Life and Other Near-Death Experiences(67)

God help me, Tom actually laughed. “O’Reilly? I mean, I love the guy, but no. No and no.”

“Who, then?”

The waitress came back with our food. I thanked her without looking away from Tom.

“I had a few crushes here and there. But that’s not what this is about. I just . . . couldn’t keep lying to you. You know?”

I responded with silence.

“I’m sorry, Libby,” he said. “I tried to tell you, but . . .”

I took a sip of my coffee, scorching my tongue on the too-hot liquid. I swallowed anyway. “Oh yeah? And when did you try to tell me, Tom?”

This time he didn’t hesitate. “After you brought up adoption, and I said I didn’t want to do it. I told you I had something else I wanted to talk to you about. And you kept saying you couldn’t handle one more thing. That if I wasn’t going to give you good news, you didn’t want to hear it.”

I gasped.

He looked at me sadly. “You honestly don’t remember.”

I told him I didn’t remember it like that. But as I stood there digging small holes into my palm with my nails, it came back to me. He had tried to sit me down. He said there were other things we needed to sort through before trying—again—to have a child. I had become angry—belligerent even, because I thought he was trying to divert my attention from the real issue. When, really, I’d been the one doing the diverting.

I took another sip of coffee, then asked Tom if there were other times when he’d tried to tell me.

He coughed awkwardly. “I pried a little. Remember in college, I told you my friend Luke was bisexual? You told me you could never be with someone who liked men, even a little.”

My face grew hot. While I didn’t remember Luke, I could imagine myself saying something like that.

“I told myself I would work harder to be the man you wanted me to be,” Tom said. “I read all those psychology books, and I looked for information online about, um, staying straight, and I tried to focus on studying and getting a good job. I’ve always been crazy about you, Libby, and I wanted to make you happy. You’re the most fun, wonderful person I’ve ever met. It just . . .”

“Isn’t enough,” I said.

Tom had known me most of my life; it was little surprise he understood what I was not saying as well. “It’s not your fault, Libby. It wasn’t up to you to give me permission to tell you. I didn’t want to hurt you, but I was lazy, too. Life was so good for us. It was so easy being half of the couple that looked like they had it all together.”

“We had that in common,” I admitted. In many ways, our so-called ideal marriage had been the foundation of my adult life. I would never admit this to my father, but after my mother died, our three-person family never felt whole again. What I’d seen in Tom was not just a person whom I was deeply attracted to, but also a steady man with whom I could build a new family. Even after our two-person team did not expand as I’d hoped it would, we were nonetheless a unit: Libby-and-Tom, happily married, content in our shared existence. And I had been so intent on maintaining that foundation that I was unwilling to see the cracks forming beneath my very feet.

“My therapist says that part of my need to have things seem perfect stems from having a childhood where everything was pretty much the exact opposite,” said Tom.

I bit into my bacon, considering Tom’s father’s drunken tantrums and flying fists; his mother’s disheveled appearance and nonexistent housecleaning skills, which were her own silent form of retaliation.

“I understand now why you—” I knew he was about to say “stabbed me,” but he stopped short. “Why you were so upset, and why you left Chicago. Though I’m sure it’s little comfort to you, I hate myself.”

I sighed and met his eyes, which were full of pain. Tom’s battle to forgive himself—to learn to love himself again, if he ever had at all—was going to be far more difficult than any struggle I would endure as a result of our separation. I had my own issues to work through. But as far as our relationship was concerned, I was already rolling downhill, while Tom was at the bottom, trying to figure out how to begin his climb.

“Please don’t hate yourself,” I said. “I don’t hate you.” It was hard to, with him sitting in front of me, reminding me that he was a real live human being whom I’d loved for so long it was hard to remember a time when that had not been the case. I wanted to tell him that we might be friends again one day. But I had a very strong feeling we wouldn’t be seeing much of each other in the future. So I simply said, “Just give yourself time, and some grace, okay? It’ll work out.”

He dabbed at his eyes with a stiff paper napkin. Then he exhaled. “I feel like you just gave me a gift.”

“You’re welcome.”

His plate was untouched, his teacup still full. “Are you going to be okay, Tom?” I asked.

“Shouldn’t I be asking that about you?” he said, and for a moment, I wondered if he suspected the truth about me. But then he said, “What about you, Libby? The apartment’s gone now, and you’re not working for Jackie anymore. What will you do next?”

“I’m going to start a foundation for children who’ve lost a parent to cancer,” I said. My lie to Ty and Shea aside, I had not truly considered this until it came tumbling out of my trap, but the moment I heard myself say it, I knew there was no going back. However long I still had to live would have to be long enough to get the charity started.