Chapter 21
The Fight
It was a laptop that did it.
Not a letter, or a message, or a mutual friend. It was a laptop, open on a kitchen table, on the ninth of December, at ten past seven in the evening. It lay between a bowl of onions and a bottle of olive oil. It was Sarah's, a small silver one with a sticker of a bear on the lid, and she had left it open at four, when she came in from work, and gone to take a shower. Daniel had arrived at six. He had a key now. He had put down his bag and the dog's lead and a paper sack of groceries, and begun, happily, to make a risotto.
It was the first time he had tried. He had read three recipes. He was stirring with great concentration, wearing the apron that said KISS THE LIBRARIAN, and singing, under his breath, the one about the squirrel.
The screen lit.
It was only a notification. It slid in at the top right, small and gray, with a soft chime, as such things do. He did not mean to look. He had a wooden spoon in one hand and a ladle of stock in the other. But his eyes went to it, in the half-second between one stir and the next, because the chime was so quiet, and the name was so plain.
Mark Hollis.
Thank you for meeting me on the 21st. It meant more than I can say. I hope the holidays
It stopped there. It had been cut off, at the edge of the box, by a little gray ellipsis.
He stood still.
He did not stop stirring. It was odd, afterward, to think of that. His hand went on, round and round, in a slow figure of eight, and the rice shifted in the pan, and a cloud of fragrant steam came up past his chin. He read the notification. He read it as one reads an address on a gravestone, with his whole attention, and nothing at all in his mind.
The 21st.
It was a Friday. He had been at robotics. He had come to her place at seven, and they had eaten soup. She had been so happy. She had laughed at his joke about the sock-folding machine. She had said, I had a lovely day, and touched his cheek.
It meant more than I can say.
The notification faded.
The screen went dark. He was left looking at his own reflection in the black glass, a tall pale man in an apron, holding a spoon.
Ask, he thought.
Don't assume.
He turned off the burner. His hand was not steady. He moved the pan to the back of the stove, and put the spoon on the saucer, and stood with both palms flat on the counter. He thought of what his sister would say. He thought of the card on the refrigerator, in her round small hand, and the pear magnet. Five. Ask, don't assume. He had written it himself.
It's a rule. You follow it.
You don't sit outside.
He heard the shower stop.
She came in with her hair in a towel.
She was in the gray sweatshirt that she wore in the evenings, and a pair of striped socks, and her face was pink and clean and sleepy. She stopped in the doorway of the kitchen. She sniffed. "It smells so good," she said. "Is it ready?"
"Nearly."
"What is it?"
"Risotto."
"Oh, Daniel."
"I know. It's, I've never, I'm not sure."
"It's the nicest thing." She crossed to him, and put her arms round his waist, and her wet head against his shoulder. She smelled of soap and cinnamon. "I'm going to eat the whole pot."
He did not hold her.
He felt it as he stood. His arms were at his sides. He had not moved them, and she felt the not-moving, and went still. After a moment she drew back, with her hands on his ribs, and looked up into his face.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"Daniel."
"It's, nothing's wrong. I'd like to ask you something. If that's all right."
"Of course."
"It might, it's not a, I'm not angry. I want you to know that. I'm going to ask it, and I'd like you to tell me. And whatever the answer is, I'd like to hear it first before I say anything." He heard his own voice. It was low, and flat, and very careful. "Can I?"
She had taken her hands away.
She did it slowly. She stood there, with the towel sliding on her head, and her arms came round to her front, and one hand found the opposite sleeve. He watched it. He watched her pull it down, over her knuckles, into her fist. He saw her face go smooth.
"Yes," said Sarah.
"Did you see Mark on the twenty-first?"
She did not look away.
That was the thing that he would remember. She could have. She did not. She stood there, in the light of the kitchen, with a towel half falling off her head and a wet strand across her cheek, and she met his eyes. She was very pale. She had gone, in the space of a breath, as white as milk.
"Yes," she said.
"Okay."
"I was going to tell you."
"Okay."
"I was going to tell you that night. I swear. It's only that you came, and the dog was, and you were, it was a bad day, and." She took a breath. "I'm sorry. I didn't tell you. I should have. I know that. I know what the rule says."
"It wasn't a rule about that."
"It was the, if I say I'm fine."
"You didn't say you were fine. You didn't say anything." He heard it come out sharper than he had meant. He put it back. "I'm sorry. I said I wouldn't. Please go on."
"He emailed. On the eleventh. He asked if we could have a coffee. To close it. He said that he'd, that it was something he needed. And I thought, I thought I did too." She was talking faster. "I met him. At a café. On the north side. For forty minutes. It was perfectly, it was all right. He's seeing a woman. He's well. We said goodbye. That's all. It was a goodbye."
"Okay."
"Nothing happened."
"I believe you."
"Then why are you're looking at me, you're looking like."
"Like what?"
"Like I've done something."
"Have you?"
"I had coffee."
"I know." He drew a long breath. He gripped the edge of the counter. "I'm not, it's not that you saw him. I want to be very clear. I'm not, if you needed to, if it was the right thing, I'd have been, I'd have driven you. I'd have waited in the car."
"Don't say waited in the car."
"I'm only saying."
"That's the thing, that's what you do."
"What does that mean?"
"I knew you'd say that." She had gone red. It came up, in two bright patches, on her cheekbones. "I knew you'd want to drive me. I knew you'd be, you'd be so, you'd say of course, and you'd be kind, and you'd go quiet. And then you'd text me every ten minutes. Home? Home? Home?" She laughed, a high, wobbling, awful laugh. "I couldn't do it. I'd just, I wanted to do one thing, by myself, for once, without."
"Without me."
"Without worry."
"I don't worry."
"You do."
"I don't, I'm not, I'm not, that's not."
"You do it all the time!" It broke out of her, hot and shaking. "You do it with every, text me when you're home. Every night. And it's nice. I love it. And then it's twenty minutes, and you're, I can feel it. I can feel you sitting there. I can feel you looking at the clock."
He stared at her.
"I don't mind," she said, more quietly. "I told you. I said I don't mind. I said it was a thing we'd, that we'd work out. But I don't know how to tell you that it's, that it's still there. That I'm still, I can't get a thing to be mine. I can't have a coffee with a man I used to love without thinking about you, waiting. And I resent it. And I hate that I resent it. And I'm so tired."
It was very quiet.
It was a thick, still, heavy quiet, in a warm kitchen, with a pan of risotto going cold on the stove. A drop of water fell from her hair onto the floor.
"I sat outside," said Daniel.
He had not planned to say it.
It came out of him as a thing comes up from a deep place in a well, slowly and then all at once, and he heard it with a kind of cold distant interest, as one listens to one's own voice on a recording. He stood very straight, with his hands at his sides. He said it to a point about a foot above her left shoulder.
"The sixth. A Thursday. The talk, at the church hall. On Pine Street."
"What?"
"I said I'd get milk. I drove there. I parked across the road. I sat in the car for forty minutes and watched the doors."
She did not move.
"I saw you come out. I saw him. Josh. He gave you a card. I saw you walk to your car, and sit there, for a minute. And I thought, she's thinking about it. I thought, she's reading the card." His voice cracked. "I didn't follow you. I went home. And I read your text, and you'd said his name, you'd told me, and I stood in the kitchen and thought, I'm the one who's lying."
"You said you wouldn't."
"I know."
"We made a rule."
"I know."
"Nobody sits outside."
"I know what it says. I wrote half of it." He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. "I'm sorry. I'd like to say I didn't mean to. I did. I sat there on purpose. I knew exactly what I was doing. I just, I couldn't stop."
She had put her hand to her mouth.
"And you didn't tell me."
"No."
"For a month."
"For, yes."
"You've been, every night you've, you looked at me. In the, you looked at me over soup. And you said I'm so glad you're here. And you'd been in a car."
"I know."
"You were hiding."
"So were you!"
It came out as a shout.
It rang off the cupboards. The dog, in the doorway, got up, and put his tail between his legs, and backed into the hall. They stood on either side of the kitchen table, six feet apart. They stared at each other. And Daniel, who had never in his life raised his voice to a woman, heard it go on, as a wave goes on, with a force he could not have stopped.
"I did a bad thing. And you did a bad thing. And we're both standing here saying you. But you hid it for two weeks, and I hid mine for one, and I'm the one in the wrong?"
"I didn't say that."
"You said I'm smothering you."
"I said it's hard!"
"You said you resent me."
"I said I'm tired!"
"That's not a thing a person says to someone they, it's a thing you say to him. You said it to the man in the, I couldn't breathe. I'm not him, Sarah."
"I know you're not."
"Then stop looking at me like I am!"
There was a terrible silence.
He heard it. He stood there with his chest heaving, and the words hanging in the air, and saw her face change. It was a very small thing. It was a flinch. It went through her body like a wire. She pulled her sleeve down over her hand, hard, and held it there in a fist against her ribs.
"Like what?" said Sarah. Her voice was thin.
"I didn't, I didn't mean."
"How am I looking at you?"
"Sarah."
"Tell me. How do I look?"
He could not say.
He stood there with his mouth open, and the whole of his anger draining out through his boots. He saw what he had said. It lay in the air. It was not an accusation. It was a plain, true, appalling observation, like a stain that has been there for months, and has been cleaned round, and suddenly the light falls on it.
"You look careful," said Daniel.
She closed her eyes.
"You look like you're waiting. For the, for me to turn." He took a step. He stopped. "I see it. I've seen it for weeks. I walk into a room, and you look up, and there's a half-second. Where you check. I tell myself it's not, I tell myself it's his. It's what he did. It's a habit. It'll go. But it, Sarah, it doesn't go."
"It's not you."
"It's me. It's me now. It's, I'm the one in the room. I'm the one who gets it." He had begun to shake. "And I can't, I don't know how to make it, I can't get you to see me. I'm doing everything right. I'm trying. I'd cut off my hand. And you still look at me like I'm a thing that might go off."
"I'm trying."
"I know you are."
"I'm trying so hard. I don't know what else, I can't just turn it off. It's not a switch." She was crying now. "It's three years. It's in my, it's in my shoulders. You think I don't want to? You think I like it? I'd give anything. I'd give my right arm to look at you and not."
"Then don't."
"I can't!"
"Then I don't know what to do!" said Daniel.
It went on for another quarter of an hour.
He would not remember all of it. It did not come back in order, afterward, but in pieces, like pieces of a plate. He remembered saying, you lied. He remembered her saying, I didn't lie, I didn't tell you, and him saying, that's the same, and her saying, it is not the same. He remembered that she said, you went and sat in a car, and that he said, you went and sat in a café, and that for some time they had said it back and forth, like a game of catch, until it had no meaning at all.
He remembered that he said, I feel like I'm competing with a ghost.
He remembered that her face went still.
"It's not a ghost," said Sarah. "It's a person. It's a man who was, he held me up. When my father died. I can't, I won't pretend it didn't happen so that you can feel more, so you can feel comfortable. You don't get to make three years not a thing."
"I'm not asking you to."
"You are. You're asking me to be someone who doesn't have it in her. Who doesn't have a, who doesn't look. You want me to be clean."
"I want you to trust me."
"I do."
"You don't. You don't, you can't. You hide things. You put them in a drawer, and you smile, and you say I'll tell you tomorrow. And I've sat there, for a year, telling myself that it's the old habit. That it'll heal. That I'll be patient. And I'm so tired of being patient." His voice broke. "I'm so tired of being the one who waits."
She had gone gray.
"You said," she whispered. "You said you weren't."
"I know."
"In April. You said, I won't be waiting."
"I lied."
"You lied?"
"I'm a person. I'm, I wanted to be. I told myself, I wanted so badly to be the good one. The one who didn't." He wiped his face. "And I've been standing at the end of the road since October. A year ago. And I'm sick of it. I'm sick, I'd like to stop."
"Then stop."
"I can't, because I."
"Then stop." She was shouting now. "If it's so hard. If I'm, if I'm a house you have to wait outside, then go. Go and be, find someone easy. Find a person who doesn't, who hasn't got a past. I don't want a man who's tired. I've been looked after by tired men. I'd rather be alone."
"That isn't fair."
"It's the truth."
"It's the cruelest thing you've ever, you know it's not what I meant."
"What did you mean?"
"I meant I'm scared!" he cried.
It was the worst of it. It filled the little kitchen like smoke. He stood there, panting, with his hands out, palms up, and tears running down his face, and he could not take a single word back. She was staring at him. She was shaking, and white, and had her fist against her mouth.
"Maybe," said Sarah, in a small cracked voice, "maybe it's always like this."
"What?"
"I thought it'd be different. I thought, if it was a good person. If it was someone gentle. I thought it'd be the, that it would never come to this." She wiped her cheeks, roughly, with the back of her wrist. "But maybe that's how it goes. Maybe every, I think every one just, it just gets to be a thing like this. A man who's afraid, and a woman who hides. Maybe that's all there is."
"That's not true."
"How do you know?"
"I don't. I just, I believe."
"I can't believe it," said Sarah. "I'm sorry. I'd like to. I really would. But I look at us, and I think, I've done this. It's the same room."
She said it very quietly.
He had thought that nothing could be worse than a shout. It was this. It was her voice, flat and small and worn, saying a thing that had no heat in it at all. It was the sound of a person who has put a heavy bag on the ground, and is looking at it, and does not know whether she can pick it up again.
"Maybe I never left him," she said.
He did not answer.
He could not. He stood in the middle of her kitchen with his arms hanging and the dog whining in the hall, and a pan of ruined risotto on the stove, and he felt the whole structure of the last year, the corner table, and the thermos, and the plum-colored bicycle, and a long, quiet, golden September, go over in him like a house in a flood. It did not crash. It went slowly. It leaned, and swayed, and sank.
"Okay," said Daniel.
He heard it. He had said it so often. It was the little breath, and the word. He had said it on a bench, and in a hall, and a gray morning. It was the word that he said before bad news.
"Okay," he said again. "I think I'd better go."
She did not say, Don't.
She stood still. Her fist was pressed to her chest. Her eyes were wide and swimming, and fixed on his, and he waited. He waited for one second, two. A man who has been told to wait will always wait for one second more. And she did not move, and she did not speak, and the clock on the stove ticked, and a pipe knocked in the wall.
He took off the apron.
He folded it. He did it carefully, in three, and laid it on the table beside the laptop. He took his jacket from the back of the chair. He said, "Pickles," and the dog came, with his head down, and his one good ear flat. He clipped on the lead. His hands shook so that it took three tries.
At the door, he stopped. He did not turn round.
"I'm sorry," he said. "For all of it. I'm sorry I sat in the car. I'm sorry I said you, I'm sorry I said careful. It's not, it's not what I think you are."
"What do you think I am?"
He thought.
"I think you're the bravest person I've ever met," said Daniel. "I just can't be the one who proves it to you."
He went out.
She stood in the kitchen until she heard the street door.
It shut with a soft, final, ordinary click. Boots on the stairs. A car engine, catching, on the third try. A long way off, the sound of tires on wet pavement, diminishing, and then nothing at all. She did not move. She stood at the table in her striped socks, with a wet towel round her neck, and the risotto turned slowly to glue on the stove.
Say something, she thought. Say it now.
Run to the window. Call out.
She did not.
She stood there until the stove clock said eight-fifteen. Then she picked up the pan, and carried it to the sink, and scraped it, all of it, into the trash. She ran the water. She washed the spoon. She washed the ladle, and the saucer, and the pan, and dried each one carefully on a towel, and put it away. She wiped the counter. She picked up an onion from the floor, and put it in a bowl.
On the kitchen table, beside her closed laptop, lay a blue-and-white striped apron, folded in three.
She looked at it for a long time.
Then she did what she had always done. She went to the radio, and turned it on, and sat down at the table, and did the crossword. She did the whole of it, in pen, in order, without a mistake. She did it with a steady hand. At the end, there was one clue left, in the corner, with its six little boxes white and empty. She did not look at it.
She put down the pen.
She put her head on her arms, on the table, on the crossword, and the radio went on playing something with a piano, very softly, in the dark, and a single drop fell, very slowly, from the end of her nose, and spread, in a blue circle, on the page.
He drove to the river.
He did not know why. It was nearly nine. It was cold, and clear, and the stars were out, and he parked at the end of the cinder path by the old mill. He got out. He let the dog out. He walked, slowly, down the path, in the dark, with his hands in his pockets, under the bare cottonwoods, until he came to the bench.
It was empty.
He sat. The wood was icy through his jeans. The river went by, black and slow, with the lights of the far bank laid on it in long wavering ribbons. Pickles climbed up beside him with a groan, and put his chin on his knee. His breath hung in a small white cloud.
It's over, thought Daniel.
He did not feel it. He sat there waiting for it to hit him, as one waits for a wave. It did not. There was only a long, flat, numb quiet, and the smell of cold water, and a brass plate on the back of a bench that said WHO LIKED TO SIT.
He took out his phone.
He looked at it. He looked at it for a good while. He had a message to write, and he did not know what it was. He thought of a hundred. I'm sorry. Can we talk. I didn't mean it. He thought of the last, and saw it very clearly, and knew that he would not send it. I'm here.
I'm still here.
It was a thing he had promised himself that he would never say.
He put the phone away.
"Okay," said Daniel, to the river.
The dog sighed.
It was the worst night of his life, and nothing happened in it. He sat on a bench until eleven, and then went home, and sat on the kitchen floor with his back against the cabinet, as he had in February, and held the beagle in both arms. And the dog, for the first time in all the long months of their friendship, did not sigh, or groan, or look at him with an expression of disgust, but only turned, and put his head on his shoulder, and stayed there, still, until the light came.