Chapter 34 1994
Susan has packed bags for the twins, a week’s worth of clothes, toothbrushes, and a few key toys: picture books, Sebastian’s blanket.
Hidden them in the trunk of her car. It will be a long drive, but they can stop off in Chicago for a night.
She will take them first thing in the morning, when Al leaves for work.
He won’t hear if they put up a fuss. He won’t be able to stop her.
“Mom, where is Silky?”
“I’m sure it will turn up, sweet one.”
“I looked, I can’t find it.”
“Come on, buddy,” says Al. “Let’s check where you might have left it.”
This is deranged, she thinks as she watches her husband tenderly turning over pillows on both children’s beds, looking for Sebastian’s blanket.
She should have grabbed it last, she should have known better, and now she’s drawn attention to what she’s doing.
Al prepares to check the laundry basket and she says I think it’s in the dryer, and I’ll bring it to you when you’re sleeping, and her husband is scooping up their little boy.
How can she possibly take them without letting him say goodbye?
When she had come home last Saturday, he looked almost shocked to see her. The house was messier than usual, the children’s toys everywhere in multiple rooms, pots piling up in the sink. He was wearing the T-shirt he wore when all of the others were in the wash.
“I thought I was going to have to come out and get you,” he said.
“Well, I’ve saved you the trip.”
Nothing had felt right since the day she took Orson to the sublet.
It was stupid, expecting him to react any other way, to throw himself into her life.
Their friendship only works if both of them are unattached, if they can play at being children themselves and unresponsible.
She would be as lonely there as ever. It will take some time to get used to, she thought, but maybe she’d never get used to it.
Maybe nowhere would ever feel as warm as this house: full of her comfortable things, the smell of her children, her husband.
Is it insane to tell herself she does not want this life?
One week—why not give them all one week that felt normal, that felt right? A parting gift? It would be the performance of a lifetime. When it was over, she would need to run without looking back.
She threw herself into the act. So deeply at times, it all became muddled.
In the afternoons, she lay on the floor with the children, watching them put marker caps on their fingernails and practice counting.
She sank nervous energy into the project of replacing all the fixtures, the doorknobs and cabinet handles and shower heads.
Al was tentative, gentle, dropping the children at day care, applauding her handiwork and taste, bringing back sweet treats from the city.
With each morning she awoke next to him, his hand or face finding her shoulder, she felt herself shedding toughness, all the Los Angeles layers required to stay safe, to stay focused. Margie’s voice grew quieter.
Now, waiting in the hallway while the children brush their teeth, she remembers the first night she and Al slept here.
In the late afternoon, Al had carried her across the threshold, swept her up the stairs, pointed at the empty rooms, and filled them with imaginary furniture.
Dinner tables and wine racks and record players and children.
Children hanging off the banister and running through the backyard.
Al looked at her in the way he always looked at her, as a woman who could transform all this empty space.
Hadn’t she? Here is the proof, scampering into bed, both of the twins kissing her on the cheek, their happiness excruciating.
Now that she has set herself in motion, she just needs it to be done, as soon as it can be.
When Al goes downstairs to make a cup of tea, she goes back to their bedroom, reaching as quietly as she can for the heels she keeps on the top shelf of the wardrobe, stuffing them into a duffel bag, her heart pounding loud—
“Silky is not in the dryer.”
“No?”
Al is by the door, holding a cup of tea. He is wearing no shirt, only his glasses and his long pajama pants. “Don’t do this,” he says.
“Do what?”
For all her theatrical credentials, she cannot hide from him. He is looking at the bag in her hand, the shoe in the other, the failed naivete on her face. Whatever they are, they are not strangers to each other.
“Susan, if you go, if you take them—”
“Al, I’ve already decided—”
“I know this has not been easy. And yes, probably, my stuff has come first—”
“We’re going tomorrow, first thing. It’s—”
“But I swear, I know you. I know that you want all of it, every form of happiness, and that you just won’t feel satisfied until you get it.
And you’re going to break both of us in the process, you’ll see.
And I always thought—we said we never wanted this, the brokenness we came from, just—your dad, my sister, that feeling of never being complete or happy, of people quitting on us.
I don’t want to quit on you. I don’t want you to quit on me.
Can’t we— I mean, Christ, Susie, I love you. ”
She moans—frustration and longing. No, she doesn’t want it, the brokenness, she doesn’t want them to inherit it, to blame her for not making it work.
But God, what will it cost! He is moving and his arms are wrapping around her so that hers do not need to move and he kisses her perfect face, and by the time the sun rises they are lying back in the same bed that they bought together so many years ago, the floor a mess of their clothes, yielding to each other in the only way that they can: the rough entanglement of hair in fingers, the clasping of flesh, the flattening of hip against hip and will against will.
They have to know she always loved them, that she chose them above all else.