And Again (38 page)

I leave the suitcase in its place for now. It’s too early to drag it down, to catch a train into the city, to buy a bus ticket at Union Station. It’s still dark outside. Tom is still asleep. So I descend the stairs, with my mind’s eye still firmly on the suitcase, on my escape. I’ve had good practice at this, being a woman who resides in two worlds at the same time.

The TV is flashing a bright Looney Tunes pallet of color across the carpet, but no one is watching it. I can hear a commotion from the kitchen, and I walk in just in time to see Jack on his knees on the counter, reaching into a high cabinet and pulling something down, bringing down a glass measuring cup with it. The cup shatters on the countertop beneath him. I can see a shard of glass open up the skin of his leg, and he’s so startled by it that he teeters on the edge of the counter.

Something kicks me forward, an impulse so ingrained that I don’t have to think before I’m moving, grabbing Jack by the waist. He lets out a little wail of surprise, then bursts into tears. I haul him over to the sink and sit him on the edge of the counter, wetting a paper towel and pressing it to the bleeding cut on his leg.

“Mommy,” he says, between hiccupping sobs. His face is crumpled and wet.

“You’re okay,” I say, remembering how I would say it to Katie when she first started walking, when she would plop down onto the cushion of her diaper, looking up at me with huge eyes, trying to gauge by my reaction whether it was a fall worthy of tears. I react the way I used to with her, wiping the fat little teardrops from his cheeks and kissing him on the forehead. The smell of his hair is different from what I remember, the powder and milk smell of babies. My boy. “My poor boy,” I whisper.

“I was trying to make pancakes. For you and Daddy,” he blubbers. “I couldn’t reach the mixing bowl. I broke one of the good measuring cups.”

“That’s all right,” I reply, checking his cut. “Don’t you worry about that.” It’s not deep, just a glancing touch of sharp glass. The
bleeding is starting to ebb even now. “Oh, this isn’t too bad,” I say. “Where does Daddy keep the Band-Aids?”

He motions to a cabinet over the sink. There are two boxes, one Cinderella, one Batman. Tom is good at this, this parenting thing. I pull out a huge Batman bandage and apply it to Jack’s leg. He seems pleased. His tears are beginning to ebb as well.

“Why were you making pancakes, Jack?” I ask, as my phone begins to vibrate. I ignore it.

“It’s July eighteenth,” he replies, and then he looks at me expectantly.

“What’s July eighteenth?” I ask. He looks puzzled, then must assume I’m playing a game with him, because he breaks into a smile. My phone buzzes again, cutting into our conversation. Who on earth would be calling at this hour?

“Your anniversary with Daddy,” he replies, clearly proud that he passed my test. “We celebrated it every year you were gone.” I nod, because suddenly I can’t speak anymore. Instead, I pull my phone from the pocket of my sweatpants, clearing my throat before I answer.

“Hello?”

“I didn’t wake you, did I?” comes the voice over the line, a familiar voice. A male voice, his tone so wry I can picture the self-satisfied grin that must be playing over his face.

“No,” I say, and feel myself smile, as if I were an observer of this body’s impulses.

“So, tell me Linda, are you staying out of trouble?”

I set Jack up with some cereal at the kitchen table and go upstairs, returning to our bedroom. I sit on the foot of our bed. Tom glances up at me when he feels the mattress shift.

“Hey,” he says, propping himself up on his elbows. There’s a red crease in the side of his face from the pillow. “What’s up?”

“I’m not pregnant,” I reply.

“What?” he sits up, fast, as if there was a task he’s forgotten to handle and the result has been the loss of our child. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m not pregnant anymore.” I say it slowly, trying to keep my tone even. Trying to keep from repeating it again and again until he finally figures out what the words mean, that it’s too late for anything to be done, that all of his questions are useless.

He’s silent for a moment, staring at me aghast. “When?” he finally asks.

“A few weeks ago. I didn’t want to tell you.”

“Oh God,” he says, and reaches toward me, his arms outstretched. I put up both of my hands to ward him off.

“No,” I say. I can see it when he changes gears, when anger pours into his expression.

“Well, why the hell wouldn’t you tell me when it happened, Linda?” he asks, his voice a bit too loud for the quiet, lingering night.

“Because I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I needed time,” I reply, still calm, trying to stay calm.

“Jesus, what about what I need?” he asks, nearly shouting, his voice high, an almost comical pitch. “All of these years, all of it. I can’t even remember what it feels like to need something and to get it.”

“What did you need, Tom?” I ask.

“I needed,” he begins, but catches himself. He slumps a bit, his bare shoulders sagging. He’s a very pale shade of white, as if he hasn’t seen the sun in a while. Small, wayward hairs curl at odd intervals on his shoulders, the first true sign of age. He is so sad, and so decent, that he will not answer. So I do it for him.

“You needed me to die. In the hospital, in those eight years. That’s what you needed.”

His knobby fingers cover his face. “Yes,” he whispers. “Because I loved you. And it was awful. I just lost you, and lost you, and there was no end to it.”

“You know, it’s funny,” I say, wishing I could cry too, to prove to
him that I’m still human. But it’s impossible to conjure the emotion. For me, it’s a simple truth, one from which I did not need to hide. “I wished for the same thing.”

“God, I wish it could have been different for us,” he says, his voice strangled. I want to love this man, love him enough at least to comfort him. But I don’t have it in me.

“I know.” Thinking back, this is not so different from how we’ve always been, even before the accident. I’ve always been the strong one, the one who sets the course for us. It must have been so difficult for him, with me gone.

“I know about Scott,” he says then.
Scott.
I think of the park bench, my children asleep in the back of our van. “He came to the house a few weeks after your accident. I had no idea who he was, until he broke down sobbing in our living room. He said he needed to see me. That I was the only one who would understand what he was going through. We ended up talking, for, I don’t know. Hours probably.”

He pauses, and I can’t imagine anything that might come next. It is as if my entire estimation of Tom, and everything he is capable of, has evaporated into the air.

“It was, in a strange way, just what I needed,” he says. “To talk to someone who knew you the way I did.”

My body is rigid with astonishment. I almost want to take my pulse, to make sure everything has not shut down from the surge of shame and confusion roiling within me. When I speak, my voice is breathless, a child’s voice.

“Why didn’t you leave me there? Divorce me? If you knew?” I think of all the different ways his life might have proceeded without me, all of the mothers my children could have had. Mothers who were more capable and more selfless than me. Tom reaches forward and takes one of my hands. His is so warm, I feel only half-alive by comparison.

“Because you would have had no one,” he says.

I pull my hand from his. There is nothing else to be done, because I will never be able to love this man in the way he deserves.
I think of my suitcase in the closet. I think of the world, the whole world, that exists outside this house and the people in it.

“We can try again,” he says. “For a baby.”

“It’s not going to make a difference,” I reply.

“Are you going to leave?” he asks, and he looks so much like his son, our son, with his red, blotchy face, that I can almost love him for the resemblance alone. Almost.

“Did you want to have a baby to keep me from leaving?”

He doesn’t reply. We are at an impasse, we look at each other for a long time. Finally, I blink. Once.

“Jack tried to make us pancakes and broke a measuring cup. Can you clean it up?” I leave before he can say anything, shutting myself in the bathroom and listening as he plods down the stairs to the kitchen, where my children are eating their breakfast and trying to avoid the shards of glass.

I put on the terrible sneakers I found in the attic, the ones with the wings inked into the heels, and creep down the back stairs and out into the lingering pre-dawn darkness. It was always easiest to run just before dawn, when the shadows of night are only beginning to recede, before the sun rises and heats the brick and concrete of the city until the air is thick with humidity. There’s an hour, when the sky begins to lighten in the east, before the city stirs, when everything is soft and cool and brimming with life. It is the hour in which I could always forget the things that weighed on me.

I run down Hinman to Main and then east to the lakefront. The water looks swollen and choppy, like it might rise up and chase me as I skirt its tide, and by then all of my muscles are warm and loose, and I find another gear. I wait to grow tired, for my limbs to take on that familiar lactic-acid heaviness, for my chest to tighten and protest the exertion, but this body does nothing but obey. It does not protest. Every breath becomes the first breath after being underwater, kicking hard for the surface and splashing up, gulping hard to get enough air. Every breath feels that sweet.

I pass other people on the path, couples with strollers and
people walking dogs, other runners. I can feel my body charging forward, my heart drumming the pulse of blood through my limbs, synapses firing like roman candles, my breath, the patter of my feet on the pavement. Everything is rhythmic. A machine, churning away, breaking through the air around me, my gears and pistons and joints well oiled and endorphin-soaked. The world around me shimmers, resplendent with morning light and the gleaming magic of moving fast, effortlessly.

I fly along as the lake begins to glitter with the first bits of sunlight breaking over the horizon, and my body feels so good, so crazy good, that I can almost convince myself that it was all worth it, just for this. Just for a moment like this. I know the feeling will end as soon as I turn back and head for home, rejoin my family, unpack my hidden suitcase. But for a little while, the ability to forget is not a curse. Sometimes forgetting is a gift, too.

I wake the morning of our last group meeting startled and breathless. Unsure, for a moment, of where I am. And then I cross the thin veil of sleep, when the whole world and all of its truths wash inward in that one potent moment. I remember it all, in an instant, rushing back like forgotten memories. But that doesn’t blunt the feeling held over from moments ago, and a kind of muted joy sits in my chest. I walk with it, through my morning and out into the world, all the way to group. With that feeling of being held.

We meet in the conference room, as we always have. We take our normal seats. It’s David’s doing, that we’re all here. David, with his opposition research. He was the only one who could bring the rest of us together in the end, for our final meeting, one year since we opened our new, light-blind eyes for the first time. We all look a bit worse for the months we spent apart, and I think of all the things I have not told these people, about Sam, about Lucy, about what has happened between David and me. About how I can still see the world in that old, beautiful way even though I cannot paint it. I wonder what secrets the rest of them must be keeping as well. I wonder how much has gone unsaid between us, all along.

“So, here we are,” Connie says, clasping her hands together. “I don’t know about you, but I think it feels good to have the band back together for this little reunion tour.”

“Well I haven’t missed you that much,” David replies. “I see you almost every time I take the Red Line. Those goddamn ads are inescapable.” I smile at this too, because I’ve been just as startled as David when I board the L and see Connie’s face lining the cars, staring out
from her ads for some new anti-aging cream. It’s Connie winking at the camera, her face pale and pristine, her lips bright red, her hair all slick golden-blonde. The text reads,
Ask my age, I dare you.

“You don’t think it’s false advertising? I mean, me hawking a fucking wrinkle cream?” Connie glances at Linda, who shrugs.

“I think if that’s the most morally ambiguous thing you’ve done since the transfer, you’re lucky,” Linda replies, and we all exchange unsteady, knowing glances. “Maybe they shouldn’t have left it to chance. The lottery. Maybe they should have picked someone stronger than me, someone who would have been better at everything that comes after.”

“People who deserve it more,” Connie adds, the straight line of her front teeth capturing her bottom lip. I’m sure we’ve all thought the same thing, more than once. I know I have, especially now, after all the damage I’ve caused.

“I think we were foolish, in the beginning,” I say, unable to keep myself from looking at David, or thinking of all my towering mistakes. “To think that going through what we did wouldn’t have an impact. To think we could just keep going in spite of it.”