“What did he say he wanted to do?” Van was looking at her now like she was insane.
“He wanted to go to Ecuador to set up health clinics. Didn’t have to be Ecuador.” She waved her wineglass in the general direction of somewhere else, both insisting on her point and dismissing Kyle’s past with an insouciant social flare. “Could have been anywhere that they needed him. He was studying Navajo at one point so he could go work at the Navajo Nation.”
“Navajo?” Van was beyond astonished at that one.
“You know how they say ‘I love you’ in Navajo?” Alison asked. “They don’t have a word for it, really. Because they don’t believe in possession. You can’t possess another person. You can’t possess anything. So they say ‘I’m glad about you.’ That’s how you say ‘I love you.’ I’m glad about you.” She looked over at Kyle, who was seriously about to kill her. She didn’t care. “Look, he still has the book,” she noted. And there it was, on the shelf, Navajo Made Easier, in with all the other books they had wrangled over. Learning Navajo, another complete delusion, long since tossed aside.
“How charming.”
“It’s not anything, Van.”
“The dream of your youth? That’s not anything?”
“It wasn’t a dream. It was nothing.” Did he actually say that? The hours Alison had spent listening to him describe the need for doctors in developing countries, the call to social justice, the hope to work for WHO. The whole problem between them, his missionary’s heart and her selfish vision of being an actress. They had never even talked about getting married and it wasn’t the Catholic church that was the problem. What was a Doctor Without Borders going to do with an actress wife?
But what was he doing with this one? What was he doing with a nice house in the suburbs and a pretty wife and a charming toddler and a baby upstairs? What was the name of the place he worked? Pediatrics West? That’s what he gave it all up for? This wife and this house and Pediatrics West?
He knew what she was thinking; of course he did. At least that was clear, they still tracked each other’s inner lives with alarming specificity. It wasn’t Alison’s careless reference to their long-buried romance. He was embarrassed before her, the accusation that she had abandoned her dreams had doubled back on him with devastating accuracy.
Why had they given up everything for so little? And if they were going to give up their dreams anyway, why not give them up for each other?
Questions that didn’t have to be answered. Blessedly the door opened behind them; another guest arrived, and another. The blanket of civility descended. It was a dinner party! No one had to account for their souls.
sixteen
“I’M HAVING DINNER with Dennis tonight,” Kyle informed Van with casual indifference. He was still at the office, in front of his computer, his eyes bleary from the hours of emailing his practice now required. It was so much cheaper to consult with patients online, there was no way the insurance company would allow him to require office visits when a few keystrokes would do. It didn’t mean less work of course—it meant more patients, given less care. His rage at the failures of the medical system got filed into another corner of his brain while he waited for Van to respond to his announcement.
“You’re having dinner with Dennis? When did this happen?”
“He called this afternoon.”
“And you didn’t think to ask me?”
“I’m asking you now.”
“You’re not asking me, you’re telling me.”
“I’m asking you, that’s why I called, because I’m asking you.” A peeved silence bloomed on the other end of the line. This had been the norm for weeks now, ever since he had, according to Van, “humiliated her” at the dinner party he had insisted on throwing for “his old girlfriend.” The endlessly circular arguments went nowhere, no matter how many times he reminded her that the idea of the dinner party had been hers, she was the one who thought it would be fun, she wanted her friends to meet the baby and she was bored, that was really how the whole thing had come to pass—no part or whole of any discussion or argument mattered.