Beside Herself

by Elizabeth Laban

  Okay, she thought to herself, he isn’t going to put me on the spot like that. Even though she hadn’t specifically asked him to not tell Dr. Snow about their agreement, she was relieved. For one brief moment Hannah let herself remember her time with Reuben in the Delaware hotel room far away, feeling excited and buzzed from the beer and, well, so turned on. She could imagine, if they had continued down that road, how it could have felt almost separate from everything else she knew. She shook her head to get rid of the image.

  “You’ve made that clear,” Hannah finally said, addressing Joel directly. “And I maintain that whatever was lost between us, whatever fell through the cracks, was not reason to do what you did. In a million years. But if we are going to try to make this work in any way, I want to feel in control; I want to feel the foundation is stable. And I think, with some perspective, our foundation, our base that needs to be strong to hold everything else up, was crumbling just the slightest bit.”

  They sat quietly for a minute. Then Dr. Snow cleared her throat.

  “I think just knowing this, recognizing it and talking about it, all of it, is key,” she said. “And to get back to your point, Hannah, there are ways to find time to be alone, if you’re creative. Maybe make a lunch date when everyone is out of the house and meet at home, or if both kids are in your bed, once they’re asleep, sneak downstairs to the couch. I know that’s hard; I know someone could wake up at any second and need you. Do you guys have a lock on your door?”

  “No!” they both said with some horror.

  “Think about it,” she said. “It isn’t the worst thing in the world. If someone knocks or tries to come in, it just gives you that extra moment to pull yourselves together. It might help you relax.”

  Joel turned to Hannah. “I promise, with all my being and heart, that I will never do anything like that again,” he said. He waited a few seconds, and Hannah met his eyes. “I will never, ever, ever be unfaithful again.”

  Hannah nodded. Dr. Snow nodded. Now it was just a matter of Hannah’s deciding if she could live with that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “I wish he had agreed to come with us,” Hannah said as she loosely wound a green Eagles scarf around Lincoln’s neck. “It isn’t even that cold out. We could have easily taken him in his wheelchair. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event!”

  “I tried really hard to talk him into it, but he wanted to be at Saint Martha’s,” Joel said, placing an Eagles cap on each child’s head and making sure they were on straight. “I think he plans on narrating the event as it unfolds, even though I know it will be on all the TVs in the place with plenty of official commentary.”

  “But you have the iPad, right?” she asked. “Because I want to Skype him from the parade.” She looked around to make sure they weren’t forgetting anything. She had all the flags, the rally towels, the sign Lincoln had made that read, Flea-Flickers Rule—Thanks, Nick! in green glitter paint. She held it carefully by the stick he had taped to the back. Ridley had decided to leave Stinker on the couch dressed in an Eagles shirt. Dune was now back in Lincoln’s closet, under the shoes, of course, in case his back got itchy. The bear, too, was wearing an Eagles shirt.

  “I do,” Joel said. “Right here in this bag.”

  “Come ooooon,” Lincoln whined. “We’re going to miss it!”

  “No, we aren’t,” Joel said calmly. “We have plenty of time.”

  “Oh, wait, I just need to get one thing,” Hannah said, leaving them standing in a jumble by the front door, all green and sparkly.

  She ran upstairs to the bedroom and pulled out the small bag she had stashed behind the books on her nightstand. Inside was a small piece of sea glass, and she needed it because she was planning to propose something to Joel later that day, and the sea glass was an important part of the symbolism of what she had planned. She carried the bag downstairs and shoved it in her purse.

  “Ready,” she said.

  They stepped outside, and the air felt cool and crisp on this February day. The sun was shining, and people were out in droves. They walked west to Broad Street, where the Eagles Victory Parade would make its way north, eventually going by them and then city hall and ending up at the art museum.

  “Go Birds!” people yelled.

  “We’re number one!” others shouted.

  “Finally!” others said to each other, nodding knowingly.

  And the ubiquitous “We all we got, we all we need,” which meant more to Hannah on this day than she ever would have expected.

  The Eagles had won the Super Bowl for the first time ever on Sunday in an exciting game against the New England Patriots with a final score of forty-one to thirty-three, and it felt to Hannah that the city was electric. They walked the way they always did when the city was crowded, Joel up front, followed by the kids in single file, and Hannah bringing up the rear. It gave her a chance to see everyone, to watch Joel in the lead, with his eyes in front of him charting the path and every few seconds looking subtly behind to make sure they were all there. Then came Lincoln with his old-man walk, so serious, his shoulders looking heavier than they had to be; then Ridley, pretty, silly Ridley, in her pink shoes and long braids tied today with green ribbons. Everyone was going to be okay no matter what; she knew that, but she also knew they were better together.

  By the time they got to the corner, they were about six people deep.

  “I’m not going to see them,” Lincoln said like it was the end of the world. “I’m not going to see Carson and Nick.”

  “No, I think you will,” Joel said, leaning in to see if he could spot anything coming. “I think the floats or buses or whatever they are going to be on will be high. I think you’ll see everything.”

  But just then people shifted, and Joel very patiently, very subtly moved and found his own place in the crowd. He reached out his hand for Lincoln, then nodded to him to reach for Ridley. Hannah was off to the side, watching. It took a while, probably ten solid minutes. She knew he knew he couldn’t move too fast, or someone might call him on it. But a big group of people like that shifted constantly, and he was an expert at getting his family to the front. Once they were there, he looked around for Hannah. She smiled, possibly the most open, real smile she had given him since this whole mess started. He knew it, he recognized it, and he reached out his hand for her. He was not trying to be subtle anymore. She leaned in and grabbed his hand and let herself be pulled to the front. She held her breath for a few seconds, but nobody said a word.

  The crowd went crazy, and she could see big buses making their way north toward them, green confetti flying everywhere.

  “Quick, Skype Richard,” Hannah said.

  Joel pulled out the iPad and found his name. It rang and rang, but he didn’t answer.

  “He promised,” Hannah said, disappointed. She didn’t want him to miss this, not just the parade but what she had planned for after. “Try again.”

  “Okay,” he said, and she heard the phone ringing.

  Finally, the call was answered, and the main room at Saint Martha’s came into view. The image bounced up and down until it settled on Richard’s face, too close, like he was holding it near his ear.

  “Dad, hey, Dad,” Joel called. “We’re Skyping you. It’s a video call.”

  The cheers were getting louder, and the buses were getting closer. Hannah watched as Richard rearranged his phone, placing it on his lap looking up. Then someone took it from him and set it on a table next to him. They could see Richard, and the room was full, so many people facing him, presumably soaking in his words, whatever they might be today. The television screen behind him was lit up with the image they were in the center of right now.

  “Look, you can practically see us,” Ridley said, pointing.

  “They’re coming, they’re coming,” Lincoln said, like he could barely stand it.

  Joel held up the iPad so Richard could see the up-close version of the buses passing, though they all knew the news cameras probably had a bett
er angle. Just then the cheers were out of control, and Hannah looked up to see Carson Wentz, the star quarterback who’d been injured during the regular season, making many wrongly think their Super Bowl dreams were over, and Nick Foles, the quarterback who’d stepped in and won it all for them. They were up there, smiling, waving, and—Hannah did a double take. Had Carson just winked at her?

  The first bus was the best, but they waited and cheered as the rest went by. Finally, it was quiet. Joel turned the screen to face them, and they could see Richard was talking to the group.

  “Philadelphia is a city of fighters. We never give up,” he said.

  She looked closer and saw he had a mug next to him that said The Philly Special, the now-famous play Nick Foles had used during the Super Bowl, one of the flea-flickers Lincoln kept referring to, with dots showing how the ball was thrown. She laughed to herself. That had to be Reuben’s doing. Reuben and his mugs.

  “Richard,” she called toward the screen. It was so loud behind her she worried he couldn’t hear her. But he looked at them and smiled. Now seemed like the right time for the moment she was planning. She was ready, she knew. And just to keep things in line with tradition, she had made an emergency hair appointment with Cami yesterday so that her hair was freshly cut, as it had been before all the other important events marking her life with Joel. She moved toward him now, reaching into her bag for the sea glass. As she grabbed on to Joel’s elbow to get his attention, a man walked between them, and she had to let go and take a step back. They both saw his shirt at the same time. It said THE UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE in big blue letters. She watched as Joel’s face lit up. He knew what the mascot was, of course he did, and as the words formed on his lips—she, too, knew they were the Blue Hens—something shifted, and he looked at her. She was pretty sure the same thought she was having moved through his mind at that moment: Who would come to this Eagles parade and not wear Eagles gear? Someone who did not deserve to be recognized was who. They looked at each other, and he shook his head, smiling at her knowingly, and in that moment she knew two things for sure—she was making the right decision, and now was not the right time for her surprise.

  Five days before Joel asked Hannah to marry him, she got a bad cold. She didn’t know for sure that he was going to ask her in five days; there had been a few holidays and a day trip here and there during the previous three months when she’d thought, Maybe he’ll ask me today, and he hadn’t. They had talked about marriage and having a family, and she was fairly sure Joel had reached out to her mother; he had asked for her number and Hannah had noticed, at a certain point, that her mother could not stop smiling when they were together.

  The day her cold was at its worst, they had been planning to have dinner at Villa di Roma, her favorite red-gravy place since Joel had introduced her to it on their first official date. But she had to cancel. Her throat had been sore the last few days, but by that point she felt terrible pressure in her sinuses, and her eyes had that swollen sensation inside their sockets. Everything hurt. Joel spent a few minutes trying to talk her into still going but relented quickly and said he would bring her a simple dinner and some tea instead. They would go to Villa di Roma when she felt better.

  He arrived at her door not too long afterward with a brown take-out bag and another tiny shopping bag.

  “This is clean, by the way,” he said as he pulled a bowl out of the second bag and held it up. “I brought it from home. I’ve been saving it for you.”

  She watched from the couch as he unpacked the brown paper bag and got her meal ready. He found a tray she kept under the stove, and when he brought it to her on the couch, it was the perfect dinner for someone who wasn’t feeling well. There was chicken escarole soup, which she learned later he’d gotten at Villa di Roma, some of their bread and butter pats, a Sprite, and a cup of tea with a tiny ramekin of honey, which he also told her later was from his stash of Holy Honey. The bowl was ceramic with a blue-and-white gingham pattern. It was a little bigger and deeper than a normal soup bowl, a little more regal, if a bowl could be regal.

  He sat quietly next to her while she ate. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was.

  “Why didn’t you get food for you too?” she asked him.

  “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “I guess . . . this sounds silly, maybe, but I was just thinking about you.”

  She had smiled then, knowing she had something not everyone got, feeling like she was really, really lucky, like she wanted to grab his hand and pull him outside and show everyone. But of course she was way too tired and achy to do that. Besides, she would have appeared to be crazy.

  “What’s the deal with the bowl?”

  “I’m glad you asked,” he said, turning to face her. “I’ve had it for a few weeks now, and I thought of you the minute I saw it, at a little shop on 20th Street. I got it because it seems like a good, solid, usable bowl, but I also had all these crazy thoughts that made me think of us, as a couple, as a couple moving into the future together.”

  She held her breath. Was this going to be it? Was he really going to propose when her nose was so red and runny? She hoped not. But she also hoped so. She waited.

  “But what I was thinking was that a bowl is so basic. I mean, everyone has a bowl; it’s useful and important but can often be taken for granted. It shouldn’t be—taken for granted, I mean—because it would be really hard to eat cereal or ice cream or, as you just demonstrated, soup without it. More than that, though, it isn’t just for the good things. It’s for the bad things too. I mean, you have an ice cream sundae when you’re celebrating and relaxing or rewarding yourself for something, maybe just treating yourself; you might have oatmeal in the bowl to get your day started; and now, when you’re sick, you have soup to try to feel better. Sort of like life or a good marriage: the good and the bad, even though of course we all prefer the good. I mean, I would always choose ice cream over soup. Please stop me—I’m totally rambling. I guess I just really liked this bowl.”

  “I like it too,” she said, leaning her head toward him and resting it on his shoulder. “Thank you for it.”

  She continued to wait, thinking, Any minute now, surely, with that preamble, he is going to ask me, but there was nothing else. That wasn’t a proposal, was it? It sort of sounded like one, all that philosophy about life and bowls and the good and the bad in one place. But there was no actual question, no offered ring. She spent the next five days wondering, not sure if she should ask him if she’d missed something. It wasn’t until she was much better, and Joel was just at the beginning of the cold but not so bad that he didn’t want to go out, that they rescheduled their dinner at Villa di Roma. And it was when the fried-asparagus appetizer came out, a diamond ring on one of the stalks that sat in that delicious and decadent butter sauce, that she knew the bowl conversation had not been the official proposal, even though in so many ways she thought it might as well have been.

  Much later, they talked about those days, and Joel confirmed that he had shifted things because of the circumstances of her cold and the timing. He hadn’t wanted to give up his idea of proposing at Villa di Roma, but he’d wanted to do something that night. And so he’d gotten the idea to give the bowl, and he said later that had been his favorite step. The actual proposal and the ring were important, of course, but more of an expected formality. “The bowl step,” as they came to refer to it, had been . . . pure, he finally said. She might have added a few other words to the description—confusing was one of them—but she didn’t. Pure seemed like enough.

  “Mommy, I’m worried,” Lincoln said in his serious voice, pulling her back to the parade and away from that memory of how incredibly naive they’d once been. That was her biggest takeaway from the discovery of the affair and its aftermath, though also that they’d been lucky to be naive because if they hadn’t been, would they really have taken such a big chance? Would anyone? Now that she thought about it, though, in addition to being naive, they’d also been smart. Considering these l
ast few months, that bowl metaphor was even more forward thinking than she had realized.

  “What are you worried about, sweetie?” she said, leaning over so she could hear him better. Now that she knew she wasn’t going to do it here, at the parade, she could relax a little.

  “I’m worried that this is as good as it gets,” he said. “That it will never be this exciting again.”

  “For the Eagles?” she asked, thinking for the ninetieth time that this kid was really something. What eight-year-old thought this way? She looked around for Joel; she wanted him to be in on this conversation. They were all right there, but they weren’t in a clump anymore. Joel was leaning over saying something to Ridley. She glanced at the screen Joel was still holding, which now looked blank. She wondered if anyone had said goodbye to Richard.

  “Well, yes, for the Eagles, but for everyone, for all of us,” he said, sounding like he had given up. “And Mommy?”

  “Yes, sweetie?” she said. She was trying to pay attention to Lincoln, but her mind was racing. Why hadn’t she realized it before? She had missed a crucial step that needed to be taken before she did what she had planned to do at the parade. She had to backtrack. She had to do this right.

  “If you go out tonight, can I call you like usual?” he asked. “But can we change it to every nine minutes? That last minute is always the hardest.”