“So you never hear from him anymore?” I ask. “Leo?”
“No,” she says. “Not in a very long time…About a year after everything happened, he called. But I never called him back. I did send him a short letter, telling him an official goodbye and asking that he please not contact me again….Honestly, he could have died for all I know.”
“Yeah. He could have choked to death,” I say, forcing a smile.
She smiles back just as halfheartedly, then suddenly shifts gears. “Are you and Nolan doing okay?”
“I guess so,” I say, wiping my sweaty forehead with the back of my forearm. “I don’t know. He’s pretty frustrated with me.”
“Because of the second baby thing?”
“Yeah. That…and you know, the usual complaints—not enough sex…” I stop, never having been comfortable discussing my sex life with even my closest friends. “That’s how the subject of infidelity came up with Amy at my last session. She said, more or less, that if someone isn’t being satisfied on that front, they may start to look elsewhere….I guess it’s not really a revolutionary concept….”
Ellen nods and says, “Yeah. I guess not. Pretty cynical, though.”
“Yeah. Amy’s a cynic,” I say. “Or at the very least a realist…but I really can’t imagine Nolan cheating on me.”
“Yeah. I can’t, either,” she says. “He’s such a good guy.”
“So’s Andy,” I say. “We’re both really lucky.”
“Yeah. Hashtag blessed.”
I smile.
Ellen laughs, as we’ve both made fun of those nauseating Facebook posts that use a religious concept to justify their thinly veiled bragging. We walk in silence for a minute or more, both of us becoming a bit breathless, before she asks her next question. “So what about you? What if Lewis came back the way Leo did? Would you be at all…tempted?”
“I really don’t think so,” I say, almost wishing my dilemma were that straightforward. If I were contemplating an affair, or following a lustful impulse, then I could just stop, confess, and recommit, like Ellen did. Or, alternatively, I could make the other choice and go ahead and have the affair—which might be a catalyst for a different change altogether. “Not that I judge you,” I quickly add.
“Oh, I know you don’t,” she says.
“It’s just that I think I finally got over Lewis when I was practicing law in New York—and sneaked in to see him in a two-man off-Broadway show.” I smile. I’ve never admitted this to anyone.
She laughs. “He was that bad?”
“No. He was fucking brilliant,” I say. “But he seemed a little…I don’t know…”
“Self-important? Pompous?” she guesses.
“No. Just over the top…a little flamboyant,” I say.
We both laugh, and she says, “Could he be gay?”
“Nah,” I say, thinking of how incredible the sex with him was. “I doubt it. But I did try to convince myself that he might be. And that helped.”
She laughs again as I continue, “The thing that I miss the most about Lewis isn’t Lewis…but the way I felt when I was with him.”
“Do you think part of what you miss is just being young? In your twenties?” she asks.
I shrug. “Maybe a little. But I don’t think that’s it, exactly. Especially because my twenties were pretty rough.”
She nods, knowing that I’m talking about my brother.
“It’s more the way being in love made me feel about life….Our love even eased my grief over Daniel—at least for a while—and it just felt like we could do anything….Go anywhere, do anything, be anyone….The possibilities felt endless,” I say, holding my breath for a few seconds, remembering the crazy, intoxicating highs that came before the fall. “And then he broke my heart. Which felt a little bit like death.”
“Yeah. Broken hearts really do feel like death,” she says as we near the top of the hill, overlooking the baseball fields. “But it all worked out. Because you got Nolan.”
She says Nolan’s name the way people say The End. In other words: All’s well that ends well.
“Right,” I say, biting my lip.
In the distance, I can see Wilkins Field—and the exact spot in the dugout where Nolan proposed—and am saddened to realize that it’s more of a queasy memory than a magical one.
“And Harper,” she says.
“And of course Harper,” I say, thinking that sometimes my daughter is the only thing that keeps me from wanting a do-over.
As we continue to walk in silence, my mind drifts from Harper, to the second baby I don’t want to have, to Amy’s final question in my therapy session, to Ellen’s explanation of what kept her with Andy—a true, deep, real love—and I’m suddenly overcome with an intense wave of guilt and grief. For what I don’t have. For what I can’t give my husband.
“Meredith?” I hear Ellen say as I realize that I’ve stopped walking. “What’s wrong?”