“She’s ready for a kiss if you want to head up.”
Vivian grabbed her cell phone and walked past me, placing the clothes she’d removed on the bed in the master bedroom. There were two open suitcases, each of them already half packed and there were far more outfits than necessary for a three-day trip. There were business suits and workout clothes, casual wear and dresses more appropriate for dinner dates. I wasn’t sure why she was packing so much. Did she not intend to come home this weekend? Surely she would have mentioned that already… but then I realized that there was no reason to believe that. I would learn what was up when she wanted me to know. As I stared at the half-packed suitcases, the phrase corporate apartments leapt again to mind. Though I’d felt hollowed out when I’d been with London only moments ago, the emptiness had now been replaced with knots.
I couldn’t bear staring at the clothes any longer so I went to the kitchen and debated whether or not to pour myself a drink before deciding against it. Instead, I stood before the sink and absently stared at the backyard. The sun had gone down not long before, the sky still clinging to the last vestiges of daylight, and the moon had not yet risen. The resulting sky—a fast-fading twilight—struck me as strangely foreboding.
I felt a growing understanding emerging along with a creeping sense of fear. The more I thought about my wife, the more I accepted the notion that I no longer had any idea what she was thinking. About London, about me. About us. Somehow, despite the years we’d been together, she’d become a stranger to me. Though we’d made love only two nights earlier, I wondered if was because she loved me or because it was a habit, a lingering residue of the years we’d spent together, more physical than emotional. But that option, as heartbreaking as it felt to me, was better than the alternative—that she’d made love to me as a distraction, because she was doing or planning something even worse, something I didn’t even want to imagine.
I told myself that it wasn’t true and even if she was vacillating when it came to her feelings toward me, she would always want what was best for our family.
Wouldn’t she?
I didn’t know, but then I heard Vivian speaking in a low voice as she descended the stairs. I heard her say the name Walter and she told him to hold on; I knew that she didn’t want me to know she was on the phone. I heard the front door open and close. Though I shouldn’t have, I crept toward the living room. The drapes were closed, the living room already dark, and I stood behind the curtains, gazing through the opening between the fabric and the glass. I was spying on my wife, something I had never imagined doing before, but the rising fright made it feel as though my free will had vanished. I knew it was wrong, even as I was craning my neck and shifting the curtain—and by then it was too late to stop.
I could not hear much until Vivian laughed, a joyful sound, one that I hadn’t heard in what seemed like years. But it wasn’t simply the laugh that startled me; it was the way she smiled and the light in her eyes, the giddiness she radiated. Gone was the Vivian who’d come home surly from work or snarled at London; the irate Vivian who’d been in the master bedroom was nowhere to be seen.
I had seen that expression on Vivian’s face before in moments of undiluted happiness, often having to do with London. But I’d also glimpsed it when we were alone, back when I was younger and still single and courting a woman I’d met at a cocktail party in New York.
Vivian looked like she was in love.
By the time Vivian reentered the house, I was in the den. Afraid of what I might say, I avoided speaking with her. I didn’t want to spend time with her and I forced myself to review Taglieri’s script, the words meaning nothing at all, even as I read them.
I felt her move behind me, but only for an instant. I heard her footsteps recede to the master bedroom, where I knew she planned to fill both suitcases until they were nearly bulging.
I stayed in the den for an hour, then another, and finally a third hour. Vivian finally came back to check on me. I think she was caught off-guard by the fact that I hadn’t sought her out. The last she knew, I’d been comforting a crying London, and because she knew me, she assumed I would try to discuss the incident.
Now, though, like she’d done so often to me, I’d left her wondering what was going on.
“Are you coming to bed?”
“In a little while,” I answered without turning around. “I still have some work to do.”
“It’s getting late.”
“I know,” I said.
“I shouldn’t have yelled at London the way I did. I apologized when I tucked her in.”
“I’m glad,” I said. “She was upset.”
She waited. I still didn’t turn. She continued to wait but I added nothing more.
“Okay, whatever,” she finally said with a sigh. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” I whispered, but even as I said it, I had begun to wonder whether that really meant goodbye.
Thirteen days passed before I learned the truth.
I went to the agency the following day and found the perfect young actress for the commercial I envisioned; that commercial would film later in September, once a chunk of the editing on the first two had been completed. I rehearsed with Taglieri and we shot the commercial outside the courthouse the following day, and completed the voice-over for the second commercial. We filmed the second commercial, and the following week, I made the presentations to the two plastic surgeons. I left one of those meetings thinking I had a chance to land my second client, and went to work on a more detailed proposal.
As my first step, I immersed myself in the doctor’s website and studied the direct mailings he’d done in the past. They’d been designed by his office manager and they were all over the board when it came to the themes we’d discussed—safety, professionalism, improved self-image, and limited recovery time—and I had no doubt I could design a more cohesive campaign. After that, I reviewed a dozen websites for plastic surgeons around the country and touched base with my tech guy, getting a rough estimate of the costs.
From there, I got started, and I spent two full days putting my ideas into the kind of presentation that I thought was necessary for his business.
The hours I wasn’t working were devoted to London and taking care of the house. And the laundry. And the yard. And the hamsters. I brought London to and from school, piano, and dance—Vivian took her to art class on Saturday—and we rode our bikes on six separate days. By that point, London had grown confident enough on the final ride to let go of the handlebars for a couple of seconds on a flat and straight stretch of roadway.
We celebrated with lemonade on the back porch while we again looked for bald eagles.
As for Vivian, she returned on Friday evening, and spent most of the weekend with London. She was polite to me, but seemed intent to keep the two of us at a distance. I went to visit my parents on my own, and when she left on Monday morning, she brought along with her two more bulging suitcases. By then, the only things left in her closet were the clothes she seldom wore. She told me that she would be using one of the corporate apartments, but by then, I’d expected her to say exactly that.
She was gone all week. She FaceTimed with London every night at six and occasionally she tried to prod me into conversation. I couldn’t do it. She got angry with me about it on Tuesday and Thursday, and hung up on me when I still wouldn’t rise to the bait.