I raise my glass to this snippet of honesty. “Hear, hear.” Sam would donate a million dollars to a good cause. He’d likely show up and sign baseballs at whatever charity event. But rolling up his sleeves and pitching in on some elbow-grease level. That I wouldn’t believe for a second.
“But this isn’t bullshit either, Liv. It’s a lot of cliché—I get it. A fresh start and all that. But I’m here because I need to do more with my second chance than take it out drinking and dancing.” He sips his water and avoids my stare. “It was, uh . . . It was sharply pointed out that before I got sick, I might have taken life for granted.”
“Really? And what is the name of this wise woman?” A tiny piece of me doesn’t want to know. While Sam never cheated on me—not to my knowledge—I’m positive he had ample opportunity. It crossed my mind, or more like grated on it, particularly as I reached whale-size, pregnant with his child. Perhaps he married one of the long-legged groupies who liked to stalk athletic types with big-money potential. Maybe she was wise and beautiful. I down another swallow of Macallan. On second thought, the swift onset of numbness might be worth the taste. I take in his lanky, now healthy frame, folded in my living room chair. I consider the way his clothes fit his body. The body beneath them. It’s my turn to look away.
“Charlene,” he says. The name of the woman who so intimately understood Sam draws my gaze to his. “She’s a good person. She put up with a lot of shit—as much as you.”
“I sincerely doubt that.”
“You’re probably right.” He takes one more sip of water and stands. “I’m sorry about the way I behaved all those years ago, Liv. The way I walked away, left you in a bad moment.”
“Bad moment?” I huff as angry beads of sweat prickle out of me.
“It, um . . . it was beyond selfish, how I behaved, especially after you lost the baby. I’m sure it was tough.”
“You’ve no idea.” Chagrined is a strange look for Sam, but that’s what I see.
“After we left the Pour House, the argument . . . Upset as we both were, God knows I never should have gotten behind the wheel of a car. Then later, at the hospital . . .”
I stand too. “I get it, Sam.” My voice rises to a tone that I wonder if Rob can hear. If he does, it doesn’t bring him pounding up the basement stairs. “You regret being a complete jerk and for proving my parents right.” I shrug. “Really, the I told you so kept them busy for years. And since you’ve come all the way to my living room to admit your folly, let me tell you how I see it: Bottom line, the only thing you don’t regret is how the problem resolved itself. I’m sure it was a tough balance—your dollop of guilt versus the relief of not having to deal with an unwanted pregnancy, or a—” I clamp my mouth shut, stifling the word son.
He is silent. The look on Sam’s face does not match any that I recall. “Yes,” he says. “I am sorry for the way a twenty-one-year-old kid handled things.”
I fold my arms and stare. Age is emphasized by the lines on Sam’s face. Damn the clarity that comes with it. Back in North Carolina, I saw my young lover as a grown man. I expected him to do what Theo said earlier, to act like one. At the time, Sam was five years younger than Theo is now. Still, I have little sympathy. He got to react like a kid. I had to be the grown-up.
“In the moment,” Sam says, “I ran from that hospital. You’re right.” I roll my eyes, slightly appalled he’s come so far to confirm what I’ve known for decades. “But after that . . . After the lightning-fast annulment your parents arranged, I’m sure you think I went right on, partying away my life. You wouldn’t be completely wrong.” My arms clench so tight I’m cutting off circulation. “But I never forgot what happened that night, Livy. I thought of it more than you’d ever believe.” He clutches the ball cap and shifts his focus to a spot on the Oriental rug. “But I was too ashamed. Back then, I was too charmed by my own life to do anything about ours.” His gaze travels from the carpet to me. “Part of my second chance is making peace with that. I regret—”
“Fine.” My chin cocks toward the foyer, a get the hell out gesture. “You regret leaving the way you did, ending things on such a sorry sour note. You’re forgiven.”
“That’s not what I regret. Not if I’m being honest.” He moves closer to the door. My face burns and so does the past, which is flaming up in front of me. “My regret isn’t about bad choices I made out of immaturity. Hell. You can think whatever you want to about that.” Sam looks over his shoulder, toward the basement door where Rob exited. “My regret is what we missed out on.”
“What does that mean?” Something at my core says I shouldn’t request a clarification. Something says “Just let him go, Liv . . . You don’t want to know . . .”
“What if you hadn’t lost that baby—or we had another eventually? What if after I got back to Iowa, I’d picked up the damn phone, like my gut said to?” A remorseful breath seeps out of him. “Once the baby was gone . . . It made my sorry-ass excuses easier. It allowed me to accept the end . . . of us. Anyway . . . either way, a whole different life could have been lived. It might have been as nice as this one.” He gestures at tangible esthetics. Sam is too far from me, too close to the door. He can’t hear the gasp drawing between slightly parted lips. He glances, again, in the direction Rob has gone. “Looks like your life has worked out. And maybe showing up like this . . . Could be all I did was disrupt your Friday night. But back then, I wish I’d made a different choice.”
“Different . . .”
“I don’t know how long it took you to get over us, or if maybe you checked out of that hospital, picked up, and moved on. It was believable. It was the thing I loved most about you—resiliency. For whatever it’s worth, what I regret is giving up on us.” Sam reads my frozen pose as a reply—anger, maybe indifference. “I regret losing what we might have had.”
He leaves. The brownstone door clicks shut behind him.
I don’t move, mentally floundering for my footing. I’m surrounded by familiarity—the slight rush of fall air as it darts in the door. The mantel clock ticks. There are nights I come down here at three a.m. and sit, desperate for the music and mania to stop. A new reality unfurls in front of me: In Sam’s great need to apologize for the life we missed out on, he’s revealed a chasm I did not know existed. He’s admitted to wanting everything I gave away—our life, our son. “You bastard. Tell me I didn’t just hear that?” And as only Sam Nash is capable, he’s shoved me, body and mind flailing, headlong into a past that might have been.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Olivia
I’m in my nightgown, standing in dreamy moonlight that streams through the brownstone’s bedroom window. In any other life, in any other bedroom, this might serve as a stunningly romantic vignette. On my way upstairs, I glanced toward the basement light. I heard the rhythmic strokes of the rowing machine. Bypassing Rob was the only thing I could think to do. He doesn’t fit into any of the thoughts in my head. Sometime later, when I hear heavy breathing at the bedroom door, I know he’s rowed five or six miles away. Yet, here he stands.
“So . . . do you plan on telling me what that was about?”
It’s such a muddled, mind-fucking mess. I go with what explains my frazzled state, something I won’t be able to hide from Rob. “He was sick.” I tip my head toward the moon.
“Sick like what? Needs a kidney, or . . .”
I turn. Rob is dripping in sweat, his chest heaving, and his expression unsure. “Like dying sick . . . at one point,” I clarify. “He came to apologize for past mistakes. You know—the whole long-before-you-existed North Carolina debacle.”
I squirm inside and out. Awkwardness is a natural reaction, having been pregnant with one man’s child. Then openly choosing to remain childless with the one to whom you are married. Rob doesn’t squirm; he’s too practiced for anything so common. But I know it’s what he’s thinking. As to what he’s feeling . . . Lately, that’s a million-dollar Rob question. “Anyway . . . Sam is hell-bent on a second-shot-at-li
fe mission. Making apologetic speeches was on his to-do list.”
“So is he going to live?”
I almost laugh. It’s such an honest Rob remark. The question is not out of concern for Sam, only an inquiry as to whether or not this subject will further affect Rob.
“Apparently he is.”
“And that was it?”
Hardly. But I’ve reached the precipice of what I’m willing to share with my husband about Sam Nash. It might blow a gaping hole in what is already a fissured marriage. “For anything that matters . . . Yes.”
Rob crosses the bedroom, discarding his sweat-soaked T-shirt as he goes. He pauses at his dresser and removes his wedding ring, placing it in the drawer—a habit. He can’t sleep with anything touching his body. He peers into the dim reflection of the mirror. “So that was the famous Sam Nash?”
As predicted, Rob forays into cursory conversation. “Famous how?” I ask.
He frowns, shaking his head. “Miracle ace reliever of the 2002 World Series? Or maybe the in-flesh phenomenon that affected Olivia Klein in ways no other human ever has.”
I widen my eyes at the less likely remark. Over time, I have confided some of the painful parts of my relationship with Sam to Rob. When I don’t respond, he does.
“Interesting, whether we’re talking about you or his World Series win, either accomplishment could make a headline.” Rob sheds his sweatpants and underwear, moving naked toward the bathroom.
I turn back to the window, imagining how exposed I would feel if Rob knew everything. Tonight, Sam and Theo and myself—we’ll sleep within a few miles of each other. The last time we slept in the same place it was a cramped dorm room on a college campus. It’s a curious reunion to say the least.
I glance in the direction Rob has gone. This is reality and I am being absurdly sentimental. The sudden, outrageous facts Sam Nash delivered are bittersweet, but they don’t matter. I scrub my hands over my face, brushing away the layers of revelations. Disrupt my Friday night? It draws a snicker.
Of course, there is a natural resolution here and I cling to it. If everything remains as is—and I see no reason why it shouldn’t—tonight and Sam and Theo will all eventually go away. With the moon bearing witness, I decide this is no more than karma biting me in the ass. I’ve had it coming since I shoved a newspaper under Sasha’s nose and uttered words about a better idea than green space beautification. I walk into the bathroom. My intention is to brush my teeth and tend to my blistered foot. It’s the one raw spot I have a decent hope of healing.
The shower water runs hot, and steam has settled over the vintage bath. It’s been restored to modern perfection—a splurge after one of my husband’s better investment deals. A soapy Rob stands with his back to me. It’s a deep shower, custom tiled, with a partial glass wall. I recall where our night was headed before we arrived home to find my past sitting on our doorstep. I consider what I alluded to as Rob valiantly carried me down the sidewalk. I ignore regrets and think of spelled-out promises, the kind said in front of a judge six years ago. Promises I meant. Instead of reaching for healing ointment, I go for a flash fix. I tug the nightgown over my head and skim off my underwear. I step into the shower.
At first it’s just the water beating around me; then it’s the feel of Rob’s hands as they make firm but intimate contact. His mouth is a little open, like he’s thinking about saying something, but can’t decide what. Just like with Sam, I have to stand on tiptoe to kiss Rob when barefooted. His mouth has something to do, and he runs with it. It’s a rain shower of emotion in an ongoing drought—soaking kisses, anxious greedy touch. Our fingers lock and I know my grip is as firm as any man’s, years of practiced movement with a bow and strings. I squeeze Rob’s hand and he squeezes back. But he lets go as his hand crooks behind my neck, kissing me harder in some claim-staking gesture. A few moments later I’m between him and a limestone wall. Both are ridiculously hard, one is more porous. If not properly maintained, limestone can rot right out from under you.
For a brief second, almost suspended animation, the kissing stops. Water beats on him, Rob shielding me. His mouth is pursed to a firm line, his gaze taking a possessive inventory. Impulsively, my hands thrust around either side of his face and I stretch to kiss him heatedly. Then I am weightless as Rob hoists my body upward, between him and the wall. My legs wrap around him. He thrusts inside of me with the well-played accuracy of a Cosmo article on hot, aggressive sex. Panting sexual noises aren’t commonplace in here, not lately. Now they override the pounding of dual rainforest showerheads.
The sex doesn’t last long, but long enough to put a dominant satisfactory look on Rob’s face. The limestone scratches against my back as I slide down, my feet meeting the river-rock shower floor. But I don’t let go of Rob, feeling both our hearts pound. His mouth opens again. “What?” I ask. Rob doesn’t respond. “He doesn’t mean anything. It’s old—maybe just an old sting.” Water and emotion continue to pour down around us. I take a chance. “Did I look at him like he meant anything more to me than an unlikely surprise?”
Rob shakes his head ever so slightly. “It wasn’t how you looked at him. It was the way he looked at you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Olivia
Ass-biting karma. I stick with it as an apt explanation for yesterday. It’s cosmic payback, perhaps a reminder that I am not immune to having to answer for my actions, even if Jack Nicholson is not presiding. Rob and I spend Saturday enforcing normal. He devotes his to a companion headset, pacing the brownstone while doing business. Outwardly, I spend mine practicing. Quietly, more covertly, I absorb Sam’s rise from the dead and the almost unbelievable presence of our son in my life. When my mother calls, I take it as confirmation that the universe is not yet done with comeuppance.
I keep the conversation short, though I do tell her about Claire McAdams’s charity event. It’s a Eugenia hallmark social gathering—a black-tie soirée, mingling deep pockets of pretty people. She coos at the notion of me joining her ranks. But while speaking, my subconscious dishes up large servings of wiseass narration: “Yes, a lovely charity event, Mom . . . I was invited by your grandson . . . You remember him . . . After I told you he no longer existed, you patted my arm and said ‘See that, Olivia. Sam proved us right, and mercifully everything’s worked out as it should . . .’” Regardless, today’s call ends benignly. My mother is going to look into Claire’s event, see if any of her friends are on the guest list.
On Sunday I refocus on practicing “Jupiter” and “Saturn,” movements four and five in Holst’s Planets. The symphony schedule picks up next week, and I’ve been distracted. If one violin is off, the rest of the violins will suffer. Since violins are the heartbeat of any orchestra, other instruments will follow. The entire performance will be lacking, and it will be my fault. My work ethic is enough for this to matter. I take “Jupiter” and “Saturn” by storm. An hour later, when the house phone rings, it breaks my concentration. But Rob picks up after two echoing shrills, and I begin again. Ten minutes later, the phone rings a second time. Rob answers, but it’s too late; I’m out of the practice zone. My mind drifts, imagining how Theo would approach the challenging measures of music. I would love to hear the passion with which he’d play it, passion that I masterfully fake.
I sink further into the Theo thought, blindsided by a fantasy. My daydream is facilitated by the new information Theo’s father provided—maybe a life where his biological parents worked it out, awed and able to foster their son’s gifts. When it comes to Sam’s talents and mine, the only common denominator is their existence. But it might have been enough. We wouldn’t have handled Theo’s gifts perfectly, but we would have grasped them. That’s something. Well, something less the obvious tug-of-war. I half smile. Damned if I wouldn’t have encouraged Theo’s musical instincts. What I wouldn’t have done was made it Theo’s only option—surely Sam would have doubled down on that.
I finger the complex pages of sheet music, lost in family dynamics
: mothers and daughters, mothers and sons. The son’s uncle crosses my mind. The only souls who know about Theo are my brother, Phillip; his husband; and the moon. It’s strange for such a long-ago, cloistered secret to breathe new life. Phillip and Scott visit every other year from New Zealand. While the visits are pleasant, my brother has rarely spoken of the son I gave birth to on the other side of the world, which is the way I wanted it. I believe his silence is compensatory. I’m the sibling who remained stateside—the adult child who sat beside Asa Klein as he lingered in this life, playing on demand while Phillip waited on the other side of the world. Then it was Rob, not Phillip, who came to my aid, taking the cool necessary action needed to end my pain and my father’s.
I raise my bow. It drops dejectedly. I am stuck on all sorts of notes from the past. Sheet music turns misty. Theo so eloquently described music as the order in his life. The thing that made sense when the world turned to bedlam. I imagine it’s something similar to what my grandfather might have experienced by way of music. I don’t know how they did it, and I strongly beg to differ. No piece of music will quiet the fact that Theo’s father stood in my living room last night, altering what I thought was truth: if Sam had picked up a phone—or I hadn’t lied—our lives would have turned out so very different. Different good or different worse? That I do not know.
I breathe deep and assure myself everything has worked out as it should. I begin to play again, but find I’m too distracted, too stuck on Sam’s unexpected confession. The light on the music room phone is still lit. I give up on practicing and head to the kitchen, guessing my mother now has Rob’s ear. She’s the only person who can keep him talking this long. But as I pass through the narrow dining room, soft peals of laughter waft toward me. It’s not the way Rob jokes with my mother, which is more of an ingratiating laugh. I hit the swinging door hard, and Rob looks startled. The laughter ceases, and he tells the caller to “hang on a sec” before holding out the phone. “It’s Sasha—something about having lunch.”
Unstrung Page 20
