a moment, as if to see whether or not I would, that lean body of his seeming to vibrate with some kind of electric current, some kind of charge. I shoved my freezing, gloveless fingers into my pockets, let the snow flurries fall on my face, and shut up.

‘Here’s what I promise you, Sarah,’ he said, moving closer, looming over me right there in the driveway, in
front of the house and the life I was abandoning. At last. ‘I will never forget you. I never have and I never will. I will always miss you when you’re not with me. I always do. I have two photos of you that I carry with me everywhere, like an obsessed person. But I accept that.’

I stopped caring that it was cold, that I was already running on empty, that I was exhausted from all the different layers of grief I’d been slogging around in for so long. I stopped noticing anything but that grim, resolute mouth of his that never made promises he couldn’t keep.

Never.

‘I will annoy you with coffee and other food you don’t want every morning you wake up with me,’ he continued, moving even closer. ‘I will irritate you. I will probably drive you crazy, and I’ll probably think that’s pretty funny.’

‘You don’t have to do this,’ I told him, though there was a lump in my throat. ‘I don’t need you to do this.’

‘I promise you that I will never lie to you, even if it would be easier,’ he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘I’m not a cheater. I don’t see the point. I promise that I will treat you like my equal in all things, even when that gets uncomfortable. I promise to expect nothing less from you.’ He was standing directly in front of me then, looking down, his expression one I’d never seen before. Solemn, but lit from within. As if these were vows. ‘I promise that I will listen to you, and try to understand you, and try to give you the benefit of the doubt when the things you say make me angry. I promise never to ask you to
hold my scalpel, unless it’s a medical emergency and I need your help. I promise to treat you like the smart, fascinating, capable woman that you are. And I promise to listen to you if you feel like I’m not giving you what you need.’

‘Alec.’ I could barely speak. ‘Come on. Stop. What do you think this is?’

‘I think this is long overdue,’ he retorted, his voice gruff, but that odd light in his gaze. ‘A necessary clarification. I promise not to ask you to follow me anywhere unless I think it’s somewhere you’d want to go too. I promise not to act like my career is more important than whatever you choose to do, even if I secretly think it is, because I am, after all, an arrogant asshole. I promise not to get too pissed when you call me that. It’s true.’

‘Am I going to call you that, do you think?’ I asked, reluctantly enchanted by this. The man, the snow. The things he was saying. What they meant. ‘Often?’