The Distance Between Us (33 page)

He found the courage to look at me again, and his face crumpled at whatever he saw. He lurched forward, awkward and heavy, and knelt on the floor in front of me with a groan. “Oh, God, Hester. I am so sorry.”

I struggled to say something, anything. “Martha?” I stammered at last. “Martha Predel?”

He bit his lip. “Yes.”

I could feel the ice in my extremities working its way inward to my heart. I knew he had even more to reveal; something told me there were far worse things coming.

I somehow found my voice again. “I see.” The words felt like two small stones in my mouth. “So did Jeremy specify what he meant by ‘something drastic?'”

The question spun in the air between us, gathering force with each passing second.

“Yes,” Arthur croaked at last. “He said he’d kill himself if I didn’t stop deceiving you.” He made a helpless gesture. “But I didn’t believe him. Given the rest of what he said that day, I thought he was just being melodramatic.”

I reeled back on the footstool and almost lost my balance. Arthur reached out to steady me but I shied away from him as if he had leprosy.

“You thought he was being melodramatic?” I repeated, on the verge of hysteria. “Let me get this straight. You were sleeping with another woman behind my back, and our son came to you and told you he intended to kill himself if you didn’t stop, and you handled it by throwing him out of your studio?”

He sat back on his heels, stung. “It wasn’t like that.” He held up his hands in supplication. “Please listen to me. He was being entirely unreasonable, and I talked to him for a long time, but then he became unhinged and started to badger me with what I thought at the time were just childish threats, and so I lost my patience and told him to go home.”

Twelve years, I thought. Dear God, twelve entire years.

For twelve years, he had let me carry the entire burden of guilt for Jeremy’s death. For twelve years, he let Caitlin and Paul hate me, assigning me the role, through his silence, of chief villain in our tawdry little family drama. For twelve years I had hated myself as much as my children did, never knowing that at least some of that hatred could, and should, be shared.

Twelve entire
years.

I nodded. “I see. Well, now it all makes sense. You’re completely forgiven. Don’t think another thing about it.”

I extended my arm and slapped him across the face as hard as I could. He caught my hand before I could do it again.

“Stop it, Hester!” he rumbled. “You must listen to me!”

I tried to pull free of him, but he was too strong. “Let go of me!” I cried. “Was your affair with Martha Predel worth your own son’s life, Arthur? Did she comfort you when he died? Did you give her up then, or did you need more time to cry out your grief on her shoulder?”

He shook me until I quieted. Then he closed his eyes for an instant, and when he opened them again, I knew what else he was going to tell me.

“Oh, I see,” I said. “I see.”

He released me and rose to his feet. “I can’t give her up, Hester,” he muttered. “I just can’t.”

They’re all staring at me: Martha and Caitlin, Alex and Eric. I have no idea how long I’ve been silent, but the entire hospital seems to have shut down around us while I was lost in my thoughts. The only sounds I can hear from the hall are a few muted voices and the distant ring of a telephone.

I sigh and cock my head at Martha, and pick up as best as I can the threads of what I had been saying to her.

“So you can believe what you will, Martha, and Arthur can deny this to his grave, but here’s the God’s honest truth: he will
never
love you the way he loves me. Never. And deep down, I think you know that, don’t you?”

Her lips are pinched, and her eyes are brimming, but she says nothing. She looks away, her jaw working.

The silence at last is broken by Caitlin, clapping lazily. “Brava, Hester. Neatly done.” She sits upright in her chair, wrathful and frightening. “And far be it from me to defend Dad for his role in Jeremy’s death. But Dad wasn’t the one on the roof with Jeremy—time after time after time—when he was suicidal. Dad wasn’t the one who was with him when he finally jumped. It wasn’t Dad who
babied him his entire life, nor was it Dad who thought that a good scolding was sound psychiatric therapy.”

She’s ticking the points off on her fingers, one after another, and the scorn in her voice is more than I can take at the moment. I feel tears coursing down my cheeks.

“Please, Caitlin, you must listen to my side of the story,” I plead. “You’ve never given me a chance to explain what happened.”

She cuts me off. “No, Mother, I haven’t, and I’m not going to now, either. Listening to you tends to make people hurl themselves off rooftops, remember?” She drops her eyes. “Which I’m feeling an impulse to do in short order, now that I mention it.”

Alex is watching me with concern.

“That’s enough,” he says to Caitlin. “Just leave her alone, okay?”

In an instant, and for no reason I can see, Caitlin is on her feet and screaming incoherent things in his face. He screams back, and the next thing I know Martha is on her feet and screaming at me, as well, and Caitlin slaps Alex, and Eric is holding Alex to keep him from hitting Caitlin. I catch a glimpse of the elderly man in the corner as he wakes to this ruckus, and his face is frightened and baffled. I try to give him a reassuring smile when his eyes flit over my face, but he draws himself into a tight little ball of anxiety in his chair.

The head nurse shows up with a security guard and an orderly in tow, and before I even know how it all happened, I’m standing with Alex and Eric outside the hospital entrance, watching Caitlin and Martha being escorted to their separate cars. The nurse is beside me, as well, telling me to go home, and that she’ll call me as soon as Arthur gets out of surgery, which is likely to be several more hours.

Her tone is final, and will brook no argument.

The sun is setting, and it’s cold, and between the cars in the parking lot are several large mounds of dirty gray snow resembling burial mounds. I think my husband may be dying somewhere in the building behind me. I watch the nurse re-enter the hospital, and I feel Alex’s long arm drape itself around my shoulders as he seeks to give me comfort.

I gaze up into his freckled, earnest face and try to recover some of who I used to be, before this day started.

“Well.” I clear my throat. “I daresay that could have gone better?” He gives me a sad smile. “Nah. It’s about what I expected.” “You’re probably right.” I bite my lower lip, hard enough to draw blood. “Oh, Alex. Please take me home.”

W
e’re on the roof. Alex and Eric and I.

I talked the boys into coming up here with me to admire the view of the stars in the winter sky, and the three of us are nestled together with our backs against the house, sharing a bottle of brandy beneath the kitchen window of the attic apartment. I’m seated in the middle, with Alex on my right and Eric on the left. As cold as it is up here, I’m wonderfully comfortable. We threw a wool blanket over us, and their warm young bodies are like space heaters against my sides. Alex is especially toasty; if you cut into his skin, I’m convinced molten lava would flow from the wound.

It’s nearly eleven o’clock, and we have yet to hear from the hospital about Arthur. We returned home mid-afternoon (after the fiasco in the waiting room) and I’ve called a dozen times since, but all the nurse has told me each time is that his surgery is still proceeding, and there’s no news as of yet, aside from that he needed a quadruple coronary artery bypass, and they’re having “serious complications” with one of the grafts. I brought my cell phone to the roof with me, but it’s resting in my coat pocket, quiet as a cadaver, and I’m beginning to feel as if it’s never going to ring again.

Arthur has been in there for more than eight hours.

Eight
hours.

What in God’s name could be taking so long?

Eric was supposed to have had dinner with his friend Sofia, but after downing a few cocktails on an empty stomach, he decided he
should remain with us for the evening, instead, which was probably a wise choice. Alex and I had quite a head start on him when he began drinking, but he made a valiant effort to catch up—so much so that now he seems on the verge of passing out. His head is lolling from side to side on his neck, and he grunts and giggles more than he speaks.

Alex is handing me the bottle and asking me something.

I attempt to concentrate. “What did you say, dear?”

He seems nervous as he points at the edge of the roof. “Is this the place?” He clears his throat. “I mean, is this where Jeremy …” He looks at me and trails off. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

I tilt my head to study him. The whites of his eyes are visible in the light from the moon and the stars, and the corners of his mouth are drawn down in a deep, troubled frown.

“Yes.” I take another drink. I have no idea how much alcohol I’ve had today. I’m surprised at how clearheaded I feel; I’m certain I should be clinically dead by this point. But the brandy must have restorative qualities as well, because my brain seems more or less operational, and when I speak my tongue still does what I ask of it.

“This is where Jeremy jumped.” I pause. “Or where he stepped, actually. He simply stepped backward into space, and fell.”

There’s a long, long silence, broken only by the wind, and a barking dog far in the distance.

“Shit,” Eric whispers. “Holy shit.”

Alex stirs against me. “Christ, Hester. Why did you bring us up here?” His voice is rough. “Isn’t this like the worst place in the world for you?”

I shrug. “Actually, no. You’d think it would be, of course, but for some reason I still find this a beautiful spot.” I stare up at the stars and find Orion, hovering over the Mississippi. I’ve been afraid to come up here for years, but now that I’m here, all I feel is a strange emptiness in my chest, where I thought grief would be lurking.

I tug at the blanket, bringing it closer to my chin. “And the worst place in the world, bar none, is the driveway below. This is a proverbial piece of cake compared to that.”

“Jesus Christ,” Alex mutters.

Ever since we came home from the hospital, the boys have been
talking nonstop. We listened to music and ate dinner, and we sat by the fire as they chattered about this and that, both of them keeping an eye on me and hopping up to refill my glass whenever it was empty. Now they’re tongue-tied, though, and I feel guilty for inflicting my bleak mood on them.

The house is full of ghosts tonight. If I close my eyes and listen, I can almost hear my entire family, including me, when we were all younger, quarreling downstairs in the kitchen, or playing music in the front room. I do not fear these phantoms, really, but I would just as soon not listen to them anymore, either.

They are a fractious bunch, and they are wearing me out.

I do my best to lighten my tone. “Anyway, I brought you up here because I thought tonight was as good a time as any to reclaim this part of the house for the living.” I nudge both of them with my elbows. “And I knew with the two of you for company, I’d be brave enough to give it a shot.”

On cue, Eric slumps against me and begins to snore.

I may be haunted by the past and on the verge of despair about the future, but this still strikes me as somewhat funny. I sigh and reach up to pat his blond head.

Alex looks across me at his friend and snorts. “He seems to do that a lot. He’s such a gimp.”

The love is plain in his voice, and my heart aches for him. But I’m grateful for the diversion this offers; his problems are so much easier for me to address than my own.

I make sure Eric is indeed asleep, then I lower my voice. “Why did he change his mind about associating with you again?”

He darts a quick glance at Eric, and doesn’t answer until we hear another light snore. “He told me he thought about it some more, and decided it was stupid not to hang out with me just because I’d done something dumb while I was wasted.” His voice is suffused with relief. “He also said he likes me a lot, and I deserve another chance.”

“I see.” I ponder this for a moment. “Alex. You’re aware Eric isn’t homosexual, aren’t you?” I study his silhouette. “And you must know he’ll never want to be more than just your friend?”

His chin trembles as he nods. “Yeah.” He takes the bottle from
me and fiddles with the cap. “I know.” He leans his head against the house. “But it’s okay. It really is.” He pauses. “Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“Yeah.” He plays with the label on the bottle. “It’s just that he used to let me hold him in his sleep, and now I don’t think he’ll let me do that anymore. And I hate like hell that I fucked up that part of our friendship.” Tears appear on his face, glistening like tinsel. “I’m so stupid. No one else has ever let me do anything like that before, and if I just hadn’t pushed for more, we could have kept on being close like that forever.”

I sometimes forget how young he is. He shared a bed with Eric two or three times, and somehow that translated in his mind into something that might actually be permanent. Foolish child.

I almost tell him he should try being married for forty-five years, if he wants a taste of forever, but before the words come out I fall mute in astonishment at my own blindness.

Dear God.

How am I only now seeing this?

It may be the brandy speaking, but now that I think about it, I’m an idiot.

Arthur is lost to me. Even if he should live through this surgery, there will be no “forever” for us, either, because he is not mine any longer. He belongs with Martha, or (God forbid) with the worms in consecrated ground, but he doesn’t belong with me, no matter how much I wish it were otherwise, or how badly I keep behaving in public.

There’s only one fool on this roof, and her name is Hester.

Oh, Arthur. What have we been doing? We’ve wasted so much time.