Skipping a Beat

by Sarah Pekkanen

  I poured myself a glass of water and sat down on a stool at our sea green granite island, remembering the time I’d served on a jury and two eyewitnesses were called to testify about an armed robbery at a convenience store. The robber was about six feet tall, the first witness said. He was closer to five foot nine, insisted the second one. Their testimony kept diverging, spreading apart and twisting back together like the double-helix strands of DNA, as lawyers took them through the crime beat by beat.

  They’d gotten so many little details wrong. At the time I’d wondered why. They’d both been there and seen and heard everything.

  During closing arguments, the prosecutor had instructed us jurors to focus on one critical fact: Both witnesses agreed the suspect sitting before us had pointed a gun at the clerk and stolen the money.

  “It’s not unusual to get confused by little details,” the lawyer said, coming over to stand before the jury box. He was an average-looking guy in every way: medium height, ordinary closecut brown hair, nondescript features. But I remember his light blue eyes meeting mine as he said, “The eyewitnesses agree on the most important fact, the only one that counts. They have no doubt at all that this man”—he whirled around and pointed at the accused—“held up the convenience store. That’s what matters. That’s what you need to remember.”

  The core truth of our marriage, the most important thing for me to remember, was that Michael and I loved each other. Our love had gotten pushed aside and bruised and buried, but it had always existed.

  I took a final sip of my water and stood up and walked into the living room, suddenly thinking of Isabelle. I’d been e-mailing her regularly, and she’d sent back a reply, saying she was traveling through Italy and didn’t have regular access to a computer. “I like your notes, though,” she’d written. “Keep them coming even if I don’t always write back, okay?”

  I’d reread her e-mail a dozen times, trying to gauge her emotions through the scant words. Then I’d typed back, “Every day. I’ll write you every day until you come home.”

  Now I thought of all the regrets she carried, for not reaching out to Beth sooner. For not taking a chance.

  Sometimes following the path that looked the safest was what led to the most hurt, I realized.

  Through the French doors I saw my husband standing on the stone patio, his hands jammed into his jeans pockets. He was staring off into the distance. I leaned my head against the glass and studied him. We’d been together for more than half of our lives, I realized. I’d met Michael when I was sixteen, and I was about to turn thirty-five. In a way it felt as though we’d lived several completely different lives together: our time growing up together in West Virginia, the years we’d spent building our companies in D.C., and finally our move to this house—the culmination of so many of our dreams.

  I didn’t know what would happen during the next half of our lives. But it didn’t matter what we did, or where we lived. I just wanted to spend it with him.

  I rapped on the glass door, but he didn’t hear me. I knocked again, louder this time, and when he turned around, I motioned for him to come inside.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked as he walked into the living room.

  I looked at him for a moment, wondering if I’d have the courage to go through with it.

  “Jules?” he said, and I took a step backward in shock.

  Michael had given me the nickname when we’d first met, but he rarely used it nowadays. I didn’t believe in signs, but it suddenly struck me that one of the turning points of our marriage had come when I’d painted the wrong picture from a handful of words in an e-mail. And now, for the second time, it was as if a word had been spun through a kaleidoscope and reshaped into something with a whole different meaning.

  “Come with me,” I said.

  Something in my expression must have told him not to ask questions. I led Michael up our spiral staircase and into my dressing room; then I pushed open the door to my closet. I walked to the back corner and moved the sweaters onto the floor and opened the safe.

  For just a moment, I heard an echo of the words Michael had said when he’d asked me to elope: It’ll just be you and me. That’s always been enough for us, hasn’t it?

  I hope so, I thought now. I think so. Yes.

  I pulled out the velvet boxes and began to pile them haphazardly on the chaise lounge. “My jewels,” I said. “Give them to Scott. Or have Christie’s auction them off for him. Whatever you want.”

  “Wait,” Michael said, his eyes huge. He reached for a box and opened it, and I saw the gleam of my diamond hoop earrings. “You want me to take your jewelry? But I don’t—I never—”

  “Please do it right now. This second.” My throat tightened, and I knew I was about to cry. “Just take it all away. I’m going to walk out of here so I don’t have to watch, okay?”

  Michael was lifting up the earrings, and the sunlight streaming in through the windows flashed across their facets, sprinkling tiny rainbows around the room. He’d given me those for my birthday—but no, that wasn’t technically true. When the jewelry store manager had rung our doorbell, I’d assumed Michael had arranged the delivery of my gift because he knew I’d be thrilled by the ceremony of it all: the little black velvet box being delivered along with a bottle of champagne that I assumed was a promise for us to drink that night. I’d put them on immediately and kept them on much later, when I changed into a silky white nightgown. When I finally heard Michael’s car pull up in front of the house, I’d greeted him at the door, posing like a fashion model with my hip jutting out.

  “Hey, you,” he’d said. He’d drawn back, looked at my earrings—I’d tucked my hair behind my ears for full effect—and smiled. I’d grinned back at him.

  “You forgot something,” he’d said.

  “Oh, yeah?” I’d answered, a teasing note in my voice. I don’t know what I expected him to say—maybe that the earrings would look better if I wasn’t wearing anything at all—but instead he reached up and touched one of my earlobes.

  “You’re not going to sleep in those, are you?”

  I’d just stared at him for a moment, realizing he’d never before seen the earrings. I should’ve known that Kate picked out all of my gifts and bought my birthday cards before putting them in front of Michael to sign in his illegible scrawl. My husband never would’ve made time to go to Harry Winston or Cartier and linger over the glass cases, trying to decide what I’d like best. And if he’d picked out my cards, they probably would’ve been silly instead of romantic.

  At the time I’d told myself it didn’t matter. I’d still opened the bottle of champagne and Michael and I had made love that night, and I’d never said a word. I’d told myself I was the luckiest girl in the world, to live in this house and have a husband who could afford such an exquisite birthday gift. Who cared if he didn’t have time to pick them out?

  I’d pretended my jewels were a mixture of a consolation prize and a reward for everything that was missing in my marriage, but they were just symbols of all that was wrong with it.

  “Are you sure? You could think about—” Michael started to say.

  My eyes were still on the earrings, but I was seeing a little girl in pink footsie pajamas, running toward her father as he spread his arms wide.

  “Michael, please take it right now. As in this second. Get it out of here. Because I really don’t want to change my mind, and if you stay here much longer I’m scared I might.”

  He took one look at my face, then he slipped the diamonds back into their box and scooped everything into one of my oversize purses and walked out the door.

  I was soaking in my Jacuzzi when Michael came home. First I’d run for an hour on our treadmill, blasting music on my iPod, which seemed determined to torment me. I’d suffered through ABBA’s rendition of “Money, Money, Money,” but when Madonna started singing “Material Girl,” I’d leapt off the treadmill and gulped down two glasses of water, chased by a finger of the wildly expensive Sc
otch we kept at the bar. I drank more water, decided it was working against me, and went for the Scotch again.

  I’d still have enough, I told myself as I wiped my cheeks and blew my nose. I repeated those words like a mantra as I remembered the figures I’d drawn on my yellow legal pad. I’d never go hungry, never lack a nice place to live, never need to make a dress out of drapes like Scarlett O’Hara.

  Even though I was scared, I knew I had to do this. It wasn’t penance for having an affair, or for not trusting Michael. The reasons were tangled and a bit murky, but I sensed they had as much to do with helping me as they did with saving Michael. I had to trust him, to trust us, and this was the only way I could prove to both of us that I was ready to do it.

  “Hi,” Michael said as he entered the bathroom. He sat down on the edge of the Jacuzzi.

  “What did you do with it?” I asked.

  “Christie’s is going to auction it off,” he said. “Apparently they expect it to go for even more than it’s worth because of the—I guess the celebrity associated with it all.”

  I winced. “Remember how you told me a while ago you were always going to be honest with me? You can skip the brutally honest part.”

  “Then I went to see Scott and Kimberly,” he continued. “She met me at the door again, and this time I couldn’t wait to get inside. I told them this had nothing to do with the lawsuit. They could go ahead with it if they wanted. But now I know, Julia. I know money won’t be a problem for them, at least not for a long time. What you did—what you gave them—was bigger than what I did when I gave everything to charity. It meant more.”

  “It wasn’t just for them,” I said. “It was for their daughter. And you. And me, too.”

  Michael smiled. “I know.”

  He reached down, and I saw then that he’d brought a brown paper bag into the bathroom. “I got you something. It’s not much …”

  I looked into the bag and saw a half gallon of Breyers chocolate ice cream.

  “Seems like a fair trade,” I said. “You know, a million bucks’ worth of jewelry for some ice cream.”

  “I thought about strawberry, but I figured that was only worth about fifty grand,” he said.

  “You know what you’d do if you really loved me?” I asked. He shook his head.

  My throat was raw and sore from crying. Ice cream would be just the thing.

  “Grab a spoon and get your ass in here and join me,” I said.

  * * *

  Thirty-five

  * * *

  WHEN I WOKE UP the next morning, our bedroom was full of flowers. Michael had snuck out to the wholesalers before dawn to buy armloads of daisies. He’d put each one into its own Dixie cup. They were stacked all over our bureaus and nightstands and tables, covering every square inch of surface, and still more filled the counters in my bathroom. It felt like waking up in the middle of a garden.

  He kicked off his shoes, then climbed into bed next to me, fully clothed. I’d forgotten all about what day it was until he said, “Happy birthday.”

  He gave me a gift every single hour. At ten o’clock it was a song—his voice cracked twice, and he tried, without much success, to rhyme Julia with beauteous—and I laughed until I cried. At noon, he baked me a chocolate cake.

  “You got the mix with the pudding in the middle?” I said, hoisting myself up onto the kitchen counter and reading the back of the box. “I’m touched.”

  “Nothing but the best for my girl,” Michael said. He looked down at the mixing bowl and fished out a piece of eggshell. “You like your cakes on the less crunchy side, right?”

  By one o’clock that afternoon, we were back in bed, my head resting against his chest again. But now his clothes were strewn on the floor next to his shoes.

  “So what comes next?” I asked. “We’re broke. And we’re not even young and broke. We’re rapidly approaching middle age—especially me, since I’m officially thirty-five as of a half hour ago—and it isn’t nearly so romantic-sounding. Somehow I don’t love the idea of carrying our stuff around in trash bags anymore.”

  “Well, I didn’t give away your luggage,” he pointed out.

  “Hmm,” I mused. “I might be able to spare a duffel bag. Just don’t get greedy.”

  “And to think I sprang for the mix with the pudding in it,” he said. “I could’ve baked you a dry cake, you know.”

  “Fine, two duffel bags,” I allowed.

  “So, what next? …. Well, once I transfer this house to Doctors Without Borders, they’re going to sell it, but it’ll probably take a while.”

  “It’s shocking that people aren’t clamoring to buy it,” I said. “I mean, who doesn’t have a spare ten million lying around?”

  Michael smiled. “So we’ll stay here for the time being,” he said. “Is that okay?”

  “Sure. I need to go back to work next week,” I said. “I’ve gotten a few calls about upcoming events.”

  “I know I told you I’d get some kind of job,” he said. “But first can I come work with you? Just for a while?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

  “I’d love to see you in action,” he said. “I want to get to know that side of you.”

  “So I get to order you around,” I said. “Tell you exactly what to do.”

  “You can even start right now,” he said, kissing my neck, then moving to a spot just behind my ear. “Is this to your liking, ma’am?”

  “I like the way you think,” I told him. “Keep this up, and I may even name you employee of the month.”

  My three o’clock gift was a picnic in our backyard. We were lying on a blanket with the remnants of our snack—cheese and grapes and French bread and bottles of sparkling water—spread out around us.

  “I know you’ve always doubted that heaven exists, but doesn’t my cooking make you reconsider?” Michael asked, handing me a piece of the cake. The middle had kind of collapsed in the oven, so he’d loaded on extra frosting to make the top appear even.

  Instead of laughing, I lay back down on the blanket, my face to the sky. “I never did ask you about what happened,” I said. “On the day that you died.”

  “Oh,” Michael said. He lay down next to me and folded his arms behind his head. If he thought it was odd that I wanted to know now, after all this time, he didn’t show it.

  “It started out as just another day,” he said. “I can’t even remember everything I did that morning. I know I drank coffee with two shots of espresso on the way in to work, because I did that every day. I must’ve gone through a few dozen e-mails, taken some calls. And then it was time to roll out our new product, this cranberry-oatmeal energy bar. We were all in the boardroom, and then, suddenly, I wasn’t.”

  I turned my head to the side so our faces were closer together. It was cloudy out, and the afternoon was chillier than I’d expected. The air was filled with the promise of the winter that would be coming soon. I was wearing jeans and a thin sweater, but no coat, and I wrapped my arms around myself and rubbed my upper arms.

  “I think I was terrified to die, before. I think it’s one of the reasons why I kept moving so fast. If I made enough money, if I was important enough, if I took up enough space—maybe I’d cheat death, somehow. Maybe it wouldn’t be able to catch me. Crazy, huh? But the thought of not being here, of not existing, was so frightening.”

  I hesitated.

  “Where did you go?” I finally asked.

  “I don’t know what to call it,” he said. “The name probably doesn’t matter. But it was as easy as walking from one room into another. Easier.”’

  I closed my eyes, trying to imagine it, but I couldn’t stop thinking about whether I could interrupt Michael and run inside to get a sweater. A sudden sharp breeze made the little hairs on my arms stand up at attention, and I shivered.

  “I understood so much in those minutes,” he said. “I felt love and I felt loved. I was connected to everyone who has ever lived or died. And we are connected, Julia, bec
ause even though we speak different languages and live in different places, we all experience the same joy and grief and anger and embarrassment and love. Emotion is the only thing we all share, and it’s the only thing we take with us when we go. After I died, I knew I was in a transitional place, and that I’d be moving on to another phase. Someone was with me, too. A presence. I knew it was safe and kind and warm.”

  “Someone?” I asked. “Like, a person?”

  “Yes.” He paused. “It was your mother.”

  I sat bolt upright and sucked in my breath.

  “Julia, baby, it’s okay. She sent me so much kindness. Her eyes … the way she looked at me. I think she was giving me her love, filling me with it, so I could bring it back to you.”

  I couldn’t speak.

  “She let me know I could come back, and that she would welcome me when I came the next time, and then I’d go on. I think others were waiting for me, in the next phase.”

  “Michael, this is insane.” I could barely force out the words.

  “I know,” he said quietly. “But Julia, it happened.”

  I buried my face in my hands. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “I wanted to. But I didn’t think you wanted to hear it.”

  “Michael, I don’t believe this. I mean, I know you think it happened, but it’s crazy. Do you hear how crazy this is?” I started to shiver, and I wrapped my arms around myself again.

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  I lay down again and stared up at the sky. My teeth were chattering—from cold or something else—and I couldn’t stop shaking.

  “I don’t know if I can believe you,” I finally whispered. “It doesn’t make any sense. How was my mother there? How is that even possible?”

  “I just wish …,” Michael began to say, then his voice trailed off.

  “What?” I whispered. I felt a tear slide down my cheek. I missed my mother so intensely I felt as if I were being torn in two. I closed my eyes and remembered her, as vividly as if she were sitting next to me: