Chapter Ten #2
I normally get it early on Saturday mornings, but it can get so down to the wire with whether I can actually come up with something by Sunday, I really don’t mind at all that she’s texted me about work at ten o’clock on a Friday night.
“Zucchinis, beets, and bell peppers. Hmm. Dang. I don’t think we have any of these right now. I’ll have to buy them.” I slide the laptop aside and stand up and Vin’s shoulders loosen, he falls back a little.
I really hate when I have to go out and buy the ingredients that we have such a surplus of in the refrigerated Harvest NYC truck parked somewhere in Harlem.
But it doesn’t often make sense for me to schlep across the city and back for something I could usually buy for less than ten dollars at the grocery on the corner (which is open until eleven).
“I’ll go,” Vin says. “Just text me the list.”
He’s walking backwards. Eyes on me. He grabs his house keys off the hook.
I decide to test a theory. “Hey.”
Vin pauses.
“Will you pick up some cookies, too? From that place I like?” (An all-natural bodega two neighborhoods away, the only place in the city that carries this particular brand.)
“Sure.”
“Oh, and also Raff said he had some Tupperware of ours. Do you mind grabbing it?” (Another half an hour on his trip.)
“Okay.”
“Oh, and I said I’d feed the fish at Surya’s house while she’s in Tampa.” (A high school friend who Vin doesn’t even like and who lives on the Upper West Side. This will add at least an hour, maybe more.)
“Oh. Uh. Sure, do you have her keys?”
“Oh, my God!” I throw my hands in the air. “Vin!”
He’s scratching at the back of his neck. “What?”
“What the hell?”
“What?”
I’m inflating like a puffer fish, filled to the gills with that warm confusion I first discovered when he texted me about the miso. “Why are you doing all this crap for me?”
He blinks.
“Seriously.” I’m literally pulling at my hair. “I don’t get it. You’re texting me about miso. You’ll go feed Surya’s fish? Do you want me or not?”
He puts the house keys back on the hook and says the only thing that it’s possible for him to say in this scenario:
“What?”
I do understand this reaction, even if it utterly infuriates me.
“No, because let’s do some math here, okay?” I’m standing now, ticking things off on my fingers. “You decide to move out without any conversation. Right after you move to the guest room without any conversation. So I’m thinking, okay he wants out. He’s over me.”
Vin inflates. He’s suddenly grown three inches. He takes a step toward me but I hold up a stop sign and plunge on.
“But then, a couple weeks later, you’re all of two seconds away from pulling a wedding night Edward Cullen on me in bed. So, maybe not so over me.”
“Who is Edward Cullen? Wait, the vampire?”
“You wanted to fuck the headboard off the bed, Vin! I was there! You can’t fool me!
So…you want me but you’re leaving. You want space but…
you’ll run errands for me at ten o’clock at night?
You’ll feed the fish at Surya’s house, Vin?
At 131st and Amsterdam Avenue? Are you kidding me?
What is this? Do you want me or not? What am I to you? ”
His mouth opens and then closes. He throws his hands up and then lands them at his sides. He very obviously cannot find the words. Eventually, instead of answering my question verbally, he lifts his left hand and shows me his wedding ring.
It’s gold and substantial, used to be his grandfather’s. Vittoria brought it to him after we eloped. I don’t wear one and never have. It never seemed important to me. And besides, I like to switch up my jewelry. There was never something I could imagine wearing forever.
I’m shaking my head. “No. No, that’s not an actual answer.”
“It’s…it’s a symbol.”
“Vin. I don’t want to be a symbol. Symbols can be interpreted in a million different…
And I just want to know what you…You know what?
Let me explain something I learned in my art class.
” I reach across the counter and grab the lined pad of paper we use for the grocery list. It’s a clean sheet.
On it I draw a stick figure with a skirt on. “See that?”
“A stick figure?”
“You know what my teacher said about them? That even a bad drawing, even a laughable attempt at drawing what you’re seeing, what’s really there, is superior to a stick figure.
Even if your drawing is so deformed you can’t even tell what it is.
” I’m pointing at myself. I’m the thing that’s gotten so deformed.
“You know why? Because even if a stick figure, or any symbol, is instantly recognizable, it’s not honest. It doesn’t show you what’s actually there. ”
“You’re saying—”
“You can’t even say the word wife out loud.
You show me your ring and think I should just get it?
How you feel? Maybe if you weren’t moving out.
But…Vin. I mean. Sure, sure, you wear the ring and it’s recognizable to the whole world what exactly it means.
But to us? To you and to me. Is it honest, Vin?
Does showing me that ring say anything about how much we’ve changed this past year? ”
His mouth opens and then closes. He twists his wedding ring one full revolution around his finger. “I…never imagined…the symbol of it…would make you feel dishonest.”
“Well…” I hesitate. I almost don’t ask. But…There are no lamentable attempts. “How does it make you feel?”
He scrubs his hands over his head and then twists his ring again, his eyes glued to it. “Calm…Settled…It…for me, it doesn’t need words.”
Draw and don’t waste time. “For me it does.”
He flinches, his face staying all crunched down on itself, then he lets out a long breath.
“I get that you need me to say…to tell you…and I’m practicing.
I swear to God I’m practicing. But when you feel something you just tell me.
But my thoughts…don’t…go in a straight line…
You want answers…But that’s not what comes.
What comes…is a cloud. Feelings I don’t have words for. ”
This is not news to me. We’ve been married for eight years.
I know that my husband is not a verbal processor.
Insights into his thoughts and feelings historically only come when he’s relaxed and open, not when I’m demanding answers.
Right, it’s not news, it’s not a pivotally new piece of information.
But…hearing him say it out loud. Hearing him reach for a description that feels accurate to him…
My breath is catching. Holy shit, Michelangelo was really onto something.
Drawing is the only time you’re actually getting better at drawing.
Well…turns out talking with Vin is the only time I’m actually getting better at talking with Vin.
There is genuine traction in this conversation.
“Roz,” he says in a low voice. His eyes are suddenly red and slitted. “I know…it’s bad with…” He points at his heart and then at mine. “And usually I…” He points at his heart again, and then, again at mine. “But since…since the accident…the cloud…” He taps his temple. “It’s like a tornado.”
I’m immediately winded. Aching for him. I think of his inscrutable exterior, thoughts like a tornado on the inside. How painful it must be to keep that permanently contained.
“But you want to know how I feel,” he continues. “Why I’ll do errands…and the headboard thing…and also the lease…” he tries, his voice low. “Well. You are my wife…To me…We are having a tough time…but that doesn’t mean…I won’t do for you.”
Emotion rises in my throat. It’s not the answer I was (yes) hoping for. It’s not I want you, I love you, I’ll never leave, let’s forget any of this happened. But in some ways it’s better.
Picture Vin with a gigantic treasure chest filled with heavy steel letters. He just painstakingly rooted through that chest and laid each letter for me on the table. I’m his wife and he’s going to do for me.
I scramble to come up with a reply and only find the ever-genius “Well. Now I know!”
Somehow my hands are thrown out to the sides.
I wish he’d stop looking at me.
He catches his left hand in his right. Under his fingers his wedding ring slides in a smooth circle around his finger, like it’s been trained to spin and spin and spin and never stop.
“I know because you told me,” I say on little more than a whisper. “So thank you. Because you don’t normally tell me. So I don’t normally know.”
I’m feeling relieved. Like I’ve just set down a twenty-pound grocery bag. I needed something and I asked for it and he gave it to me. Look at us! It’s working—But when I look up and take in his expression, I read…dismay.
“But…but you do normally know,” he says in a low voice. “You can tell what’s…going on with me. You…you were like the first person who just got me. Without…”
Without him having to say anything.
Tears spring up from deep within, pinching behind my eyes. “Oh, good. Another thing I’m failing at.”
“No. No, I—See! See, this is why it’s a bad idea for me to say this stuff. Because when I do, I just end up making you sad.”
“News flash. I was sad before.”
“I know.”
“And so were you.”
“No. I was determined. I…thought I could fix it…”
By leaving? Or…I suddenly remember the sign on that door I discovered the other night. Roz, there’s something extremely important that you’re missing.
“Vin…how did you think you could fix it?”
“I thought…space…”
“Right. Space.” I’m not sure if I’m offering it to him, or asking him why he’s already taking it. “You want space. I mean, obviously you do,” I mutter. “You’re the one who signed a lease.”
He’s turned half away from me. I can tell from the stubborn set of his jaw that this conversation is coming to a screeching halt. It occurs to me that it’s not stubbornness. It might just be fatigue. He’s been very clear that he’s not good at this.
I’m not good at running up a hill with a forty-pound sack of flour on my back. If you asked me to do that for twenty minutes after sundown, I’d probably cry uncle myself.
His chin comes up. “That lease doesn’t start until August fifteenth.”
It’s the second time he’s mentioned that explicitly. And this time…I have to ask. “What are you saying?”
“I’m just saying…”
I wait. Please say that you’re not going.
“That I’m still here.”