We stopped at a beach. Chuck and the boys jumped in the water. I watched them dive into the curling waves. My boys, their strong, beautiful bodies. Chuck, he needed to work out. I found broken shells in the sand and put a few in my pocket. I overheard a woman say to her friend, “Fuck it, let’s move here,” and I smiled to myself.
We were pink faced and giddy in the car. “Those waves were gnarly,” Cam said. “We should get a surfboard,” Jed said. Chuck looked more refreshed than I’d seen him in a long time. “You’re right,” he said, happily tapping the wheel, “we should do that.”
Our first dinner at the new house was a Costco pizza, Hawaiian-style. We ate at the new table off our old IKEA plates. Chuck was excited to start work. Jed was excited to kill it at tryouts. Cam was excited they finally didn’t have to share a room anymore. “Only took seventeen years,” he said. Before they went to bed, Cam peered out from the doorway of his new room and said, “I’ll miss you, brother.”
Jed said, “Me, too.” And then in unison, they shouted the same strange term: “Ass clown!”
Chuck had been sleeping on the couch since the night Shelly had called to confess, so it was unclear where he would sleep in this new house. The ohana was empty. Maybe he’d sleep in the ohana. I kept waiting for him to leave. Dinner was done, the dishes were done, the boys were in bed. But he still hadn’t left, and his suitcase was still by the door. I could tell he wanted to say something and he wasn’t saying it. The way he kept putting his hands in his pockets, the way he was repeating himself: “Can you believe we’re here?” “I can’t believe we’re here.” Chuck was a bad communicator. He hated conflict. He’d always been that way. I peeled an orange slowly. Somewhere during the peeling, I realized I was giving him time, I was waiting for him to speak, and this was very generous of me. Too generous. I peeled faster while he pretended to care about the texture of the wall—he was sliding his palm up and down the wall now, saying, “I never thought we would live in Hawaii.” I couldn’t be patient anymore. With half the orange still unpeeled, I said, “I’m going to bed, Chuck, good night,” and walked past him.
“Wait. I—” and when I turned, he whispered, “Where do you want me to sleep tonight?” The worry in his eyes. He scratched his neck just for something to do. I felt bad for him. He looked so pathetic. Oh, sweet Chuck, you are such an idiot.
In a tone I hoped was emotionless, I whispered back, “Where do you want to sleep tonight?”
Slowly, while contorting his face to show me that yes, he understood it was a lot to ask, he pointed to the bedroom.
A long pause and then I nodded since we were speaking without words now. Chuck looked so relieved. He went to get his suitcase.
The truth was I had wanted him to ask; I’d been waiting. Also I knew our sleeping apart really bothered the boys. They’d started sneaking out at night to light illegal fireworks from Mexico the same week Shelly had called to confess, which I didn’t think was a coincidence. Plus this was about trying now. Hawaii meant we had agreed to try.
That night, we slept on the farthest sides of the same bed. It was closer than we’d been in months.
2
Our cars arrived. We’d had them shipped. Chuck’s champagne Honda Accord. The boys’ blue Honda Accord. My gray Honda minivan. Chuck was a big fan of Hondas because they lasted forever. That was his line in defense of Hondas. “Well, they do last forever.”
The sight of my minivan in the sunny lot should have delighted me. I had a car now; we didn’t have to share the rental anymore. But when I got in and smelled that old fake pine-tree smell and felt that old bald fabric on my legs, I wondered how long “forever” meant for a car. It was already ten years old. “And also,” I said to Chuck that night, “I don’t need a minivan now. Our children have grown up.” Chuck said once we got more settled, maybe we could explore other options. He said this carefully and with a forced optimism, his head bowed and his eyes looking up at me. This was his new submissive way of having a conversation. He was trying to please me now. He was trying to undo his mistake.
And I appreciated this. I liked the little bit of power it gave me. But since the affair, I’d also begun to resent conversations like these. Conversations that pointed out how powerless I actually was, how much I relied on Chuck. I was a housewife who had to ask her husband for a new car. The word that kept repeating itself in my mind was weak. Nancy, you are weak. Other women would have left him. Other women would have found a good lawyer by now. Other women had careers to fall back on. Some women had chosen not to get married at all. Some women had chosen not to be mothers. Some women were movie stars or teachers or politicians. Those women had goals. They had direction. And meanwhile here I was, lost in an unfamiliar kitchen, searching frantically for the ice cream scooper—“I know I packed it!”—until Chuck opened the lucky drawer and proudly, too proudly, said, “Here!”
I almost said, I hate how I rely on you, Chuck, but I wasn’t in the mood to fight. I pushed the tub of ice cream across the counter. “You scoop tonight,” I said.
“Of course!” he agreed, joyfully peeling back the lid. He was happy I’d given him a tangible way to show me that he loved me.
?
Chuck had started saying “I love you” a lot, which was new. “You don’t have to say it back, I just want you to know.”
Sometimes I said, “Thanks,” but that was awkward. Sometimes I smiled. Sometimes I thought he was being manipulative and other times I may have wanted to say it back, but didn’t.
He was being his most perfect self these days. He went to work on time and came home early and he didn’t drink at all. He brought me the multicolored bouquet of roses from Costco and the three-pound bag of raw almonds I’d asked him to get because I was eating healthy now. He scooped the ice cream at night and made his side of the bed in the morning and told me my hair looked pretty. These efforts were nice, but they were also small deposits into the bank account of our marriage. Chuck would need to bank a lot more small deposits to make up for the huge withdrawal of his affair.
He also started taking me on dates. One night he took me to a restaurant built on a wooden pier right over the water. Brad had told him it was fantastic. A view of the ocean, starched white tablecloths, the sound of waves crashing beneath us. We rushed to get there before sunset and made it just in time to see the last bit of orange disappear. “Did you see the green zap?” he asked me. He looked so eager.
“No, did you?”
“I think so. Maybe a small green zap.”
His optimism these days was almost tiring, but it was better than the sullen way he was when he drank.
I ordered the salad with ono and Chuck ordered the lobster BLT and we didn’t talk about the past. It felt like an unspoken agreement, a part of moving on.