Vox(68)

Patrick leans over, picks up my beer, and swallows it down in one long gulp. “Anyway, that’s why I didn’t tell you. When they come for me, it’s better if you don’t know anything.” When. Not if.

“But I do now,” I say.

“I guess you do, babe. I guess you do.”

“Steven?” I don’t want to ask the question, but I can’t help myself. “If he makes it up to North Dakota and they find him—”

Instead of answering, Patrick folds himself forward, head buried in his hands.





FIFTY-SEVEN




There’s no love tonight, but there is.

We put three children to bed and silently make a wish for Steven, that he turns back before it’s too late. Then Patrick takes me to bed, wrapping himself around me.

“You need to get out,” he says. “Any way you can.”

“I can’t,” I say, even though I can.

“You know someone, don’t you? That Italian who worked in your department.”

So this is what it’s like, having my own husband sanction my affair.

I get out of bed and take Patrick’s hand. “Let’s have a drink.”

On the way to the kitchen, I still haven’t fleshed out the story, not the whole story, not the end of the story, but I know how it begins. And it might as well begin with the truth. I take out two glasses and pour an inch of neat scotch into Patrick’s, a full measure of water into mine.

“No grappa tonight?” he says.

Everything is about to spill out: that first day in Lorenzo’s office with the music box, when I watched his long musician’s fingers and imagined them playing over my skin. The oldness I felt seeing Steven, only a baby yesterday, rush into his teens. Boredom after so many years of the same man, the same sex. Finally, my anger at Patrick’s passiveness, the meeting with Lorenzo after bumping into him at Eastern Market. The baby. My new passport.

Except, before I talk, I think.

I think all of these things, imagining the words bouncing off the tiled walls of our kitchen. In reality, there is no perpetual motion; all energy eventually gets absorbed, morphs into a different shape, changes state. But these words that I’m about to unleash, they’ll never be absorbed. Each syllable, each morpheme, each individual sound, will bounce and ricochet forever in this house. We’ll carry them with us like that cartoon character who’s always surrounded by his own dirt cloud. Patrick will feel them prick like invisible, poisonous darts.

The way things turn out, I don’t have to say anything at all.

“I think you should go with him,” Patrick says at last, as if he’s seen the whole story in my eyes. “With the Italian.”

I should be relieved, I think, that I didn’t have to say the words. Instead, I’m sick from having to hear Patrick say them, sick realizing his knowledge of who I am comes not from prying, but from years of intimacy. His voice is cold; an artificial chill sharpens its edges. I reach out and lay my hand on his arm, and two things happen.

His own hand covers mine. He also turns away.

We stand there, a middle-aged married couple in a kitchen, a frying pan from dinner soaking in the sink, the coffee maker ready to go into action when morning comes. Everything about this tableau is normal, the simple routine of a life together.

Finally, he breaks away. It’s nothing, really, only Patrick turning to busy himself by wiping a stray crumb from the counter or by checking the soaking pan. And at the same time, that break is everything. When he turns back to me, the V in his forehead seems deeper, almost branded onto his skin.

“Take Sonia,” he says quietly. “I’ll stay with the boys and figure out something.”

“Patrick, I’m—”

Now it’s his turn to console, and the hand he lays on me feels like a weight. “Don’t, Jean. I’d rather leave things”—he sighs—“I don’t know. I guess I’d rather we not go into it all. It’s bad enough knowing. Okay?”

I have no idea what to say to this, so I push all the pain somewhere dark, to be taken out and dealt with later, to feel the sting on my own, in my private time. For now, Patrick doesn’t need to know about the baby. “What will you do?”

“I said I’ll figure out something.” The V that I didn’t think could deepen further does just that.

“Like what? You know what they’re planning, don’t you? A new serum, a goddamned water-soluble serum. How long do you think we’ll last in Italy—or anywhere—before the whole goddamned world turns Pure Blue?”

He doesn’t have an answer.

But I do. I don’t need Patrick and his political insight to tell me what I already know. All those smiles and nods and How about some coffee, Jean? in Morgan’s office aren’t fooling me. I’m as disposable as an empty lipstick tube, or I will be the moment we test the new serum. The lab will keep me on, for a while, until we’ve established a successful track record, until they’re sure I’m no longer needed. It will happen like this: I’ll be in my office, maybe seated at the desk with no phone, maybe standing at the wall that should have a window but doesn’t. Morgan will knock at the door, only a perfunctory little rap, because I can’t prevent him from entering, from penetrating my space. My office door is lacking a lock.