by Kate Hilton
“What about Hugh?” I said.
“I can’t tell you what to do about Hugh,” said Matt. “Only you can decide that.”
I went into my bedroom and closed the door. I sat down on the bed and looked around. There was so little of me in this room, in the whole apartment, really. Hugh’s duvet, Hugh’s bed, Hugh’s dresser, Hugh’s plates and cups and knives and forks. Everything I had brought could fit in a small suitcase. I picked up the phone and called Hugh’s office.
“Darling,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said. I was weeping.
“What is it?” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s all just so overwhelming,” I said.
“I know,” said Hugh. “It’s terrible. You wouldn’t believe the stories I’ve heard today.”
“My mother wants me to come and visit,” I said. “There’s a train tomorrow morning.”
“Do you want to go?” he asked.
“It would make her feel better,” I said. “And I worry about the air quality.” Everyone knew that there were chemicals in the debris cloud, and it wasn’t only the hypochondriacs who were talking about cancer and infertility. I stood on the precipice, hesitated, and leapt. “Given our . . . plans, it might not be a bad idea to get out of town until the air clears.”
“Darling,” said Hugh. Now he was the one who was choked up. “Of course you should go. I hate to be apart from you, but you’re right. And, Avery, we have so much to look forward to when all of this is over.”
“Yes,” I said, hating myself, and hating him a little for the person I’d become, the person lying to him on the phone, planting heartbreak like a bomb timed to detonate once I’d cleared the area. “Yes, when all of this is over.”
Hugh took us to the station in a taxi. “Take care of my girl,” he told Matt. He’d been completely unfazed by the idea that Matt was coming with me. He was pleased that someone reliable, someone who owed him a favour, would be keeping an eye on me, the future mother of his child.
“I will,” said Matt. They shook hands.
I let Hugh kiss me and load my suitcase on board. “Call me when you get there,” he said. He stood on the platform as the train pulled out, waving.
I sat back in my seat. I was so tired. Had I really just left my marriage? I thought so, but thought, possibly, that I was simply hysterical, that I’d go home, sleep in my childhood bed, remember how much I liked adulthood, realize that I’d invented an entire relationship with Matt that didn’t actually exist, and return to New York when the literal dust settled. And then Matt leaned over the armrest between us and reached for my hand. He raised it to his lips and kissed it, once, gently.
“Thank you,” he said.
We held hands as the train picked up speed, carrying us toward something both old and new.
It was a long journey, and it felt old-fashioned, as though we had stepped out of time. Who travelled by train anymore except to commute? But here people were friendly, they weren’t rushing, they soaked up the experience; they played cards with strangers to pass the time and told stories about where they’d been and where they were going. They looked out the windows and commented on the landscape. They put their phones away—cell service was still spotty, anyway—and they talked to each other.
One girl, an Australian, had been on the ferry looking at the World Trade Center when the first plane hit. She was on a year-long backpacking trip, and had planned to spend six months of it in America, where she’d always dreamed of living. Now she was forsaking America for Canada, the closest thing to home on this side of the planet, or so she’d been told. She had a Canadian guidebook and wandered the aisles asking for advice. “Has anyone been to Whitehorse?” she’d ask. “Has anyone been to Lake Louise?”
I raised the armrest and put my head on Matt’s shoulder. I closed my eyes. I felt his lips touch my forehead and I slept.
Near Albany, I jolted awake. “There you are,” said Matt. “How about some food?”
I was on the verge of saying that I wasn’t hungry, but Matt handed me a bag of almonds and I devoured them. He handed me a bottle of water and I drank it down. I only wanted what was required for basic survival. That Matt appeared to be one of these requirements was unsettling.
“Let’s get you some proper sustenance,” said Matt. “They have a bar car here somewhere.”
“Yes, please,” I said.
We found a pair of window seats in the lounge.
“You’ll get a nice view of Niagara Falls from here,” said the waiter. “Can I get you anything?”
“Most definitely,” said Matt. “You can’t have your third drink until you’ve had your first.”
“Do you know any jokes?” I asked, once the waiter had left.
“Only lawyer ones,” said Matt. “What’s the difference between a lawyer and God? God knows he isn’t a lawyer.”
“More,” I said.
“A lawyer, a vegetarian, and a marathoner walk into a bar. How can you tell which is which? They all tell you in the first thirty seconds.”
“Again,” I said, giggling.
“What happens when you cross a blonde and a lawyer? I don’t know. There are some things even a blonde won’t do.”
The laughter bubbled up and spilled over. I laughed until I could hardly breathe, until my ribs hurt. “Those are absolutely terrible jokes.”
“I know,” he said, smiling at me. Then his smile faded, and he said, “I need you to understand that I don’t care about your husband. Don’t get me wrong. I care that you’re married. I care about that, and I don’t like it. Your husband is on his own as far as I’m concerned. I’m a nice guy, Avery, or I used to think I was, but when it comes to you, I’m a selfish son of a bitch.”
“I understand,” I said.
And then he leaned over and kissed me, while the Honeymoon Capital of the World flashed by our window.
{CHAPTER 13}
Sunday, July 16, 2017
On Sunday morning, a persistent buzzing wakes me. I dive over the empty half of the bed for my cellphone, registering anew that Matt is not where he should be, and answer.
It’s Peter. “Sorry to do this, Avery,” he says, “but I need you to come back to town.”
“What happened?” I say.
“It’s not an emergency, exactly,” says Peter, “but I need you to brief me on the waterfront dissidents.”
“Is that what we’re calling them?”
“That’s what Adam Rothman was calling them, when I saw him at a party last night.”
“Oh dear,” I say. “Adam’s concerned?”
“Adam would like to see less in the way of negative press. He asked me to see if I could get them settled down. Unofficially, of course.”
“Of course,” I say. “I met with Jim Crawford and the artists and with Doris Renaud and WAFADASS this week and they’re both waiting to hear back from me on their proposals. They should be quiet until then. I’m not sure what could have stirred them up in the meantime.”
“There’s a new player,” says Peter.
“Who?”
“Mel,” says Peter.
“Who’s Mel?” I ask.
“M-E-L,” says Peter. “Mother Earth League.”
“Oh God,” I say. “Shit.”
“My thoughts exactly,” says Peter.
“Right. I’m on my way. I’ll meet you at the office by noon.”
“I know you haven’t had a day off all summer. I’m sorry to ruin your weekend.”
“No problem,” I say, surprised that he’s noticed. “I’ve had enough country air. I’m ready for some smog.”
I slide out of bed and ease into the hallway. The house is silent. It’s not quite seven o’clock. I knock on the door next to mine, and Matt opens it. He’s already dressed.
“I heard you on the phone,” he says. “Did you want a shower?”
“Yes,” I say.
“I’ll pack the car,” he says. “And put on some coffee.”
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sp; I reach for his cheek. “Thank you,” I say.
“You’re welcome,” he says, a bit too formally for my comfort. Evidently, he can hold a grudge in extreme circumstances, one more thing I’ve learned about him in the last twenty-four hours.
Last night, we’d thrown a party for Tara, as promised. After Matt’s abrupt exit in the morning, the dinner party had given the day a focus. Mom and I had dispatched Matt to the liquor and grocery stores, and we’d baked a chocolate layer cake and assembled a retro dinner, hearkening back to birthday parties of the past.
Waiting on the verandah, watching the guests arrive, I had a sense of time unwinding. Here were Ethan and Tara and their daughters, and Kerry, her mother, coming up the path from one side of the point, and Jenny walking up from the other side, but in my mind I could see the original families: mothers wearing dresses and oven mitts, carrying hot trays, dads in collared shirts with the top button undone, kids with clean hands and faces. Seeing Jenny approach the house, looking so much like her mother once did, lovely in a soft cotton dress, her blonde hair still thick and lustrous, I realized with a jolt that we were now the age our parents had been then. At our age, my father had only a couple of years left to live. At our age, he believed he had all the time in the world.
I met Jenny at the door. She smiled, but her eyes were wary. “You look wonderful,” I said. “I’ve missed you.”
She touched my arm, squeezed briefly, but made no move to close the distance between us. “It’s good to see you, Avery,” she said. “I follow all your successes in the papers. Congratulations on the waterfront redevelopment. What an achievement that is.”
“Thank you,” I said. “It’s a team effort.”
“Politics suits you,” said Jenny.
We were both relieved to have Tara and Ethan and their entourage pour onto the verandah then. Jenny had never been a person who appreciated the purpose of small talk. She thought it lazy and inauthentic. But for us, there was nothing between small talk and bloodletting. Tara folded Jenny in an embrace, and they moved to the old swing sofa, chatting about Jenny’s upcoming art exhibit and Tara’s new campaign. “Basically, I’m using sex to sell beer,” I heard Tara say, and Jenny replied, “A time-honoured tradition.”
“Shall we take drink orders?” asked Matt, wrapping an arm around my waist.
“Yes,” I said, grateful for an occupation.
“Shirley Temples, ladies?” I called out to the room and was rewarded with a chuckle from Tara and Jenny and a “Yes, please!” from Anna, Tara’s youngest daughter. Claire, the oldest, rolled her eyes but asked politely for a Coke instead.
I went into the kitchen and helped Mom put the finishing touches on dinner. She patted my back. “Three is a difficult number,” she said.
“Sorry?”
“Groups of three. Greta and Kerry and I used to talk about that with you three girls. Someone was always on the outs. Someone was always in tears. The dynamic was always shifting. But at the root, you all loved each other like sisters.”
My eyes welled up with tears.
“It’s still there,” said my mother. “You can find it again, you and Jenny, if you both want to.”
“She’s the one who won’t make up,” I said.
“How old are you?” said my mother.
“Point taken,” I said, mopping myself up with a tea towel.
“Then we’re ready for dinner. Do you want to call everyone to the table?”
I seated everyone. Matt poured wine, and Mom put a plate of chicken Marbella from the Silver Palate cookbook down in front of each place. Jenny raised her glass. “To Tara,” she said. “Happy birthday.”
“To Tara,” we echoed.
“This is the best birthday present you could have given me,” said Tara. “Having all of us together again? It means so much to me.”
“I’m so glad we could do this,” said my mother, reaching across the table for Tara’s hand. “You girls are like family. It’s been too long.”
“Ladies!” said Ethan. “It’s a party. Stop crying. Game time. The person who tells the funniest story gets an extra slice of cake.” It’s an old tradition, one that we all remembered.
“Do you remember the stories your dad used to tell about law school?” said Jenny. “He had that great one about the time he lived with a med student.”
“The one where they drilled a tiny hole in the door and squirted the neighbour with a syringe?” said Tara.
“I’ve never heard this story,” said Matt.
“Brian loved that story,” said Mom. “If it was worth telling once, it was worth telling a thousand times.”
“They hated their neighbour across the hall,” I explained. “He was always throwing these wild parties and keeping them up half the night during exams.”
“So they’d wait for him to come home, and shoot water at his neck. He never knew what it was.” Tara could barely get the words out, she was laughing so hard.
“And then, after a week or so, the neighbour snapped,” said Jenny.
“And he tore the fire axe off the wall and slammed it into their door,” I finished.
“The door still had the crack in it when I started dating Brian a year later,” said Mom.
We all howled with laughter. Matt and my nieces looked at all of us as though we were crazy.
“It’s possible that you had to be there,” I said. “The way Dad told it was so funny.”
Matt’s smile was gentle. “I’m sure it was,” he said. “Did I ever tell you about the time I met Johnny Depp?”
After dinner, after we’d put the dishes away and climbed up the stairs to bed, Matt and I paused in the hallway.
“That was fun,” I said.
“It was,” he said, moving to the door of the spare room. “Goodnight.”
“Wait,” I said. “You’re sleeping in there again?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I want to be just like family too, Avery,” he said. “I want to join the club. Nothing’s changed since yesterday. I can’t figure out what I need to do to qualify.”
“Matt,” I said. “You qualify. God. This is so out of hand.”
“I need some time alone, and so do you,” he says. “Sleep well.” And he left me standing alone in the hallway.
We set off for the city by eight, and there’s no traffic on the road. We’ve been driving for almost an hour when Matt says, very calmly, “If you don’t put that phone away, Avery, I am going to throw it out the window.”
I look over at him, wondering if I’ve misheard. He glances away from the road for a second and meets my eye. “I am so completely not kidding, if that’s what you were thinking,” he says.
It was, in fact, but I don’t say so. I put my phone away in my purse and fold my arms in my lap.
“Let’s review,” says Matt. “We have been together for fifteen years. We have lived together for fourteen of those years. You left your husband for me. You tell me that you love me.”
“I do,” I say. “I do love you. I love you more than anyone.”
Matt softens. “That’s the right reason to get married, Avery. If we have that, we can make it.”
“It scares me, Matt,” I say. “You don’t understand. You haven’t been married and had it fail. I never want to feel that way again.”
“I’m not Hugh,” says Matt.
“You don’t even know how much you are not Hugh,” I say. What I don’t say is But I’m still me. I’m still the person who did that to him.
Hugh suffered for a long time after I left. I know this because of what my mother reported from Kerry, and from the letters that Hugh wrote to me for a couple of years afterwards—letters that I stopped opening—and from the phone calls I received from his friends in New York. But I would have known it anyway. You can’t be married to someone, even someone completely incompatible, and not know what your leaving will do to him.
It might have been easier on him if I’d been ho
nest about my confusion and my doubts, if I’d let the relationship unspool instead of snapping the thread. For the record, I never missed Hugh. I regretted his pain, but I never longed for his company. I never once thought, Hugh would have loved this, or I wish I could share this with Hugh, or Hugh was so much fun at parties. I take no pride or pleasure in this; I’ve always considered it a tax on my freedom. I chose myself over Hugh, and the cost to me is the knowledge that I am capable of deception and disloyalty and cruelty.
It’s true that Matt isn’t Hugh, but it’s also true that Hugh has everything to do with the way my relationship with Matt has unfolded. I’d always thought that there was an unacknowledged impermanence to the life that Matt and I built together, and it comforted me. For the first few years, it was because I wasn’t divorced, and after that, it was because it gave us (or perhaps only me) a sense of choice. We weren’t together because of a legal obligation, or because of shared bank accounts, or because of dependants, but because of our ongoing desire to be with each other. I realize now that I had assumed something enormous: that our domestic arrangements reflected Matt’s preferences, too. But today I see what I had never noticed before: that Matt has been staking out a homestead too sprawling and too generous to trigger my flight instincts, that he has been quietly and deliberately fencing me in.
“So what is it?” says Matt. “If you don’t try, you can’t fail? That doesn’t sound like you. You try your guts out for Peter.”
“Peter is my boss,” I say. “I care about my professional reputation. Of course I go all out at work. That’s what makes me good at my job. But Peter has nothing to do with my feelings about marriage.”
“You are the only person in this car who believes that,” says Matt. “Peter is your backup spouse. It’s like you need two of us so that you don’t have to commit to one.”
“That is the craziest thing you’ve ever said to me,” I say. “Why are you doing this? Why are you creating problems that don’t exist?”
“I’m identifying problems that have existed for years, and that I have ignored in order to make you happy. But I spent several weeks where I barely spoke to you, let alone spent any time with you, and I want more. I want more from life and I want more from you.”
