TWENTY-THREE
Dear Maggie,
I was as pleased as punch to get your last email. Of course, I’m sorry to hear about Adam’s health problems, but it was good of you to be there for your children, even if (thank the good Lord) his prediction didn’t come to pass. But worry most about your own heart, you hear?
Lucky you, the best part of the year has just arrived. There’s nothing like May, after the students leave and return the city to us townies. I’ll miss it, just as I miss the feel of my rough kitchen floor beneath my feet. There is something about the familiar that is just so darn appealing.
I met a lovely painter named Al, and we’re getting on like two hogs in a mud puddle. Course, that’s probably because I know it’s just for now. Ever since Sam, I’ve found that the life of a lone wolf mostly suits me. At any rate, I’m painting my heart out, and I’ve learned enough Italian to ask for thirds on the mozzarella and to call out if I’ve fallen on the cobblestones and can’t get up. Familiar is good, but maybe sometimes unfamiliar is even better.
This Charlie fellow sounds like a catch. And I’m awfully happy to hear about your volunteering gig, too. Which leads me to: Any plans for August? You can’t fault me for hoping you’ll fall in love with Ann Arbor and stay on longer—but neither could I fault you for moving on. The world is your oyster now!
Much love,
Jean
I wasn’t one for oysters, and I still had no idea what I was going to do when Jean returned. Would I put the house in Oak Valley up for sale, as Linnea had been encouraging me to? Was I expecting a burning bush to declare my next move? Or waiting for a stable option to present itself to me instead of going out and creating it?
I was still staring blankly at my computer when there was a knock at the front door. I jumped up; delivery drivers left packages on the porch, so I immediately wondered if it was Charlie. A week had passed since I had turned down his offer to sleep over. We had gotten together for coffee a few days earlier, and though we had spoken like everything was normal, neither of us had suggested going to the other person’s house afterward, and we had parted with tepid promises to be in touch later that week. Already the space I had wedged between us seemed like a vast distance, and I was having withdrawal pangs that suggested I had become too dependent on him.
But maybe he was here to say he missed me. Maybe we could draw new boundaries and close the gap without completely merging. I smoothed my hair and went to the front of the house.
The window atop the door was low enough that I could see that whoever was standing there was not Charlie, but rather a white man with close-cut salt-and-pepper hair. As I opened the door, however, it took several seconds for my eyes to inform my brain that the person to whom this hair and skin belonged was Adam.
“What on earth are you doing here?” I said, stunned. I looked past him and saw an unfamiliar car in the driveway. “You drove here? You’re not supposed to be driving.”
There were bags under his eyes; he looked like he hadn’t slept in days. “It’s been more than a month since my surgery. I was cleared to drive last week. Though technically I only drove from the airport. I took a flight to be on the safe side.”
Hours of travel following heart surgery sounded like the opposite of safe to me. Moreover, it did not sound like a risk Adam would take. WebMD had said postbypass personality changes weren’t unheard of. Still.
“I wanted to talk to you,” he added.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “You came all the way from Chicago to do that? Without calling first? What if I wasn’t here? And where did you even get my address?”
“Jack,” he said, embarrassed.
I was going to have to have a word with my child.
“I didn’t call, because I knew you would tell me not to come,” he added.
“Quite prescient of you.”
“Maggie, please. I just want to have a conversation.”
The uncertainty I had felt after Adam’s surgery immediately resurfaced. To allow him into my life—or even into my borrowed house—was to knowingly step in emotional quicksand. I slipped on my shoes, which were beside the door, and joined him on the porch.
It was a warm day, but Adam appeared to be shivering in his thin cotton trench coat. “Are you all right?” I asked.
“Yes.” He sighed. “I’m just tired.”
“I can only imagine. In the interest of my time and your health, you want to give me the CliffsNotes version of why you’re here?” I had started at Second Chance at the end of the previous week and was due back for another training session in a few hours. “Please tell me you’re not going to ask me to get in the car with you so we can drive to your mother’s to convince her to take her pills,” I added. I had spoken with Rose about the Alzheimer’s medication several times since Adam’s initial request. As I had anticipated, she was determined to march toward her fate without chemical intervention.
Adam looked sheepish. “No, you were right about that. I’m here to apologize.”
I cocked my head. “You already did that in court. And with first-class airfare.”
He stood there blinking in the sunlight. “I don’t think I made myself clear, though.”
“And you traveled two hundred and forty miles to clarify.”
He nodded.
“When I saw you in the hospital, things seemed normal as they could be, given your taking a hammer to our marriage last year. I thought we were on the same page. But that assumption was why we ended up divorced, isn’t it?”
He shoved his hands deeper in his pockets. “Maggie, please. I’m trying to make things right. I lie awake at night thinking of how I hurt you and destroyed us. The guilt is eating me alive.”
I couldn’t tell if his confession pleased me or made me pity him. A bit of both, I supposed. “Yes, well, I spent many a night imagining all the ways that you and Jillian Smith made love.”
His eyes clouded over. He had probably assumed that I would be moved by his pain and plea for absolution. And to be honest, I was moved—at least a little. I didn’t know how to not care about him.
“I’ve changed,” he said quietly. “A lot. Give me a chance to show you that.”
I stared at him. A chance? Did that mean what I thought it meant? I felt as if I were at the top of a roller coaster ride, waiting to plummet. “Well, I’ve changed, too. I’ve moved on,” I said, and I was content to hear that I sounded more resolute than I felt. “You showing up at my door unannounced isn’t helpful.”
“I’m sorry.” He kicked at some nonexistent dirt on the ground, just like Jack had sometimes done when he was a child. “Can we go get coffee, maybe talk things through?”
A sob rose in my throat. Even after everything, the idea of going to have coffee with him sounded so damn lovely. I could tell him about my life in Ann Arbor! He could tell me about his pro bono work! We could commiserate about our children and kvetch about Chicago’s latest political scandal the way we used to! Not that we had been in the habit of doing this in the final stretch of our marriage. We probably hadn’t been on a proper date with just the two of us for a full year before he left me.
I swallowed hard, readying myself to say no.
“It doesn’t have to be right now,” he said. “I rented a hotel room, so I’ll be here until tomorrow night. I could even stay on longer, if there’s another day that would work better for you.”
The man with the watertight calendar had open-ended plans? Maybe he had changed. I hated that this idea excited me. “No, I’m not going to go to coffee with you.”
His head dropped. He stood there for a moment, allowing my rejection to sink in. Then he began to walk away.
“Wait,” I called. It was lunacy, giving into my curiosity like that, but I just had to know what he had come all the way from Chicago to say. “Five minutes,” I said as he practically trotted back to the porch.
“Thank you, Maggie,” he said humbly.
“You’re welcome, but seriously—make it quick.” I sat on one of the two small metal café chairs on the porch and indicated that Adam could take the other one.
As soon as he sat down, he began rotating his shoulder. “Sorry,” he said when he realized I was watching. “My shoulder has been worse than ever since the surgery. Back and shoulder pain are common side effects.”
Adam had once said I was a natural-born caregiver, and I suppose he was right; I had to ignore my urge to push a painkiller on him. “So . . . are you healing okay?” I asked.
“I guess.” He looked down, then back at me. “I—I almost died. I don’t know if you know that.”
“You didn’t, thank God.”
“I almost did, though,” he said. “I passed out in the emergency room. It was as close to death as I’d ever been. I saw white lights, Maggie.”
I would have laughed—this was the least Adam-like thing I had ever heard him say—but his hands were clamped on either side of his chair, and he was staring at me intensely. “Everything was black, but then it was suddenly bright white. And somewhere deep in my mind, I was conscious enough to understand I was dying.”
I thought of my mother, whose death I had always described as peaceful because she had not been awake for it. I wasn’t sure I would ever say that again. “I . . . I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
“I wasn’t ready to talk about it before now. When I woke, I saw everything so clearly. When I left you, I had felt so dead inside.”
I winced. “Yeah, well, marriage isn’t always roses.”
He shook his head. “That’s not what I mean. Every day of my life for the past thirty years was the same, Maggie. Give or take a few details, I’d basically been living out Groundhog Day.”
I felt like I had been slapped. Here I thought having the same person at your side year after year was a good thing. “If that’s true, then it was self-imposed.”
The color in his face was starting to return. “If I had left my job, what would we have done? You wanted to be home with the kids, and I wanted that for you—for all of us—too. And we had to pay for college and save for retirement, and there’s Jack . . .”
Without rising from my seat, I stomped my foot once, hard. “I’ve been telling you for ages that you should tell Jack no. Being broke is rotten, but maybe that’s what it will take for him to grow up.”
“I know,” he said quietly. “I’ve been thinking about that.”
While I was glad he had acquiesced so quickly, our son wasn’t really the point. “If you had told me you were feeling trapped, I would have found a way to help. I could have gone back to work earlier or gotten a full-time position.” Even as I said this, I found myself questioning my own choice not to return to work full-time. I must have been futilely wishing and waiting for life to return to the wonderfully chaotic mess it had been when the kids were still home. There were several occasions during my years as a bookkeeper—Zoe’s bout of pneumonia during her first semester of law school, Adam’s father’s death, Rose’s hip fracture—in which it almost seemed that secret wish might come true. “We could have downsized our life,” I concluded.
Adam sighed. “You seemed content with the way things were, and I wanted at least one of us to be happy. But then . . .”
“But then Jillian,” I supplied.
“Yes. I guess so.” He looked miserable. “She made me feel like I had options. Like I could make a change anytime I wanted to.”
“Great.”
Adam stared at me. “If you met someone who made you feel alive again after your life had flatlined, can you honestly say you wouldn’t have been tempted to go for it, even if you knew deep down it was a mistake?”
I instantly thought of Charlie, who made me feel alive. But I had not pursued him while I was still married. “That’s some serious rationalization on your part, Adam.”
“No, listen. I’m not trying to make excuses. I understand now that I picked the exact wrong way to go about it. It wasn’t even just the heart attack—after I started doing pro bono work, I realized my job was even more soul sucking than I had ever admitted.”
“So that’s what the improv class was about? You trying to shake things up and learn how to live in the moment?”
He nodded. “I’m horrible at it, but it’s the most fun I’ve had in a long time.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Not counting your affair. I mean, that’s the root of all this. Instead of starting with improv or a new job, you tried to find excitement with a new woman. And even after you had the good sense to end it before it got serious, you lied to me about that, knowing it was tearing me up inside.”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I failed. I failed us, and I failed you. It really seemed to me that our marriage was over, and lying to you was the best way to make that clear. I knew if I only said I wanted to leave, you would do everything in your power to keep us together, and I—I needed a clean break,” he said, looking down at his lap. “Saying I was in love with Jillian was my way of helping you move on sooner than later.”
“Well, mission accomplished.”
“I know now that it was incredibly stupid. Maggie . . .” He lifted his head. His eyes were welling with tears, and I had to remind myself not to reach out and give him my hand. “Seeing you in the hospital room after I woke up from surgery was probably the happiest and saddest moment of my entire life. It shouldn’t have taken a heart attack for me to realize how incredibly lucky I was and how I had thrown that all away.”
I had waited a full year to hear him admit this—that he had squandered his good fortune. Yet his words did not bring any relief.
“What did I ask you on the phone when I called from Italy?” I asked suddenly.
He pulled his head back with surprise. “You don’t remember?”
“You couldn’t tell I was drunk?”
“I mean, yes, but I didn’t realize . . . it’s not like you to get messed up like that.”
“It’s not like me to get dumped by my husband.”
Adam grimaced, like he was afraid to tell me. Which he probably was. “You . . . you asked me what it would take for us to be together again. That’s all you kept asking: What would it take?”
Shame rushed through me. No wonder I couldn’t remember. Deep down, I didn’t want to.
“That’s why I came today, Maggie. I finally have an answer for you. All it would take is you forgiving me.” He leaned toward me. Even in his fraught state and fragile health, he was still so handsome. “I am so sorry. I’m asking you to consider taking me back. Please.”
I sucked in my breath.
“I know that’s too much to ask for now, but maybe we could start talking again. I want to show you that I’m a different person.” His eyes searched mine. “I’m planning to sell the firm to Michael,” he said, referring to his junior partner. “I don’t know what I’m going to do next, other than keep on with the pro bono work. But whatever it is, it won’t involve sixty-hour workweeks. We could set up our own nonprofit, like we used to talk about before the kids came along. We can travel the world. We can even buy a condo someplace warm. Or in Ann Arbor if you want,” he added hastily. “I’ll move here if this is where you want to be. We can be a family again.”
Maggie, you’d be God’s own fool to lose that boy, I heard my mother say.
Another voice in me argued, But what if he changes his mind?
I looked at the cracks in Jean’s wood porch for a while. One was curved like half a heart. Another looked like a dagger. “I don’t know, Adam,” I finally said. “I just don’t know.”
“I know I wasn’t there for you before. You were right in front of me, but I didn’t see that your needs had changed, too. I believe that’s why our marriage fell apart.”
My silence was my affirmation. We had both neglected each other in our own ways, but yes—if we were keeping score, then Adam’s neglect far outweighed mine.
“I can’t answer you today,” I told him.
He stood from his chair. “I understand. I wasn’t expecting an answer on the spot.” I thought he was leaving, but instead he reached into his pocket and fished out something small, which he pressed into my palm. When I looked down at my hand, I saw that it was a rose-gold band that looked like my original wedding ring. I had lost it swimming at the community pool with the kids, and Adam had replaced it with a diamond-studded eternity band I had always felt was too flashy for me, but which I wore anyway. I was so taken aback by the replica that I almost dropped it. “What is this?”
Adam bent on one knee before me.
“Get up,” I hissed, pulling him by the sleeves of his trench coat. I could just imagine what Cathy would say if she happened to look out her door and see a strange man proposing to me on Jean’s porch. Or—a chill ran down my spine—what if Charlie showed up? “You just had heart surgery. Please, get up.”
Reluctantly, and not without effort, Adam stood. “Maggie, I want to marry you again. I want what we had—but better. And I know it’s possible, if only you’ll take me back.”
I wasn’t sure whether to projectile vomit or kiss him. How many dozens, even hundreds, of times had I imagined this scene in my head? Except even in my fantasy version, I had not dared dream that my then husband had not actually carried through with his affair. Nor did I wish that he would give up his workaholic ways. And though we had talked about traveling and creating some sort of charitable organization earlier in our relationship, I had long since accepted that I would sooner hitch a ride to the moon than see these particular plans come to fruition. All I had permitted myself to fantasize about was his remorse and newfound devotion. Now he was offering me all that, and much more.
As I looked at Adam, I allowed myself to admit what I had spent months denying: I had loved him so long that my love for him had become a part of me. I could no sooner undo it than I could rewrite my own genetic code.
And there was so much about sharing a life with him that I missed. Talking about how our days had gone before falling asleep beside each other in bed. Watching him rise and dress in the morning—the sight of him slipping on his nice pants and buttoning a pressed shirt had always brought me a strange pleasure. Knowing that being alone was only ever a temporary state that Adam’s presence would soon relieve.
The idea of having all of this back brought tears to my eyes. Yet I could not bring myself to say yes. I wanted a guarantee he would never again go back on his promises.
“What can I do? Just tell me what it will take,” Adam said, searching my face.
The words tumbled out before I considered them. “Prove it,” I said. “Find some way to show you’ll never hurt me like that again.”