The Vanishing Year(21)

I expect this to work, to be the bridge between us, to bring him back to bed, his ankles over mine, his face in my neck as he brainstorms about who he knows that could help locate her, and how we could do it. Who he could pay, We’ll hire the best PI I can find. I genuinely believe this.

Instead, his mouth is set, his jaw working.

“Why am I not enough, Zoe?” His hands hang down by his sides, but his fists are clenching and unclenching.

“Oh, honey no, I just meant—”

“I know what you meant.” He slaps the bed, hard, and I jump back. “In the course of one evening, you tell me you were almost killed, you’ve connected with an old friend—someone shady and who looks like a common criminal—and now you want to reach back into your past and find your birth mother, even though, by your own admission, your past is shrouded in secrecy and vague, and you have no living relatives. We’ve made a goddamn life, Zoe.”

I’m stung by his words, his assessment of our evening and how drastically different it is from mine.

“Henry, I’m telling you this because I feel close to you! Please, just listen—”

“I said you can do anything you want to do. I mean that. But you are restless. You are not content in our life. With everything we have, you want more. You bring up this Carolyn every time I turn around. She’s the woman who left you. I am the man who is here. And it will never be enough.” His eyes flash with anger and he spits the words at me.

“Henry! NO!” I shout, I can’t help it. He’s not even listening to me. This all seems ridiculous. He obviously doesn’t understand what I’m talking about, what I’m asking.

“Don’t you dare raise your voice to me like that.” He says it slowly, low and scary, and I shrink back. I’ve never been afraid of Henry before.

“Henry. I’m happy here. I will not be stagnant my whole life. You can’t keep me in this marble box of an apartment.” I speak slowly and clearly. I smart at his words, the woman who left you, but I won’t tell him that.

We stand off facing each other, both of us in identical poses, his hands on his hips, for several minutes. His nostrils flare. The pizza is cloying, greasy and sickening.

“I just want to be enough for you, Zoe. This is my biggest fear—that I’m not.” He drops his arms to his sides and turns his back to me. I cross the room and touch his bare back. His skin feels cold.

“You’re enough for me.” I touch my nose to his spine and inhale.

“I’m not. I won’t be. You’ll leave. I’ll be alone.”

“That’s crazy.” I wrap my arms around his waist. “I won’t leave you simply because I find her. That’s crazy. I don’t even know if she’ll want to know me.”

“So this is Lydia, this is her idea. You’ve started mentioning Lydia and Carolyn at the same time. We’ve spent the last year in this world. It’s different social circles, Zo. She’ll drag you backward into her scene again.”

“What? I have no mind of my own?” I pull him closer. “I love you.”

He pats my hand, then pulls out of my embrace. He doesn’t turn to look at me and instead sighs. “Now. You love me now.”

“Henry, love isn’t conditional on growth. If I make a new friend or find my birth mother, it doesn’t mean I’ll move on or outgrow you.”

“You’re an exotic bird, Zoe. You don’t see that.”

“This is crazy, Henry. I’ll love you no matter what.”

“I’m not ready, Zoe. I’m not ready for us to reach back into our pasts. We’ve been living in this bubble, living in the present. I’ve loved it. I spent the whole year before I met you completely living in the past. I can’t look back. Not yet. Can you see that? Can you give me time?”

“Time.” I repeat. The word seems senseless.

“Yes. Time. Let me figure it out. Then maybe I’ll even help you. We can do it together. But I just need to be ready. There’s a lot you don’t know about me. I know that and it’s my fault. I’ve kept myself from you, parts that I haven’t been ready to access. It hasn’t been fair, but . . .” he shrugs. “It is what it is.”

“Okay.” I nod slowly. I don’t really understand but I know that real love is about sacrifice, understanding, giving when you just want to take. “I guess I can give you time.” Even though I have no idea what that means.

He pulls me into a fierce hug, his arms around me like a vise. I can’t be sure, but I think I feel tears on my hair. “I won’t let you go. Not again.”





CHAPTER 7



FEBRUARY 2013, NEW YORK CITY



“You have a date?” In my hands I clutched a fistful of wilting anthurium, with their veined, leathery leaf-like petals, a masculine flower. Phallic, really, the stamen popping out like a penis.

“It’s a corporate banquet.” Lydia’s eyes plead. “It’s a big date. You’ll be fine.”

“Elisa hates me. She’s going to hate this,” I grumble, pouting, smoothing out the last of the bouquets. Elisa criticizes the way I change water buckets. I picture her smooth blonde-gray ponytail swinging as she shakes her head, her lined mouth bowed down, as she ticks off on slender fingers all the things I should have done differently in her clipped, efficient accent. Elisa is five feet tall and sixty years old and my hands shake at the thought.