by Ben Schrank
“Before it was kind of like improv. Now we’re making it real. We’re beginning to be happy in a real way.” Emily gathered the quilt around her and went over to the window. Outside there was nothing but darkness in all directions. She couldn’t even see the parking lot. How could he be running out there, she wondered. He would run into a tree.
“The thing is you sound kind of skeptical?” Sherry asked.
“I know, I’m happy but at the same time skeptical. I’m nervous. We’ve been having sex like crazy.”
“Where is Eli?”
“He went for a run.”
“What? Oh, okay. A run. Let’s have dinner Monday night, and you can tell me all about it.”
“Sherry?” Emily took a deep breath. She knew she shouldn’t ask so much of her sister. She understood that having to reach out to her right now was not a good indicator of how things were going.
“What?”
“Do you like me? Do you think I’m a fun person?”
“What? Of course I do. What are you talking about?”
“Sometimes I think he’s dutiful about being married to me. I don’t want him to feel that way, like it’s homework.”
“Um, I think marriage is homework. That’s why I’m nowhere near it.”
“Don’t say that. It’s true but don’t say it.”
“He loves you. You’ll be fine. I’m glad you did this crazy thing.”
“It’s dorky and maybe a little dangerous.”
“No. It’s cathartic. You realized a dream. I’m jealous. And Emily?”
“What?”
“It’s actually kind of glamorous, when you think about it.”
Emily said, “I get that I’m leaning too much on you if you feel like you’ve got to say that.”
“Well, at least it sounds like you’re doing something that’s good for you. If not glamorous, then good. It’s like a cleanse, only really special and unique to you.”
“Stop. I’ll call you tomorrow when we get home. Dinner Monday night, for sure.”
Emily went into the bathroom and turned on the shower.
The bathroom was big. There were pink roses painted on the white tiles. Eli still wasn’t back. For some reason, she locked the bathroom door. She wanted to get back to a time with Eli, to some moment even before last summer, when they’d had sex where they did new things and laughed together and were awkward in the mornings when they’d brushed their teeth. How to get back there?
The water felt good and she took a hotter shower than she knew was good for her. Not how to get back there. How to go forward to combine that pleasure with the trust they’d developed … earlier today. Maybe that was a little ambitious. But that was what she’d ask Peter. How to do that. In just a little while, in an hour or so. She loved her husband. If he was capable of today, he would work with her to get to the place she could describe to him.
Peter, Winners’ Dinner, November 2011
“It’s so nice to sit here in this beautiful dining room in the candlelight with the two of you,” Emily said. “You are my two favorite men in the world.”
She smiled carefully. Both men looked pensive, their heads hunched forward and their faces heavy so they supported them with their hands. But where Eli was immobile, Peter kept trying to rise out of the somber state they’d found him in.
“I’m glad I found candles,” Peter said. “Usually I can never find the darn things.” He was at the head of his table. Emily and Eli were on either side of him, facing each other. He had given them some scotch when they arrived because he’d had a glass in hand when he opened the door. They had skipped the soup because Peter had forgotten to heat it up and it looked lumpy and a bit suspect. They had laughed about Peter’s forgetfulness and moved right to the lamb shank, which they had all discovered was cool in the center. Peter had gotten confused about the heating time for the polenta, too, so the disks were hard and shiny, like wheels pulled from a toy truck.
“Have more brussels sprouts,” Peter said. “I didn’t mess with them.” Peter had his scotch glass with him at the table. Emily and Eli had switched to wine. “If the meat’s undercooked, I can put it back in the oven,” Peter said.
“No, no, it’s terrific. Really old-fashioned and homey tasting,” Emily said.
“You’re too kind,” Peter said. “I’ll bet the wine they left us is really nice. They brought several bottles so don’t be shy about asking for more. My friend Henry down at the inn selected them. He took a course a few years back, at the Culinary Institute at Hyde Park, in the evenings. With a—what did he call it? An oenophile … They ended up becoming friends.”
“We forgot the wine we brought you! I think it’s still in the car.” Emily stood up. “I’ll get it.”
“Please don’t,” Peter said. “It’s cold out there. And remember your status. You’re winners. Relax, sit down.”
And so she did. He liked how formal she was. She was wearing a gray wool dress and a pale blue cardigan. Eli was slumped in his chair in a red sweater and jeans. They were in the country, after all. But then Peter realized that Emily was probably always more formal than her husband.
“You go for a lot of walks around the lake?” Eli asked. “You ever take pictures of the birds?”
“I used to walk with my wife, Lisa. We didn’t take pictures since the birds were so much a part of our daily life. Who needed pictures? But we always held hands.” Peter touched his fingertips together. “I hope you two are in the habit of holding hands?”
“We are.” Eli helped himself to some more lamb although there was already plenty of food on his plate. “Lately we do that more and more. Which is funny, since most couples do it less and less as they get older.”
“You were married for a long time, weren’t you?” Emily asked Peter. “Forty years?”
“Almost that many.” Peter nodded. His mouth was full and he knew that made him look as if he was frowning.
“I’m sorry,” Emily said. “It must be hard to talk about.”
“Don’t be sorry. I’m glad we’re mentioning Lisa. I want to talk about her. We weren’t always happy.” Peter looked around the dining room. He hadn’t had people sit down to a dinner in this room in years. Lisa had used it as a kind of second office. The bottom drawers of the cupboard were full of papers that needed to be addressed and then moved into her study. Or thrown away, more likely. “Then again, no one is always happy. But that’s not my point. Do you want to hear this?” he asked.
“Of course we do,” Emily said.
“She and I—I came up here to marry her and I did that in a way that was intentionally dramatic and so that act, I think it was meant to become part of the life of my book. I know how I’m feeling my way here, with my words, but hear me out—she seemed like the right life for me. And so we both worked hard to fit into each other’s worlds. Like you two are doing. We wanted more children but in the end, we only had one. Belinda. There’s a painting we had done of her.” Peter pointed at an oil painting of an eight-year-old Belinda kneeling at the edge of Lake Okabye. She had a round face and Peter’s big eyes and ears. Emily and Eli nodded and smiled at the picture. “Do you two want children? I should have asked earlier.”
“We are talking about it. It could happen for us soon,” Emily said. She bit her lip and didn’t look at Eli. Peter finished what was left of his scotch and pushed the glass away.
“Once you have children it’s different,” Peter said. He lowered his head and smiled at Emily. “Another cliché. But we understood the pressures a child creates and we gave each other room to grow. The eighties were hard for us. My transition to my forties—this was in the late eighties … I drank too much then. I did a few things wrong. Like you did, Eli.”
“I actually don’t drink that much,” Eli said.
“I meant the other thing that came up this afternoon.”
“Oh,” Eli said. “That.” Peter watched Eli frown and struggle to find his way back to feeling bad about his cheating. Peter thought, L
et him be. I’ll keep talking and that’ll be a way of letting this poor lost man be.
“My wife. She knew what I was up to. There were a few years where our silences had a mean tinge to them. But by then we had Belinda, like I said, and we had built a life together. I never meant to hurt Lisa.” Peter went quiet. Emily wasn’t looking at him, or Eli. Was he being too vague? Too honest? Both? “I’ll stop,” he said. “You didn’t come here for this.”
“How’d you get past all that?” Eli asked. “Now that you’ve brought it up, we may as well take it on. It certainly seems relevant.” Eli pushed his plate forward and took more brussels sprouts off the serving dish with his fork.
“We let each other make big mistakes,” Peter said. “She suffered through quite a few nights when I was drinking at a bar called the Sally Forth, at our inn in Hudson. This was a long time ago. And that place didn’t work out for us. We wasted a lot of money and we fought over those losses. And I suffered some coldness from her. She needed a good measure of control and that turned into a silent tug-of-war for us. But we never thought of leaving each other. We soldiered on. That doesn’t seem so bad, does it? To give in to each other? My Pop and his Bess didn’t do that, I don’t think. I recall that they had quite a bit of fun together. And I wrote about that as best I could. But in my life, I suppose I chose to soldier on. You two could do it.” Peter stopped again. He reached for his scotch glass but he didn’t see the bottle on the table and he willed himself to keep from going to look for it. He said, “You two have plenty of promise in you. You don’t need to hear all this personal stuff. It’s not what you came for. We’ll stick to what I put in the book.”
“No, this broadening is okay. The parts of marriage you just mentioned, we are getting better at that, too,” Emily said. “Giving in. Soldiering on. I like that Eli is asking so many questions. He never does that.” Emily smiled at her husband. “I have questions, too. How do you make a marriage a safe space where you can have fun, like your Pop and Bess had? How does a life like theirs really work? Not in the big moments. I want to know what happens in the little ones.”
“You mean the interstices.” Peter smiled. “You want what I left out.”
“Doesn’t everybody?” Emily said with a laugh.
“Our marriage is a safe space, isn’t it?” Eli asked. “We have fun, don’t we?”
“We did. Now we’re rebuilding,” Emily said.
“Oh.” Eli tilted back in his chair. “I stand corrected.” Eli made a noise in his throat. Peter watched Eli. He hadn’t seen him behave this way before. Emily and Eli were watching each other, both of them with their eyes too wide, circling each other without moving. Like cats, Peter thought. Peter suddenly found that he was struggling for the right thing to say. He thought he ought to lecture them on how to get along. Even if he bored them, that would be all right—it would draw their event to a proper close. He could feel that they wanted to be honest with each other and he blamed himself for bringing that on, all because he’d stupidly veered from his original plan and indulged in talking about Lisa. Nobody needed to hear about the life he had with Lisa.
“In my book—” Peter said, but Emily cut him off.
“Peter, I’m sorry. Just a second. Eli’s mad at me. Aren’t you, Eli? Are you upset that I did that?” Emily breathed through her mouth and looked at Eli. “That I corrected you?”
“Why do you ask me so many questions?” Eli asked. “Can’t you trust me? I’m not passive. If I’m upset, I’ll say so.”
“That’s good, Eli,” Peter spoke quickly. “This afternoon was quite an undertaking. I can imagine that you have some comments that you still want to make. I would. So yes, say them. I recall that so much of the time, my grandparents didn’t hesitate to speak their minds. But they were never hurtful or mean. Never.”
“What about me?” Emily asked. “Can I let some things out?”
“Yes, you can.” Peter smiled. “A few minutes of it can’t hurt. So long as you’re both kind and solicitous. Just as Pop and Bess always were.”
Eli frowned and stared at his full plate.
Peter watched Emily breathe in and out. He found that he had balled up his hands under the table, that he was hoping that the worst of it was over and at the same time, he knew it wasn’t. He hadn’t meant to steer them into this territory. He went ahead and poured wine into his scotch glass. Or had he?
Emily said, “As we all know, Eli, you did something and then you tried to hide it from me, so I don’t totally believe what you just said about trust. Not yet.”
“This stuff,” said Peter, gesturing at the polenta. “I can try to reheat it, maybe it’ll soften. Food gets better as leftovers. Even in the same meal. Over the years I found that to be true, I can swear to it.”
“Leftovers?” Emily asked. “I’m sorry. Of course that’s true. We feel that way about food, too.”
“That’s good,” Peter said. “You want your safe space question addressed? I’m no fan of complete honesty. In some ways, constant kindness precludes it. You see? And, further, I like leaving the mystery in a marriage. Forget what I said about Lisa. The pain of losing her is still a little too fresh for me. That said, a baseline of honesty is key. Do you see the beauty in that undulation? But you two, you’re well on your way there. You shouldn’t worry about these things.”
“Yes, we are on our way,” Emily said. “Thanks in part to you, Peter, and what we talked about this afternoon.” She looked at Eli. For a long time he hadn’t touched the cold meat or the polenta. But now she saw that when she hadn’t been looking, he had quickly and thoughtlessly eaten all the food on his plate. Still, his cheeks were hollow and his eyes were wide. He was staring at the painting of Belinda, or at least looking in its direction. It wasn’t such a bad painting, she thought. It had a little Wyeth in it. Eli wasn’t moving.
“Eli, let’s get on the same page here,” Peter said. “Let’s get back to where we were this afternoon, when we parted.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?” Emily asked.
“Because we’re not on the same page or on our way there.” Eli placed his hands flat on the table. “We’re just not.”
“What do you mean?” Emily asked. “Can you explain? Or are you simply noting that we are working on it and I’m being presumptuous because, really, we should be cautious, like we’ve been saying? That would make sense, if you were saying that.”
“Emily, maybe now is a good time for Eli to find his own words,” Peter said, and then immediately wished he hadn’t. He said, “Wait. Let me get in here for a moment—”
“Can you stop clearing up everything I say?” Eli asked. “I want to get safe like we keep talking about so we can get back to building some sexy mystery between us. Don’t get me wrong. I love that we’re doing this. I’m, like, more into this than either of you, I think. And I am really accessing some stuff. First, about Jenny. And I know, Emily, that you want me to shut up about Jenny. But I don’t want to. There was something there. Something real. And I killed it because I am married to you and I love you.”
“Eli?” Emily shook her head. “Do you understand what you’re saying? Because if you do, do you see how that shatters me? Do you mean what you’re saying?”
“I think I do.”
Peter watched Emily. She quaked a little, her shoulders and head swaying. And then she went still.
“This territory is all wrong,” Peter said. “You two are twisting everything around.” He reached out for their hands but stopped short of actually touching them. They had both moved farther down from him and away from the table. His hands were out in front of him though, and he felt his ribs touch the table’s edge. He tried to show that he meant to be in this position, crouched forward, toward them. But it didn’t matter because they were not looking at him.
“Maybe you think you’re being kind by sounding so harsh. You work hard at this marriage, right?” Emily asked Eli. “Do you think you work too hard? Are you tired from the long day
? Is that what’s the matter right now?”
“I want to save it,” Eli mumbled.
“Are we in that dire a situation? I forgave you. I don’t know how I did it but I did. Now I am steering us back. I mean, we are. If we’re twisting things around then let’s untwist them. Right now.”
“Sure.” Eli looked at Peter, at the way he’d positioned himself, and imitated him. He raised his hands, palms up, so they were on either side of his face. He pushed his plate away and crouched over the table. “Let’s do that. But—fuck it. Look. I’ve been with some women.”
“Now Eli.” Peter raised his voice. “You’ve already said something that hurt Emily, more than you know, I think. Let’s not share more of what’s meant to be hidden.”
“Why not?” Eli asked. “What do you mean, meant to be hidden?”
“In your life?” Emily asked. She was very still. “Sure. You had a whole life before me. Women love you.”
“I don’t know why they do. But I can’t resist. I say yes. You know that, don’t you?”
“What are you asking me? I know what?” Emily asked. She was increasingly upright, in her chair. Eli’s body was still crouched and low.
Peter gritted his teeth and said, “I think you two should stop. Let’s reel this in. I think we did just what we were supposed to this afternoon and we ought to leave it there, if you want to know what I think.”
“It’s not just Jenny,” Eli said.
“Not just Jenny,” Emily repeated.
“I’ve been with others. I want us to stay married. Jenny says—”
“Jenny says? You’re talking to Jenny about all this?”
“Excuse me.” Peter stood up. “Let’s take a break. I am going to bring the dishes in and you, Emily, you can help me.”
“No.” Emily went to him fast and grabbed his hand. “Stay, please. I’ll help you clean up later. Please stay.”
Eli reached across the table. He said, “Hold hands with me. Not him.”
“No,” Emily said.
Peter sat back down. He said, “You two need to back off each other. You are like fighters in a ring. I can tell you there’s no place in marriage for how you’re behaving right now. I can say that for sure.”
