Chapter 20
Love Isn't Perfect
They talked about it in the morning, over toast, and it was a good conversation, and it solved nothing.
That was what Daniel would remember. It was a gray Saturday, the twenty-fifth of October, and they were at her kitchen table in the yellow light, with the radiator going and the crossword between them and two mugs of tea. He had slept on her couch, in his clothes, with a blanket, because she had said, I think I'd like to sleep on my own tonight, and he had said, of course. He had lain awake for four hours looking at the ceiling and hating himself with the dry thoroughness of a man doing his taxes.
She had put her hands round her cup. She had said it first.
"I want to tell you how it felt."
"Okay."
"I'm not saying it to, I'm not accusing you. I want you to hear it. As a thing that happened in me."
"Okay."
"I saw eight messages. And I felt, there was a, it went through me. It was very fast. It was like a hand on my neck." She looked at the tea. "And then I knew it was you. And it went away. But it had been there. For about a second. And I think I need you to know that it still, that it's still in me. The hand. I don't think it's your hand. I think it's his. It's still there."
He sat with that.
He had known it would be something like this. He had practiced his answer all night. He had a good one. It was sensible, and warm, and honest, and began with I'm not him. He heard himself begin to say it, and stopped.
"I'm sorry," said Daniel.
"It's not."
"No, I am. I scared you."
"You didn't scare me."
"You just said."
"I said I felt it. I didn't say you did it." She smiled, a little crookedly. "I'm trying to be, it's very hard to say. I don't think you did anything wrong. I think you got frightened, and called. I'd have done the same. It's only that it's the, it's a shape. It's a very old shape. And I'm only, I just want to be honest. About what it does to me."
"What does it do?"
"It makes me want to say I'm fine."
He took a moment. He turned his mug. He looked out at the gray fire escape, and a pigeon walking on the rail.
"Okay," he said. "I want to tell you about the sirens."
"The what?"
"My sister." He said it slowly. "When she was with Carl. For a year, at the end, I'd get a call. It'd be eleven. It'd be two. She'd say, I'm fine, I'm just calling. And I'd hear it. In her voice. And I'd drive over, in the, I'd have to. I'd sit outside in the car. For hours. To make sure the light in the kitchen went off." He drew a breath. "I did it for a year. I never, she never knew. I'd park across the road. I'd watch his window."
"Daniel."
"It's what I do. When I'm scared for someone. I go and I sit outside." He gave a short laugh. "I sat outside your building on Wednesday. For forty minutes. Before I called. I'm not, I wasn't going to tell you."
She did not move.
"I know it's, I can see how it sounds." His voice shook. "It's the thing I swore I'd never do. I told you in April. I said, I won't stand at the end of a road. And I did. I stood at the end of your road. With the dog."
"You were worried."
"I was terrified."
"Of what?"
"That you'd stopped, that you'd gone quiet. Because I'd done something." His eyes were bright. "And that you'd be sitting in the dark, and not say. Because you're good at that. You're so good at that. And I couldn't tell the difference. Between you being fine and you being a person who'd decided to look fine."
There was a long silence.
She put out her hand, and laid it over his. It was small, and warm, and not quite steady. She said, in a low voice, "That's the most honest thing you've ever said."
"It's not a good thing."
"It's honest."
"I don't want to be the man on the street."
"I know."
"I don't want to do that to you."
"I know," said Sarah. "So we'll make a rule."
It was her idea. It was very simple, and she wrote it on the back of an envelope, in pen, and stuck it on the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a pear.
1. If I'm going to be out late, I'll say. (Before.)
2. If I say I'm fine, and I'm not, I'll say so. (Eventually.)
3. If D. is worried, he calls ONCE. Then he waits an hour. Then he can call again.
4. Nobody sits outside.
He read it standing up. He read it twice, and bit his lip, and his eyes ran over. "I'd like to add a fifth," he said.
"Go on."
"5. Ask, don't assume."
"What does it mean?"
"I mean I'd like to, if I think there's something. I'll ask. And I won't decide what the answer is." He wrote it. His hand was not steady. "And if you think I'm doing it. If you feel the hand. You'll say."
"I will."
"Even if it's, even if it's a small."
"Even then."
"Good." He put the pen down. "It's a good rule. I'd like it framed."
"You'd like everything framed."
"I've got a Red Flag sauce in a glass case."
She laughed. She put her arms round his waist, and her face against his shirt. It was warm, and smelled of dog and laundry soap. He held her, with his chin on her hair, and felt the whole room grow still and soft round them like a wrapped parcel. It was all right. It was going to be all right. They had talked. They had made a rule. It was the very thing that he had read about, in a book his sister had given him, once, on healthy communication.
It was exactly how it was supposed to go.
He did not know why he had the strange small feeling, with his cheek on her head, that it was a good deal too easy.
November came in wet.
It was a month of rain, and early dark, and the smell of burned leaves. The robotics fair went well. Priya won a ribbon for a machine that folded socks, and cried on Daniel's shirt. Owen had a birthday. Sarah ran a story hour for a hundred and twenty children in a gym, with a bear costume, and came home with a split seam and a sprained wrist and the happiest face he had ever seen. They were busy. They were so busy that a week would go by in a long bright blur, like the windows of a passing train.
And he found, on certain evenings, that he could not stop doing it.
It was nothing. It was very small. It was a thing that he told himself was only love, and then, as the weeks went on, a thing he told himself was only sense. He would say, at the door, text me when you're home. And she would say, I will. And she did. And he would sit on the couch with his phone on his knee, and the dog on his foot, and watch the clock. He would be fine, until it was nine minutes. Then he would be fine, until it was twelve. At fifteen, something in him began to hum, a small high thin wire of sound. At twenty, he picked up the phone.
He did not call. That was in the rules.
He texted. It was a different thing. He said it to himself. He wrote, home? with a question mark, and then nothing else, and she would answer in half a minute, yes! sorry! and he would feel the whole of his body unclench, shamefully, like a hand opening.
I'm not doing it, he told himself. It's one word.
It's allowed.
It was on the sixth of November that he drove behind her.
She had a late event. It was a talk, on a rainy Thursday, a woman from the state library, in a church hall on Pine Street. It ended at nine-thirty. He had said, cheerfully, that he'd pick her up. She had said, I've got the car, and he had said, of course. He had done his grading. He had made tea. At twenty past nine, he had put on his coat, and said to the dog, I'm just going to get some milk.
He parked on Pine Street.
He told himself he would only be a minute. It was a dark road, and the church hall was lit like a ship. He sat in the car with the engine off and the wipers still, and watched the doors. People came out in twos and threes. They put up umbrellas. At ten to ten, a small figure in a red coat appeared at the top of the steps, with a large tote bag and a rolled-up poster, and spoke with a man in a gray suit, and laughed.
It was the man with the bear.
He saw it from half a block away. It was plain. It was Josh, with his sandy hair, and his nice open face, and no toddler this time. He was holding an umbrella over her head. He was saying something. He was leaning, very slightly, in the way that he had leaned at the desk in March.
He's a patron, thought Daniel.
He's a father. He's got a daughter.
She's not interested.
He knew all of it. He sat very still and told it to himself, calmly, in order, with his hands in his lap. He watched the man put a card in her hand. It was a small white rectangle. She looked at it. She smiled, and nodded, and tucked it into her bag, and he saw the umbrella move, and her wave, and she went down the steps alone in the rain.
She walked to her car.
It was a long way down the road. He watched her go. He watched the red coat under the lamps, a small bright figure, bending her head. He watched her unlock the Civic. He watched her get in. The lights came on. She sat there for about a minute, with the engine running, still, and his heart went into his throat.
Then she drove off.
He did not follow. He did not even turn the key. He sat with his forehead against the wheel for a long time, with the rain on the roof, and a feeling in his stomach like a cold coin. I did it, he thought. I sat outside.
He drove home. He was careful. He took the long way.
He was at the stove when she texted. It was 10:21. home! was lovely. i missed you. josh from the bear book was there, he's the one with the little girl, he says hi. xx
He read it standing up.
She had told him.
She had told him, plainly, in the first paragraph, with a kiss. She had said Josh, and hi, and not one word of anything wrong. He stood at the stove in the warm steam and read it three times, and felt the cold coin in his stomach turn, very slowly, to something hot, and shameful, and very heavy.
She trusts you, he thought.
She trusts you, and you were out there.
He typed. so glad. missed you too. He deleted it. He typed, i love you, and deleted it. He typed, i was outside, and looked at it for a very long time, with the cursor blinking, and the dog watching, and the pot boiling over on the stove.
He deleted that too.
She did not tell him about the email.
It came on the eleventh. She read it on her lunch break, in the staff room, with a cheese sandwich going dry in her hand. It was a short one. It was from Mark Hollis. It said that he hoped she was well. It said that he was doing very well himself. It said that he had been seeing Dr. Ellis for seven months, and had learned a good deal, and that he'd been wondering whether she might be willing, once, for half an hour, to have a coffee.
Not to ask for anything, it said. Only because there are things I'd like to say that I couldn't say in the park. I understand if you say no. You don't owe me an answer. I only thought it might be good for both of us to have an ending that wasn't a gate.
She read it three times.
She told Tessa, that afternoon, in the stacks, in a whisper. Tessa said, in a flat, careful voice, "Do you want to?"
"I don't know."
"What does your gut say?"
"That it's fine." She was standing with a stack of picture books against her chest. "It's not, I don't want to. I don't want him back. I just, I think I'd like to say it. Properly. I think I'd like to close the door. I said goodbye at a gate. It wasn't, it was messy."
"And Daniel?"
"What about him?"
"What does he think?"
"I haven't told him."
"Sarah."
"I'm going to. I will. It's just that I think he'll, you know how he gets. It's very small. And he's got so much, he's had such a, I don't want to put it on him. It's not his, it's my own thing." She was blushing. "I'll tell him after. When it's done. When there's nothing to tell."
"That's, I don't think that's what the rule says."
"What rule?"
"The one on your fridge." Tessa raised an eyebrow. "If I say I'm fine, and I'm not, I'll say so."
"I'm fine."
"Are you?"
"It's coffee," said Sarah.
She met him on the twenty-first, at a small quiet café on the north side, where nobody went.
He was waiting at a window table. He stood when she came in. He looked well. That was the first thing. He had gained back the weight. He was in a gray sweater, and his hair was cut, and his eyes were clear, and rested, and a little shy. He did not try to kiss her cheek. He held out a hand, and she shook it, and they sat.
They talked for forty minutes.
It was a good talk. It was not painful. He said that he was sorry, again, and clearly, without a trace of self-pity. He said that he had been to a group. He said that his therapist had told him a thing that he had never forgotten, that you cannot love someone into staying, and that he'd thought about it every day. He said that he'd met a woman, a few weeks ago, a dentist, in a book club. He said that he had not asked her where she was.
"I wanted to tell you," said Mark. "In case you were, I thought you might worry. I'm not asking you to, I don't need your, I'm happy."
"I'm really glad."
"Are you?"
"I am."
"And you? You look, you're, you look different."
"I think I am."
"Is it him?"
She hesitated. She did not look at his face. She looked at her cup. She said, after a moment, "It's me. I think. And a bit of him."
"That's a good answer."
"It's the true one."
"I thought it might be." He smiled. It was rueful and warm. "He's a lucky man."
"I'm a lucky woman."
"Good." He looked out of the window. "That's all I wanted. I wanted to hear you say it, and not, I wanted to see your face, and for it not to hurt." He drew a long breath. "It doesn't. I thought it would. It's like a, there's a scar. I can touch it."
"I'm glad."
"I want you to be happy."
"I know."
"I'll go first," said Mark. He stood. He put a ten-dollar bill under his saucer. "Is that, would you mind? I think it's easier. If I'm the one who walks."
"Of course."
"Goodbye, Sarah."
"Goodbye, Mark."
He went out into the gray street. She watched him through the glass, a tall fair man in a gray sweater, walking easily, with his hands out of his pockets. At the corner he paused, and looked back, and lifted one hand, and she lifted hers. Then he turned, and was gone.
She sat there.
She had thought that she would cry. She did not. She sat in the warm café with her hands round a cup, and listened, in herself, for a long time, and there was only a small, slow, quiet tenderness, such as one feels for a house in which one used to live. It was all right. It was finished. A door had been closed, softly, from both sides.
She felt wonderful.
She felt, in fact, so clean and light and glad that all the way home on the bus she was smiling at strangers. She got off at Elm Street. She walked up Pearl in the early dark, with her hands swinging. She thought, I'll tell him tonight. I'll tell him over dinner. I'll say, I had coffee with Mark, and it was good, and it's done.
She would tell him in a bright, easy voice.
It would not matter. It was a very small thing. He would say, oh, that's great, I'm really glad. And they would eat soup.
She went up the stairs.
She did not tell him that night.
It was not a decision. It was the dog, who had thrown up on the rug. It was a bad day at school, which she could see on his face from the door. It was a pot that boiled over, and a phone call from Nina, and a bit of homework that had to be done. It was the rule on the refrigerator, and the pear, and the way he looked at her across the table, with his hand over hers, saying, I'm so glad you're here. She opened her mouth three times. Each time, the sentence got a little heavier, and the moment a little less right.
Tomorrow, she thought.
It's not a secret. It's only a thing I haven't said yet.
She heard it as she thought it. It rang in her head, clearly, like a bell in a distant room. She had thought it before. She had thought it on a gray November morning, a year ago, in a yellow kitchen, with a phone in her hand.
She put it away.
It did not feel like a lie. That was what she would remember. It felt like kindness. It felt like sparing him a little worry, on a night when he had enough. She lay beside him in the dark, with her head on his chest, and his hand in her hair, and the dog snoring on the rug, and she felt the whole warm weight of him, and she told herself that she would say it in the morning.
In the morning, she did not.
She had meant to. She had it ready. But he was making pancakes, in her kitchen, in a pair of her mother's old oven mitts, singing a tuneless song about a squirrel, and the light was gold on his hair, and it seemed a shame to put a stone in the batter.
It's done, she thought. It's finished. There's no need.
She sat down at the table, and picked up a pen, and did seven across.
It was still blank.