Life and Other Near-Death Experiences(8)

“That’s not fair, Libby,” he said. “We were raised to believe homosexuality is a sin, and I thought it was a choice. And I was attracted to you.”

I winced. “Past tense.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said quickly.

A wave of nausea hit me. No, he probably didn’t mean it like that. In fact, there may have never been a time in which Tom had not been imagining a physique markedly more masculine than my own while we were having sex. “So did you—?”

“No,” he said firmly. “I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t like that.”

I couldn’t bring myself to respond. Instead, I left him in the kitchen and wandered into our bedroom. Funny, it was the one room in our apartment that we had never finished decorating: the walls were as white as when we moved in, and our comforter was the same one I’d used in college, even though it was too small for our queen-size bed. On the wall, Tom had nailed a photo of us in front of the church on our wedding day. Beside it, I had hung a picture of him and me at junior prom; we’d started dating earlier that year. On the dresser, there was a photo of me, pink-cheeked and spilling out of my bikini on the beach in Acapulco, which Tom snapped on our honeymoon. I was relieved to be done with the wedding and to begin our lives as husband and wife. I’d married my best friend. We had a great apartment and friends we loved. Tom was on his way to having the career as an urban planner that he’d dreamed of, and it wouldn’t be long before the two of us would welcome a baby into our lives, or so I thought.

I’d never felt more hopeful than I did then.

Mexico.

The thought was an electrical current through my body. At once, I realized I needed to get moving—and fast. I went to the hall closet, located a suitcase, then returned to the bedroom.

“Libby?” Tom called from the dining room.

“Not now, Tom!” I yelled, and began opening dresser drawers and tossing his clothes into the suitcase. After it was stuffed, I went to the master bathroom and threw in Tom’s cologne and various other personal grooming products. I wheeled the suitcase to the spare bedroom, which we used as an office, and finished stuffing it with papers of Tom’s that looked like they might be important.

By this point, he was standing in the doorway watching me. “Libby, please stop.”

“Not an option. You need to leave. As in yesterday.”

The year before, Tom and I had gone skiing in northern Michigan. We were halfway down a bumpy blue run when I almost skied into a man who was splayed out in the snow. Even beneath his thick snow pants, it was clear that the lower half of his leg, which was bent at an unnatural angle, was snapped like a twig. I expected him to be moaning in pain, but as I pulled up beside him, he looked up at me with clear eyes and a neutral expression. “I just broke my leg and need to get down the mountain right away,” he said, as though he was commenting on the temperature. “Would you mind flagging down the ski patrol for me?”

At the time, I was amazed at the man’s reaction. Now I knew how he was feeling. I was aware that the bit of pain I was feeling was going to start hurting like hell in very short order, but for the time being, my brain and body were in self-preservation mode, and I could focus only on what had to be done next.

“But this is our apartment,” Tom said.

“That may technically be true, but who paid for it?” I asked, so coldly that I surprised myself. Until that moment, I’d never once held money over his head, even though I’d used the sum I received from my mother’s life insurance policy when I turned eighteen to make the down payment on our home, and covered more than four years of mortgage payments on my own before Tom began drawing a paltry salary as a newbie urban planner. He now paid a mere third of our monthly bill, and I continued to cover his student loans.

“Libby, please. I told you, I really want to work this out.”

“Tom,” I said, putting my hands on my hips, “that is not possible. No matter what you say or do, what you told me will always be with me. Always, Tom. It can never be undone. You must have known that, deep down, when you admitted it.” I’d intended to mock what he said the day before, but mostly I sounded sad. “I don’t have the time or energy to work it out with you. This may not make sense now, but one day it will. If you have additional questions, I suggest you discuss them with your therapist or a divorce lawyer,” I said, and handed him the suitcase.

“Oh, Libby,” he said. He was starting to cry.

It had been a long time since I’d seen Tom shed tears, and he looked so sorrowful that my instinct was to fling open my arms and cradle him to my chest. The scene quickly unfolded in my mind: I would say soothing things to him, and he would look at me appreciatively, then longingly as I dried his tears. We would make sweet, tender love on the bed, or maybe on the floor, and I wouldn’t even mind that it was over before I was ready. Afterward, he would joke that he should really cry more often, and we would laugh together, and then I would kiss my lovely, emotional husband and tell him I loved him like a mouth loves pizza, which never failed to make him smile.

It was enough to make tears spring to my own eyes.

But this was not the time to dwell on things that would never, ever happen again. “Please do that somewhere else,” I said, and pushed a now-weeping Tom toward the front door.

I expected to cry, too, after Tom left. Instead, I sat on the hallway floor feeling hollowed out and exhausted. If cancer was a gift, I wanted to return it. I didn’t need a fast-acting tumor to remind me about the fleeting nature of life: watching my mother rot in a hospital bed and die in hospice before she had a chance to teach me to choose a bra that wouldn’t make my ample bosom resemble missiles—let alone see me walk down the aisle with the man who would shatter my heart with one stuttering sentence—that was reminder enough.