“The flight was delayed because of weather for seventy-five minutes. I spent the time wandering E Terminal, read an Us Weekly someone left behind at an empty gate. A janitor caught me doing it. You ever gotten a disapproving look from an airport janitor? Shrivels the testes, it does.”
She grinned and shook her head. “Really, I believe you.”
“Then I grabbed a cup of Dunkin’s, and by that point we were boarding. I got on, found out the outlet in my seat wasn’t working. Fell asleep for an hour or so. Woke up, read my board meeting materials even though I knew it was pointless, and watched a movie where Denzel refused to take any shit.”
“That was the name of it?”
“In several foreign territories, yes.”
She met his eyes again. There was always something in that act; you either ceded power, took it, or shared it. They came to a mutual decision to share it.
She put a hand lightly to the side of his head. “I believe you.”
“You haven’t been acting like it.”
“And I wish I could tell you why. It’s probably just all this fucking rain.”
“Rain’s gone.”
She acknowledged that with a nod. “But, hey, I did a lot these two weeks—the subway, the mall, the cab, I even walked into Copley Square.”
“I know you did.” The empathy in his face—the love—was so genuine it hurt. “And I couldn’t be prouder.”
“I know you went to London.”
“Say it one more time.”
She kicked his inner thigh softly with her bare foot. “I know you went to London.”
“Trust is back in the house?”
“Trust is back in the house.”
He kissed her forehead. “I’m going to take a shower.” He touched her hips with both hands as he rose from his knees.
She sat in the chair with her back to her laptop, her back to the river, her back to the perfect day, and she wondered if they’d been off all week because she’d been off. If Brian was acting weird because she was acting weird.
As she’d just pointed out to him, in the last fourteen days she’d ridden a subway, entered a mall, walked into Copley Square, and trusted a stranger to drive her—all for the first time in two years. For most, these were tiny accomplishments, but for her they were monumental. But maybe those accomplishments had also scared the shit out of her. Every step she took out of her comfort zone was either one step closer to better mental health or one step closer to another breakdown. But another breakdown now, after so much progress, would feel ten times as debilitating.
For the last two years, one refrain had raced back and forth through her brain pan—I can’t go back there. I can’t go back there—every fucking minute of every fucking day.
So it made sense that when she engaged in acts that promised liberation at the same moment they threatened imprisonment she might start to deflect the totality of it by obsessing over something else, something that began with a credible basis—she’d seen an awfully realistic replica of her husband in a place he wasn’t supposed to be—but had clearly evolved past a rational place.
He was a good man. The best she’d ever known. Didn’t make him the best in the world, just the best for her. With the exception of The Sighting, as she’d come to think of it, he’d never given her reason not to trust him. When she was unreasonable, he was understanding. When she was frightened, he soothed. Irrational, he could translate. Frantic, he was patient. And when it had been time for her to venture back into the world, he recognized it, and he led her there. Held her hand, told her she was safe. He was there. They could stay or they could go, he had her back.
And this man, she thought as she swiveled back to the window and caught her own ghostly reflection hovering over the river and the green banks beyond, is the man you’ve chosen to mistrust?
When he came out of the shower, she was waiting on the bathroom counter, her pajamas pooled on the floor. He grew hard in the time it took to reach her. There was some awkwardness after he entered her—the countertop was narrow, the condensation was thick, her flesh squeaked against the mirror behind her, he slipped out twice—but she knew from the look in his eyes, a kind of shocked wonder, that he loved her like no one ever had. It seemed to do battle within him sometimes, this love, which made its reappearances so exhilarating.
We won, she thought. We won again.
She banged her hip on the faucet one time too many and suggested they move to the floor. They finished on top of her pooled pajamas, with her heels digging into the hollows behind his knees—a ridiculous sight, she imagined, to God, if He was looking, to their dead, if their dead could see through time, through galaxies—but she didn’t care. She loved him.
The next morning, he left for work while she was still sleeping. When she went into their walk-in closet to pick out her outfit for the day, his suitcase was open on the wooden rack he otherwise kept folded and stowed beside his shoes. He was mostly packed, one empty square of the suitcase awaiting his shaving kit. A garment bag hung from a hook nearby, three suits inside.
The next trip was tomorrow. And it was one of the big ones he took every six weeks or so. This time it was to Moscow, he’d told her, as well as Kraków and Prague. She lifted a few of his shirts, noticed he’d packed only one sweater and one coat, the thin raincoat he’d worn on his last trip. Seemed light for Eastern Europe in May. Wouldn’t the average temperature there be in the high forties or low fifties?
She checked it on her phone.
Actually, temperatures in all three cities were expected to be mostly in the high sixties.
She went back to their bedroom and flopped on the bed and asked herself what the fuck was wrong with her. He’d passed every test she’d put before him. All yesterday, after they’d made love, he’d been attentive and funny and a joy to be around. A dream husband.
And she rewarded that by checking the weather report to see if he’d packed appropriately for the places he was claiming to go to.
Claiming. There it was again. Jesus. Maybe she needed to double up on sessions with Jane for a while, get this paranoia under control. Maybe she just needed to do something with her time besides lying around imagining ways in which her marriage could be a sham. She needed to get back to writing the book. She needed to sit in the chair and not get up until she fixed whatever was causing her blockage in the Jacmel sections.