The Good Widow(21)
“What was it like between you and Dylan the last time you saw her?” I push aside the sound our front door had made when I’d heaved it closed behind James with all my strength, how it had rattled in the doorjamb so hard I was sure the window next to it was going to shatter, just like we already had.
“That’s the worst part for me, I think.” He pauses.
“If you don’t want to tell me, it’s okay. It’s personal.” I jump in and fill the space, realizing I don’t want to answer the same question. Because now he has me thinking about karma and my role in all this. And I don’t want to go there.
“I think we’re past personal at this point.” He smiles, but his eyes don’t join in. “I was just remembering her face—she was glowing. She looked so beautiful that day. Her hair was in a ponytail, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. Just pink lipstick, I think. Yeah, that’s what it was. Because when I went to kiss her, she told me she didn’t want to get it on me and have me get shit from the guys at the station. I was on my way to work.”
He stops, and I can picture the scene in my mind. I imagine her wearing a T-shirt and jeans and watch as she playfully brushes off his kiss, standing on her pixie tiptoes and hugging him so she doesn’t have to feel his mouth on hers.
“I’ve replayed our conversation over and over looking for clues. But she seemed totally normal, talking to me about her last shift, and how she’d spilled a glass of red wine all over a woman wearing white linen pants. We’d laughed about how mortifying it had been—Dylan had grabbed a black cloth napkin to blot the wine off the woman and ended up making it worse—the napkin actually shed on the stain.” Nick smiled. “I remember watching her as she tried to mimic the woman’s Australian accent and thinking, wow, she’s in a great mood, she seems happy. I make this woman happy.” He stops again. “But it wasn’t me. I wasn’t the one who did that for her.” He rubs his palms over his eyes. “Sorry.”
“Please don’t apologize—especially not to me. I’m riding this emotional seesaw too.” I think about being in my bathroom this morning. Grabbing what I thought was my Prozac, prescribed by my gynecologist a couple of years back to help with the mood swings I’d started to experience around my period. I’d put them in the back of the medicine cabinet above our sink with the label turned away. James never said this, but I knew they were a reminder that I wasn’t pregnant.
I decided this morning that before I got on the plane, it might help to take one of my happy pills, as my doctor had referred to them after I told her about the anger I’d feel in the days before my cycle started. My recurring nightmare about James losing control of the car and plummeting down the cliff had kept me up most of the night, and I’d almost called Nick three different times to cancel, telling myself I’d made a huge mistake agreeing to go to Hawaii. But instead I’d accidentally grabbed a bottle of muscle relaxers that had been James’s—then dropped it like it was a hot skillet, the tiny white pills scattering around the sink. I’d clutched the edge of the counter as I watched the meds roll down the drain, some of them getting stuck and causing a pileup, and remembered why he’d had them in the first place.
He threw out his back helping the deliverymen carry that pine dining room table I purchased while he’d been traveling, the one my mother-in-law can’t stand. The one I’m pretty sure James never liked either. It was heavy and awkward, and he raked one of the legs on the doorframe as they were carrying it inside. He caught my eye as I directed the man holding the front toward a nook just off our kitchen, his eyes blazing with annoyance—that I’d made yet another purchase without consulting him. And I shot him an angry look and shrugged, because I made money too. I had a right to spend it. And don’t you dare imply that because I don’t make even half what you do on my teacher’s salary, I don’t have a right to buy this table. Another reason the damn thing means so much to me. It has always made me feel stronger to have it, even though it was brought into our house during a low point.
He’d traveled fourteen days the month I bought it, and I’d been lonely. And I was tired of him telling me to get a hypoallergenic dog (he was allergic) to keep me company. And I was sick of having dinner with my sister and her husband and my nieces and nephew and feeling sorry for myself as they passed around their perfect bowl of quinoa pasta with basil and fresh tomatoes and perfect sautéed broccoli and garlic and talked about their perfect days. I’d end up drinking half the bottle of red wine I’d contributed to the meal, missing my husband and sad we didn’t have a family of our own to sit around the ginormous pine table I’d just purchased.
As James and the deliverymen set it down on the gleaming travertine in our kitchen, James let out a cry and fell to the floor. Let’s just say his embarrassment over his back collapsing in front of two twentysomething men—with their proper weight belts and wide eyes, who could’ve carried it without his help—didn’t bode well for the already fragile state of our marriage. We didn’t speak for two days. I think about those arguments now—the ones where we’d be in a battle of wills, not talking, daring the other to be the first to give in—and realize we’ll never have one again.
I guess you won, James.
“Did you read the emails?” Nick interrupts my thoughts.