chapter fourteen

MEREDITH

One steamy evening in late September, Ellen and I meet for a walk in Chastain Park. A few minutes in, she tells me that she heard from Andy, who heard from his sister, Margot, who heard from a girl on Margot’s tennis team, who heard from Will’s wife, Andrea, that some guy Josie is dating saved Will’s life last Saturday night at Bistro Niko.

I give her an incredulous look, stopping on the paved path so suddenly that a runner nearly collides with us. “What…in the world?” I say.

As the runner swerves past us and we begin to walk again, Ellen explains that, according to the report, Josie just happened to be randomly passing by Will and Andrea’s table at the very moment that Will began to choke on his steak. Josie’s date, who does something in the medical field, administered the Heimlich maneuver or some such procedure, dislodging the meat and saving Will from his untimely demise.

“Unbelievable,” I say. “And yet somehow…not.”

Ellen laughs and says, “Yeah. You’d practically think Josie planned it, but how could she?”

“If anyone could, she could,” I say. “And I bet it wasn’t a coincidence they were at the same restaurant….At the very least, she’ll use this as an excuse to talk to Will. Call to follow up on his airway.” I roll my eyes, disgusted. “Andrea better watch her back.”

“You don’t think she’d really do that, do you?” Ellen asks.

I shrug. “Probably not, no. Although my therapist says that most everyone is capable of an affair under the right circumstances.”

Ellen murmurs her pensive agreement as I find myself thinking about her marital problems from several years before. I don’t know the details, or if anyone else was involved, but somehow I got the impression that the rockiness was more her fault than Andy’s.

“Have you ever been tempted?” I ask.

When she doesn’t immediately respond, I mumble, “Sorry. That’s none of my business.”

“It’s okay,” Ellen says, pausing to stoop down to retie a shoelace. “You can ask me anything. You know that.”

I pause and wait for her to secure the knot, then tighten the other. She doesn’t speak until we’re walking again. “Remember Leo?” she asks as her pace quickens.

“Of course,” I say, recalling one of several long conversations we had about our two most significant exes, Lewis and Leo, and specifically how similar they were. Both were artist types (Leo was a journalist, Lewis was still acting, mostly on Broadway but occasionally appearing in small indie films). Both were native New Yorkers. Like Lewis, Leo had been very intense and had broken her heart.

“Well, a few years back,” she continues, “I started to have…contact with him again.”

“What sort of contact?” I say, struggling to keep up with Ellen’s stride, her legs so much longer than mine.

“Mostly just emailing and texting…but I also saw him a couple of times. Once on a shoot in L.A. Once in New York…”

“Did you…?” My voice trails off.

“No,” she says firmly. “We didn’t have sex or anything close to that. It was really more of an emotional thing. But it was still pretty bad….”

“I’m sorry,” I say, feeling vague disappointment that my suspicion has been confirmed, but no judgment whatsoever. If anything, I feel reassured by the evidence that people can recover from major marital setbacks. “Does Andy know?”

“Yeah. He knows,” she says, her voice thick with regret. She then confesses that although it was mostly an emotional affair, she did kiss Leo once.

“One kiss isn’t so bad,” I say, although I’m not sure I entirely believe that.

“Yes. Maybe not. But I contemplated much more than that…including leaving Andy altogether.” Ellen finishes abruptly, and it takes me a few seconds to respond.

“What made you stay?” I ask.

She looks back at me with wide, earnest eyes. “Love,” she says.

“Aww, Ell,” I say, moved by the sincerity and purity of her reply, especially when I was anticipating a more cynical answer: fear or guilt or a sense of duty or that she was already pregnant with Isla. “I’m so glad you worked it out. You’re really perfect together.”

“Well, nothing’s perfect,” she says. “But I do think Andy and I truly belong together. And things are really good now.”

“Did you love Leo?” I say, lowering my voice, as if his name might still hold some power over her.

“Maybe. But it wasn’t a true, deep, real love, like the kind I have for Andy….It was always more of an obsession…an unhealthy addiction….And to a certain extent, maybe I was just feeling that sense of what if?…What if I had married Leo? What would my life be like?”

I nod, thinking the whole concept of the path not taken is partly what has always troubled me. Not so much in terms of Lewis, though I do think about him once in a while. But in terms of a different life altogether, the one I might be living if Daniel hadn’t died and I hadn’t married Nolan, the two events always seeming so intertwined.

“So Andy just…forgave you?” I ask.

“Well, not right away…We definitely had a rough couple of months. Really a pretty shitty year…By the time I met you, though, things were a lot better. And when Isla came—wow.” Ellen’s voice becomes light, yet also awe-filled. “She really took us to a higher place. Fixed things…”

“She did?” I say, finding it a little hard to believe that a baby could have that effect when Harper definitely caused a strain for Nolan and me. Then again, Isla has always been easier than Harper in pretty much all respects.

“Well, I guess I shouldn’t say she fixed things. We did that on our own with a lot of hard work. But she definitely renewed our commitment. It was almost as if her birth gave us something of a clean slate. Put everything in perspective.”

I nod, thinking that this part I understand. Motherhood really does give you a broader perspective about so much.

Ellen continues, “I think the whole ordeal, as horrible as it was, made us stronger in some respects. Maybe that’s just me trying to justify things, but I really think it’s true.”

“So you never hear from him anymore?” I ask. “Leo?”

“No,” she says. “Not in a very long time…About a year after everything happened, he called. But I never called him back. I did send him a short letter, telling him an official goodbye and asking that he please not contact me again….Honestly, he could have died for all I know.”

“Yeah. He could have choked to death,” I say, forcing a smile.

She smiles back just as halfheartedly, then suddenly shifts gears. “Are you and Nolan doing okay?”

“I guess so,” I say, wiping my sweaty forehead with the back of my forearm. “I don’t know. He’s pretty frustrated with me.”

“Because of the second baby thing?”

“Yeah. That…and you know, the usual complaints—not enough sex…” I stop, never having been comfortable discussing my sex life with even my closest friends. “That’s how the subject of infidelity came up with Amy at my last session. She said, more or less, that if someone isn’t being satisfied on that front, they may start to look elsewhere….I guess it’s not really a revolutionary concept….”

Ellen nods and says, “Yeah. I guess not. Pretty cynical, though.”

“Yeah. Amy’s a cynic,” I say. “Or at the very least a realist…but I really can’t imagine Nolan cheating on me.”

“Yeah. I can’t, either,” she says. “He’s such a good guy.”

“So’s Andy,” I say. “We’re both really lucky.”

“Yeah. Hashtag blessed.”

I smile.

Ellen laughs, as we’ve both made fun of those nauseating Facebook posts that use a religious concept to justify their thinly veiled bragging. We walk in silence for a minute or more, both of us becoming a bit breathless, before she asks her next question. “So what about you? What if Lewis came back the way Leo did? Would you be at all…tempted?”

“I really don’t think so,” I say, almost wishing my dilemma were that straightforward. If I were contemplating an affair, or following a lustful impulse, then I could just stop, confess, and recommit, like Ellen did. Or, alternatively, I could make the other choice and go ahead and have the affair—which might be a catalyst for a different change altogether. “Not that I judge you,” I quickly add.

“Oh, I know you don’t,” she says.

“It’s just that I think I finally got over Lewis when I was practicing law in New York—and sneaked in to see him in a two-man off-Broadway show.” I smile. I’ve never admitted this to anyone.

She laughs. “He was that bad?”

“No. He was fucking brilliant,” I say. “But he seemed a little…I don’t know…”

“Self-important? Pompous?” she guesses.

“No. Just over the top…a little flamboyant,” I say.

We both laugh, and she says, “Could he be gay?”

“Nah,” I say, thinking of how incredible the sex with him was. “I doubt it. But I did try to convince myself that he might be. And that helped.”

She laughs again as I continue, “The thing that I miss the most about Lewis isn’t Lewis…but the way I felt when I was with him.”

“Do you think part of what you miss is just being young? In your twenties?” she asks.

I shrug. “Maybe a little. But I don’t think that’s it, exactly. Especially because my twenties were pretty rough.”

She nods, knowing that I’m talking about my brother.

“It’s more the way being in love made me feel about life….Our love even eased my grief over Daniel—at least for a while—and it just felt like we could do anything….Go anywhere, do anything, be anyone….The possibilities felt endless,” I say, holding my breath for a few seconds, remembering the crazy, intoxicating highs that came before the fall. “And then he broke my heart. Which felt a little bit like death.”

“Yeah. Broken hearts really do feel like death,” she says as we near the top of the hill, overlooking the baseball fields. “But it all worked out. Because you got Nolan.”

She says Nolan’s name the way people say The End. In other words: All’s well that ends well.

“Right,” I say, biting my lip.

In the distance, I can see Wilkins Field—and the exact spot in the dugout where Nolan proposed—and am saddened to realize that it’s more of a queasy memory than a magical one.

“And Harper,” she says.

“And of course Harper,” I say, thinking that sometimes my daughter is the only thing that keeps me from wanting a do-over.

As we continue to walk in silence, my mind drifts from Harper, to the second baby I don’t want to have, to Amy’s final question in my therapy session, to Ellen’s explanation of what kept her with Andy—a true, deep, real love—and I’m suddenly overcome with an intense wave of guilt and grief. For what I don’t have. For what I can’t give my husband.

“Meredith?” I hear Ellen say as I realize that I’ve stopped walking. “What’s wrong?”

“I just need a second,” I say, drifting over to sit on the stone wall that separates the sidewalk from the steep slope below. She sits beside me, our backs to the ball fields, our shoulders touching.

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know. I’m just not happy. With Nolan and our marriage. Sometimes I think the whole thing was a mistake….” My voice breaks, my vision blurs, and I have to stop talking to keep from bursting into tears.

Ellen takes my hand and does her best to soothe me, telling me that all marriages are complicated and messy and mysterious and flawed. That maybe I’m just confusing the burdens of unglamorous everyday life with something missing in my relationship. That it might sound simplistic but sometimes you just have to love the one you’re with. I know her advice is mostly sound, but deep down, I also know how very different our situations are. She hit a bump in the road, whereas I’m on a road I never should have been on in the first place. She lied to Andy in her marriage, whereas my whole marriage sometimes feels like a lie.

LATER THAT NIGHT, after being held hostage in Harper’s darkened room for over two hours, I fall asleep in the glider next to her bed, awakening to the sound of my phone vibrating. I find it in the cushions and see Ellen’s name.

“Hi, there,” I whisper, tiptoeing out of Harper’s room.

“Are you alone?” she asks.

“Yeah. I was just putting Harper to bed,” I say, walking downstairs, where I start cleaning the kitchen.

“Where’s Nolan?” she asks.

“At a work dinner.”

“So I’ve been thinking about earlier,” she says.

“Me, too. Listen—I’m sorry—I don’t know what came over me. I think I’m just hormonal…about to get my period—” I’m lying to my friend, but only because I don’t want to burden her.

“No, I’m sorry,” Ellen interjects. “I shouldn’t have tried to tell you how you should feel. And I hope I didn’t imply that my marriage is perfect now. Because it’s not. Far from it.”

“I know,” I say. “I didn’t think you were doing that.”

“Okay, good. Because sometimes I have the feeling that everyone thinks that everyone else is living a fairy tale. Especially in the South. People fake things so much. Put on a happy face and show off your perfect life.”

I murmur my agreement as she continues, “And I just wanted to say…that I hope you stay with Nolan, but no matter what happens, I’ll always be here for you.”

“That’s really nice,” I say. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” she says, then hesitantly asks if I’ve considered marriage counseling. “I mean, I know you go to Amy…but what about couples therapy?”

“Yeah. Maybe we’ll try that,” I say, although I’m pretty skeptical about it as a solution for us. It seems to me that counseling might help with a lot of relationship issues, but that it can’t make you love someone you just don’t. I’m also beginning to realize, sickeningly, that the only real solution is to tell Nolan the truth.

“It’s going to be okay,” Ellen says. “You just need a little time.”

“Right,” I say, thinking that the notion of time healing all might be an even bigger lie than the foundation my marriage is built upon. Daniel’s death taught me that much; some things will never be okay.