“That is not true.”
“I had told you the day before that I was pregnant. You needed time to think about it. You came to my loft and said it was the hardest decision you’d ever made, but you were busy with your research, the research that would ultimately win that big award. You said the next year of your life would be in a cleanroom and that I deserved better. That our child deserved better.”
I say, “That is not how it happened. I told you it wasn’t going to be easy, but that we’d make it work. We got married. You had Charlie. I lost my funding. You quit painting. I became a professor. You became a full-time mother.”
“And yet here we are tonight. Not married. No children. You just came from the opening of the installation that’s going to make me famous, and you did win that prize. I don’t know what’s going on in your head. Maybe you do have competing memories, but I know what’s real.”
I stare down at the steam rising off the surface of the tea.
“Do you think I’m crazy?” I ask.
“I have no idea, but you’re not well.”
And she looks at me with the compassion that has always defined her.
I touch the ring of thread that’s tied around my finger like a talisman.
I say, “Look, maybe you believe what I’m telling you, maybe you don’t, but I need you to know that I believe it. I would never lie to you.”
This is possibly the most surreal moment I’ve experienced since coming to consciousness in that lab—sitting in bed in the guest room of the apartment of the woman who is my wife but isn’t, talking about the son we apparently never had, about the life that wasn’t ours.
—
I wake alone in bed in the middle of the night, my heart pounding, the darkness spinning, the inside of my mouth sickeningly dry.
For a full terrifying minute, I have no idea where I am.
This isn’t the alcohol or the pot.
It’s a much deeper level of disorientation.
I wrap the covers tightly around me, but I can’t stop shaking, and a full-body ache is growing more painful by the second, my legs restless, my head throbbing.
—
The next time my eyes open, the room is filled with daylight and Daniela is standing over me, looking worried.
“You’re burning up, Jason. I should take you to the ER.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You don’t look fine.” She places a freezing washcloth across my forehead. “How does that feel?” she asks.
“Good, but you don’t have to do this. I’ll grab a cab back to my hotel.”
“Just try to leave.”
—
In the early afternoon, my fever breaks.
Daniela cooks me chicken noodle soup from scratch, and I eat sitting up in bed while she sits in a chair in the corner with a distance in her eyes I know too well.
She’s lost in thought, mulling something over, and doesn’t notice that I’m watching her. I don’t mean to stare, but I can’t take my eyes off her. She is still so utterly Daniela, except— Her hair is shorter.
She’s in better shape.
She’s wearing makeup, and her clothes—jeans and a form-fitting T—age her down considerably from thirty-nine years.
“Am I happy?” she asks.
“What do you mean?”
“In our life that you say we share together…am I happy?”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.”
“I couldn’t sleep last night. It was all I could think about.”
“I think you’re happy.”
“Even without my art?”
“You miss it for sure. You see old friends finding success, and I know you’re happy for them, but I also know it stings. Just like it does for me. It’s a bonding agent between us.”
“You mean we’re both losers.”
“We are not losers.”
“Are we happy? Together, I mean.”
I set the bowl of soup aside.
“Yeah. There have been rough patches, like with any marriage, but we have a son, a home, a family. You’re my best friend.”
She looks straight at me and asks with a devious smirk, “How’s our sex life?”
I just laugh.
She says, “Oh God, did I actually make you blush?”
“You did.”
“But you didn’t answer my question.”
“I didn’t, did I?”
“What’s wrong, is it not good?”
She’s flirting now.
“No, it’s great. You’re just embarrassing me.”
She gets up and walks over to the bed.
Sits on the edge of the mattress and stares at me with those huge, deep eyes.
“What are you thinking?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “That if you aren’t crazy or full of shit, then we just had the strangest conversation in human history.”
—
I sit in bed watching the daylight fade over Chicago.
Whatever storm system brought the rain last night has blown out, and in its wake, the sky is clear and the trees have turned and there’s a stunning quality to the light as it moves toward evening—polarized and golden—that I can only describe as loss.