Still, I knew how to battle with her. With a man, with HIM, everything is different. He smiles when I would have expected her to jab. He chuckles when she would have sneered. His eyes soften, are dipped in compassion and understanding—qualities I hadn’t expected her to possess.
In this fight, I don’t even know where to stand. I swallow. “You should have told me the truth.”
“I’m sorry about that,” he sighs, and he actually sounds sincere. It must be a cowboy thing, the ability to drag words along the ground and kick up emotional dust. “I’m not in the habit of telling anyone. My daughter and my agent. That’s all who know.” He leans forward, turning down the air conditioner. “Well, and now you.”
“And Kate.” I add quietly, and cracks form along the ridge of my anger. I, more than anyone, understand secrets. I understand how one person, one whisper of truth, can crumble empires, destroy lives, reveal monsters.
There was a day that I was a monster. And this man… he will soon have to carry that truth, hold that secret, guard that pit.
Maybe it isn’t a bad thing he’s kept this fa?ade for so long. The man can keep his mouth shut. It’s a tool that will, in the next few months, come in handy.
I look out the window, and feel some of my hate fade.
“It won’t be that bad.” He puts on his turn signal and merges into a space between two cars that an elephant would find tight. “I talk less when I write. It can only be an improvement to this.” He gestures in the open space of the cab, and I smile despite myself. This: (a noun) the awkward exchange of words between two opposites.
He turns right, and I watch a jogger stop, bouncing up and down in place, her eyes meeting mine through the window. “I can’t even picture you writing,” I admit. The thought of this man hunched over a laptop is amusing. He probably pecks at the keys with his pointer fingers. He probably double spaces the start of each sentence and forgets to save his work.
“It’s a very masculine endeavor. A lot of grunting and flexing.”
I laugh, the sound barking out of me, and I lift my hand to my mouth to cover the slip. “You’re not going to take this seriously.”
“It sounds like a dark book, Helena. You’re going to need some comic relief at some point.”
I turn to look at him, and his eyes are soft, the kindness in them clear. It’s cute that he thinks he can handle this, that he can take in my sad story and create a novel from it. But all he knows is that I lost my family. He doesn’t understand how.
And it’s the how that is the most twisted piece of it all.
We end up at a Taco Bell drive-through, the Thai restaurant closed, a sudden yearn for chalupas rearing its head. There is a storm coming, the air electric with anticipation, the sky dark enough to be dusk. We head back to my house, racing the rain, his foot heavier on the gas, my eyes watching the clouds. He holds his hand out toward the takeout bag.
“Pass me a taco.”
I tighten my grip on the bag. “Not in the car.” If I had a rule book handy, I’d outlaw drinking, eating, and talking in the car. I’d insist that only eighties music be played, nix any air fresheners, and require absolute control over the car’s climate.
“I’m a grown man. If I want a taco I just paid for, in my truck, I can have one.” He shakes his hand and I scrunch up my face, digging in the bag and unwrapping one of the six tacos he’d ordered. Six. Who needs six tacos?
“Here.” I shove it into his hand and look away, closing my eyes briefly at the crunch made when his jaws close around the hard shell. There will be bits of cheese everywhere, strings of lettuce falling into the floorboard, his hand one dirty mop that will touch the steering wheel, gearshift, and door. In my purse are hand wipes, and if he thinks he’s stepping into my house without a thorough wipe-down, he’s crazy.
He puts on his turn signal and makes the turn without me telling him, his sense of direction better than mine. I used to constantly get lost. I once drove to a meeting in New York and ended up in Princeton. It was a lack of focus issue, my mind wandering through the pieces of my latest work-in-progress, miles and important turns slipping by unnoticed. Now, there are probably apps that keep you on the road, constant reminders of upcoming actions, a way to easily see where you are in your journey. But back Before, all I had were maps, ones with directions scribbled in the margins, my chances slim of getting anywhere on time. Simon always drove, his hand occasionally leaving the steering wheel to reach over and touch my knee, the weight of his palm comforting, his smile at me shy, as if I might push his hand away.
“Are you married?” The question is a hollow attempt to push away the memories, Simon’s eyes, and the curl of his fingers around my bare knee.
“No.”
I recognize it immediately, the clip of words, the tightening of his shoulders. I don’t want to think about the past, he doesn’t want to talk about his present. It’s too bad for him, because he isn’t allowed to cut my head open and then protect his own. “Why not?”
“I was married. She passed away.”
I suddenly understand the look I’d seen in his eyes, the haunt of grief that hugged the edges of his smile. No wonder I feel a kinship with him. We’ve both lost someone, his pain still as raw as my own. I look away. “How’d she die?”
“Cancer.”
Go figure. I sigh. “That’s encouraging.”
“Sorry. It’s a popular disease.”
“You could have been more creative with it.” I risk a glance at him. “Told me that she got trampled by elephants while on safari.”
“Fine. It was a band of cannibals. They broke in and feasted on her. I barely escaped with my life.”
“Oh my God…” I try and swallow a smile. “Please tell me that she passed ages ago, so that this isn’t terribly painful and rude.”
“Three years ago. But conversation with you seems to lean toward painful and rude anyway.” He finishes his taco and I watch as he crumples the wrapper into a ball and tosses it into the floorboard. I wouldn’t have thought that littering in a vehicle needs a rule, but it obviously does.
“I’m sorry about your wife.”
“Thank you.”
There is silence, and against the windshield, the first drop of rain hits. I watch it, then a second, then there are a hundred blurry dots across the smooth surface, his hand reaching up to start the wipers.
“Have you outlined anything yet?” He has to speak up over the rain, and I turn to him.
“No. I will this afternoon.”
“I won’t need a lot, just an idea of what is next.”
“Have you worked off an outline before?”
“No.” He grins at me sheepishly, like it’s any confession whatsoever. I could have told you that five chapters into any of his books. His writing lacks the organized structure that comes from an outline. It wanders in places where he should be concise. He has plot threads that sometimes dangle, as if he’d planned to go one route, then unexpectedly switched courses.
I’ve told him this, of course. I have criticized his sloppy execution in plenty of emails—dozens of them. They haven’t made any difference in his work, my criticisms ignored, his own path consistently and stubbornly retread, book after book, like a broken record played by a deaf DJ.
“You’ll have to learn to work off an outline.” He may push every rule I set, but this is non-negotiable. If he can’t stick to the path I give him, it won’t work.
“I’ll be fine.” We are on my road now, passing homes of people I used to know, of children Bethany once played with. He turns into the driveway and parks.
I didn’t realize I was lonely until I met him, until he fused himself into my life so completely that there wasn’t Helena and Simon, but only US.
And once I got used to US, I didn’t want to be alone any more.