Floating Staircase(23)

“Yes.”

“How come you never told me?”

“I don’t know.”

“You could have told me.”

“Yeah,” I said, but I was hardly listening to her.

“I’m here, if you ever want to talk about it again.”

“Thank you,” I said. “But I’m okay.”

“Just keep that in mind, baby.”

“I will.”

“My baby.”

“Yes.”

And that was all I ever said about it to Jodie, who later became my wife.



Jodie made tacos and Mexican rice for dinner while I set the table, put an Eric Alexander CD on the stereo, and opened a bottle of Chateau Ste. Michelle. Even though the handprint on the basement wall still hung over my head like a black aura, I didn’t want my wife to think I was completely out of my mind, so I even lit a couple candles and put on my best face at the dinner table. To my surprise, by the time Jodie was halfway through telling me about her afternoon, the handprint diminished to only a vague and distant throbbing toward the back of my cranium. Another hour and a few more glasses of wine and I convinced myself I could forget all about it.

“You know, we’ve got that perfectly good office upstairs that we’re currently utilizing as a storage locker,” Jodie said, setting her fork down on her plate and pouring herself another glass of wine. “We could put my laptop up there instead of leaving it on the coffee table in the living room, and you can organize your writing stuff. I’m going to need a quiet place to finish my dissertation, and I’m sure you don’t want to continue writing on the sofa for the rest of your life, anyway.”

Of course, I hadn’t been getting much writing done on the sofa, either. “Give me the next couple days, and I’ll set it up real nice. Are you teaching tomorrow?”

“Yes. You should come out to the campus, take a look around. They’ve got a nice library.” She smiled sweetly and innocently, and for one mesmerizing second, I saw her as she had been as a young girl. “You could have lunch with me.”

“How long is the winter course?”

“Just a few weeks. But listen,” Jodie said, setting her wineglass on the table, “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something.”

I raised my eyebrows and said, “Shoot.”

“They’ve got a full-time slot opening up this spring, and I was thinking about applying for it.”

“Teaching?”

“I know it sounds crazy, and I know I didn’t just sit through six years of graduate school to end up back in the classroom . . .”

“But what about your post doc? What about the clinical work you wanted to do?”

“I know. I know,” she said, laughing, and rested her chin on her hand. “I’ve really enjoyed teaching. I like the kids. I like the students.”

I sensed the conversation sway dangerously close to our one area of incongruity—Jodie’s desire to have children. I felt a momentary flare of contempt for her, as if this were some passive-aggressive attempt at bringing up that old subject—I like the kids. But that feeling was just a spark quickly eclipsed by the look of genuine contentment on my wife’s face. Her eyes gleamed like jewels in the candlelight.

“Well,” I said, “if that’s what you want to do . . .”

“You mean you wouldn’t have a problem with it?”

“Why would I have a problem with it?”

“Well, I mean, after all the schooling . . .”

“You should do what you want. If you change your mind down the road, you can always go back to clinical work. Do you think you have a shot at getting the position?”

“I do,” she said nearly breathless. “I really do.”

“Hell,” I said. “Then go for it.”



We made love again that night and it was very nice, although it lacked the unconstrained sense of lust displayed by our previous coupling on the living room sofa the first week in the house.

“What is it?” Jodie asked me immediately afterward.

“What do you mean?”

“You seemed distracted.”

“It sounded like you enjoyed yourself,” I said.

“Is it the notebooks? That I took them out of the trash in London?”

“No.” To my own ears, my voice sounded very far away.

“Then what is it? There’s something.” She rubbed my chest. “I can tell.”

Kissing her forehead, I folded her up in my arms and hugged her.

“You’re not going to say anything, are you?” she asked after a while.

I said nothing more and eventually fell into a dreamless half sleep while Jodie got up and showered before coming back to bed.

Sometime during predawn, I was awoken by what felt like a cold hand touching my chest. I jerked upright in bed, a shriek caught midway up my throat. Jodie slept soundly beside me; I was surprised my start hadn’t woken her. Across the room and through the part in the curtains, I could see the three-quarter moon cleaving through the inky darkness of space and the pearl-colored luminescence of the frozen lake below.

I pawed sleepily at my face while my eyes adjusted to the darkness. There was a needling sense of urgency directing me to get up, get up, get up. I peeled back the blankets and stepped onto the ice-cold hardwood floor. A shiver shot like a bolt of lightning through my body, and I felt my testicles, those two wrinkled cowards, shrivel to the size of dried figs. I pulled on my pajama bottoms and crept out into the hallway, still unaccustomed to the placement of the squeaky floorboards; I winced inwardly each time one creaked, afraid I’d wake up Jodie. But she was snoring steadily and lost in her own dreamland, and I made it to the carpeted section of the landing without incident.