Chapter 24 1991
“You told him what?”
Susan’s husband looks perplexed. Since his promotion to Associate Professor, he’s been roped into more department meetings, fewer late-night feeds.
And now he is sitting on the edge of the bathtub, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up over his elbows, absently cruising a small plastic motorboat around Sebastian.
“I told Mark I want to go back to the show.”
Orson was true to his word. The call had come, begrudgingly, from Flowers, saying he was open to discussing it. He was a practical man, and the ratings had dipped since Susie’s hiatus. She knew, the moment he rang, she wanted it.
“But… You seem so happy—”
“I am happy,” she says. Her hands are massaging suds into Viola’s head, molding the nap of her hair into a mohawk.
How can she explain? Happiness has washed diffusely over these last nine months.
But now it is concentrating into intent.
“It’s just, I’m ready to get back to my life, you know? And this is the chance.”
She lifts Viola up and swaddles her into a towel and rubs her tummy and pats between her legs and under her armpits. She presses her cheek into her daughter’s cheek. Al is allowing Sebastian to claw at his finger, to hit the water with the flat of his palm so that it flies up onto his shirt.
“Well, how would that work?”
“I could bring them with me.”
“And what about me?”
He sounds stung, like she’s reduced him to an afterthought.
Which might have been true when her heart jumped into her throat at the sound of Mark Flowers’s voice.
But all afternoon, she has been thinking of little more than how to present this to him.
How to make it a shared adventure, an opportunity to unify their world.
“Well. I was hoping… You could come too.”
The last time they discussed this, it seemed impossible. Academia appeared to her an endless succession of hurdles. But now she can see that it need not be so. It is only his fear of the unknown that is stopping him, she tells herself, resolving to be gentle and positive.
“You’re suggesting I quit?”
“You could get a transfer.”
“You think it’s that simple?”
“I never thought it would be simple, I only thought…”
As Al lifts Sebastian out of the tub, their son starts to wail and piss into the water.
Not all men are good with babies, but Al never complains.
He changes their diapers and wipes their noses and spends Sunday afternoons putting together car seats.
And now he is swaddling and applying baby powder and clapping his son onto his shoulder.
They carry the children into the bedroom with its soft orange lamp, diaper them, place them together in the crib.
She reads them a story about some meddlesome kittens and Al leans against the wall listening.
This is the best part of my day, he told her recently, and she feels almost apologetic that she has taken something from him in this moment, a sense of total peace.
Gradually, the twins settle and curl toward each other, and he follows her quietly into the hall.
“In this plan of yours,” he says, “who would take care of them all day?”
“We could bring a nanny. Sadie will do it.”
“With all due respect, I wouldn’t trust your sister with a pet rock.”
Heat rises to her face. She follows him step-by-step down the stairs and does not say that Sadie has been beyond helpful recently.
Susan has always loved this man for his simple offerings, for things he gave freely because they were easy to give.
But now that she needs something difficult, he has hardened himself.
Perhaps she has dashed some hope she didn’t realize he was holding: that she had reached a point of completion.
That she would never want for anything else.
They move to the kitchen, where he makes a cup of tea.
In the bright light, his profile is smooth, plump with the hours of sleep, all the nourishment his mind is getting from his young, brilliant students, who are also sleeping for eight to ten hours, who are capable of adult conversation.
With sudden fervor, she resents him. When did her desires, which have always felt so simple—to work! to live!—become selfish?
“Okay then,” she says. “Why don’t we just leave them with you? You can breastfeed them, right?”
“Susie.”
“Or here’s another idea, why don’t we each take one? It will be like a science experiment.”
“Susie.”
“Or we could each take half of each. Very biblical.”
“Christ’s sake, Susie, don’t be hysterical.”
“The only question is which half.”
He clears his throat in a way that she hates, a deep hacking sound. How can anyone clear their throat at a time like this? It is as though he can’t understand the stakes of the conversation; she is talking about her life.
“Look at me,” she commands.
She can feel his mind at work, trying to find some logic, some solution that will bend things to his favor.
“I can see you’re bored,” he says. “I understand that.” He puts a hand on her back and leads her to the living room. She can’t be too loud in here. The children are overhead. He sits on the couch and asks: “I just want to know where this is coming from.”
She sits at the far end, resisting the tranquilizer of his voice. “I don’t want our children to look at me and think I’m a nobody.”
“How could they possibly think that, Susie?”
“Because I gave up everything for them. For us.”
In spite of herself, the anger is leaking away. He opens his arms and calls for her to crawl into him, and she caves to the ease of it. For a minute she lies with her head on his chest, opening to his rise and fall, diffusing in the old familiar ways.
He will never leave her.
“Look. I know you think the only thing you will ever love is acting. I know it’s wonderful for you.
But you know—and I know—this job could be snatched away at any moment.
And then whose salary do we need to rely on?
I don’t want the kids growing up feeling lost or unsafe.
Feeling like they don’t know where home is. ”
She sits back away from him, covers her face with her hand.
Oh God, she thinks. He is going to make me choose.
Here with them or there, alone. She hates him, she hates his logic, she hates his concern for the children, hates that her desires are extraneous to the world that he is continuing to depict as the only world—
“Suze, I’ve been making some big sacrifices to get ahead.
Frankly, people respect me now in the department.
I can’t just throw that away. And nowhere, nowhere is going to pay me better.
So, please. Please. For me. I just know if you put your mind to it, there will be all kinds of things you can do around here. You just have to be open to them.”
He is reaching for her hand and tucking her hair behind her ear, and she feels the force of his belief in this world where she can be happy and small. She’s so tired, and her arms are so sore from carrying the twins.
Stand up for yourself, Margie says. Fight.
She lifts her face.
“Al, I have been open. I have been so open that sometimes, I stop feeling myself entirely. But I am telling you this is what I want. And whether you like it or not, I’m going.”
Her husband pulls back, speechless. Their house, their accoutrements scattered over the floor, their children murmuring static through the monitor. And yet somehow, she is insisting on herself as a separate being.
Al stands up. His face is caving into childish frustration.
It is awful to stop herself from comforting him, to hold herself hard and apart while he becomes fourteen again and unable to stop a woman from leaving his house.
Here is the boy who awoke to find himself sisterless, denied the power to bargain, stripped of any choice.
He is not a child, though, she reminds herself.
He is only choosing to be hurt. He could choose me instead.
“Do what you want, Susie,” he says. “But don’t pretend it’s for the kids.”
In the end, he will see he is wrong. For them, for herself, she will not give up on her life.