Sunlight and Joy

by Barbara Delinsky

  When Rick got his job offer, he had the good sense to give me the news on the phone, so that we could talk it out without involving the kids. At least, that was the plan. Only we were interrupted three times on his end, so he didn’t have much more than a quick chance to tell me, before he had to run. He said he would be home for dinner, but it wasn’t until well after the kids and I had finished that he ran in.

  “God, I’m sorry,” he said, looking sorry indeed. “I got sucked into a teleconference that went on and on. I should have called.”

  I didn’t blink. I was hurt, and I was angry. “We’re used to your not making it.”

  “Really, I wanted to get here to talk about this. Did you tell the kids?”

  I shook my head. “I thought you should. I wouldn’t have given it a fair telling.”

  “You’re still against it?”

  I knelt at the cabinet under the sink, pulled out a steel wool pad, and rose to attack the pans in which I’d sautéed veal, cooked rice, and boiled peas. “Are you for it?”

  “I asked first.”

  “My answer’s dependent on yours.”

  “So’s mine,” he countered.

  I began to scrub the veal pan gently, then scrubbed harder when pieces of fried-on crust resisted. As they came off, the steel wool moved more fluently. “Yes, I’m against it.”

  “Because it isn’t fair to you and the kids.”

  “Because it isn’t good for us. Good for us,” I specified. “You and me.”

  He was silent. I looked up.

  “You and me,” he echoed quietly. “What do you mean?”

  I went back to the pan, but only for seconds. Dropping the steel wool, I braced soapy hands on the edge of the sink. “You’ve asked me why I do this,” I said with a small hitch of my chin toward the row of dishes draining dry in the rack. “I didn’t know at first. I only knew that it … felt good … somehow. I didn’t give it much thought until you started asking about it. Remember Cambridge, and the first apartment we had? There was no dishwasher. When you took a job in Hartford and we went apartment hunting, I knew I wanted one. We were expecting Sam. I figured there’d be more dishes and less time. Then you had a great opportunity in Albany, and there would be enough money to buy a house, and a dishwasher was on our list of must-haves even with that first tiny house. You moved us here to Portsmouth when you took the helm of this company, and now we have a house which is many times larger than that one. The kids are still living at home, so there are dishes twice a day, plus pots and pans. Lord knows I have work of my own to do. I have papers to correct and lessons to plan. I’m heading the committee that is revamping the fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade curriculums. There are proposals to write up and assignments to make. So why am I standing here doing this? Last time you asked, I said there was a sense of satisfaction.”

  “And control.”

  “But it’s more than that. Doing dishes is simple. It’s straightforward. It’s brief and finite. It’s also an old-fashioned thing to do. It reminds me of when we were first married, way back in that fourth-floor walk-up in Cambridge. We used to do the dishes together. Do you remember? Then we moved and got the dishwasher, and you stopped. You had other things to do, and those things started taking up more and more of ‘us’ time.”

  “Hey,” he warned her. “Don’t blame it all on me. I never told you to teach. I’d have been perfectly happy if you’d stayed home with the kids.”

  “I needed more, Rick. The kids were at school all day, you were at work, and I had an education degree on hold. I needed the same intellectual stimulation that you all were getting—but that’s not even the point. The point is that I miss the days when our lives were simpler.”

  He barked out a laugh and rolled his eyes. “Don’t we all.”

  “I’m serious. Between work and the kids, we’ve lost us. If you take this job, it’ll only get worse.”

  “But this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he said, leaning into the argument.

  “Do you need it?”

  He paused, straightened. “No, I don’t need it. But I want it.”

  “Like you wanted the job that brought us here eight years ago? Like you wanted the one that took us to Albany two years before that, and to Hartford three years before that?” I tapped my chest. “I like it here, Rick. This is where my job possibilities are, and they’re not portable. Neither are the kids’ high school friends. Always, before, you’ve come first. But our lives can’t always be about you.”

  He stared at me. In the silence, I heard my own words. They helped clarify my thoughts.

  “With our lives like this, I need those other things, because you’re never around, and I’m lonely.”

  He drew in a deep breath but didn’t speak.

  “Charlotte’s fifteen,” I said. “Three more years, and she’ll leave home for college. I’ll be forty-six, you’ll be forty-eight. That’s young, Rick. It’s young, and we’re healthy and athletic and adventurous. Lots of things stopped when we had kids, but we can start them up again. We can try new things. We’ll have the strength, the money, and the opportunity, which is so much more than so many people have. How can we waste it?”

  He was listening. I could see it. Whether he heard what I said was another matter.

  Quieter now, I said, “I wouldn’t want the principalship if we had more of a life together. It’s filler, Rick. Not first choice. First choice is us and what we used to be.”

  He dropped his chin to his chest, then raised sober eyes. “You’re saying things you’ve never said before. Where’s it all been, and why’s it coming out now?”

  “It’s been simmering. Your job offer brought it to a boil.”

  “And you think you can recapture what we had before by chaining me here?”

  Chaining me here. Those were fighting words.

  I swallowed. “No. I can’t do that. You’ll do what you want.”

  “What if I take the job?”

  I pressed my lips together.

  “Ellen?”

  “I can’t move, Rick. Not this time.”

  He looked stunned. “You’re saying that you won’t come?”

  I didn’t speak.

  He pushed a hand through his hair. “God, Ellen, I need you to be supportive.”

  “I need the same from you,” I said, determined to stick with it now that I’d come this far.

  “But you’re asking me to give up something really important.”

  “For something else that’s even more important, at least to me.”

  The phone rang.

  He put his hands on his hips, but they were no sooner settled when he took one off again and ran it around the back of his neck.

  My heart had begun to pound, as the enormity of what I was doing sank in. Still, I repeated, “I can’t move.”

  “Telephone, Dad!” shouted Jimmy from somewhere upstairs.

  With a last, long, despairing look at me, Rick left the room.

  Setting Sam’s dish on the rack to drain, I turned to the pasta pot. I took my time, soaping leisurely, trying to recapture the serenity that I had mentioned to Rick. I found myself scrubbing with greater force, though only the occasional spaghetti string had dried on the side. My thoughts were murky and dark, and my stomach in knots. It had been that way for a full twenty-four hours.

  Of the second thoughts I’d had since issuing my ultimatum, the one that had emerged as the most urgent involved whether or not I was truly prepared to give up my husband if he wouldn’t give up his job. I loved him. Our lives were good, albeit too busy.

  I thought of those early days of our marriage when Rick had been with me—and not only doing the dishes. We had gone marketing together, gone to the library together, gone biking and hiking and running together. Each with our nose in a book, we had sat on opposite ends of the sofa with our legs linked.

  We used to call each other at work. We rarely did that now. He was busy when I was free. I was busy when he was free. We left messages fo
r each other, and I can’t even call it playing phone tag. Leaving messages had become our standard form of communication.

  It was a modern thing, increasingly common among two-career families like ours. But it was sad.

  So maybe he was right. Maybe I should stop working. If I did that, I would be home when he found that free minute or two to call. But I loved teaching. I’ve been doing it for twenty years, and I’ve worked hard—and for a fraction of my husband’s hourly wage, I might add. I’d also been the person returning to square one each time Rick packed us up and moved us out.

  I didn’t want to leave Portsmouth. It hurt that Rick was suggesting it—hurt that he didn’t value my life—hurt that he was putting our relationship on the line.

  Frowning, I rinsed the pot under a cleansing stream of water. I wedged it into a small slot at the end of the rack, but I could see that there would be no room for the stew pot waiting to be washed. So, taking the dishtowel, I dried the dishes, put them away in the cabinet, then went at the pot. In my attempt to shorten the stew’s cooking time, I had used a higher flame than I should have, which meant that bits of beef had burned on the bottom. It took elbow grease to remove them, but the effort felt good.

  I was good at washing dishes. I was good at drying them, too. Drying them had been the very first chore that I remember doing as a child. My mother was the washer, and I felt so grown-up when she entrusted me with that dish towel. Hold the dish carefully in this hand with this end of the towel, she instructed gently, patiently, and use the other end of the towel to wipe it dry. Take your time. Climb up one more step on the step stool. That’s right. Keep the dish over the counter in case it slips. Rub round and round. Get every spot. My grandmother used to watch, sitting in the tall wooden chair that gave her bent back its greatest support. I remember her praising me with the wisps of clear thought and voice that illness had left her. There in that kitchen, with no built-in ice maker on the refrigerator door, no trash compactor, no microwave oven, no breadmaker, no Cuisinart, no whisper-quiet dishwasher, I remember feeling safe. I remember feeling loved.

  Maybe that was what this was about. Love. Our lives had grown to be so busy and fast that I was feeling without it. Without love. And if Rick left? What would I feel then?

  Worse. I suddenly knew that. I had loved him for the better part of my adult life. That wouldn’t stop. It couldn’t stop. So yes, I would move. I would give up my shot at being principal. I would help the kids adjust to the change, just as I’d done the other times, because when push came to shove, I didn’t want any of us to be without Rick.

  The garage door opened. As dim as the rumble was behind that of the running water, the sound was ingrained in me. Many a night I had listened for it to know that one of our new drivers had returned safe and sound; many more nights than that I had listened for it to tell me Rick was home. Those nights, I breathed a little sigh of relief. This night, there was no sigh, only the apprehensive throb of my pulse.

  Rinsing the pot, I fitted it into the spot that I’d made on the drainer, wiped my hands, and turned just as Rick appeared. His eyes met mine. He looked uneasy—and in that instant, I was sure he had taken the job. He had taken the job, he was calling my bluff, he was leaving unless I gave in, which of course I would do but at what price? Unable to help myself—though I had never been prone to it—I burst into tears.

  In a minute, he had crossed the floor and taken me in his arms. He didn’t speak at first, just rocked me gently, making soft shushing sounds, pressing my head to his chest and my body to his.

  Was this a goodbye? If so, it was a perverted one. The only people who held each other this way were ones who loved each other, and people who loved each other like we did didn’t say goodbye.

  I wanted to say that, but my throat was too tight. It was all I could do to curb my tears.

  In the ensuing lull, he said into my hair, “I haven’t been able to work all day. Couldn’t do my own stuff here, couldn’t talk with anyone from Houston. All I could do was think. Think about moving away without you. Think about staying here without you. Think about growing old without you. I didn’t bargain on being without you, Ellen. It’s not what I want.”

  “Me, neither,” I said brokenly. “I’ll go.”

  “I told them no.”

  It was a minute before his words registered. I looked up through a blur of tears. “You did?”

  He smiled, nodded. “And the weirdest thing happened.”

  “What?”

  “I felt relief. Like maybe I was taking on too much. Like maybe it’s time to step back and take a breath. Like I want to do all those things we couldn’t do once the kids were born.” He paused, seeming to want to say more. Then he simply smiled.

  His smile was the sun coming up. I reached up and traced it, moving my hand only so that he could kiss me. When the kiss was done and he raised his head, his eyes were as moist as his mouth. Seeming embarrassed by that, he rolled them, squeezed them tight, and cleared his throat. Then he looked past me toward the counter.

  Before I knew what he was up to, he released me, picked up the dish towel, took the stew pot from the rack, and began to dry it.

  “Let’s talk,” he said, looking comfortable and content and, yes, relieved.

  That was when I knew we’d be fine.

  A Conversation with Barbara Delinsky

  One of the Random House editors recently sat down with Barbara Delinsky to discuss “Sunlight and Joy,” writing, life, and her next book, Escape. Here’s what she had to say.

  RH: What inspired this short story?

  BD: Introspection, actually. We have a summer place on a lake in New Hampshire. The house is at the end of a dirt road and does have a dishwasher, but lately it seems that I choose to hand-wash dishes more often than not. Mind you, I hate doing dishes back home in the city. But not at the lake.

  RH: Why not?

  BD: Well, I kept asking myself that as I stood at the sink washing those dishes. For starters, I wondered why I wasn’t angry to be the one squirting the soap on those plates. But the truth was that I usually had help—either my husband or one of my sons or daughters-in-law. And there’s a kind of satisfaction starting and finishing a task. It takes me nine months to write a book. Fifteen minutes to wash dishes? Easy.

  So I wasn’t angry. I was relaxed—which was, it struck me, the purpose of a summer place. Time is slower at the lake. Family and friends congregate in the kitchen, making dishwashing a social event. It’s also a throwback to a simpler time, as is so much of lake life. Cell phones stay in the house, computers remain closed. Canoes and kayaks don’t have electronic components. When family visits, we communicate verbally and face to face, as we don’t always have the luxury to do the rest of the year.

  “Sunlight and Joy” builds on that premise with the story of a husband and wife whose lives are about to get more pressured and complex. For Ellen and Rick, washing dishes becomes synonymous with applying the brakes and slowing things down.

  RH: Are you saying that our lives are out of control?

  BD: Yeah. I am. Too often we get caught up in life’s myriad possibilities without stopping to think about whether those possibilities will enhance our lives. Often, they do not. We spin our wheels and go nowhere. That’s when we need to step back and take a breath.

  That said, I’m not against technology. I own all the latest gadgets, including more than one brand of e-reader. But take cell phones. I just bought a new one. The salesperson went on for ten minutes about a slew of incredible capabilities that I will never, ever use. I don’t watch movies on my phone, nor do I video-conference, and as for games, one good free cell solitaire app is all I need. The longer my eyes are on a device, the less I’m interacting with people.

  RH: Isn’t email or text messaging a form of interaction?

  BD: Absolutely. But not the kind I like. I want to see facial expressions and hear tones of voice. How many of us have gotten in hot water over an email that another person misinterpreted? Beside
s, interacting with other people—hearing their voices, seeing their facial expressions—this is all fodder for my books. I have often said that an hour in a shopping mall can give me a dozen book ideas. I watch, listen, and imagine.

  There you have it, the key to my work. I write about everyday people and the problems they face.

  RH: You write about families.

  BD: And friends.

  RH: How did that come to be? You have degrees in psychology and sociology. Is your writing an offshoot of your education?

  BD: (Laughing.) I’m glad you asked that. No. That would be putting the cart before the horse. I went into those fields because people interest me. Truly? I don’t remember a single course I took in college or grad school. But I do remember being president of my dorm and having to deal with a kleptomaniac, and I remember the student suffering with a bad toothache but refusing to see a dentist because her religion forbade it.

  I like dealing with problems. This is where I’m at my best. I’ve been blessed with instinctive understanding and an abundance of common sense. I have always been the one friends turn to with problems.

  RH: Does this frustrate you?

  BD: Being the impromptu, unpaid therapist? Are you kidding? I’m challenged, flattered, honored. I understand emotions. And I’m curious, so I ask questions. By the way, asking questions is the single most important social tool I taught my sons. If you’re on a date and the conversation lags, I always said, ask a question. People love talking about themselves. My sons are all adept at conversation, something that has served them well now in each of three very different professions.

  No, the only time I get frustrated is when I find myself in a discussion with a saleswoman at Nordstrom’s about her engagement ring, which I’ve told her is beautiful, but then I ask about her wedding plans, which leads to talk of her honeymoon plans, and of course I ask what her fiancé does and then hear all about his new job—and before I know it, people are lined up behind me, and I’m late getting home.

  See? Isn’t that what I was saying about face-to-face encounters? I’m an addict.