10. Erika
— ? —
Erika
The drive to Dora’s house takes forty-five minutes, and I spend every one of them watching his taillights.
We take two cars. I told him I’d drive myself, and he opened his mouth to argue and then closed it again, and now he’s a hundred feet ahead of me on the canyon road with the Hollywood Hills winding past in a blur of green and gold, and I follow him the way I’ve followed him for four years, at a distance he sets, and I hate that I notice it.
He slows at every curve so I won’t lose him.
It’s the most attention he’s paid to where I am in months.
We haven’t talked about what happened, not really.
This morning he stood in the guest room doorway and said, “We should leave by eleven,” and I said, “I’ll take my car,” and he said, “Erika, come on, we can…” and I said, “She’ll have wine, you don’t need to stop,” and that was the whole conversation, the two of us trading logistics like coworkers coordinating a meeting, and nothing real, nothing that matters.
The words that need to be said are too heavy to lift, so we just let them sit between us like stones.
Dora’s house appears around a bend in the road, a Spanish-style bungalow with terracotta tiles and bougainvillea climbing the walls, beautiful the way old Hollywood is beautiful, full of history and character, nothing like the glass monument to wealth that Kai calls home.
I’ve always loved it here, always felt more myself within these walls than I do in my own house.
Kai pulls into the driveway and I pull in behind him, and he’s out of his car and standing at my door before I’ve cut the engine, and for a moment we just look at each other through the glass, neither of us moving.
Then he opens my door for me the way he used to, and stands there holding it, and I don’t get out.
“We should go in,” he says finally.
“I know.”
Neither of us moves.
“Erika…”
“Don’t.” I unbuckle my seatbelt. “Whatever you’re about to say, just don’t. Not right now.”
He nods, jaw tight, and I get out, and we walk up the front path together, not touching, not talking, two strangers who happen to be married, going through the motions of a Sunday lunch like actors in a play we’ve both forgotten the lines to.
At the front door his hand hovers at the small of my back, that automatic gesture of intimacy he’s done a thousand times before, and I feel it there, not quite touching, the heat of his palm through the fabric of my dress, and I don’t move toward it and I don’t move away, and I hate that I don’t know which one I want to do. Then he drops it.
Dora opens the door before we can knock, her silver hair pinned back in its elegant twist, her eyes sharp as ever as they sweep over both of us, and I see her clock the distance between us, the way we’re not touching, the careful blankness of our expressions.
She doesn’t say anything about it, just pulls me into a fierce hug and says, “There she is. My favorite granddaughter.”
“I’m your only granddaughter-in-law.”
“Exactly.” She squeezes me tight, and I have to fight the urge to collapse into her arms and tell her everything. “How are you, sweetheart?”
“I’m okay,” I manage, and we both know it’s a lie.
She doesn’t push, just releases me and turns to Kai, studying him with that penetrating gaze that misses nothing. “You look like hell.”
“Thanks, Grandma.”
“Go help me in the kitchen. Erika, sweetheart, go set the garden table, will you? The good china’s already out there.”
I take the stack of plates she hands me and pass through the kitchen on my way to the back door, and Kai is already at the counter with one of Dora’s aprons thrown at him, tying it on with the fumbling hands of a man who’s never once been asked to peel a potato in his own home.
He looks up as I go by. For a second it’s just the two of us and a stack of plates and the smell of rosemary, and I think he might say it, whatever it is he’s been carrying around in his mouth all morning, and I look away first, because if he says it in front of Dora I’ll cry, and I’m not going to cry in this kitchen. I go out into the garden.
The garden has always been my favorite part of this house, a wrought-iron table under an ancient oak tree, string lights wound through the branches, roses blooming along the fence in waves of red and pink and white, a birdbath in the corner where hummingbirds come to drink, and the air smells like jasmine and cut grass and safety.
The first Sunday lunch I ever had here as his wife was three months after the wedding, and I set this same table with these same plates while Kai and Dora argued about pot roast through the window, and he came out with two glasses of wine and handed me one and kissed my temple and said, “She likes you more than she likes me, you know,” and I said, “Everyone likes me more than they like you,” and he laughed so loud Dora yelled at him to keep it down.
We ate for three hours that day. He didn’t look at his phone once.
I don’t know when he stopped coming out with the wine.
I start arranging plates on the table, falling into the rhythm of a task I’ve done dozens of times before, silverware beside each plate with the handles aligned, napkins folded into neat triangles the way Dora taught me, water glasses to the right and wine glasses above them.
The repetition is soothing, gives my hands a job while my mind drifts to the front door, the way his hand hovered at my back and then retreated, the way we’ve become two people who don’t know how to touch each other anymore.
Through the kitchen window I can hear voices, Kai’s low rumble and Dora’s sharper responses, and I’m not trying to listen, not really, but sound carries in this garden, and once I start hearing the words I can’t seem to stop.
“…don’t know what to do.” Kai’s voice is raw and frustrated, the voice of a man at the end of his rope. “She’s shutting me out. Won’t talk to me. Barely looks at me.”
“What did you do?” Dora’s voice, cutting straight to the point the way she always does.
“I fucked up. I know I did.” A long pause, and I can picture the look on his face, the one he gets when he’s cornered. “And I’ve been trying to fix it, and nothing works.”
“And?”
“We can’t get through a day without it turning into a fight now. About everything. About nothing.” His voice drops, quieter and more defeated. “It feels like no matter what I say, it’s wrong.”
I set down the fork I’m holding, very quietly, and stand perfectly still.
“And?” Dora prompts.
The silence stretches out, long and heavy.
“The spark is missing.” His voice is barely above a whisper now, like he’s confessing a crime. “And I don’t know if I still feel the same way about her.”
My hand goes to the edge of the table, steadying myself.
“I love her,” Kai continues, and he sounds like he’s trying to convince himself as much as Dora. “Of course I love her. She’s my wife. But maybe we’re just not right for each other anymore. Maybe we grew apart and I didn’t notice until it was too late.”
The garden goes very quiet, or maybe that’s just the blood rushing in my ears, drowning out the birdsong and the rustle of leaves and the distant traffic on the canyon road.
The fork slips from my fingers and clatters against the plate, sharp and sudden in the silence, and I freeze, terrified that they heard, that they’ll come out here and find me standing like a statue with tears streaming down my face and my whole world crumbling around me.
But the voices in the kitchen continue, muffled now, and I realize they didn’t hear.
They’re still talking, still having a conversation about the end of my marriage like it’s just another problem to be solved.
I set down the silverware I’m holding, very carefully, very quietly, and I look at the table.
Three places. Two of them side by side, his and mine, the way I’ve set them every Sunday for four years without thinking about it, the napkins folded, the glasses lined up, everything ready for a lunch I’m not going to eat.
Somewhere in the kitchen he’s saying my name and I can’t hear it anymore.
Then I walk to the side gate, and through it, and across the driveway to my car.
My hands are shaking so badly I can barely get the key in the ignition, but I manage it, and then the engine is running and I’m backing out of the driveway, and I see Kai burst through the front door with two glasses of wine in his hands and confusion all over his face.
He says my name, probably, but I can’t hear him over the roar of the engine and the pounding of my own heart and the words echoing in my head. Two glasses of wine. He came out with the wine. Four years too late, on the one day it can’t matter.
I don’t look back.
I drive without destination, letting the road carry me wherever it wants to go, the Hollywood Hills blurring past, then the flats of the valley, then the coast highway with the ocean spreading out gray and endless to my left, and I don’t know how long I drive, only that the sun moves across the sky and starts its descent toward the water, painting everything gold and pink, and the whole time his words play on repeat.
Somewhere past Malibu I pull over at a turnout and cut the engine and sit there with the ocean going gray in front of me, and my phone rings on the passenger seat, his name on the screen, and I watch it ring.
It rings out and starts again. I put my hand on it.
I don’t know what I’d say if I answered, and I don’t know what he’d say, and I’m afraid the answer is the same thing he said to Dora, only to my face this time, so I take my hand off and let it ring itself quiet, and then I sit there another twenty minutes just to be sure it won’t start again.
I don’t know if I still feel the same way.
I think about all the times I told myself he was just busy, all the excuses I made for his absence and his distraction and the way his eyes would go distant even when he was sitting right next to me.
I thought it was stress. I thought it was work.
I thought that underneath it all he still loved me the way he used to, and he doesn’t, and I’ve been living in a marriage that was already over, too blind to see it, too desperate to accept what was right in front of my face.
By the time I pull into our driveway the sun has set and the house is dark, and I sit in my car for a long time, just looking at it, the glass walls reflecting nothing, the sharp angles cutting into the night sky.
This was supposed to be our home, our future, the place where we’d grow old together and build a life that mattered, and now it just looks empty.
I go inside.