The Instant When Everything is Perfect (30 page)

“It’s too easy,” she says quietly.

Ford looks up at her, his eyes wide. “Too easy? What are you talking about? Too easy. This has been hell.”

Mia feels her tears pool in her chest. “What do you mean?”

“Mia, how do you think it’s been living like this.” He waves a hand. “Here. Knowing I’m lying to you. To the boys. Every single day, I’ve just wanted to . . . .” He can’t finish, swallowing, his eyes full. “I’ve felt like I was disappearing into one of your stories. I would try to talk to you, but you weren’t really paying attention.”

For a moment, Mia feels like she is weightless, floating, her stomach the only thing heavy in her chair. Here’s what she didn’t know. Here’s the story she could have never written because she wouldn’t have wanted to see that Ford was so miserable. That living with her was killing him, draining him. All along, just as she’d thought, they’d forgotten how to know each other.

And he’s right, of course. How easy is it to feel that you are only half, that the part that you’ve wanted to fit into yourself is no where in sight? For how many years has Mia awakened every day, understanding that that piece she wanted for herself wasn’t available. That she could never have it. Because she was married to a man she liked and loved, she hadn’t wanted to hurt him and she allowed whatever that part was called—love, happiness, fulfillment, completeness—to slip away each morning as she left her bed.

How many times had Ford held her, his body moving into hers, and she couldn’t move into him, couldn’t hold him close enough because even if she’d been able to, she’d be grabbing the wrong thing, the wrong man. Mia held his flesh but not his heart. He was pulsing into her, and she wasn’t responding, nights and nights of the wrong movements with the wrong people. Years of time that wasn’t wasted completely because they had their boys--both safe and strong--but wasted in their hearts.

Ford was right. It had hurt; a slow, long hurt.

“It’s never been easy,” he says. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And now I think I’m relieved. It’s not easy. But I’m relieved.”

“Wow,” she says.

“I didn’t mean—“he begins, but she waves away his words.

She hates how easily he can let go of her, even though this is exactly what she wants. She can’t stand that she hasn’t known his story, thinking that she was the unhappy one, the one who wanted to leave. For a strange minute, she wants to fight for him, to write the story differently. But the urge lifts and then falls, evaporating into the truth that today is the last day they will be together like this, married, in the same house.

“It wasn’t easy,” she agrees. “You’re right.”

Ford sighs, the sound loud in the quiet kitchen.

“What are we going to do?” he asks.

In the time that it took Ford to drive home from the city, Mia has figured out exactly what they will do. He will stay here at the house until the boys come home, and they will all talk, just like they learned to do in the days of rehab, each saying what is true. Because she has no choice, Mia will tell Lucien and Harper about her own affair. She doesn’t want them thinking that their father is the one to ruin everything. She keeps hearing the words from rehab, “It’s a family disease.”

But after the talk and all the tears and the anger and disgust and feelings of betrayal, Ford will pack up what he can carry out of the house in one trip and leave. He will move in with Karen, and they can be business partners and lovers. He will hold her all night, and she will react to his body the way Mia’s reacts to Robert’s.

Later, Ford will come back and take the rest of his things, he and Mia arguing—but not too much—about what belongs to whom. Lawyers will take care of the rest of the details and the money, both of them being generous and fair, despite the flare of anger over discussions about when to sell the house and who will buy out whom. When the divorce goes through, Ford and Karen can get married. Mia won’t go to the wedding, but she will encourage the boys to.

In two years, Harper will go off to college—soon after, Lucien will go to graduate school. Mia will keep teaching at Cal and continue writing, maybe finding someone to date, finding this person the normal ways, through well-meaning friends and dating services and personal ads. She will never again expect another exam room door to open and her true love to walk through. She will never again expect her body to flood with feeling when a man steps inside a room, looks at her, shakes her hand. This much she has learned. This much she will carry with her into her divorce.

“You’ll leave,” she says quietly. And Ford—this man she met when he was still a boy, who grew up right in front of her, who gave her two children—looks up and agrees.

Lucien asks smart questions and nods through the entire discussion, but Harper sobs. He doesn’t let either Ford or Mia touch him, holding himself to the edge of the couch.

“I’m so sorry,” Ford says over and over, his hand trying to decide what part of Harper to try to touch now: shoulder, arm, knee. But Harper jerks away, mumbling,

“You suck. You both suck.”

Mia starts to cry then because she knows he’s right. She sucks. She is a coward, was a coward. But she won’t be any more.

“Harper,” she says, “how your father and I did this was wrong. We should have talked to each other. But it’s hard.”

“How hard is the truth?” Harper cries.

“Impossible,” Lucien says. “Worse than anything.”

Ford rubs his forehead. “We lied to ourselves, too.”

“What’s going to happen to us? What’s going to happen to me?” Harper asks.

Ford looks at Mia and says, “You’ll live here. Except for me being gone, your life will stay the same. Then you can come and see me.” He stops, bites his lip, and then breathes in. “If you want.”

Harper sits up, wipes his eyes. “I’m never getting married.”

“If I never got married, Harp, I wouldn’t have you and Lucien,” Mia says. “You wouldn’t be alive. I would have never written what I wrote. I wouldn’t have been able to live in this house I love so much. I would never have been able to know someone like I know your father, even if it ended this way.” She leans over to Harper now, who lets her touch him. “This is a horrible ending. A terrible way to stop. But there were years in there that will always be the best I ever had. I’ve been able to live a certain way because of my marriage, and I don’t regret most of it.”

Ford stares at her, his old expression on her, the one she remembers from when they first met, full of surprise and interest. It’s the same way he looked at her when she walked out of her apartment door and he was locking his bike against a post. “Who are you,” the look said. “I want to know.”

They watch each other for a moment, and then his face settles into the truth of now.

“That’s right,” Ford says. “All of that is right.”

Harper wipes his face, pulls in a ragged lungful of air. Lucien pats his shoulder.

“I hate this,” Harper says, his voice flat.

Mia nods. But even though she is sad and knows that this first night alone without Ford in her bed will feel like sleeping on knives, she doesn’t hate it.

“One day at a time,” Lucien says, whipping out the constant refrain from rehab.

Mia wants to bark out a laugh, but he’s right. Tonight and then tomorrow and then the next day. Nothing more than living through them until she can walk out the door that today’s truth has opened.

“Fuck that,” Harper says, standing up and walking toward his room. “I hate you all.”



Ford throws some clothes and shoes into a duffle bag, lays a few suits into a garment bag. Then he stands in front of the closet, his hands on his hips, and cries.

Mia sits on the bed, looking out the bedroom window at the bay and oak trees, an empty toiletry bag in her lap.

“You’re going to Karen’s.” She turns the bag in her hands and then puts it on the bed. She’s not going to fill it for him this time, making sure he has razor and shaving cream and lotion as she has done so many times before.

“Yes,” Ford says. He wipes his eyes, turns back to the garment bag and zips it up.

“This is horrible.” Mia can’t look at him.

“Yes,” he says. He picks up the toiletry bag and walks into the bathroom. She hears drawers open and close, the sound of him putting containers and bottles and jars on the sink counter. After a couple of minutes, she hears the zip of the bag, and then he’s back in the room.

“I’ve left her number by the phone,” he says.

“Okay.”

“Mia,” he says, and she looks up. She wants to hug him, hold him tight, tell him that it’s still not too late. It’s all a mistake that they can fix. They’ll be one of those couples who renews their vows and then has a mid-life baby, a happy, spoiled child who will graduate from high school when Mia and Ford are in their early sixties. She wants to tell him there is still time to start all over again, make it right this time. Somehow, Mia will fix that part of her that wants something else. He can, too. Maybe through anti-depressants or week long tantric workshops or twice weekly counseling appointments they can stand to live together for the next forty years. Whatever it is, she’ll do it in order to save them from this transition. In order to save Harper. To keep them all from having to change.

“I’m going to go,” he says.

“I know,” she says.



After Ford leaves, Mia picks up the phone and begins dialing. She thinks she is calling Kenzie, not able to believe that so much has happened in her life that Kenzie is unaware of, when Katherine answers the phone.

“Katherine?” Mia says, surprised, looking at the phone.

“What is it? Is it Mom?”

“Yes,” Mia wants to say, “yes, it’s all about Mom and not about me.”

But she doesn’t. She breathes in and exhales. “No. It’s about me.”

“What did he do?” Katherine says.

“Who?”

“The doctor. The one in the hall.”

“How did you know that?” Mia feels her face burn, her throat tighten. Just the thought of Robert that day in the hall makes her want to weep. There he is, pushing his hair back, looking at her. There are her lips on his cheek, his skin soft and warm.

“Mia, I’ve been single as long as you’ve been married.”

Mia nods, begins to weep.

“Meesh,” Katherine says, using her old nickname for Mia;
Meesh
, the way she pronounced her sister’s name when she could barely talk. “It’s okay.”

“Ford left.”

For a second, Katherine stops, and then she clears her throat. “That’s been coming for a while.”

“How do you know that, too?” Mia stands up, walks around the living room. “How could you have possibly seen that?”

“I know you think I’m the family loser relationship-wise, but Meesh, you and Ford, your staying together—it was about the kids, wasn’t it?”

Mia wants to hang up on her sister, the doctor who seems to have known the truth about everything all along. How irritating! How annoying! Just like Katherine to come in with the facts when they won’t do any good at all, the same way she sailed in and then out of Sally’s illness, barging forward with pronouncements and ideas and then flying home before any of the real healing had even started. The way she left for med school and never came back to the Bay Area, leaving Mia to do it all. And now she says she could see what Mia couldn’t? Wouldn’t?

But then Mia sits on a chair. She’s never told anyone except Kenzie about how she felt about Ford.

“Yes,” she says. “The kids.”

“Then this is good. It’s a new start.”

“Once I start, where do I go?”

“Look, who in the hell am I to say? I can’t even find the starting line, with either sex.”

Mia hears Katherine’s breathing, the soft sound of music in the background. It’s a weekday, and Katherine is home from work, alone in her big house, preparing dinner, listening to jazz, talking with her cats. Then she’ll eat and watch a movie on the VCR and go to bed. Alone, at least tonight.

Mia will be alone tonight, too.

“I don’t know how to do it,” Mia says.

“Who does? But what about the doctor? What was his name? Rosen something? No, Groszmann? Anyway, I saw that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with, well, such an expression.”

“We were—we had an affair. But he ended it. Something freaked him out.”

“You told Ford?”

“Yes. And the boys.”

“The boys? They know about this?”

“They told me about Ford.”

“Shit,” Katherine says. “The kids told you? Christ. How did they find out?”

“Harper overheard Ford on the phone a couple of times, and then Lucien pieced it together.”

“You damn writers. Always working on what makes people tick. He’ll probably write about that later in life.”