Another Piece of My Heart (20 page)

He slows down as he comes into town, pauses at a bench, and bends, clutching his knees, slowing down his breathing before standing up and stretching.

Usually he takes nothing with him on his runs, except perhaps an iPod strapped to his arm, but today he has a small fanny pack with money; today he has a plan.

Andi was fast asleep this morning when he left. Usually, she wakes up while he is in the bathroom; he emerges to find her sitting up in bed, checking her e-mail and looking at
The Huffington Post.

But these past few days she has been … if not actually sleeping, then feigning sleep. Her breathing is too slow to be asleep, the most common mistake people make when they are faking, but she keeps her eyes closed, and when he leans down to kiss her good-bye, she mumbles something inaudible before rolling over away from him.

Even though he knows she is awake, he doesn’t know what to do other than leave, quietly pulling the bedroom door closed behind him.

When he gets back from his run, she is usually making breakfast for Sophia downstairs, busy packing snacks and lunch for camp, helping her pack her bag, or chatting with her about what it will be like being in seventh grade.

Ethan tries to join in, but Andi can barely look at him, only talks to him if she has to. He knows she is still furious with him, and feels helpless in the face of her hurt. He has tried to apologize but isn’t changing his mind, knows that nothing would make him willing to raise this child.

Time will heal her wound. It has to. When the baby is born, when a suitable family is found, she will forgive him. She will understand.

If only the chasm between them weren’t growing larger by the day.

He remembers this feeling once before. Years ago. At school, when he fell in love with Tricia. They dated for two years, and he thought he was going to spend the rest of his life with her.

They were together all the time her junior year, but toward the beginning of their senior year, something changed. At first, he thought he was imagining it. She didn’t pick up the phone, or she said she was going out with girlfriends when she had not been on a girls’ night out for years.

She came in late, and became suddenly critical of him. He worked too hard on the landscaping business, he didn’t have enough time for her, he was too serious. Nothing he did seemed to be right.

When she said she needed space, he trusted she needed space. She said she was going through some emotional stuff, and she just needed space to figure out where she was; it had nothing to do with him, and, no, he shouldn’t worry at all.

He agreed, reluctantly, to a month off. She moved out and into a friend’s apartment, and stopped taking his calls entirely. A week after she moved out, he was dragged out by friends to try to drown his sorrows at the local bar.

He walked in and saw Tricia immediately. Nestled in a corner booth with a guy he vaguely knew—one of the basketball players. She was giggling, with her head on his shoulder. They shared an intimacy and a comfort that led to Ethan’s knowing, instinctively, this had been going on for a while; this was the reason for her needing space.

She must have felt him staring. She looked up, and the smile on her face was instantly replaced with shock. Guilt. Remorse. She stood up and tried to push her way through the crowd to … what? Explain? He didn’t want explanations. He was gone. To another bar, to get blind drunk. To figure out what had gone wrong.

To this day, he doesn’t know what it was. He’d spent months thinking about what he could have done differently, how he could have saved their relationship, but he never figured it out. One day they were fine, the next it was as if she turned the switch to “off.”

She was gone; there probably wasn’t anything he could have done about it.

What terrifies him today, despite the fact he is no longer a naïve kid, despite the fact that he has been married, divorced, remarried, has two beautiful children, is that the way Andi is treating him, the sense of distance he now feels, is exactly what happened all those years ago.

It is as if that switch has been flicked again.

This time he is damned if he is going to let it go without a fight. Yes, things have been difficult. Of course, Emily has thrown drama after drama at them, and he has always been in the impossible situation of being in the middle, trying to keep his wife and his daughter happy when they both seem to hate each other, each wanting him to
choose her
.

But Emily was almost a grown-up; these terrible teens were almost over. My God—was this really as naïve as it now felt—he
presumed
that he and Andi would spend the rest of their lives together.

After the drinking and the drama that colored his first marriage to Brooke, Andi was his port in a storm. It wasn’t the intense, passionate falling in love he’d had with Tricia all those years ago. If anything, it was slow and steady. He liked being around Andi. He liked who he became when she was there and the way she seemed to take everything in stride.

He loved how she was with Sophia, and how measured she was with Emily, even when Emily was behaving horribly. Occasionally, Andi would snap; complain to him—Emily was the only thing they had ever seriously fought about—but to Emily she was always calm. Emily would scream things at Andi, and she never took the bait. She just calmly said she wasn’t going to be talked to that way, and she was sorry Emily felt that, and she would go out until Ethan managed to calm Emily down.

And things seemed to be so much better between the two of them. It seemed like, since finding out she was pregnant, Emily was turning to Andi more than to him. It was what he had always wanted: all his girls to get on.

Before Andi came into their lives, Ethan had always been the caretaker. He had looked after Tricia, then Brooke, then his daughters. Whenever anyone had a problem, Ethan was the one who stepped in to mediate and sort it out. It had never occurred to him that in a partnership you take care of each other; it had never occurred to him that someone should look after him.

These past five years, Andi has looked after him. She doesn’t stare at him disdainfully when other women talk of expensive vacations and ask him witheringly when he is going to make some proper money.

She doesn’t pick up his hand when they are out, having dinner with friends, and drunkenly point out his less-than-clean fingernails, shuddering with mock horror and suggesting he might want to take a longer shower next time, as their friends sit, frozen with mortification and horror.

She doesn’t belittle and criticize, slurring that he shouldn’t be so sensitive, and she is just joking, despite the anger and resentment in her voice.

Andi loves him. She believes him to be handsome, and clever, and brilliant, and in believing that, has changed the way he sees himself. She doesn’t want him to make more money, or be more successful; she doesn’t expect him to compete with some of the wealthier men in town.

Andi is happy with him exactly as he is. They talk about everything, have the same sense of humor, and are both of the opinion that the key to a successful marriage is not taking each other for granted. At this they have …
had
 … been successful.

She cooks for him, for the girls, every night. Delicious meals that she presents with love. Sophia’s favorite is her lasagna, his, her porcini-encrusted steaks. Emily professes to hate everything she cooks, but they all know she secretly loves Andi’s Italian meatballs.

Andi has created something none of them had ever had before: a family. She has created a beautiful home, and warmth, and good food, and stability.

But it is more than that for Ethan. She
is
home. And losing her, losing everything, is something he cannot let happen.

When they first met, when they first became lovers, on weekends when they had no children to look after, he would go for a run and return with fresh croissants and cappuccino for her, fresh strawberries from the market.

The cappuccino would be lukewarm by the time they finished making love, but they would lie in bed, limbs intertwined, crumbs everywhere as they ate breakfast.

They haven’t done that in years.

Life, children, domesticity have gotten in the way. This morning, as he completes his morning Mill Valley run, he is planning on bringing her breakfast in bed. A small thing, but it will surely remind her of the past, of how good they are together when they do not let the turmoil of their life and their children intervene.

*   *   *

“Ethan?”

Ethan turns from the counter, the croissants in hand, to see Drew waiting at the end of the line in the café.

“Hey!” They give each other a brief hug as Drew grins.

“So we live next door to each other, but I don’t see you for weeks, and the only time I run into you is here? That’s insane. You’re working too hard.”

Ethan is about to laugh, but he pauses. It’s true. He has been working hard. He has taken on more clients than he ever thought he would, and the tensions at home have been overwhelming to the point where it is easier to be outside of the home, away from Emily and Andi and the discord that exists between them.

Perhaps that is part of the reason why things are bad with Andi. He needs to spend more time at home, he suddenly thinks. He needs to be present more.

“You’re right,” he says to Drew. “I have been working too hard. How are you guys? We should have dinner. The four of us haven’t gotten together for ages.”

“Why don’t you and Andi come tomorrow night? I just got some organic short ribs, and I was going to braise them. Join us! Casual.”

“Casual? Right!” Ethan snorts with laughter as Drew shrugs helplessly. Drew and Topher’s idea of casual is anything but. When they entertain casually, it means Drew has dotted the house with beautifully arranged vases of green-and-white parrot tulips, armfuls of stock and nicotiana, creamy white roses.

Their house will be lit by candlelight, scented candles on every surface, crystal dishes filled with nuts spiced by Drew, glistening in the light.

They will have a signature drink: whiskey sours, Manhattans, or dirty martinis, all the accoutrements for the drinks, including olives, and ice, and cocktail shakers assembled on a large, round, silver tray they will place on the antique marble-topped table in the living room.

Hours will have been spent on the perfect playlist: Ella and Count Basie, with some Buble and Mraz thrown in, drifting soulfully from the unobtrusive speakers behind the sofa.

Drew will have spent hours on the menu. He will serve thin slices of toasted baguette rubbed with garlic and topped with a teaspoon of whipped ricotta, a sliver of prosciutto, a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and fig jam.

There may be homemade cheese straws, made with the finest Dufour’s puff pastry, and the best Parmigiano-Reggiano money can buy. They will be brought into the living room hot from the oven, where the delicate twists will be devoured in minutes.

They may sit with drinks and hors d’oeuvres for an hour, sometimes more. When they are ready, they will move to the dining table, covered with a crisp white tablecloth, small pots of lavender running down the center, ceramic lotus flowers holding fat white votive candles.

They will start with a beautiful salad: perhaps caramelized pecans, pears, blue cheese, beautifully arranged on simple white plates, all the better to show off the food. Drew will serve an artisanal bread perhaps, one he made that morning, with a delicate soup.

They may have short ribs as an entrée, but they will be balanced precariously on a round of creamed potatoes, surrounded with a drizzle of brussel-sprout purée, topped with a crescent of horseradish cream.

Their guests—and it may be just Andi and Ethan, or, as so often happens with Drew and Topher, there will be last-minute additions: artists, and musicians, and finance guys, and cooks, and dot-com billionaires, and creative directors—their guests will take a bite and swoon with dreamy pleasure, and all will tell Drew that he is the next Martha Stewart, bemoaning the fact that someone doesn’t give him his own TV show.

*   *   *

“
Casual?
” Ethan laughs. “You and Topher don’t do casual.”

“Usually we don’t. But…” Drew lowers his voice and his face turns serious. “I know things are tough right now. I thought it might be nice just for the four of us to get together, quietly, sitting around the kitchen table.”

Ethan feels an unexpected lump in his throat. How much does Drew know? He swallows hard and nods.

“How’s Emily doing?” Drew quietly lays a hand on Ethan’s arm.

Ethan doesn’t trust himself to speak. Instead, he just nods and shrugs, as if to say, you know, it is … how it is.

“And how are
you
doing?” Drew then asks gently, and the lump is back, and Ethan cannot say anything, and if they were not in a public place, he might very well burst into tears. As it is, he stands, struggling, until Drew leads him outside without saying a word, then stands next to him, one hand on his arm, while Ethan struggles to compose himself.

“I’m sorry,” Ethan says after a while, when the threat of tears has passed.

“Don’t be. Sometimes it helps to let it out.”

Let it out? Could Ethan let it out? he wonders. What would he say? That his life, which has felt so settled for the past five years, now feels as if it is about to turn upside down, and he feels utterly powerless; that he doesn’t know what to do about it? That he wakes up most mornings so scared it is all he can do not to throw up?

“It’s … rough,” he says finally, assuming correctly that Andi will have confided in Drew, that he will know most of what is going on.

“It must be,” Drew says, for which Ethan is grateful. He is glad he didn’t say “I know,” because he couldn’t know. No one could know unless he had been through it himself.

“I’m terrified,” he says. “For Emily, and for what this means, and … for us. I feel like this is going to change everything. I’m not ready for this.”

Drew nods.

“And Andi seems … so far away. I can’t reach her.” He gestures down to the bag he is holding. “I know it’s stupid, but I’m bringing her breakfast in bed. I thought it might remind her of how things used to be.”