After You (15 page)

Jet lag is beginning to set in. Phillip’s face hangs slack. Sad that I find myself here, nervous about approaching the subject of sleeping arrangements with my husband, even after mass quantities of alcohol.
He is your husband
, I remind myself.
Husband, husband, husband
, I repeat until the word has no meaning. I remember when we first got married and I would make up excuses to use the word:
Oh, that’s my husband’s. I’ll ask my husband what he thinks. Have you met my husband?
Then, the term never lost its significance, only gained power in its use. I wanted to advertise our attachment to the world.

I can’t tell whether Phillip is nervous or resigned, the latter so much worse, the former bringing me back to that vulnerable place of hope. Hope for what, though, I can’t say. Hope that he still loves me, too, that we can make this work on different continents? Hope that he’ll tie me up and drag me back home, and then we’ll slip back into our old, empty life? Hope that he’ll move here, and we can start over in this other country, one where I’m not so sure I even belong?

“I can come with you, right? Upstairs, I mean,” I say instead, unable to meet Phillip’s eyes. I’m ashamed of the pleading in my voice, but I have no choice. I have unwound us that far.

“We still need to talk, Ellie. We haven’t done that yet.”

“I know. Upstairs. We’ll do that.” He looks me up and down. I am wearing my black dress, the one I wore to Lucy’s funeral. Crepe, belted, and more conservative than the occasion warrants. I wish I were wearing something daring and red, with a slit maybe, a dash of extra confidence in my new quest to seduce my husband. But I own nothing red in any country.

Yes, the plan is to seduce Phillip. My sex drive is back, the hourglass flipped again and full, the sand beginning a new slow leak.

This dress is not helping matters; right now I look a lot like his mother.

Phillip takes out his plastic key, and I follow him out of the restaurant. We step into the elevator, and then, like magic, we go up.

25

T
here are two beds in his room. Two. Fucking. Double. Beds. A cosmic joke. An extra negotiation. Lucy is up there somewhere, laughing her ass off at the fact that I no longer know how to make my husband have sex with me.

Two beds in this fussy and tasseled, overtly British hotel room. Two flowered duvets, crimson woven with gold, already turned down, and two notes reminding us to conserve water. Framed black-and-white photographs of London landmarks, Big Ben, Parliament, Tower Bridge, decorate the walls and add an edge of despair. Why go outside when you can see the sights right here in your room? We can get a taste of London just within this paisley-wallpapered oasis, with its impressive selection of complimentary teas and its dangling-pull-string lamps.

“So,” I say, and remain standing, not sure which bed to pick and how to do this. Part of me just wants to take off my dress and see what happens. Could he reject me that way? Standing in front of him, naked?

“We need to talk, Ellie.”

“Okay, so let’s talk.” I move closer to him and try to sustain eye contact.

“I think we both know where this is heading.” He means our relationship, not the moment. I want him to mean the moment, but he looks so distressed there is no way he is thinking about sex. He is thinking about some inevitable end to us.

“Phillip.” The red wine makes me brazen. I am going to flip things; I still can, it’s not too late. It’s never too late. Lucy’s right: We are entitled to as much happiness as we can grab. “Phillip.”

I reach up and touch his hair, brown and wavy. My fingers smooth right through it, brush a bit away that has fallen just shy of his eye.

His hand reaches up to catch mine, but it’s a cruel gesture. Only a mini-handcuff of thumb to forefinger.

“Don’t,” he says.

“Please.” I ignore my clear desperation, my shame overpowered by my desire to feel his skin. We are almost cheek to cheek now, and he is frozen, holding my wrist in the air, not sure how to play this. We look like samurai warriors in the silent, time-stop moment before the ass-kicking begins.

I kiss his jawline. I do, even though I know he doesn’t want to be doing this with me right now. He wants to sit across a table, at least five feet between us, and work through the details. I am not ready yet—to talk about the future, to reap consequences.

“Ellie.” His voice cracks in panic. His ears are too sensitive. I am not playing fair and I know it. “Please. We shouldn’t.”

I ignore him. Since I have no hands—one is still in a cast, the other caught in his—I use my face to turn his, to molest his other ear. He can’t help but moan.

Next, his neck. My hand drops, a surrender on his part. He stands there, his arms at his sides, waiting. Just waiting. He has no fight left.

Nature. Habit. Instinct. He finds my mouth. We pick the bed on the right. The one closest to the window, the one with the storybook view of Hyde Park.

Afterward, while he sleeps, I rememorize his face. I trace the shading of his way-past-five-o’clock shadow. The slide from the top of his profile to under his eyes. That spot where my nose fits into his neck.

And when I wonder if it’s all too late, if I’m too late, I weep without making a sound.

When I open my eyes, a shaft of sunlight through the drawn blinds, a white line across the center of the room, tells me it’s morning. Phillip is out of bed already, showered and dressed and packed, waiting by the door. He is wearing a baby-blue cashmere sweater and the designer jeans with the flap pockets I forced him to buy last year, when we saw them on sale. They make him look ten years younger, like the boy I first saw in the library. His face is shaven, and lined, and I realize the new Phillip is back—the competent adult version, who is perfectly capable and happy to proceed with his day without me. His hand is resting on the plastic handle of his rolling executive suitcase, ready and eager to push it out the door.

“Hey.” My voice is creaky. I am very hungover.

“Hey.” He’s doing that wincing thing again, like my friendly words and gestures are daggers.

“Last night was nice.”

“We didn’t talk. Ellie—”

“We can talk today.”

“Ellie—”

“There’s this great breakfast place around the corner—”

“I don’t have time for breakfast.”

“Come on, it’s the most important meal of the day.”

“I have a plane to catch.”

“Today? You don’t have to go. Not yet.”

“Ellie—”

“Seriously, not yet.”

“We can’t keep putting this off.”

A beat.

Please don’t say it. Phillip, please don’t say it. I am not ready. Not yet. Not today. Today is not the day I lose my husband
.

“Phillip.” I take a breath, ready to dive into my plea, resort to seduction again if I have to, but he beats me to it. “Please don’t—”

“Ellie, I’ve already spoken with a lawyer.”

“Please don’t—”

“I want a divorce. This is all clearly … I don’t know, over.”

“But last night.” I have no words, I have not practiced. Anyone would have known this was coming. And yet, having known doesn’t help at all.

“Last night was a mistake. I guess all of our parts still work.”

“But it was. I mean. Great. Wasn’t it?” I don’t wait for his answer, I keep talking. If I keep talking, he can’t roll his suitcase out the door. I limit my goals. Damage control. Just keep him from walking out the door. “What about us?”

“This isn’t a marriage.”

“What was last night, then? Just a … a … a freaking pity fuck?”

“Ellie.” His eyes are pleading,
please don’t make this any harder
, but I can’t help myself. I am scared, and the fear is morphing into rage. Rage seems easier than total emotional breakdown.

“Is that what I am to you? Someone who you can sleep with and then leave the next day?”

“Let’s not.”

“Let’s not what? Fight? Tell the truth?”

“That’s not the truth and you know it. I have better things to do than sit around and wait for my wife to come home. Actually, when you were home you weren’t even home. So you know what? I have better things to do than sit around and wait for the woman I married to make a reappearance. I can’t even remember the last time I saw her.” He sounds like someone who used to be angry and now is just tired. He sounds like someone whose flight keeps getting delayed.

“Phillip—”

“I give up. Okay? Sometimes, you just have to quit. I’m done, I’m done.” He shows me his palms; empty.

“So you flew all the way to London to tell me you want a divorce?” The word is still too new, too raw. I don’t want a divorce. I want him to climb back into this bed, to make me feel like there is a place called home. To touch him again, reclaim his face.

No, I want to rewind back in time, to when we used to recognize each other. Maybe as far back as pre-Oliver.

“I came here to tell you in person. I figured even you deserved that much.”

“Please don’t do this.” The tears have started and I hurt all over, my body and insides sore.

“Yeah, well.”

“But I love you. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” A question, only half rhetorical.

“Ellie, please just let me go. You’re not fair. This isn’t fair,” he says, and I can see now he’s pleading too. He is desperate to get out of this room, to get out of this country even, as far as he can get from me.

“Why are you doing this? You know I have to be here for Sophie. You know I can’t just get on a plane—”

“You really don’t get it, do you? This isn’t only about London. Actually, forget it. It doesn’t matter anymore. Believe what you want. Good-bye, Ellie.” He opens the door, and I see the carpeted hallway of the hotel, the route he will take to the elevator.

“Phillip.”

“Please say good-bye to Soph for me, will you?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer. A shy wave, and the treadmill sound of his suitcase rolling out the door behind him.

The whole thing takes less than two minutes.

About an hour after he leaves—an hour I have spent trying hard not to vomit up last night’s red wine, an hour I have spent convincing myself that it will all be okay, that I can survive losing both Lucy and Phillip in one summer, an hour where I wonder if I will ever recognize myself again—there is a knock on the door. I run to it, let the rush of relief soothe me.

“Phillip! You came—”

“The gentleman ordered breakfast?” A man in a green polyester uniform and long, thin sideburns moves briskly into the room, pushing a rickety clothed table on wheels. When he notices my tear-streaked face, he looks away. “By the window?”

I nod. Look away too.

“Enjoy, madam.” The room-service guy leaves quickly, without even pausing for a tip.

Phillip has ordered my favorite hangover meal; he remembered from college, probably the last time I had a hangover before moving to London—black coffee, eggs Benedict, extra hollandaise.

I force myself to eat it, even though the sauce is glutinous and my stomach is in revolt.

Every bite feels like a sucker punch.

26

H
ey, where’s Uncle Phillip? I drew him the most awesome picture of me and my fake thumb. Look, look,” Sophie says, and tugs on my shirt, moments after I walk in the door. I guess this is where I live now: Lansdowne Road. Postcode: W11. “Auntie Ellie, you’re not looking.”

“Wow, Soph. You did a great job with the knuckles.” I glance at her drawing—a stick figure with a disproportionate turkey hand. What can I say? She did not do a great job with the knuckles. Sophie is a terrible artist. She may grow up to be a journalist like Lucy, or a lawyer like her father, perhaps even a novelist—her obsessive love of reading has to be worth something—but I am not looking at the next van Gogh.

“So?”

“So what?”

“Where’s Uncle Phillip? I want to show him. Is he hiding?” Phillip and Sophie used to play marathon games of hide-and-seek in Sharon. She would explore every nook of the house, while Phillip, squeezed into the kitchen cupboard, would wait patiently for her to find him. Now Sophie walks to the hall closet and looks inside at a bundle of jackets: hers, Greg’s, and Lucy’s also. A heartbreaking gesture. Despite recent events, she has the optimism to interpret Phillip’s absence as a form of sport. I wonder if somewhere, in the folded depths of her being, she believes that her mother, too, is just waiting for the right moment to reappear.

“Sweetheart, um, he left. He had to go back home. But he told me to tell you good-bye and that he loves you very much.” I deliver my husband’s message, kneeling in front of her, the way I’ve seen parents give children bad news in after-school specials. I am fooling no one with this stoic performance.

“But, but, I didn’t even get a chance to … We were supposed to … Really? He left?”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“Soph, you’re allowed to be upset. Seriously, I understand if you want to cry or yell or something.”

“Nah, it’s okay. Really.”

“Okay.”

“Auntie Ellie?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you want some tea and biscuits?”

Her voice is full of adult efficiency, matter-of-fact and taking control. The tone I used at the funeral, when I realized that I was the one in charge. Taking my hand, she leads me to the kitchen and sits me down in what I’ve come to think of as our nook. Sophie fills the electric kettle, flips it on, and puts together a plate of cookies.

“Take some,” she says, and nudges the tissue box toward me. I touch my face. A flood of tears that I hadn’t even noticed or felt.

“So,” she says, sitting next to me, patting my shoulder. “You want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Okay, do you want to just sit here quietly, then?”

“Yes, please.” And so we do, without speaking, just like that night after Lucy’s funeral. Sophie rests her head on my shoulder, and just like last time, when our world had cleaved and split in two, we sit here and wait until we have the strength to get back up.

Later, I call my father to give him the news: His daughter is graduating from marriage. I’ll tell him first, because then he can tell my mother and I’m spared the psychologist’s angle for now. I am not yet ready to analyze this and parse it down to its component parts. To shoulder the blame, which will inevitably fall my way.

My father and I have spent the last half hour discussing the floral arrangements for my parents’ upcoming wedding. He has surprised us all by becoming a bridezilla, consumed wholly with the planning process, neglecting his Civil War research to call me up at all hours of the night to debate “signature cocktails.” He wants something yellow, to match his tie and the boutonnieres. Personalized water bottles have been bought and secured for every table and labeled in accordance with the “theme”:
Reunited and it feels so good
. My parents actually have a theme, like they’re turning thirteen and are having a bar mitzvah, and my father intends to have those horrible song lyrics printed on every napkin. He is unswayed by my concerns that the event has taken a terrible turn for the tacky.

“Sweetheart, did you know they have magazines for weddings? Huge ones, like telephone books. An amazing industry. A whole subeconomy. Fascinating stuff.”

“Dad, they’re not called wedding magazines. They’re called
bridal
magazines. For
women
.”

“Whatever. I find them informative. There’s so much to learn, and we have only three months.”

“I know.” My mother is rushing back toward the altar; given too much time, she’ll bolt. “So, I have some news.”

I have waited the hour to tell him, in the ridiculous hope that I can just slip this tiny detail into the conversation. If there is anyone who will let me off the hook with a twenty-second discussion, it’s my father, who is much more interested in facts than emotions.

“Phillip left you, huh? I’m so sorry, honey.”

“Yup. How’d you—”

“Come on, even I saw that one coming. You okay?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes … Do you think I screwed up the best thing that’s ever happened to me?”

“I think that marriage hasn’t been the best thing that’s ever happened to either of you for a while now. But, yeah, I do think things changed after you guys lost Oliver. You used to be great together. I love Phillip.”

“I know.”

“Ellie, I hate to say it, but he did the right thing. I know it hurts, but he had to cut himself loose. You weren’t playing fair.”

I cough, to shake the tears out of my voice. It’s hard to hear that it’s universally agreed this breakup is my fault. I had been expecting comfort, not blame. Blame, I’ve already got covered without my parents.

“Once I read a study about prisoners with a life sentence. The ones without the possibility of parole were happier than those who might get out. Defies logic, but then, not really. Sometimes it’s the hope that kills you.”

“So what are you saying? Being married to me was like being in prison?”

“Of course not. I’m just saying Phillip couldn’t keep waiting. The poor man was miserable wondering when you were coming home. Worse,
if you
were coming home.”

“But—”

“Fish or cut bait. Put up or shut up. Shit or get off the pot.”

“I get it.”

“Listen, honey, if you want to talk more about relationships, you should call your mother. You know she’s better at this than I am.”

“Okay.”

“Sorry, I just realized I need to go. New wedding crisis.”

“What is it this time, Dad?”

“I need to redo the seating chart.”

“Why?”

“Darling, I need to switch you and Phillip over to the singles’ tables.”

Greg gets home after ten. Sophie has long been tucked in. A rereading of chapter twenty-five—just thirty pages until the end of
The Secret Garden
, though neither of us is ready—a glass of water by her bedside, a kiss on her forehead. A ritual, like all rituals, clung to and relied upon for relief and comfort.

“Hey, where’s Phil—” Greg stops mid-sentence when he sees the bottle of scotch already opened, already poured. This is the second time I’ve had scotch in my entire life. The first being the Day of the Black Eye. “Oh.”

“Yup.”

“You okay?”

I shrug and make a silent toast with my glass. “Yeah, I guess.”

“I’m sorry. You know I’ve been there.” He sits down on the couch, too, but on the far end, and loosens his tie.

I pour him a drink, much smaller than my own.

“Which part are you going through now? The heartache? The anger? The replaying it all in your mind? Or have you gone straight to the exhaustion phase, when you think about having to start over with someone else?”

“Pretty much all of it at once. But the thought of dating—I haven’t even gone there yet. That makes me feel sick. And the anger, yeah, that too. Oh, and guilt. Guilt is currently winning.”

“It sucks.”

“Yes. It. Does.”

We drink in silence for a while, letting the liquid burn its way down, waiting to be anesthetized. I rest my head on the back of the couch and exhale.

“I am going to be okay, right?” I ask, because though this is my fault, I still need to hear someone say it:
You are going to be okay
. I need to know I’ll be able to get out of bed tomorrow, and the day after that too.

“Yes. You are.”

“But first Lucy. And now Phillip. I know it’s not the same and that I sort of asked for it, and forgive me because I know you have it worst of all, but, holy shit, I don’t know if I can do this. I really don’t. Lose him too?”

“You can do this. You’re going to be more than okay. We all deserve more than okay. We deserve all the happiness we can grab.” I look at him and wonder if he knows he’s parroting Lucy’s words. Or maybe it’s always been the other way around. Maybe she learned them from him. Took that lesson and used it as a weapon.

My tears start again, and Greg looks alarmed. He is the sort who can be undone by a crying woman. A box of tissues appears, offered without eye contact.

“Sorry,” I say, and he waves my words away. “It’s just that I’m thirty-five, and somewhere along the way I’ve lost my life. I don’t know where I’m supposed to live. I don’t have a career that I care about. I’ve lost my best friend, and now my husband. The one solid thing—which wasn’t solid at all, not really—I don’t have him either. What the hell am I doing? How did I get here?”

“I don’t know. If it makes you feel any better, I’m a thirty-nine-year-old widower living in a house that I hate—I really hate this place, have I ever told you that? Lucy loves—loved—it, so we stayed. Being a lawyer can be so painfully tedious that every morning I have to talk myself into getting on the tube. And I have an eight-year-old daughter upstairs who it sometimes hurts me to look at. But I know I’ll be okay. I can’t say that all the time, but right now, in this very instant, I really believe I’ll figure this out and I’ll be okay. We all will.”

“Maybe.”

“Better than okay.”

“You know what? You’re right. We’re going to be great.” I join his rallying cry with the last bits of my energy.

“Like pigs in shite!” He beams at me, warmth and sunshine and fraternal love, and he brings his glass to clink mine. If our lives were a movie, this would be the scene where the music changes. We’d make eye contact—tentatively at first, then a pact—before we’d rip off each other’s clothes and declare our undying love. We’d get to live happily ever after, in this pastel-colored house in Notting Hill, to swelling crescendo. A simple, natural, and, best of all, neat resolution.

Sophie gets a mother, I get a child, Greg gets a wife. All solved in five minutes or less.

But this is not a movie, and things are never simple. Besides which I have no interest in seeing Greg naked. We are fellow soldiers at war—he is my brother, he is my comrade—and so there will be no falling into bed and easy cleanup. Our lives are not a puzzle that needs solving but blurry pieces, loose ends, competing loyalties. Resolution has no place in our story.

Instead, I will keep sitting here, sipping my scotch, and wondering who I’ve suddenly become without the people who most defined me.