One True Loves(47)

It aches to look at him, to know that he’s trying so hard to be OK right now, that he’s trying to be understanding and patient and secure, when he’s anything but. He is standing there, putting a frying pan down over a medium flame, trying to pretend that the fact that I saw my (former?) husband today isn’t tearing him up inside.

I can’t put him through this any longer.

“We can talk about it,” I say to him.

He looks up at me.

Mozart walks into the kitchen and then turns around, as if he knows he doesn’t want to be here for this. I watch as he joins Homer under the piano.

I grab Sam’s hand. “We can talk about anything that is on your mind; you can ask me anything you want. This is your life, too.”

Sam looks away from me and then nods.

He turns off the flame.

“Go ahead. Whatever you want to know. Just ask me. It’s OK. We’re gonna be honest and we’re gonna be OK.” I don’t actually know what I mean by that, about us being OK.

He turns to me. “How was he?” Sam asks.

“Oh,” I say, surprised that Sam’s first question is about Jesse’s well-being.

“He’s OK. He’s good. He seems . . . like he’s adjusting.” I don’t mention that he seems almost bizarrely unflappable, that he is singularly focused on restoring our marriage.

“How are you?”

“I’m OK, too,” I say. “I’m a little stunned by everything. It’s very weird to see him. I’m not sure what to make of it.” I’m choosing vague words because I’m afraid to narrow anything down. I’m afraid to commit to any particular feeling more than another. I honestly don’t know what words I’d choose even if I was committed to specifics.

Sam nods, listening. And then he breathes in and asks what he really wants to know. It’s clear the first two questions were warm-ups and this is game time. “Did you kiss him?”

It’s funny, isn’t it? So often men see betrayal in what you’ve done instead of how you feel.

“No,” I say, shaking my head.

Sam is instantly relieved but I feel worse. I’m getting by on a technicality. Jesse didn’t even try to kiss me, so I don’t know if I would have let him, or if I would have kissed him back. But I still get credit as if I’d resisted. I don’t feel great about that.

“I’d understand if you did kiss him,” Sam says. “I know that . . . I guess what I’m saying is . . .”

I wait for him to finish his sentence but he doesn’t finish it. He just gives up, as if it’s too overwhelming to try to choose words for his thoughts.

I know how he feels.

He turns the burner on again and goes back to making sandwiches.

“You’re in an impossible situation,” I tell him. I want him to know that I understand what he’s going through. But I could never really understand it, could I? I have no idea what it’s like to be him right now.

“You are, too,” he says.

We’re both playing the same game with each other. We want to understand, we want to make the other person feel understood, but the truth is we’re on opposite sides of the street right now, looking over at each other and imagining what life must be like.

I watch him as his eyes narrow and his shoulders broaden from the tension in his body. I watch as he puts butter on a piece of bread.

Maybe I understand him more than I think.

Sam is making his fiancée a grilled cheese sandwich while worrying that she might leave him.

He’s scared he’s about to lose the person he loves. There’s not a fear on this earth more common than that.

“Let’s make these together,” I say, stepping toward the pan and taking the spatula out of his hand.

I’m great at flipping things with a spatula.

I’m not great at choosing what to add to a lackluster soup and I have no idea what cheese to pair with anything. But show me a half-baked omelet and I will flip it with the ease of a born chef.

“You keep buttering; I’ll flip,” I tell him.

He smiles and it’s honestly just as striking as watching the sun shine through the clouds.

“All right,” he says. He puts more energy into swiping butter across the sliced bread. It’s so yellow, the butter.

Before I met Sam, I kept sticks of cheap butter in the refrigerator and when I needed it for toast, I chopped it off in tiny chucks and futilely tried to spread the cold mess over the hot toast like a woman in a faded dramatization of an infomercial.

When Sam and I moved in together, he had this small little porcelain container that he put on the counter and when I opened it up, it looked like an upside-down cup of butter sitting in a puddle of water.

“What the hell is this?” I’d asked him as I was plugging in the toaster. Sam was putting glasses away in the cupboards, and when I said it, he laughed at me.

“It’s a French butter dish,” he said as he got off the step stool he’d been using and flattened the box the glasses had been in. “You keep the butter in the top part, put cold water in the bottom, and it keeps it chilled but spreadable.” He said it as if everyone knew this, as if I was the crazy one.

“I have been all over France,” I said to him, “and I have never seen one of these. Why is this butter so yellow? Is this some sort of fancy organic butter?”