“Maybe you’ll be like us, son,” he said to Dylan. “Meet your future wife in college. Your parents did the same thing, so it runs in the family!”
Brad said nothing. I ate a piece of bread to soak up some of the vodka. Beatrice began talking about her first and second husbands, and no one noticed my weirdness.
“You’ll be fine,” Vanessa said, reaching over to squeeze my hand, and I jumped. Did she know? “Once you know he’s settled in, you’ll be just fine.”
Ah. She was talking about Dylan. I wanted to fall into her arms and sob. Unlike my own mother, Vanessa noticed me. She had loved me from the moment I walked through her door on Beacon Hill, was thrilled when I got knocked up, adored her only grandson and praised me for raising him so well.
We talked at least twice a week, had lunch often, cooked together during the holidays. Once or twice, she’d treated me to a spa weekend with her in Vermont. She was so proud of me and loved hearing stories of labor and delivery. My own mother couldn’t listen to me talk about work for more than a minute before saying I should have gone to medical school and become a doctor. Mom treated Dylan like a delightful puppy, then grew bored after half an hour.
Vanessa wouldn’t be my mother-in-law anymore. I was about to lose half of the family I had now. My vision grayed.
Dylan was the first to finish dinner. The rest of his night would be spent at Project Graduation, where they locked the kids in the school gym for the night so they wouldn’t drink or do drugs or have sex. There would be pizza and music, movies, all that. He thanked us all, kissed his elders like the kindhearted boy he was. Brad said “Have a great time!” in an overly jocular tone, ignoring the fact that he would soon destroy his son’s family, home life, holidays. Things would never be the same because Brad wanted joy.
I got up and hugged my boy. “Have a great time, honey,” I said. “I love you.” He hugged me tighter for a second, then left, taking my heart with him.
I sat back down and looked at Brad. He smiled at me, and I scratched my nose with my middle finger. The smile on his face was immediately replaced with a sulk. Good.
Brad and I didn’t speak on the way home from the restaurant. “I guess I’ll stay down in the guest room until I leave,” he said when we got home. “Unless you want me in the studio”—we’d converted my grandfather’s old toolshed into a tiny, perfect guest space about ten years ago—“but Dylan likes to hang out there with his friends.”
“When are we going to tell our son about your infidelity, by the way?” I asked.
Brad sat down on the couch and tilted his head in his shrink mode, his brows coming together. “Yes. About that. I’ve been thinking about what would be best for him.”
“Not cheating on his mother leaps to mind.”
“I think we should let him have these last few weeks be as normal as possible,” Brad said. “Once he’s settled at college, we can FaceTime him and say we’ve grown apart. He’ll understand. It’s already happened with half his friends.”
“Brad . . .” My voice broke, and the fury wobbled for a moment as all the good times Brad and I had had flashed through my mind. Dating. Our honeymoon in the Maldives, a gift from his parents, me newly pregnant, him smitten. The way he’d cried when Dylan was born. The joyful and fun toddler years, rebuilding this house inch by inch. We’d laughed together, cooked together, always held hands when we walked, locked eyes in mutual love and pride for our son.
I cleared my throat. “Brad,” I said, already hating myself for what I was about to say. “This is very hard for me to accept. We have such a beautiful family life. I think it’s worth saving.” Not that I didn’t want to stab him in his sleep, mind you.
He closed his eyes for a second, then sighed. “It’s been over for years, Lillie. This is just a formality. You’ve changed, and so have I. We want different things.”
“That’s not true. I want the same thing we signed on for twenty years ago. A family. Security. Love. A partner.”
“Interesting that you’re just now noticing that we don’t have that anymore,” he said.
“Don’t have what?”
“A partnership. Not really.”
“Since when? When did all of this happen?” I asked, wiping my eyes.
“Lillie.” He clasped his hands loosely between his knees and leaned forward a little. “You haven’t supported my dreams. You don’t listen to me. You’ve been cruel. You’re as much at fault for this divorce as I am.”
“What? No, I’m not!” I screeched. “How can you say that? I took extra shifts so you could spend more time writing your book. I love hearing about your clients. And cruel? When, Brad? Name one time.”
He tilted his head. “It’s subtle. Passive-aggressive, much like your mother.”
Ooh. A low blow. “Name a time. One time.”
“Well, just last night, you called my book stupid.”
“I was in shock! You’d just told me you’d met someone, and I was stunned!”
“Are you really telling me you haven’t noticed the distance between us?”
“We say ‘I love you’ every single day. We have sex, like, two or three times a week. I cook you fantastic meals—”
“You’d make those even without me,” he said.
“—and I do your laundry—”
“You don’t iron my shirts.”
“You insist on doing that yourself. Brad, come on! We’ve been partners and raised our son and made this home beautiful and cozy. And God knows, I’m good to your parents. This is our family, Brad. Don’t shatter it.”
He sighed again. “But you don’t see me, Lillie. I haven’t felt joy with you in a long time.”
“Really? Not when we went kayaking last month and saw the loon? Not when we went to have dinner in Boston and took that walk on the Common? What about Christmas, when you said you were the happiest man in the world? That sounds like joy, goddamn it!”
“I was trying to convince myself,” he said.
“You’re lying.” He was. I knew it as well as I knew my own name.
“And there you go again. Not hearing me. Dismissing me.”
The absolute worst thing about being married to a therapist was their gaslighting skills. They could twist anything to make you think it was your problem, your reaction, your childhood that was the issue, not them. They could justify anything. Taking responsibility was not in Brad’s wheelhouse.
“I’m drained,” Brad said. “Good night.” He stood up and headed for the stairs. “And, Lillie . . .” For one second, I thought he was going to say he was sorry, a terrible joke, really, but my face . . . priceless! “This is for the best. You’ll see.”
I went into the bedroom and closed the door, and barely made it to the bed. Tears leaked out of my eyes and down my temples, wetting my hair. How was this happening to us? To us?
I cried until I was exhausted, ugly sobs wrenching out of me, utter dismay and anger and, for some reason, shame. I had lost my husband. Another woman had slid in between us, and I hadn’t even noticed.
The sound of the ocean, just over the ridge of the kettle pond chain, roared, and the leaves rustled a poor reassurance. A whip-poor-will sang, and I tried to let the sounds drown out the shrill hissing in my head.
This time, though, the magic of my home didn’t do the trick, and sleep didn’t find me.
* * *