Love and Other Natural Disasters (5 page)

"What does it matter, Eve? I
would never cheat on you. I love you."

"And what do you feel for
her?" My eyes bore into his and, for a second, I thought,
We can
survive this if he just tells the truth right now.

"She's my friend, that's
all."

"How can you do this? How can
you just lie like this?" I burst out.

"I'm not lying! She's my
friend."

"That's not a feeling.
Friendship isn't a feeling."

"It is a feeling. I have
friendly feelings toward her."

"Jesus Christ, Jon. What do
you take me for?"

"I'm telling the truth."

What scared me was he seemed to
believe it. "Then something's wrong with you. If you'd deceive me for a
year for someone who doesn't even matter, then something's wrong."

"I told you how that
happened."

"I think you're either lying,
or you're too afraid to admit what she really means to you."

"There is a third possibility,
you know."

"I don't think there is."
I paused. "I want you to go to therapy so you can figure out who you are
and what you Want."

He snorted. "Come on,
Eve."

"I'm serious, Jon."

He studied my face. "We'll go
to marriage counseling and figure it out together."

"No. You go to counseling by
yourself."

I felt a certain grim satisfaction
in watching Jon squirm. I'd done tons of therapy in my life; it was always a
given between us that he never needed it. I was the fucked-up one, even if it
was in remission.

"Fine," he said.
"I'll go to counseling."

"I don't want you to come home
until you've figured some things out."

"Where do you expect me to
go?"

"I'm sure you can stay with
your mom."

He was looking at me with
disbelief. "You're kicking me out for this? For writing e-mails?"

"If that's all you think
you've done, you really have some figuring out to do."

"I know you want to punish me,
but what about Jacob?"

"This isn't about punishment.
It's about what I'm feeling. Would it help Jacob to see us hating each
other?"

He winced. "You're saying you
hate me? You're capable of hating me?"

"Just—you can't come home.
Okay? Can't you understand that?"

"Look, I know you're hurt, and
sometimes it's easier for you to be angry—"

"Fuck you, Jon. This isn't my
character deficit we're dealing with."

He visibly took a deep breath.
"I knew this wasn't going to be easy, and I'm prepared to deal with your
anger. For as long as it takes."

"Do not patronize me."

"I'm not patronizing you. I'm
trying to be with you. I know you don't have to make that easy for me, but can
you at least admit that part of you, a small part of you, wants me home,
too?"

"A lot of me wants you home.
If you'd asked me this afternoon... but you hid another woman from me, you told
her all sorts of things..."
Careful.

There were tears in his eyes as he
said softly, "Please. I'm begging you. Let me come home."

I started to give way, but then I
felt a hard pellet inside me. I couldn't say the size or the location (my head?
my stomach? my chest?) but it said, HE CANNOT COME HOME. It said, DIDN'T YOU
HEAR ME? I SAID HE CANT. And I suspected that pellet was me. It was who I was.
I had to listen to it, even if it tore me apart. I had to trust myself, if I
couldn't trust Jon.

"I can't," I said.

"I think you are just trying
to punish me," he said.

"I don't think I am."

"But even if you are, I'll do
anything to come home. If It lakes therapy and living with my mother, that's
what I'll do."

"It's not a promise. It's not
like, 'If you do therapy, you get to come home.' I mean, who knows what you'll
find out." I got butterflies saying that. I suddenly realized anything
could happen. Of course, anything already had.

"How about two sessions, and
then I get to move back into the house? Into the guest room. Your mom will be
gone by then."

"Don't you think it's a little
soon to negotiate, 'Mr. I'd Do Anything'? Not twelve hours ago, you were
sitting in our bedroom, telling another woman, '
Shhh
,
it'll be okay.'"

"You're right, you're right.
I'm sorry." He reached for my hand, but I wouldn't give it to him.

"I don't want you touching me
right now."

"Fine. I understand."

"I need you to give me some
space."

Fie shifted on the couch.

"No, not physical space. Well,
that too. But I mean, don't call me, I'll call you. That kind of space. And
time."

"How much space? And how much
time?"

"I don't know."

He sighed. "I truly am sorry.
I'm not just saying that. I mean it."

"What are you sorry for?"

"For hiding Laney from
you." Seeing from my expression that wasn't near good enough, he added
quickly, "Even though I would never do anything sexual with her, the whole
thing was wrong."

It was the kind of dialogue I had
with Jacob after he'd misbehaved, my attempt to teach him morality. I realized
what a bad technique it was—coercing apologies, complete with a recitation of
sins—since Jacob was only trying to avoid punishment and, really, so was his
dad.

CHAPTER FIVE

That night was a kaleidoscope of
feelings, a truly dizzying assortment. When I was a kid, my brother, Charlie,
and I used to get giddy over a trip to the ninety-nine-item Salad bar. Some of
it was nasty, like three-bean salad. But ninety-nine items! Well, this was like
that, only all ninety-nine sucked.

After Jon left, I did not sleep.
Not one minute. No matter how much I begged the powers that be to let me go, to
let one hour pass in painless slumber, I was held hostage. Of course, I was my
own captor. That's the worst part of insomnia. You're holding the gun to your
own head.

I watched the room lighten
incrementally for hours, sometimes through eyes gone vacant with exhaustion,
often through a fresh round of sobs. No matter how I tried to spin it, Jon's
version just didn't fit the story those e-mails told. I wasn't sure which was
more painful: his defection with Laney, or that he had become so comfortable
lying that he could deny everything right to my face. That was how little he
thought of me and our marriage. I could only hope that I'd be able to believe
in him again before our baby was born. If not... I didn't even want to think
about that.

There were a lot of things I didn't
want to do. I didn't want to get out of bed, I didn't want to lie there any
longer staring at the oversized Paul Klee print on our wall
(Blue Night
—a
cubist jigsaw puzzle of tonal blues and black that had started to seem like a
Rorschach test). If this had happened years ago—before marriage, before Jacob —
I would have stayed in bed for days. That kind of wallowing wasn't an option
anymore, which seemed like both a blessing and a curse.

It was Black Friday, and not just
for me. The heaviest shopping day of the year, it was downright un-American not
to spend, spend, spend. Huge chain retailers were opening their doors at 6 a.m.
Jonathon and I had originally planned to get an early start and combine baby
shopping and The Holiday shopping (The Holiday being our family's hybrid of
Christmas and Chanukah, with its own idiosyncratic rituals that, to my
perpetual delight, made Sylvia want to shit bricks). Knowing I needed to do
something, anything, I decided to follow the plan. Jon might not like that I'd
done it without him, but I couldn't give him a say right then.

After taking a shower and putting
on my elasticized maternity jeans and a sweater, I went down the hall to the
kitchen. I could hear the dishwasher running, and my mother was standing at the
sink, scouring a pot. She'd cleared away most remnants of Thanksgiving. My eyes
watered.

I leaned against the counter and
for a second studied her up close in the morning light. My mother insisted on
dyeing her hair a deep, unnatural red, but she did it so irregularly that it
was shot through with gray and dull brown. I could see new furrows on her
forehead, like birds flying in V formation.

"Thanks," I said.

She seemed flustered by my arrival.
"It's the least I could do, right?"

"No, you could do less."

I'd been kidding, but she looked
around skittishly. She was always ready for me to dig at her, and, somehow, the
fact that she expected it made me do it. We both wanted it to go differently,
but our relationship had always been one big self-fulfilling prophecy.

"I want to try to get some
shopping done today," I said.

"With Jon?" she asked
hopefully. She laid the pot in the dish rack. I picked it up for drying, while
she started a ferocious scrub-down of the turkey pan.

"No, just me. Do you think you
could watch Jacob? You two could stay here, or walk to the park. I don't know
if children's museums are open today, but you could always see a movie."

"What about Jon?"

"I don't know what he's doing
today."

"I mean, maybe I should go
shopping with Jacob, and then you could spend the day with Jon."

"I don't want to spend the day
with Jon. At the moment, the absolute last thing I want to do is spend the day
with him."

She looked worried and hesitant.
"How are things going to get better between you if you don't—"

"It's too soon, Mom, okay? I
need more time." I reminded myself that she was trying to help and
softened my tone. "If you don't feel like watching Jacob, maybe Tamara could
do it. I was just thinking it might be nice for you to spend some time alone
with him."

"No, I want to be with Jacob.
I'll watch him."

The bruised way she averted her
eyes made me feel like I needed to apologize. "I'm sorry. I just didn't
sleep at all last night."

"You could try one of my pills
tonight, if it would help."

"That's probably not a good
idea for the baby."

"Right. That was stupid of
me."

My head was throbbing violently.
"I'm going to call Tamara and Clayton and check on Jacob. Did you eat yet?"

She nodded. "I finished off
the pumpkin pie. That was good. Who made that?"

"Jon."

Now her expression was apologetic,
but she didn't say anything.

Was Jon's name going to become a
dirty word now? People might try to stay neutral, but ultimately they were
going to have to take sides. Wasn't that the way these things worked?
"I'll be back in a few minutes," I said.

I returned to the bedroom, shut the
door, and dialed.

"Hello?" Clayton said.

"Hi, Clayton. It's Eve."

A brief pause, a search for the
appropriate remark, I hen realizing there was no such thing: "Hi,
Eve."

"Hi." I perched on the
edge of the unmade bed. "How's Jacob?"

"He's got us making
pancakes," he said.

"He loves pancakes." I
heard Jacob chirping happily In the background. I felt a rush of relief that
last night hadn't touched him, and I missed him sharply. I was about to ask to
talk to him, but Clayton was too quick for me.

"Hey, Tamara's right here.
Hold on just a second."

From the speed with which he
extricated himself, I guess I knew whose side Clayton was on. "Eve,"
Tamara said. "I was thinking about you all night."

I almost laughed, thinking what
kind of night Clayton must have had. Tamara tended to be rather vocal about her
feelings.

"Are you all right?" she
asked. "I mean, of course, you're not, but are you... ?"

"I'm still breathing. I'm
still walking around. So for our purposes here, let's just call that all
right."

"I just couldn't believe it. I
mean, this is Jon we're talking about."

"I know."

"How did you find out? I mean,
one minute we were all enjoying Thanksgiving, and the next, you're white as a
ghost and kicking us out."

"I heard him talking on the
phone."

Shocked silence. "He took a
call from his mistress on Thanksgiving?"

"That he did."

"Wow, that's more balls than I
thought Jon had."

"You and me both." I
started to laugh, in spite of myself. Tamara joined in a few seconds later, as
if she'd been waiting to see if it was permissible.

"What was he saying?"

"He was telling her it'd be
okay, like she was crying."

"Don't tell me. She was crying
about being alone on Thanksgiving."

"That's my guess."