“Pilot project,” Dylan muttered.
“Yes,” Kate said. “Call it that. I like that better than ‘going all Utah.’ ”
She left then for the kitchen. David wanted to follow but didn’t. He and the boys sat without speaking. Jack reached for the remote but thought better of it.
“I’m sorry you’re dragged into this,” David finally said, “but you’re too old not to be honest with. I miss the old days too, you know. But maybe your mom is right that we can’t make it be like it was.”
“Home maintenance!” Dylan said, as if playing a trump card. “Are you going to do the guy stuff for two houses?”
“I don’t know. Possibly. By the way, we’ve agreed not to research this kind of thing online.”
“You’d probably just get porn,” Jack said.
No one laughed.
After vetoing a few suggestions (too many bikers, too many aging stoners), the brothers ended up in an out-of-the-way bar where they wouldn’t see anyone they knew. They settled into a booth and Dylan said, “Did you see this coming?”
“No way. I had the impression Jane had just stepped aside—like, ‘Sorry, wrong seat, I’m really in Row G.’ ” Jack started to say more, then stopped and said, “Weird shit, but who knows?”
“If I had to pick someone who could maybe handle this, it would be someone like Jane,” Dylan said. “But Mom? What’s in it for her?”
“Maybe it’s what she said—less responsibility. And I think people don’t get so crazy jealous when it’s all above aboard.”
“If it was Mom’s idea—and I do believe that—then she’s pretty much in control of the thing,” Dylan said. “I don’t mean that in a bad way. And it does make the idea seem a little bit possible.”
“Well, if Dad wasn’t ever going to get over Jane—”
“I don’t know if he would have.” Dylan thought he should explain the dopamine hypothesis to his brother—help him understand the activation of their dad’s reward circuit. How even his love for their mother and his joy at her return could face strong competition from the new, unanticipated stimuli that was Jane. Dylan wanted to say that if he were told to give up Lily forever or the city of Chicago would be destroyed, he’d have to think about it. And he might just say “screw Chicago.” But it wasn’t his job to lobby for his dad.
“Then I guess Mom either doesn’t love him any more,” Jack said, “or she loves him a whole lot.”
“I wonder if it’s some mixture of the two.”
Jack frowned. “Do you even know what you mean by that?”
“I think I mean that she loves him a lot, but that it’s different now, or it feels different to her. That there’s some change that lets her see Dad’s side and Jane’s side without making her nuts. I wonder, too. I mean, he did move on. He did fall in love with someone else. Not until years had gone by, but still, how do you just pretend that didn’t happen? Mom’s not big on pretending.”
Jack was unusually quiet before saying, “The only part I really hate—I mean the part I hate most, so far anyway, is…I really, and I mean really, do not like having to think about our parents’ sex lives.”
Dylan agreed. “It’s a terrible thing. And it seems about to get a whole lot worse.”
“I want things back…” Jack said, but he didn’t finish.
“I should call Jane later. She’ll be wondering.” David wanted Kate to know before he called. No matter what his wife said, he planned to be very careful. He knew how it felt to imagine oneself to be left out. It never felt like imagination.
“She’s got to be curious about the boys’ reaction,” Kate said, and then went upstairs to take a bath.
He didn’t expect to find Jane at home, but maybe he had a chance calling her cell. He noticed they both left their phones on a lot more and had become adept enough to answer in time. Of course, he was always slightly on edge expecting bad news from Kate or about Kate. Jane answered on the second tone, her voice barely audible over loud music.
“Am I allowed to ask where you are?”
“I’m at an old-fashioned key party. Let me just see who I’ve agreed to go home with.” She waited a beat and said, “Oh, no, I am not leaving with that guy. Hold on a second. I’ll walk somewhere quieter.”
He heard the background sounds muffle.
“I’m in the bathroom now. How are you?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure you’re not at some weird swapping party, which is good. I’m not jealous. I just don’t want to catch anything.”
She laughed. “It’s a card party. I came for the pizza and powdered donuts.” She waited.
“Kate and I talked to the boys. They are not fans of the idea.”
“Do they hate me?”
“No. They hate me.”
“I suppose they would, but they could also be profoundly annoyed that I’m willing to be part of this.”
“They think Kate’s crazy and they hate me. They didn’t really focus on you.”
“Yet.”
Kate spent the next morning looking at photo albums, one son on either side. “It’s interesting how often you two don’t agree about where a picture was taken or even who’s in it,” she observed.
“It would help if I had labeled any of them,” David said from behind the couch, where he perched periodically to see what they were looking at. “Maybe you could go back and do that now. From wherever you left off.”
“I did some the other day,” she reminded him.
Dylan and Jack seemed to be frozen, waiting for him to leave the room, so he did. Later, Kate made sandwiches for the boys, and they left five hours before they would have if things were normal.
“I’m sorry,” David said, after they drove off.
“I’m glad they don’t try to fake it,” Kate said. She leaned against him. “Look, you don’t have to come home. Like this week, when you go over there. I’ll be with Martha all evening. Stay over. That’s better, don’t you think? As long as I know what your plans are. And I think you know that I don’t see your time with her as some once-a-week…”
He knew, thankfully, that she wouldn’t be able to say booty call, even if she knew the phrase. Thing was what she eventually came up with.
They moved to sit on the living room couch, first clearing off the albums and newspapers.
“Has it really been okay for you?” He forced himself to continue. “I know it’s just a handful of times. I feel like I’m intruding to ask again, and I don’t even know what I want the answer to be.”
“It’s better than watching you missing her and trying not to show it, and I don’t say that to make you feel bad.” Quietly, she added, “I’ve not been in pain.” And then, “What about you? Do you feel guilty—in any direction?”
“I’ve felt guilty about you for so long, maybe I can’t even tell if I feel some higher level of guilt now.”
“Guilty? You mean when you met Jane?”
“No, longer. Like maybe we had an argument and it triggered a bunch of brain chemicals and that’s how it began. Maybe if I’d admitted sooner that you were ill, something would have helped. And then meeting Jane. I didn’t so much think that I was doing anything wrong, but I still felt guilty. They’re not always the same thing, are they?”
“You don’t really feel responsible for what happened to me, do you?”
“Not in any way that makes sense,” he said, “but I think maybe guilt can be a way to stay close to a person, a tie to someone who’s gone.” On the word gone, he saw her blink hard.
“And now? With Jane again? More guilt? New guilt?”
“Maybe I should, but I don’t seem to. Only because you know, and I’m not sneaking. Does that make me shallow and greedy?”
“I think you’re sort of brave.”
“What?”
“I mean you risk disappointing both of us, and I don’t mean mostly about sex.”
“Yes, two people to let down. I just can’t make myself worry about that right now.”
/> “I’ll tell you this too. It’s sort of embarrassing, but it’s you, David—I can tell you. I think it’s been just the smallest bit arousing, as if something broke through this asexual state. Does that sound perverse? Or childish? Like how Fred doesn’t want the cloth mouse until Anova touches it.”
“Childish? No. But perverse?…” he said, talking into her silky hair. “Yes, perverse, though in a good way. For me, anyway.” She laughed and he thought perhaps he should make a move and then smiled to think of planning a strategy to seduce his wife of decades to whom he used to be able to just say I want. He felt her relax against him and heard her breath rise, then fall, and he let her sleep for a few minutes until his arm went numb. When he extricated it, she woke and they stood, and he watched her climb the stairs slowly, like a child long past bedtime.
Now that David always had use of his car, their mornings felt deceptively like the routine he and Jane had before Kate came back. He found Jane in her kitchen, holding a sponge but not using it. She didn’t eat breakfast, and he was finding he could skip it too.
“You know, we never really got a chance to talk about living together,” he said. “I never heard your answer to that idea. Is it even fair to ask now?”
“Everything. I would have said yes to everything.”
Her willingness to lay herself bare made his heart race for a beat or two.
“But as for the new question, I can’t tell you what the minimum is that will work for me. One day a week? Three and a half days a week? Does it even matter, if I keep expecting a call from you or Kate saying there’s been a change of plans?”
“First of all, that is not the new question. No one is asking what your minimum is. Second, you say that Kate or I will flake out, but you don’t actually sound pessimistic. About us. About you and me.”
“I plan to learn to live in the moment.” She smiled. “And yes, the contradiction is intentional.”
“So we need to live in the moment—and we do that by…careful planning?” he asked rhetorically.
They made a date for three days off—their last chance before Kate’s parents’ arrival.
When he got to class, the lecture hall was mysteriously locked. He opened it and the students camped out in the hallway climbed to their feet and streamed in to hear his talk on the unknown abolitionists. To most of them, it was as if he were recounting a cable news story. The topic engrossed them, but it was all news to them, the details too full of conflict and ambiguity to survive into popular history. A few asked such smart questions that he thought, as he sometimes did, that he would do this part of the job for free.
After class, he called Kate. She’d spent the previous evening with Martha. He was pretty sure he knew what had taken place.
“We weren’t in the mood for shopping. We just talked. It seemed like the right time to tell her. About the plan—we have got to think of a word for it. You know, I think I’ve shocked her before. I mean, this is a woman who went through the seventies without smoking pot, and she was clearly not prepared for this. She wouldn’t comment—she refused to give an opinion. Whatever she thought or felt, all she did was grab my hand and say it was good to have me back. I hope Don doesn’t have a heart attack when she tells him.”
It seemed to David that he had a choice here: to be flooded with embarrassment and self-consciousness—exposed in a dreaded and dreadful way—or to…just not. To not go that familiar route. To be somebody different, not necessarily an improved version of himself but just different. Someone who planned to make this thing work, and with some confidence and kindness, not just towards others—he was good at that—but also towards himself.
“Thank you, brave one,” David said. “It was right to tell her.”
“I wouldn’t be doing this,” she said, “if it was something I couldn’t talk about.”
“Yes, I understand that. It only works if it feels valuable. And possible.” This way of seeing things was starting to feel possible. “Jane is good,” he offered. “Tentative, as you can imagine. Sort of expecting a change-of-heart phone call from you. Or me.”
“Understandable.”
He heard their doorbell ring. “I’ll see you after work. We’ll prepare for your parents’ visit.”
“And we’ll do that how?” But she laughed after she said it.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
David and Bill shook hands, but then mutually turned it into a hug. David was struck as usual by how much taller he was than Bill, who, even just a few feet away, seemed by sheer command to add four inches to his height. Bill looked his age again, as if some of the premature withering they’d all experienced had dissipated. Perhaps his grief had eased as he’d had increasingly less contact with his daughter’s condition. David watched Eve as she waited her turn—if he squinted, he could see Kate superimposed on the still lovely woman. When Bill released him, Eve took over and wrapped him in a long guilty hug, or so he imagined. “It’s been so long,” she said. “Too long.”
David took a breath and said, “I haven’t really prepared you very well for…” and he saw their faces, already tight, collapse. “No!” he added quickly. “I mean I haven’t prepared you for the…improvements,” he decided to call it. “In fact, we’re not going to the L. Kate’s actually in the house.” Bill set down the larger of the two grocery bags he was carrying, then took Eve’s arm and they started up the front steps quickly. Eve tripped and Bill said, “Slow down, Eve. Remember the no-falling plan.” They walked carefully into the house, where David caught up with them, banging luggage against the door molding as he led them to the living room.
Kate stood by an armchair. “Hi, Daddy,” she said sweetly, and then, “Hi, Mom,” her eyes clear and focused, though with the glisten that precedes tears. Eve dropped her handbag and Bill let the small shopping bag he was carrying fall—something in it resounded, possibly broken, but he didn’t glance down. They walked slowly towards Kate as if afraid she’d disappear like a hologram.
“I’m feeling a lot better,” she said. “The new medications seem to be working.”
Bill knelt down. Whether his legs gave, or he was praying, wasn’t clear. Kate knelt beside him and took his hands. Eve melted into the closest chair, placed her hands on Kate’s shoulders, and kissed the top of her head, a series of little kisses, as one does with a baby, mouthing “you’re back, you’re back” into Kate’s hair. Bill had yet to utter a sound when David began a quiet retreat.
At first, he only went as far as the kitchen, but the air throughout the first floor seemed thick with the intensity of the reunion, and he soon felt short of breath. He went to the basement, little used now, and watched sports highlights on the last of the old squat TVs.
Much later, he heard footsteps, and Kate found him watching the end of a two-year-old basketball game. He roused himself to a seated position and she sat next to him, looking both exhausted and slightly manic. Putting his arm around her, he could feel her quivering as adrenaline started its delayed reaction. He breathed along with her, trying to slow his breath each time. Soon, her breath matched his and he felt her begin to calm.
“They’re unpacking the groceries they brought. We won’t have to shop for a while. They also brought a cooler with some things they made. They must not know you cook now.” She glanced at the muted game, then back at him. “I didn’t tell them about Jane yet. It seemed like my dad was ready to ask, but then he didn’t.”
“Do we even want to tell them?” he said. “We don’t have to—unless they move here—which is entirely possible now.” David thought her parents should move near Kate, safe and close, for their last years, but he knew Bill and Eve were the type that didn’t plan on dying—or even becoming old-old. Mind over matter, he could picture Bill saying, as he did when confronted with something unpleasant like stuck lug nuts or a pulled muscle. He had been the last to admit Kate was ill. Even Jack could talk about her illness sensibly before Bill did.
“Of course, we don’t want to hide like we’re ashamed,
” he said seemingly contradicting himself. “Look, Kate, I’ve been worried about something. It’s important to me that you know that I do not think I deserve this. It would bother me if it seemed that way.”
“Is it possible that if all kinds of bad things happen to us that we don’t deserve, then it’s okay if something good happens that we don’t deserve either?”
He pulled her towards him, held her too tightly, and then relaxed his grip.
“I’ll tell them tomorrow morning,” she whispered.
“I’m in if you want me,” he said. “Always good to have something to look forward to.” And they both stood to climb the stairs.
After dinner, David and Kate helped Kate’s emotionally exhausted parents maneuver their luggage and get settled at the inn where they had stayed during each visit since Kate first moved to the L. David had understood right away that they couldn’t stay in the house without Kate, and no one tonight suggested they change their plans. They all needed a break. When he got back, he found Kate in bed, still awake, not quite vibrating like earlier but too wired to sleep.
“What would help you?” he asked, and she said, “Some educational TV. Maybe history—history always puts me to sleep.” She wasn’t joking. When she was pregnant and plagued by insomnia, she’d say “talk history to me,” and it would work, though he realized more from relaxation than actual boredom. It wasn’t that Kate was uninterested in history; she just couldn’t retain the information. Periodically, she’d say, “I still don’t get World War I. And the War of 1812—why don’t I even remember the sides?” She hadn’t properly understood that the Panama Canal connected two oceans. One time he asked her what she did while history class was going on around her but she didn’t know that either.
Now he laughed and turned on the History Channel. “Christ, it’s about Caligula. That’s not going to work.”
“How about Raymond? Is Raymond on?” As usual it was, and before the end, she was asleep. David waited for the epilogue and then he fell asleep too.
The Half-Life of Everything Page 18
