Chapter 11
Jealousy
Daniel saw the ring on the eighteenth of February, at 5:34 in the afternoon, and said congratulations in a perfectly normal voice.
He was proud of that, afterward. It was the one thing about the whole evening that he could look back on without wincing. He had come in early, as he always did. He had the table. He had graded eleven papers, and three of them had been good, and he had been sitting there in the warm steamy room with a pen in his hand and a feeling of cautious, hard-won calm, as a man sits who has been through a very long winter and is beginning to think it might be over.
She came in at 5:20. She stood a second in the doorway, with her hand on the glass. She took off her coat. She sat, and pulled her chair in, and said, "Hi," and he said, "Hi."
She picked up her mug.
He saw it then. It was only a flash. It was a tiny cold spark of light, on her left hand, as she lifted the cup, and it was gone, and came again when she set it down. It was small and square and clean. It sat on the third finger, in a plain gold band, as if it had been there all her life.
He did not stop breathing. He wanted that clear. He did not drop his pen, or go white, or make any sort of sound. He looked at the ring with a mild, polite interest, as one looks at a bird that has landed on a fence, and then he looked at her face.
She was watching him.
Her cheeks were pink. She had both hands round the mug, and she was holding it a little too tight, and her eyes had that wide, clear, braced look of a person walking into a cold sea.
"Mark asked me," said Sarah. "In Vermont."
"Congratulations," said Daniel.
It came out so smoothly that it surprised him. It was warm. It had a smile in it. He even heard himself add, in a good, hearty, reasonable voice, "That's wonderful news. That's really great."
"Thank you."
"When's the, have you set a date?"
"Not yet. September, maybe. His mother wants the church."
"The church. Lovely."
"It's very early. We haven't."
"No. Of course."
She nodded. She turned the mug. She looked at the table, and her thumb found the stone, and began, very softly, to turn the ring round and round, as one turns a screw that is not quite tight.
"It's a nice ring," said Daniel.
"It's, yes. It's very, he has good taste."
"He does."
"He remembered my size."
"That's thoughtful."
"Yes," said Sarah. "He's, he is very thoughtful."
There was a silence. It was not a comfortable one. It was a long, slow, jagged silence, with a great many things in it, and neither of them moved. A man at the next table dropped a spoon. Behind the counter, Mia had stopped steaming milk, and was standing still with the pitcher in her hand.
"I'm really happy for you," said Daniel.
He said it a second time. It was a mistake. He heard it as it left him. The first time it had been a thing that he had to say. The second time it was a thing that he was trying to believe.
She looked up.
For a moment she looked straight at him, with her gray eyes wide, and her lips a little parted, and something in her face open and bare and terribly young, and he thought, she's going to say something.
"Thanks," said Sarah.
She lowered her eyes. She picked up her chai. She drank it, in small careful sips, and talked for twenty minutes about a flood in the children's room.
He listened to all of it.
He nodded in the right places. He laughed once, at the part about the duck. When she left, at a quarter past six, he said see you next week, and watched her go. Then he sat there with his hands flat on the table, among the lab reports, and noticed that he had written, on the back of the top one, in the tiniest handwriting, with the green pen, the same word forty times.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.
It did not stop.
That was what he had not understood. He had thought that when it happened, a thing as definite as that, a ring, a date, a church, there would be a kind of end to it. A door would shut. He would find, somewhere inside himself, the quiet room where one puts such things, and go there, and be calm. People did. He had heard them. He had taught a whole unit on stages of grief, to eighth-graders, with a flow chart.
But it went on. It was simply the same feeling, with a ring on it.
He taught. He graded. He took the dog out at six and at nine. He sat at the corner table every Tuesday and she sat across from him in the red sweater, with a small bright stone on her hand, and they were kind to each other in a way that rubbed like a splinter. They talked about the library. They talked about the wedding. She said, in the first week of March, that Mark wanted a hundred and forty people. She said it lightly, with a small shrug. He said, "That's a lot of cake." She said, "It's an incredible amount of cake." And they both laughed, in the same short, shallow, careful way, and looked at the table.
On the fourth, a Tuesday, he found someone at the door.
She was already inside when he got there. She was sitting at the corner table, in his chair, with her feet tucked up under her and her hair falling down her back, and she had a pencil in her teeth and a large sheet of paper spread out in front of her, covered in squares. She looked up as he came across the floor. She took the pencil out. And she gave him a slow, amused, delighted smile, as of a woman who has had a good idea and is waiting to be told so.
"You're late," said Maya.
"I'm early."
"You're late for me. I've been here since four. I took your table. I thought you wouldn't mind."
"I don't. I don't mind. What are you doing?"
"Planning." She tapped the paper. "It's the spring assembly. I've got eleven classes and one stage and a fire code. I thought, I need a man with a clipboard."
"I haven't got a clipboard."
"You've got a mind like one." She pushed out the chair with her foot. "Sit. I'll buy you a drink. You look as if you've been in a car crash."
Maya Okafor was the history teacher at Lincoln. She had been there for three years, two doors down from him, and she was one of those people who came into a room as if she had been sent for. She was thirty. She was tall, and warm, and brown, with a big wide laugh and large gold hoops in her ears, and she wore bright dresses to class on principle. She had once explained the fall of Rome to eighth-graders by making them play musical chairs with a very loud whistle. She was the only person in the building who had never asked him how he was.
"Okay," said Daniel. He sat. "One drink."
"That's what they all say."
He had not known that he could laugh. He did, easily, at the way she said it, and she put her chin on her hand, and watched him do it, with her eyes bright. "There he is," she said. "I've missed that. I haven't seen it since Christmas."
"I haven't been laughing."
"No. You've been going round like a man who's lost a sock." She held up a hand. "I'm not asking. I'm too tired. I'm only saying that I've been worried, and I'm very glad that you still know how."
He laughed again.
He was not looking at the door. He had not meant to look. It was only that, at about 5:20, in the middle of a sentence about a school bus, he was aware of something in the air, as one is aware of a draft. He glanced up.
She was standing in the doorway.
She had one hand on the glass. She was in her dark red coat, with snow on her shoulders, and a bag of books, and she was looking at the table. She was looking at the woman in his chair, and the brown hand lying on his sleeve, and the sheet of paper between them, and Maya's gold hoops, which swung when she laughed. Her face was perfectly still.
He lifted a hand.
She did not wave. She stood for a long, odd, rooted moment, as though she had forgotten how to enter a room, and then she did a thing he had never seen her do. She turned round.
She went to the counter.
It was ridiculous. She knew that. She stood at the counter of Ruth's, in her wet coat, with her ring turned inward on her finger, and gave an order to Mia that she had given forty times, in a voice so level that she could hear the effort in it, and she knew perfectly well that she was being absurd.
It's a colleague, she said to herself.
It's a colleague, in a nice dress, who's sitting in his chair.
It was not the chair. It was not a thing she would have said aloud, even to herself, in the dark. It was the hand. It was a long brown hand with a silver ring, resting on a gray sleeve, lightly, casually, as though it had been there for years. It was the way he had been laughing. She had seen it from the door. It was that great helpless shoulder-shaking laugh, with his head back and his eyes screwed up, the one that she had thought, in a corner of her mind, was a thing she had made.
It's mine, thought Sarah.
She heard it. It was a small, flat, entirely unreasonable sentence, and it went through her like a cold wire, and she stood stock-still, with the order half given, and her mouth open, and every nerve in her body alive.
"You okay?" said Mia.
"Fine."
"You look funny."
"I'm fine. I'd like it to go."
"To go?"
"In a cup. Please."
Mia looked at her. She looked, past her, at the corner table, and the tall woman in the bright yellow dress, and the man with his back half turned. She did not say anything for a moment. Then she pushed the lid across the counter, without a word, and said, in a quiet voice, "It's not what you think."
"I don't think anything."
"Okay."
"I'm just in a hurry."
"Sure," said Mia. "I'll make it hot."
She went out into the snow. She walked down Elm Street at a pace that was nearly a run, with the paper cup clutched in both hands. She did not know where she was going. She turned at the bakery, and stopped under a lamp, and found that her face was burning and her hands were shaking so that the chai had slopped over the lid.
What is wrong with you?
You're engaged.
You have a ring.
He can laugh at whatever he likes.
She leaned against a wall. The brick was cold through her coat. She breathed in, and out. She drank the chai, and it was exactly as she liked it, and she could not taste a thing.
She walked home in the snow.
She did not look at her phone. When it lit, at 6:12, in her pocket, she did not take it out. Everything ok? it said, in a gray bubble. It was from Daniel. She stood in the hall of her building with her back to the door, and read it, and did not answer. She went up the stairs. She sat on the bed in the dark in her coat, with the empty cup in her hand, and she thought, I'm jealous.
She said it out loud.
It was a very small word, in a very small room. It sounded, in her own voice, foolish. It sounded like a child's.
She sat there for a while.
Then she did what she always did. She got up, and took off her coat, and hung it in the closet, and washed her face. She made herself some toast. She put on the radio, and the crossword, and did the whole of the top half in pen, fast, with her jaw set. She did not look at seven across.
When Mark rang at nine, she was perfectly cheerful.
It was Daniel who saw the other man.
It was nearly two weeks later, on a Thursday. He was dropping off a stack of flyers for the Robotics Fair, which was a large and unwieldy affair, with a bake sale. He had not planned to stay. He walked in at ten to four, with a roll of tape in one hand and the flyers under his arm, and she was at the children's desk with her back to him, talking to a man.
The man was perhaps thirty-two. He had sandy hair, and a nice open face, and a long navy coat, and a toddler on his hip in a yellow hat. He was leaning on the desk. He was leaning a long way. He had one elbow on the counter, and was looking at her with that bright, attentive, delighted look that Daniel knew so well from his own mirror, and was saying something that made her laugh.
It was her real laugh. He could hear it from across the room.
"No, honestly," the man was saying. "I've been trying to find a book about a bear for her for a week. She's very specific. It has to be a bear who's sad."
"Sad."
"But in a hopeful way."
"I think I know the one." She was pulling a book from the shelf behind her. She was smiling. She was blushing, a little, across the bridge of her nose, and she tucked her hair behind her ear. "It's called Bear Misses the Sun. It's about winter. He's very, there's a bird. It's a good one."
"You're a genius."
"It's the job."
"No, it's you." The man grinned. "I've been in three libraries. You're the only one who didn't look at me as though I was making it up."
"That's a lot of libraries."
"I'm a dedicated father. I'm Josh, by the way."
"Sarah."
"I know. It's on your badge." He held out his free hand. "I'd, look, I hope this isn't, I wondered. Would you maybe like to get a coffee sometime? Not as, I mean as a way of saying thanks. I'm new in town. I don't know a soul."
She hesitated.
It was a very small hesitation. It was no more than a breath. Daniel, ten feet away, with a roll of tape in his hand, saw it as he might have seen a small bird lift off a wire. He saw her hand go to her sleeve. He saw her look down at it, slowly, as if she had forgotten what was on it.
"I'm engaged," said Sarah.
"Oh." The man's face fell. It was a sweet, rueful, honest fall. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't see. You're not wearing a, I didn't notice a ring."
"It's, I take it off. At work. For the glue."
"The glue?"
"For the crafts."
"Right. Of course." He laughed, embarrassed. "That's very, I should've, I'm sorry. Congratulations."
"Thank you."
"He's a lucky man."
"That's very kind," said Sarah, in a small bright voice.
She did not look round. She did not know that he was there. He stood in the doorway, a long way off, with a stack of paper in his arm, and he saw her pick up a pen, and put it down, and tuck her hair behind her ear once more. He saw her rub the empty third finger of her left hand with her right thumb. It was a quick, absent, unconscious motion, like a woman rubbing a place that has gone numb.
She takes it off.
At work.
For the glue.
He felt something happen in his chest. It was very small, and very hot, and very mean. He knew precisely what it was. It was a glad, fierce, shameful flicker, like a match struck in a dark room, and he stood there in his gray sweatshirt in the doorway of a public library, hating himself, with an expression on his face that would have alarmed a child.
And under it, much larger, he felt the other one.
It was a slow heavy heat. It started in his stomach, and it climbed. It was the man's elbow on the counter, and his easy, open, unembarrassed voice. You're a genius. It was the sandy hair, and the daughter in the yellow hat, and the kind eyes. He was a good-looking man. He was a nice man. He had asked her out without a trace of calculation, in front of a child, in the plainest way, and been turned down with a smile, and gone away happy.
That's all you'd have to do, thought Daniel.
You could say it. Just like that. In the open.
And you can't.
He put the flyers down on the nearest table. He did it with great care, squaring the edges. He found, to his surprise, that his hand was not quite steady.
"Daniel?"
He turned.
She had seen him. She was standing behind the desk, with her hand at her throat, and her eyes wide. She looked, if anything, more shaken than he did.
"Hi," he said.
"Hi."
"I've brought the, there's a fair. It's the Robotics. In April."
"Oh. Yes. Great."
"There's a bake sale."
"That's, wonderful."
"I'm sorry. I'll just. I'll leave them." He was backing away. The man with the toddler had gone to the picture-book shelf, and was holding up a bear. "I didn't mean to, I wasn't."
"It's fine."
"I'll see you Tuesday."
"Tuesday."
"Good. Okay." He stopped at the door. He turned. He had no idea why he said the next thing, or how it came out. It was a stupid thing. It was, in a way, the most truthful thing he had said in a month. "He seems nice."
"Who?"
"The man. With the bear."
"He's a patron."
"He seemed very, he was very friendly."
"He's a father."
"I'm only saying."
"Is this about Maya?" said Sarah.
It came out so fast, and so loud, and so entirely without a plan, that it hit the air like a dropped tray. The man at the picture books turned his head. Two grandmothers at the nonfiction shelf lowered their novels. A very small girl on the rug looked up from her reading, with her mouth open.
Sarah's face went scarlet.
"Sorry," she said. "That was, I don't know why I, that was a stupid thing to say."
"Maya?" said Daniel.
"The woman. At Ruth's. In the yellow."
"She's a colleague."
"She was very, she seemed very comfortable."
"She's the history teacher."
"I'm sure she's wonderful."
"She is. She's got a, she's got a husband. His name's Tunde. He plays the trombone."
There was a pause.
"Oh," said Sarah.
"They have a, there's a baby. Due in June."
"Oh."
"She was planning the assembly."
"Right."
"With a clipboard," said Daniel.
They stood there, ten feet apart, in the middle of a public library, in the cold fluorescent light, in front of two grandmothers and a small girl. Neither of them had the faintest idea what to say. They were both, visibly, scarlet. And then, after a long moment, helplessly, as if some small catch had been released, Sarah put her hand over her mouth.
She was shaking.
It took him a second to see that it was laughter. It was soundless. It was a thin, strangled, hiccuping thing that bent her over the desk, with her eyes screwed shut and her free hand pressed flat against her ribs, and he stood in the doorway with his mouth open, and felt it go through him like a wave.
"I'm sorry," she gasped. "I'm so sorry. I'm, I can't."
"It's fine."
"I accused you of a, in public."
"You did."
"You've got a pregnant colleague."
"I do."
"I'm a monster."
"You're a librarian," said Daniel. He was laughing too. He had to hold on to the door. "It's the same thing."
She straightened. She wiped her eyes. She looked at him, flushed and bright and wet-lashed, across the room, with the small square diamond glinting on the finger that she had put back, at some moment in the last minute, without either of them seeing.
Neither of us said it, thought Daniel.
He saw her think the same. It was there in her face, plain, for the space of a heartbeat. It lay between them like a coin on the carpet, in the open, in the light, with two grandmothers and a girl in a yellow hat all politely looking away. It was a question, and it was a very large one. They both saw it. Neither of them picked it up.
"Tuesday," said Sarah, quietly.
"Tuesday," said Daniel.
He went out.
He walked a block before he realized that he had left the tape.