The Behavior of Love

by Virginia Reeves

  All morning I feel the ropes on my wrists, those wet fish lips around my waist. Too pointed, I think. Too obvious. My subconscious bubbles right at the surface.

  Ed is at a conference in DC.

  In the evening, I drop Benjy at Bonnie’s and meet Tim for a drink.

  I seem to do nothing but compare the two of them—Ed and Tim. They are so physically different, Tim slight where Ed is broad, each body better suited to the other’s work. But Tim is attentive, where Ed is preoccupied. I am all Tim sees when we are together. The bartender could shatter a tray full of glasses and Tim wouldn’t move his eyes from my face.

  After two drinks, I get in Tim’s car, and he drives us to his house.

  “This place is too nice for a single guy,” I say. Wood floors, cathedral ceilings, a huge fireplace, leather sofas.

  “Did you forget what I do for a living?”

  He is a builder. He built this house himself.

  There are twelve boxes of Girl Scout cookies on his coffee table.

  “Those?” I ask.

  “The Baker girls,” he says. “Tireless little bloodsuckers. Worst thing about the neighborhood. You’ll have to watch out if you start coming around more often.”

  Not a subtle invitation.

  The thumbnail on his left hand is black.

  He drove us here, but I am the one to cross the few feet between us and press my mouth to his. He pulls away briefly to ask, “Are you sure, Laura?”

  I answer with my hands on his body, and he leads me to a high four-poster bed he sheepishly admits he also made.

  I am having an affair, but it is quiet and gentle. Nothing like Ed in the bathroom at the hospital or the time in my classroom in Boulder. There’s no desperation. Tim removes each piece of my clothing with care, inspecting as he goes. He touches my shoulder as though it’s precious, his fingers running the length of my collarbone. “I’ve wanted this since I met you,” he whispers, his mouth against my neck.

  “You were mourning your mother when you met me.”

  “And feeling guilty about how much I wanted you.”

  I expect my own guilt to rise at some point. I expect to see Ed, to feel the weight of him pressing against me. But I am only right here, focused and consumed. And Tim is, too.

  “I don’t have any expectations,” Tim says afterward. “You don’t have to leave your husband if you don’t want.”

  I hate the word husband in his mouth.

  “I think I do.” We are facing each other in bed, and I wonder if it will continue, this thing with Tim. I have always been with older men, but Tim is four years younger than I am. He is smarter than my firefighter but nowhere near Ed. His hands are rough, his body lean and muscled. He has good tastes and can build things, big things like houses.

  I imagine Ed saying, I am rebuilding an entire institution. What’s a house compared to that?

  But I want the house, now. I want the tangible thing, here in front of me.

  I have no use for aspirations anymore.

  Tim drives me back to my car, and we kiss like teenagers behind foggy windows for much too long.

  When I finally break away and open my door, he says, “Please don’t disappear, Laura.”

  I know he means from his life, but I hear his words only in relation to the greater disappearance I’ve been facing. Already more in tune than Ed, he is asking me to stay, to fill myself back in.

  — —

  Something has started. I feel it. When I pick up Benjy, I can tell Bonnie feels it, too.

  “You all right?” she asks.

  “I am.”

  She looks suspicious. “You’ll tell me what’s going on, I hope?”

  “Soon,” I promise.

  Benjy raises his arms into the air. “Mama?”

  He has many sounds but has been slow to acquire words. “Mama” and “Beau” are his regulars. No “Dada” yet.

  I lift him up and settle him on my hip. He’s getting big, this baby of mine.

  Bonnie offers me a glass of wine before I go, and I turn her down, anxious to leave. I want to know if it feels different to be alone with Benjy now. Just the two of us.

  “Something’s going on,” Bonnie says again.

  “I’m fine,” I tell her.

  When Benjy and I get back to the Third Street house, it feels temporary. I walk through the rooms, touching things, and so few of them are mine. My easel and paints, my clothes, a few books, my students’ artwork.

  — —

  A couple days later, I go for a walk with Benjy and Beau. The streets are mucky with spring runoff, littered with gravel. We wander down the hill, across State and Highland, pausing for the traffic on Broadway and then down farther, past Breckenridge, another worded street interrupting the numbers. We turn east on Sixth. Benjy is asleep in his stroller. Beau trots dutifully at my side, holding part of his leash in his mouth. I can still taste Tim’s breath, feel his hands.

  The leaves are budding overhead, grass greening in yards, and here on my right, at the corner of Sixth and Beattie, is a little green house with a sweet front porch and window boxes newly planted with annuals, a “For Rent” sign in the yard.

  In Ed’s book about dreams, six is a symbol of completeness. My grandmother’s name was Beattie; it means bringer of joy. I do not believe in omens, but I write down the number on the sign. I hustle home, half-running up the hill, pushing the stroller, Beau galloping at my side.

  A deep-voiced man answers on the first ring. “I can show it to you right now, if you’re interested,” and I say, “Yes, yes, yes. Please.”

  Chapter 20

  Ed is home in time for dinner. He walks in the back door as Laura pulls takeout from a bag, the white boxes from On Broadway, their special-occasion place.

  He puts his hands on her hips, kisses her neck. “Anything I can do to help?” he asks.

  “Sit with Benjy,” she says. “Get yourself a beer.”

  A perfect answer.

  Ed shrugs out of his jacket and pulls off his tie, pops the cap off a beer from the fridge. “You need one?” he asks Laura, and she nods to the glass of wine on the counter, standing next to its half-empty bottle. “Thatta girl.”

  Benjamin sits in his high chair, tiny fingers pinching peas and bits of meat, deliberate as a crane, and Ed sits down next to him, pushing food into the center of the tray.

  “This boy’s getting so big,” he says. “We’re going to have to give him a little brother or sister one of these days.” He’s been saying this since Pete and Bonnie’s second son was born, pushing it whenever he can, but Laura’s birth control pills stay in the medicine cabinet.

  She doesn’t respond.

  They eat at the table in the kitchen, Laura plating their meals as nicely as the restaurant would if they were there—steaks and garlic potatoes and sautéed mushrooms. Benjamin remains fixated on his own food, taking the bits of potato Laura gives him, the tiny bites of steak. She gives him a piece of mushroom, and he chews it for a few seconds before scowling and swiping it from his mouth. They both laugh. Ed tells her about his day, how much he enjoys his patients, how Chip is going to move in with his uncle and start working as a janitor at the nearby elementary, a great success.

  Ed continues. “It’s nice to treat ourselves. We’ll have to go out soon. Get this little guy a sitter.”

  After dinner, they put Benjamin in his playpen and go to the front porch, Ed with another beer, Laura with a full glass of wine. They can look through the big living room window to see Benjamin sitting in his little cage, analyzing his toys. He doesn’t seem to play with them, only inspect. They leave the front door open so they can hear him if he cries.

  Ed lights them each a cigarette.

  The evening is warm, and the lilacs just off the front steps are starting to leaf out. Ed can nearly smell the blossoms. Lilacs are his favorite. So many favorites in one night.

  Laura says, “I need to talk to you about something.”

  His thoughts are still li
ght and airy. Maybe she is pregnant—a missed pill and another baby on the way, a wonderful surprise, great news. Maybe she’s sold a painting and her art career is on the verge of exploding, a brilliant artist discovered in this small mountain town.

  He reaches for her hand, laces his fingers through hers, seeks her ring that he regularly plays with. It isn’t there, and still—still!—nothing sounds in his brain to signal concern, no alarms, no bells. She must have taken it off to paint. She does that sometimes.

  He has time to think all these things.

  Laura takes a drag of her cigarette, and he’s just about to tell her how damn sexy she is when she says, “I signed a lease on a house today.”

  Ed is confused. They own their home. There’s no need to lease.

  “It’s down on Sixth Street—corner of Sixth and Beattie. That was my grandmother’s name, you remember? It’s close, which will be nice for Benjy.”

  Ed isn’t making sense of the words. She’s talking about her grandmother, for some reason—probably dinner. Wasn’t her grandmother a great cook? But was there something about a house? Her grandmother’s house?

  “I’m going to start moving my things tomorrow.”

  That sentence is perfectly clear. The ignorance breaks, a thick-shelled egg cracked open.

  Benjamin is whimpering in his playpen.

  “What can I do?” Ed crushes out his cigarette and Laura’s, covers her hands with his own. “Anything, love. Tell me.”

  Benjamin’s noise grows louder. A word comes through. “Mama!”

  She shakes her head.

  “Mama!”

  “No, Laura. You don’t just end it.”

  “Mama!” A fierce wailing.

  “Coming, Benjy.” Laura slides her hands from under his. She leaves a warm place next to him on the bench where she was sitting.

  Ed knows the limits of his profession—all the ways he can fail his patients. He knows the need for change and redirection. When one model doesn’t work, he tries another. And then another. But he failed to cross-apply that principle to his own marriage. He even noted the changes in his marriage’s behavior, but he didn’t rewrite its treatment. He simply continued, blindly believing it was healing itself.

  — —

  Ed doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting outside. It’s grown dark, and he hopes it’s some future spring, all this behind them, everything repaired.

  Inside, Laura lies on the sofa, eyes closed, though he knows she’s not asleep. He sits on the floor and leans his head against one of the seat cushions. “Please,” he says. “I can change. I’m a behaviorist. If I can change other people, I can change myself.” He feels her hand come to his hair, her long fingers running through the strands, soothing him like she soothes their son when he scrapes his knees or touches something hot or sharp. “Please.” He’ll say the word until she says yes. “Please. Please.”

  “No, Ed.” Her voice is as soft and gentle as her hand in his hair.

  He stands up and grabs her, pulling her against him, her arms and legs loose as a doll’s. “Please.”

  “Put me down, Ed.”

  He doesn’t. “Please, Laura.” She can’t leave him if he keeps her in his arms.

  “Put me down.”

  He waits a moment more.

  “Now, Ed.”

  He sets her down, and they sit next to each other on the sofa.

  “Come to bed.”

  “No, Ed.”

  He begins to weep. It’s a deep, ragged sadness he’s never known, and he holds his face in his hands. Laura’s fingers are on his back, tracing circles. Hush, her touch says. It’ll be all right. Everything heals.

  But he doesn’t want the injury, not this one.

  Please. He doesn’t know if he’s saying the word aloud anymore, but it’s all he hears, all he feels, an urgent, unyielding request.

  Like the time on the porch, this time in the living room stretches into nontime. They have always been there, and they have never been there.

  — —

  He’s lying on the sofa when he wakes to Benjamin’s morning whimpers. His head is still in Laura’s lap. He feels her slip out from under him, one of her hands cradling his head and easing it down gently onto the pillow she tucks in to replace her. He keeps his eyes closed and listens to her soft voice with their cranky son.

  “Hello there, my love. Oh, there’s nothing to cry about. Let’s get you changed and have some breakfast. Does that sound good?” The whimpering dies down, replaced with giggles, small chirps of pleasure, and the loud shout of “Mama!” He hears the scrabble of Beau’s nails on the floor, raising himself from his bed near the stove, the jangle of his tags as he shakes the sleep from his body. Laura’s voice again: “Should we let Beau outside?” And Benjamin shouting, “Beau!” Then the slap-stomp of Benjamin’s feet on the floor, trotting out from his room as though it’s any other day. Slap-stomp to the back door alongside Laura’s gentle footsteps, the creak of the floorboards, the open-and-close, the click of the latch, Beau barking at someone walking by. Ed hears Laura lift Benjamin into his high chair, fasten on the tray, shake out Cheerios for him to start with. She lets the dog in, and Ed listens to the rattle of food in Beau’s metal bowl. “Sit,” Laura says. “Stay. That’s a good boy. Here you go.” Why has he never listened to all this before? These sounds of his family.

  Maybe you dreamed it.

  He returns to that first trip. Dean wooing him, mountains and rivers, the sweet downtown, this house, everything perfectly aligning itself for their lives in Montana. But what if he was wrong to bring them here? He flies back to their old apartment in Michigan, Laura’s easel in the nook off the living room. He brings her a puppy the first time she asks, agrees to children right away. The apartment grows thick with bodies until they’re forced to find a new house of their own that they shop for together.

  Would they still be finding themselves in this place?

  Maybe they would, and that scares him more than the possibility of being wrong about the move. Their demise more inherent—destined, no matter where he took them.

  He sits up and Laura brings him a cup of coffee. “You should get going or you’ll be late.”

  “I’m not going in today.”

  “You have to. You have that meeting, remember? You told me about it during dinner, a big meeting, something important.” She forces a smile. “You should go, Ed.”

  He lets her pull him up and turn him gently. Lets her propel him toward the bathroom, where he somehow showers and trims his beard. Then he walks himself to his closet and selects clothes that he somehow knows how to put on, a tie he knows how to knot, a jacket he knows to fill with his wallet and his cigarettes, his lighter and keys. When he returns to the kitchen, Laura is sitting at the table with Benjamin, a cup of coffee held in both hands as though to warm her, a tiny fire. Benjamin looks up at him and shouts, “Dada!”

  “That’s right, Benjy.” Laura looks at Ed. “Dada.”

  She stands and walks him to the door. Stay, his mind says. Take off your work clothes. Put on jeans. Take your family into the mountains. Hike to the top of Mount Ascension like you’ve planned so many times.

  He sets a hand on the side of her face, stares at the composition, trying to memorize every bit, so he can conjure it at will and bring her back. “Stay?”

  “No.”

  He brings his other hand to her face and presses his mouth to hers, grateful when he feels her respond. They remain wrapped together until Benjamin calls them apart, banging on his tray for more food and hollering out his nonsense words. Laura holds her hand in front of her mouth, lips to fingers.

  Ed cups her face once more. “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “Me, too.”

  Stay.

  But he doesn’t, and she’s gone when he returns.

  Chapter 21

  They agree to tell Bonnie and Pete together, meeting them at the Third Street house. Benjamin is asleep in his playpen, Justin asleep in his car seat
, Hank entertained by the television in the living room. The adults sit around the kitchen table, two six-packs of beer in front of them that Ed doesn’t think are enough.

  “No whiskey,” Laura said. “Please.”

  “But how can I get you so drunk you’ll forget this whole thing and come to bed with me?” He was trying levity, the wit and humor he originally wooed her with.

  “No whiskey.”

  It’s been a week since she left. Laura doesn’t believe he hasn’t told Pete already, but he hasn’t. He can’t. He doesn’t know if he can even now.

  “You sure you want to do this?” he’s asked her each of those seven days. “There’s still time to back out.” He’ll reach for her, and she’ll back away. He hasn’t touched her since that last morning, though he’s tried every time he comes to her new house to take Benjamin and the dog for a walk. “Join us?” he’ll ask. Another shake of her head. He’ll reach for her when he brings them back, and she’ll shake her head again.

  He tells himself it’s just a separation. He’s agreed to tell Bonnie and Pete only because he thinks they’ll take his side.

  They each open a beer, and Pete says, “You guys are way too serious. What the hell is going on?”

  “We’re getting a divorce,” Laura says.

  “No,” Ed says. “That’s extreme. We’re separating for a bit. Laura’s taking some space.” He gulps down his beer, reaches for another.

  Bonnie and Pete are silent, staring.

  Finally, Bonnie says, “I don’t like it.”

  They all laugh nervously.

  “I don’t, either,” Ed says. “Help me talk her out of it, won’t you?”

  But the laughter is gone because Bonnie is looking at Laura, and Laura is crying and starting to speak words that aren’t quite words yet, until they suddenly are, and Ed is listening to a version of the life he thought he was living, cast in a light that makes it foreign and ugly. “And I was so lonely,” she’s saying, “lonely and trapped and so angry and then so sad, and he couldn’t see that I was disappearing, that I needed him. I was so tired of competing with his patients, with Penelope. I needed him to make me believe I was real and important and part of something, and the few times it came, it left so quickly, which was nearly worse than it never coming at all. And I just want to be whole again.” Her voice is breaking, but it smooths out here. “I need to be whole again.”