Yes, of course. Fear in the face of real, tangible danger. That’s understandable; it makes sense; it’s about self-preservation, the will to live.
But isn’t the death of the spirit a real danger, if not a tangible one?
Was I afraid while I was married to Matt, afraid that I had signed a sort of death warrant by agreeing to live with him as his wife? Afraid that if I kept my promise to love, honor, and cherish him, I would destroy myself in the process?
Or is this convenient hindsight? Am I creating a reason in retrospect for the crime I committed, just trying to let myself off the hook, just
“Jess?”
I looked up, startled, and closed the notebook with a slap.
“Oh,” I said to Seth. “Sorry. I didn’t hear you come by.”
“You okay?” Seth leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms.
“Yeah. I am. Just—preoccupied.” I slid the notebook away and smiled.
“I just wanted to know if you’ve had lunch yet. I thought I’d run down to that new Chinese place for some takeout.”
“Just give me one minute,” I said. “I’ll meet you by Tom’s desk.”
Seth went off to wait for me in the department’s reception area. I slipped the notebook into my bag and, after a minute, followed.
“I’ve been keeping a sort of journal,” I said. “I’ve been exploring what happened with Matt and me, trying to figure out the truth.”
Nell didn’t respond right away. Conversations over the phone are faulty. Hesitation makes the listener wonder if she’s been heard. There are no facial expressions and body gestures to help her understand those words that are being spoken.
“Nell?”
“I heard you,” she said. “I was just thinking. I think you have to be careful about journaling, or whatever it’s called in professional circles.”
I took a sip of the wine I’d poured earlier with my dinner and asked, “Why?”
“I’m sure that in some cases and maybe for a short time, writing about something big that’s happened in your life can be productive. Maybe it can help you understand things, give you some insight into your motives, whatever.”
I nodded to the kitchen sink. “Right,” I said. “That’s what I’m hoping, anyway.”
Nell went on, “But I think that in other cases, or after a certain amount of time, journaling can result not in helping you move on but in keeping you tethered to the past. You know, sometimes rehashing a subject becomes a symptom of laziness or an unwillingness to let go. Not that I’m saying that’s what’s happening in your case,” Nell added hastily. “Only you can answer that.”
I felt a tiny rush of annoyance, self-defensiveness, but let it pass. It did, quickly.
“It sounds as if you’ve given this topic a lot of thought,” I said. “Have you ever kept a journal? Have you ever used writing as a sort of therapy?”
“Once,” Nell replied. “When the doctors thought I might have cancer. It helped. But that was a very different sort of situation from the one you’re facing now.”
“So, not when Richard left?”
“No. I didn’t keep a journal, but I did fall into a sort of obsessive way of thinking about my troubles. It happens. It’s not unusual, but it can really hurt you in the end.”
I put down the empty glass of wine and wondered. Had I really learned anything from all the scribbling I’d done in the past weeks? I couldn’t say for sure that I had.
“So,” I said, “you see journaling as self-medicating? Something better left to the professionals?”
“It seems to me that talking to a professional counselor is a far more productive way to recover. If she suggests you keep a journal, fine. I imagine she’d offer guidelines to help make the exercise worth your while. Of course,” Nell added with a small laugh, “if therapy isn’t appealing, you could always talk to your friends.”
“Which, of course, I’ve been doing for far too long,” I replied.
“That’s okay, we’ve all been talking obsessively about our lives. It’s what friends do. People need perspective on their problems. People need advice, especially in times of crisis.”
“Unless the advice is ridiculous,” I said. “If you listened to Laura, you’d hold a grudge against Richard for the rest of your life.”
“I learned long ago not to take advice from my sister. You have to carefully consider your sources.”
I walked into the living room and sank into a chair. I suddenly felt very tired.
“So,” I said, “what do you think was the key to your being able to move on? And don’t say Trina or leather pants. It has to be something more powerful than gossip and cowhide.”
Nell laughed. “It was. It is. The answer, Jess, is forgiveness. I had to forgive Richard in order to live. You, my friend, have to forgive yourself. It’s that simple.”
“It’s that hard.”
“Yes. But I know you, Jess. You’re strong. You can do it. You’ve already begun the process.”
“I slip back a lot.”
“So do I,” Nell admitted. “Right now I’m having a hard time remembering that I don’t hate my ex-husband. But no path is perfectly straight. Lord, listen to me: I sound like some two-bit guru or a poorly written fortune stuffed into a cookie.”
“Only a little bit. Look, Nell, thanks again for listening. And for the advice.”
“So, you consider me a reliable source?”
“I do,” I said. “Good night.”
I went to bed soon after that. I didn’t open the notebook. I thought a bit about forgiveness and what that really meant, and then I slept quite soundly.
Chapter 52
Nell
You know what they say—the third time’s the charm. Don’t be afraid to look fabulous on your wedding day. Take the time to have a facial and to have any unsightly growths removed. Practice posing for the camera in a way that minimizes the obviousness of your sagging chin. Consider a mother-of-the-bride gown as they are generally excellent in hiding the time-ravaged body.
—Fashion Advice for the Third-Time Bride
It was about ten o’clock in the evening. I was already in my nightgown and robe when the doorbell rang. I jumped when it did; no one I knew just stopped by unannounced, especially at night.
I pulled my robe tighter around me—an instinctual protective gesture, though what a fold of terrycloth would protect me from, I didn’t know—and tiptoed to the door. I couldn’t remember when I’d last had occasion to peer through the peephole. I felt a bit afraid to look.
“Who is it?” I demanded in a voice so aggressive I hardly recognized it as my own.
“Nell,” a male voice, far less aggressive, answered, “it’s me, Richard.”
“Shit,” I said. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“Nell?”
I thought I heard a note of pleading in my ex-husband’s voice. Good, I thought, let him plead. Let him stand in the hallway and plead for all the neighbors to hear.
“What do you want?” I shouted.
Richard hesitated a moment before answering. “Nell,” he said, almost too softly for me to hear, “please open the door.”
Now I hesitated a moment before answering. It wasn’t lost on me that I was behaving badly, like a woman scorned; worse, like a bitchy teenaged cheerleader mad at her dumb jock of a boyfriend because he bought her the wrong color roses.
It wasn’t lost on me, but I didn’t much care. Still, I did have a reputation to maintain as a good neighbor, and having a public fight with my ex-husband wasn’t going to help me maintain that reputation.
I unlocked the door and opened it partway.
Richard stood there in a rumpled trench coat. The collar of his shirt was half in and half out of the coat. He wore a beat-up pair of loafers. He looked sad, or maybe like he hadn’t slept well, but I had no sympathy to give.
“What?” I asked.
“I had to see you, Nellie.” Richard made a move to step forward but then didn’t. “Yo
u haven’t returned my calls. I know my announcement about the wedding must have come as a surprise and—”
“You don’t know anything.” I began to close the door. Now Richard stepped forward and put his hand against it.
“Please, Nellie,” he said. “Please, can we talk about this?”
Suddenly, I felt tired, absolutely exhausted. If I couldn’t spare myself, at least I could spare the neighbors this ugly little scene. I turned away from Richard, heard him follow, and then heard the door close quietly behind me.
I walked into the kitchen. It was my domain, always had been, since Richard and I were first married and I was learning to make chicken without killing us with salmonella. I turned back to face him and leaned against the concrete counter I had installed only months before I learned that Richard had a secret life.
Innocent times.
“Can I take off my coat?” Richard asked.
I shrugged.
Richard sighed and folded his coat over one of the stools at the counter.
“I’m sorry it’s so late,” he said. “I mean, I’m sorry that I came over so late.”
“And unannounced.”
Richard nodded, pulled out the stool on which he’d laid his coat, and sat.
“I suppose I should offer you something to drink,” I said. The sudden thought of coffee or tea, even water, made my stomach flip. I remembered those first horrible weeks after I had found the note from Bob, Richard’s lover. I remembered how I could hardly eat, how my clothes began to hang off me, how I only could sleep with the aid of a pill.
The memories made me feel angry all over again.
“Okay,” I snapped, “so what do you have to say? I’m tired. I want to go to bed.”
“Nell—”
“Wait,” I interrupted, “let me guess. You feel bad and you want me to make you feel all better. Okay, you know what, Richard? I’m as happy as a clam for you and Bob. Okay? Feel better now?”
Richard shook his head. “No. I won’t feel better until you do.”
“Oh, pressure!” I laughed, shocked at the nastiness in my tone.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Richard protested. “You know I didn’t.”
I walked around to the far side of the counter, putting a physical barrier between us. I stared hard at Richard; he looked away, toward the calendar hanging on the refrigerator door. I flashed on how when the kids were little, the fridge would be covered with their drawings and scribbles.
“You still feel guilty for lying to me,” I said, “for cheating on me. And now you want to move on and marry your lover with a clean conscience and you want me to give that to you, but I can’t, Richard. And even if I could, I’m not sure that I would.”
Richard rubbed his forehead and looked back to me. “I do still feel guilty,” he said. “I probably always will. I know you can’t absolve me of the guilt, but you can forgive me, Nellie. If you choose to. I thought you’d already started.”
I remembered what I’d said to Jess just the other night, about forgiveness and how to move on in life you had to forgive if not entirely forget. But who was I to preach to anyone?
“You’re asking too much from me,” I said, and I heard my voice waver.
Richard didn’t reply for a moment, and when he did finally speak, I heard something new in his voice, something stronger than I’d heard for over a year. “Maybe I am,” he said. “Maybe I am asking too much of you, but Nell, maybe I’ve been asking too much of myself, too.”
Richard stood abruptly and leaned over the counter toward me. His eyes were dark. I took a step back.
“I’m tired of apologizing and I’m tired of groveling, Nell. I can’t do it anymore. I’m flawed, yes, and I made some big mistakes and I hurt you, but you know what, Nell? I have to live my own life, with or without your approval.” Richard shook his head, then laughed. “You know,” he said, “I shouldn’t have come here tonight. I shouldn’t have bothered you and I shouldn’t have bothered myself, either. You’re right. I’m asking too much all around.”
Richard straightened and took a step away from the counter. An uncomfortable silence settled on us. Absurdly, I wondered if I was strong enough to knock him down. I wondered if I were brave enough to slap his handsome face.
And then the words just came, without forethought.
“God, I hate you.”
Richard flinched as if I had indeed hit him physically.
And I felt sick. I ran to the sink and gagged but nothing came up. With shaking hands I wet a paper towel and held it to my face. There was a heavy silence behind me, Richard’s damaged presence.
Finally, I turned back to my ex-husband, the father of my children, my first and only love. But I had nothing to say.
Slowly, Richard reached for his coat. I had, indeed, defeated him. Isn’t that what I had wanted to do all along?
Richard slipped into the coat and then our eyes caught. And I realized that I’d never, ever seen him look as sad as he did right then, not even when I’d told him ten years earlier that I might have ovarian cancer.
Suddenly, he was no longer the enemy.
The tears came in a flood. I dashed around the counter. “Oh, Richard,” I cried, “I’m so, so sorry.”
Richard took a step forward and then we were in each other’s arms. I hugged him so hard my arms hurt.
After a while—it felt like a long time—we pulled apart enough to look at each other. Naturally, as we’d done for over twenty years, we shared a tender kiss, the kiss of friends.
I was finally ready to let him go off into his new life, his real life.
“I still love you, Richard,” I whispered. “How can I not?”
“And I still love you, Nellie,” he said, his voice pleased.
“I’m glad.”
“Will you come to the wedding?”
“I will.”
“Thank you.”
“But,” I said, “I am not going to try to catch the bouquet.”
Richard laughed and it was lovely to hear. “Fair enough.”
Chapter 53
Laura
The cost of legally changing your name back to the one you were given at birth should be absorbed by your ex. After all, if it weren’t for his philandering ways, you wouldn’t be waiting in line at the DMV and posing for an unflattering passport photo.
—It’s His Responsibility: Getting Every Last Cent Out of the Bum
“Laura, will you marry me?”
It can’t be, I thought. It can’t be, he wouldn’t.
But it was. I know jewelry. It was definitely the same diamond he had given Jess when they’d gotten engaged.
Matt and I were sitting on my couch, side by side, knees touching. In his left hand he held an engagement ring, a brilliant-cut diamond flanked by six smaller diamonds, three on each side. The setting was yellow gold. The band was decorated with filigree.
I continued to stare at it.
Matt shifted a bit closer to me. “I know what you’re thinking, Laura,” he said. “But this diamond has been in my family for generations. I—I know you’ve seen it before, but the ring is entirely new. I sold the—other—setting and had this one made just for you.”
I understood. I did, Matt’s family and all, but still, it felt weird.
“It’s fine,” I said brightly. “I’m just surprised, that’s all.” I kissed Matt’s cheek. “Yes,” I said. “I’ll marry you.”
Matt hugged me. And then he started to kiss me. I felt my lips responding, but my mind was still on the ring. Maybe, I thought, Jess won’t notice the diamond I’m wearing now used to belong to her. Maybe no one will notice and I won’t have to tell anyone I’m wearing a recycled stone.
Matt’s kissing got more intense and before long we were in my big bed. We had sex.
It was fine.
“Matt asked me to marry him.”
I called my sister the next morning while Matt was out getting bagels. I felt weird. Empty. Like there was nothing left to loo
k forward to.
“I’m assuming you said yes.” Nell sounded sleepy. I wondered if she’d been out the night before with that Trina person.
“Yes.”
“Well, congratulations are in order.”
“Thanks.”
Neither of us said anything for a moment.
“I thought you’d be happier,” Nell said finally. “You’re getting what you wanted.”
What I wanted. Be careful of what you wish for. Was it too late to back out now?
“I am happy,” I said. “Really. It’s just . . .”
The teapot on the stove. Duncan had given it to me. It had a whistle that he couldn’t stand but that I loved. He had endured its shrill sound for me.
“Just what?” Nell asked. “Say it.”
I turned away from the stove. I walked into the living room.
“Look,” I said, “I’ll admit that it’s not the perfect situation.”
Nell laughed halfheartedly. “It’s far from ideal. Marrying a man you don’t love just to have his baby. Just to have your baby.”
Matt’s brown oxford shoes sat by the front door. His briefcase sat alongside it. It was also brown.
“Things could be worse,” I said.
“Yes, they could. Matt could find out that you don’t love him.”
I laughed, though nothing at all was funny. “I’m not so sure he’d care. I’m not so sure Matt loves me. We’re like—we’re like two people doing each other a favor.”
Nell sighed. “Please, Laura,” she said, “please reconsider this.”
I walked back into the kitchen. I took the butter out of the fridge. Matt would be back in a few minutes.
“You think,” I said, “that I’m settling by marrying Matt.”
Nell hesitated before answering. “Not settling. I think you’re trying to negotiate. I think you’re trying to distinguish what you really need from what you really want.”
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