Chapter 17 #2
If Jack calmed down, he would understand her point of view.
That’s what couples did: they tried to understand each other.
If he really would give her anything, why couldn’t he give his understanding?
“I’m so happy you planned this trip. It’s such a nice idea.
I’m going to love the scenery and you’ll have a great time skiing.
I’ll read by the fire and we’ll have wonderful dinners.
But I’m not comfortable skiing. It’s too risky. ”
“ I’m not comfortable shelling out a bunch of money to be alone the whole trip. I’m not comfortable that you can’t even manage a thank-you.”
“I have been saying thank you.”
“Actually, you haven’t.”
“I’ve said many times how glad I am. That I’m grateful.”
“You don’t act like it.”
What could dispel the horrible tension between them, besides capitulation? It didn’t matter that she didn’t deserve his anger. It felt so awful to make him angry that the feeling was indistinguishable from guilt. “Thank you so much. I know how much effort you put into this.”
He took the handle of his suitcase in one hand and the handle of hers in the other. He refused to look at her. “Let’s check in and go to the gate, or we’ll miss our flight.”
Emily had bought two books in the airport bookstore but needed more.
She needed to occupy not only the empty time spent seated before a view of jagged mountains but also the strained hours after Jack returned from skiing, face windburned.
He answered her questions and responded to comments, polite yet curt.
Her efforts at conversation failed. Part of her understood that he had decided that her refusal to ski meant that she was ignoring him, so he would ignore her, too, yet be civil in order to show that he was the better person.
Another part of her knew that this was bullshit.
A final part of her believed that it didn’t matter what she knew or understood, because the situation was intolerable.
She hated being the object of his resentment.
On the first day, she tried being cheerful. She told him about her books and the gorgeous view. “Must be nice,” he said, “having such a good time without me.”
The next day, she said nothing about herself but instead asked how the slopes were.
He said, “You would know if you could make room in your reading schedule to see for yourself.” The baby roiled inside her.
The bulge of a small foot distended her maternity shirt.
She considered booking her own room. She could fly back to New York.
But if he was this upset about her (normal—it was normal, wasn’t it?) hesitation to ski, what would he do if she left?
Instead, she read. She read Bridget Jones’s Diary. She read a new translation of Snow Country . In it, people dyed fabric white by laying it on the snow in the sun. Emily began to feel like that fabric: bleached by exposure.
Then Emily read nothing. She looked at the mountains and drank hot chocolate.
She swam in the hotel pool. What would Gen do, if she were Emily, here in Jackson Hole?
Gen wouldn’t have found herself in this situation…
not just because she wouldn’t have married a man.
If Gen didn’t want to do something, she’d refuse.
She wouldn’t care what other people thought.
Gen was good at saying no. She had said no to Harvard.
What she had said to Emily’s father at the birthday dinner was also a way of saying no.
Unlike Emily, Gen hadn’t pretended to be straight.
Emily wrote all this down. She wrote about how Jack was devoted to her. Gen had said no to Emily, too…and that was okay. Loving Jack had made it okay.
Thinking about Gen made Emily’s throat ache. She threw the letter into the lodge fire.
On the final morning of their trip, Emily told Jack she would try some easy slopes.
His mood immediately lifted and she was rewarded with deep relief.
Their fight was over. He kissed her cheek and zipped her coat, offering to fasten her ski boots.
“We’ll go slow,” he promised. They spent the day on green slopes, with him calling out compliments on her form.
After they made their final run to the lodge, he said, “You were incredible! You didn’t fall once.
I get that you were scared, but you can’t let fear rule you. You were perfect, Em.”
She wondered what else she might have to do to become his idea of perfect . She wondered what would happen if she couldn’t.
She called Florencia, who had moved back to Buenos Aires soon after graduation.
Ever since Emily and Jack had returned to New York, he had been so attentive to her—he brought her tea in bed, he massaged her lower back—that Emily began to second-guess that she had been in the right.
She was half aware that self-doubt made her life with Jack easier.
If, as he believed, she had been in the wrong, and had been so paranoid about safety that she had belittled his gift of their vacation, then he was a good man with a good heart.
That meant all was well, so long as she took greater care with his feelings.
Maybe she hadn’t been sensitive enough to how he felt.
Emily’s half awareness whispered that her life with Jack could continue, uninterrupted, if she submitted to his point of view.
She would reach the end of her pregnancy secure in her marriage to the father of her child.
Their little family would be safe. She would avoid his anger and keep his love.
Emily’s half awareness was a convenient teacher, one that vanished once the lesson was learned. It was with a breezy tone that Emily told Florencia that she had gone skiing.
“You did what ? Emily! You could have hit a tree. If you fell hard enough, the force could have torn your placenta. You could have given birth on the slope. You could have lost the baby. I can’t believe Jack let you do that.”
“I wanted to ski.”
“Then the pregnancy hormones have rotted your brain! When I see Jack, I’m going to tell him what I think of him.”
“No,” said Emily quickly. “Don’t.”
From the first moment Emily held Connor in her arms, she loved him.
He was dear to her, dear not just in the sense of cherished, but also in its older, forgotten meaning, the one that people didn’t use often.
Dear as in costly. Something that came at a high price. Whatever the price, Emily would pay it.