Chapter Three
Three
It’s not exactly a coincidence that next Friday, when Vin gets home from work—blank expression in place—I’ve got my ass in the air and two oven mitts in the oven.
Look, I’m not an incredible cook.
In the kitchen I have one indelible skill, really. Resourcefulness.
I was raised a staunch middle-class New Yorker. Sing it with me now: wasting food is a sin! (Said my mother as she put a spoon in a leftover can of pinto beans when I complained of being hungry after dinner.)
Not many people take their formative-childhood-inflicted neuroses and turn them into careers (or maybe they do, IDK) but I sure did!
I’m a recipe creator and food distribution coordinator with Harvest NYC, a food rescue org.
Basically, we dispatch teams of volunteers to race around the city, rescuing the excess food from farmer’s markets and restaurants and grocery stores.
Then I’m sent this week’s list of what we’ve rescued and I rush to put together something edible out of the mishmash.
So that when people come to pick up their free boxes of rescued produce, they have some vague guideline on what the heck they could make out of bok choy, damaged jars of peanut butter, garlic, and romaine.
(A very festive salad, in case you were wondering.)
All this is to say that cooking is my zone of competence. You need dinner on the table, I’m putting dinner on the table.
Which is why this current tableau is not a coincidence. Vin closes the front door and I turn toward him, holding a frittata framed in pink-and-green-striped fabric. (The apron matches the mitts.)
I feel like a stick-figure wife someone might have as a bumper sticker on their Subaru.
But, look, as much as cooking is my zone of competence, it’s also my zone of confidence. And I really needed to feel confident tonight.
Because this morning I received one of the worst texts that someone can ever send. From Vin: Are you going to be home tonight? I have something to tell you.
I have something to tell you via text message should be illegal. Seriously. You should have to, at least, show up in front of a judge, in your Sunday best, and explain yourself for sending a text like that.
He sent it in the moments after I heard him leave for work, and it ruined my entire day. Not that it’s been a great week so far. Vin leaves before I get up, returns home after I’ve locked myself in the room at night.
But tonight we’re both here. I’ve got a frittata and he’s got drywall dust on his clothes.
“Smells good,” he murmurs, toeing off his work boots.
I blink at him. Well, look at us. It’s like a night from happier times got airdropped into the present moment.
This is excruciating.
I all but slam the frittata down on the counter. “Just tell me!”
He jolts, assessing me with wide eyes. But says nothing.
“Seriously, Vin! You have something ominous and terrible to tell me and I’m all ears. I’ve been all ears the entire day. So tell me already!”
“Oh. It’s not ominous. Or terrible. I don’t think. Just. Maybe. Complicated?”
I’ve got two hands on my hips and I’m eyeing him with the intensity of a high-speed train. I know that if I interrupt now, it’ll only derail him further, but everything in me wants to scream the word SPEAK.
He walks to our dinner table, pulls out a chair for me. I pole-vault into it and fold my hands. SPEAK.
He pulls out a chair for himself, but then takes stock of his dusty work clothes and instead stands behind it, bracing himself on his elbows. His eyes are down.
“It’s…” His eyes come up. “About the accident.”
I take a deep breath. My mind already racing through every possible combination of unknowns he’s about to make known. “Okay…”
“I’ve been thinking…everything got fractured…nothing’s been easy since…”
I’m pinning the insides of my lips closed with my teeth. I want so badly to hurry him along. Waiting for him to say what he’s really here to say is excruciating.
“There have just been a lot of bad days this year,” he says finally. “And I thought…maybe if I went back…to that day…”
“Back?” I ask, certain I’m not hearing him right. My voice is scraping out of me. “To that day?”
“I…I found the other guy…The guy who was with us…”
“Are you serious?”
He nods and his eyes settle, for a moment, on my right collarbone, where there’s a vertical scar hidden underneath my shirt. Even after he looks away I know he’s seeing it in his mind’s eye. I know because I’m seeing his scar, long and not-so-thin, down the left side of his back.
“I guess the paramedics had put all our stuff in one box and brought it to the hospital,” he says. “Someone…I guess…got confused and stuffed his ID into my wallet.”
“You’ve…you’ve known his name this whole time?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t realize it was in there. I just found it. I googled him…he works in Brooklyn…Lives there too.”
I’m gripping my elbows so hard it makes my fingers ache to release them. “Is he…okay?”
“I don’t know. I think so. When I googled him, an event website for his kid’s birthday party popped up. So. Yeah. I don’t know. Looks like he’s got family.”
“Are you…are you going to contact him?”
“Look,” he says in a low voice. “I think so…And I know…things between you and me…but the anniversary is coming up and—”
He cuts off when my eyes fill and I slam my hands over my face.
Of course the accident was going to have an anniversary. It was always going to have an anniversary. It just hadn’t occurred to me that I would be marking it while Vin packed his things to leave.
Don’t you feel like someone’s just tossed you out of a plane, Vin? Isn’t there a knife in your gut? Aren’t you already homesick for me?
If he was, how could I even tell? His beard is a brick wall between him and the world. No light gets through.
“Why?” I finally ask in a low, shaky voice. “Why open all this up again? Raff is only just better—”
I cut off because I notice his hands have tightened around the back of the chair where he’s leaning. “I’m not—I can’t—” He straightens up and jams his hands in his pockets. His eyes are closed. “Roz. This part of my life…This whole chapter…I need it to be over.”
Which part. Which chapter.
I think I’m going to be sick.
“It can’t go on like this anymore,” he continues. “I thought…maybe meeting him…could bring some closure. Maybe then I could start new. Without the bad shit. Put it all behind me. Put everything behind me.”
Well, I’m not sure if I am part of the bad shit he is referring to, but I certainly fall into the category of everything.
I—and I hate that this is true because I would love nothing more than to be cool and calm and cold right now—am stricken.
The worst part is that I get it. The worst fucking year of his life took place in this apartment that used to be our beloved home.
And he lived it right alongside me, who used to be his beloved wife.
We’ve been shredded into pieces and he can’t put himself back together here.
He’s basically telling me that he wants to go off and live.
And what can I say? No, Vin. Stay and suffer.
I say the only word I can force out through my burning throat. “Okay.”
There’s a long silence. And then, “Do…”
I wait for as long as humanly possible for him to finish that sentence, but he can’t, or won’t. I only realize I’ve been holding my breath when it all gets exhaled on a huge whoosh.
His eyes snap to my face, stumbling over the tears, hot and thin, sliding down my cheeks. I dash them away and can’t believe my fingertips don’t come away red.
“Roz—” His hands come out of his pockets, freeze, and then slide immediately back into his pockets. He straightens up.
There was a time when, if I was crying, it was always directly into Vin’s shirt.
His arms around me at the first hint of a sniffle.
Back when he used to join me in the shower without a second thought.
Back when he’d zip my coat up to my chin on a chilly day because it made him warmer to see me warm.
Back when he’d sit me up on the kitchen counter to kiss me hello when he got home from work.
But now? Now he’s brushing drywall dust from his shirt and frowning. He’s clearing gravel from his voice, stepping toward me and then—God—directly past me. “I should shower,” he mumbles. “I’ll be right back.”
Thank goodness he’s gone because for a minute or two, I just completely crumble. Till death do us part. Or, rather, till bad stuff happens and then he can’t even be in the same room with me when I cry do us part.
I turn, taking a few deep breaths, and realize the oven is still on. I turn it off, quickly put away a few dishes from the drying rack, and then the laundry basket at the edge of the living room catches my eye.
It’s all my laundry, except for the green sweatpants and hoodie of Vin’s that I wore home from Raff’s last weekend. He’s still in the shower, so now is as good a time as any. I force myself to move forward, get this task done.
Even though it means walking into the guest bedroom. Which used to be Raff’s room. But of course, before it was ever a guest bedroom it was actually my bedroom.
So I should probably explain about the apartment. And in particular, I should probably explain how the hell two middle-class New Yorkers afford a two-bedroom in the West Village.
Let me tell you a little tale.
Once there was a girl (me) aged fourteen, growing up in Bay Ridge. And one day, the girl’s mother came into her room while she was working on an English paper and said the following: “You’re moving in with Aunt Therese.”
Aunt Therese is actually Great-Aunt Therese. A rich old bat who wore fur to the grocery store, could make Tony Soprano cry, and taught me how to cook at knifepoint.