Chapter 11
ELLEN
Jack told me all of it on a Sunday night, the last week of November. It took him a long time, and the whole way through I bit down on every reflex I had to soften it for him.
We were in the front room with a fire going. He'd been quiet all evening — not the empty kind of quiet, the kind with something loaded inside it. Then he sat forward, elbows on his knees, hands knotted together, and said, "Can I tell you about my father? The real thing. Not the joke version I do."
"Yes," I said. I set my book down. "I'm listening."
"He bought my mother roses every year. Two dozen, red, for their anniversary.
Had them delivered to the house so the neighbors would see the truck pull up.
" His thumb worked against his knuckle. "And he'd book somewhere with a name to it, and put on the good suit, and partway through dinner he'd stand up — wherever we were, whoever was there — and give this speech about her.
Best thing that ever happened to him. How he'd marry her again tomorrow, all of that.
" His jaw tightened. "And people ate it up.
Every single year. What a romantic. What a marriage. "
"And it wasn't," I said.
"It was a graveyard." The word came out flat.
"The roses'd still be sitting on the table, not even wilted, and the two of them wouldn't be speaking.
She'd be crying in the kitchen. He'd be out in the garage.
I'd lie up in my bed and hear the whole house go cold the second the audience went home.
He'd, what, perform loving her about six times a year, and the other three hundred and fifty-nine he barely looked at her.
And she stayed. She just — got smaller." He looked at me.
"By the time I was fifteen I had it figured.
I decided the roses were the lie. A man who's got to announce it doesn't mean it.
And I swore I'd never do that to anybody.
No roses. No speech. I'd just take care of her, every day, quiet. That was the real thing. Not the show."
I let it sit. Outside the ring of firelight the room was nearly dark, and his face kept catching the low flicker of it.
"Tell me about her," I said. "Your mother. You never talk about her. Thirty years married to you and I know six sentences about the woman."
He didn't answer right off. The fire popped.
"She was funny," he said at last. "Before.
When I was little, before I clocked what was going on in that house — she was funny.
She did voices. She had this way of —" He stopped.
His throat moved. "By high school she'd quit.
The voices, the jokes, all of it. Went quiet.
Careful. Like she was — I don't know. Watching a storm come in and trying to stay ahead of it.
And I hated him for it. God, I hated him, El.
The performance most of all, because he'd stand up at those dinners and go on about her like she hung the moon, and I'd be watching her face the whole time, and she wasn't proud.
She wasn't happy. She was getting through it.
Waiting on it to be over so the two of them could go back to not talking. "
"And you were the only one watching her face," I said.
"I was the only one watching her face. Everybody else was watching him. He was the show." His hands opened and closed. "She was who the show was supposed to be about, and she's dying in a kitchen chair while the neighbors clap, and I swore — I swore I'd never, ever do that to a woman."
"That's not a foolish thing for a boy to decide," I said, carefully.
"No. It's half right — which is exactly what made it so easy to hide behind for thirty years.
" He shook his head. "I took the one true thing that man ever taught me and turned it into a rule that let me off the hook.
Told myself I loved you the daily way, so I never had to learn the other thing.
Filled your gas tank and called it a marriage.
Any time you wanted a day to count, I heard his roses, and I moved the day.
" His voice thinned. "But you never once asked me for a show.
You asked me to sit in a chair. You set a table for two and wanted me in the other seat.
That's the opposite of a performance. And I couldn't tell the two apart, because I decided at fifteen it was all his sickness. "
I kept my hands in my lap and let him hunt for the next of it.
My book sat closed on the cushion beside me, my place in it gone, the cover warm on the side facing the hearth.
I moved it to the arm of the chair. The fire had burned down some between us and neither of us leaned in to feed it; a log shifted and threw a spray of orange up the flue, and I watched the last of it die against the brick.
"I've got to say the rest," he said. "Or none of it counts.
The golf trip. I already told you I saw the date when I booked it.
I want to say all of it, the whole way." He looked straight at me.
"I stood at that calendar in September with the phone in my hand.
I saw your star on the second Saturday of October.
I knew what it was. Our thirtieth. Thirty years.
" He swallowed. "And I remember thinking — she won't mind.
We'll do it the weekend after. It's just a number.
" His jaw worked around it. "It felt small, El.
That's the ugliest part, right there — it felt small because I'd spent thirty years making it small.
I let you sit alone with two candles on our thirtieth and told myself I was the honest one in this marriage. "
"Say the number," I said. I don't know why I needed it out of his mouth. "The one you keep getting right up to. Say what you decided in September."
He looked at me and he didn't flinch off it.
"I decided you were worth less than a morning round of golf on a course I'd been wanting to play," he said.
"That's the math. Your thirtieth on one side.
A tee time on the other. I did the arithmetic and the tee time won.
I didn't forget you, El. I weighed you against a golf course, and I picked the golf course, and then I called you from the bar to get your permission — so I could tell myself I'd been considerate about the whole thing. "
He stopped. The worst of it was out in the room now, said, not growing in the dark anymore, and my own breath came a little looser around it.
The fire ticked. I found my face was wet, and I hadn't felt it start.
I left it. The heat off the coals dried it stiff along one cheek while I sat there and let him see it.
My hands had gotten hold of the hem of the throw over my knees and were folding it, unfolding it, doing the thing they always do when they want something to square up.
I made them stop and lie flat on my lap.
"I see the boy," I said, finally. "I want you to know that. I see the fifteen-year-old in the bed listening to the house go cold, and I understand him, and my heart breaks clean in two for him. I do see him, Jack."
He nodded. For a second he couldn't get words out. "Thank you for seeing him," he managed. "Nobody ever saw him. Not even me, mostly. I just — used him. As a reason."
Then, "But," he said, before I could.
"But he's fifteen," I said. "And you're fifty-eight.
The boy explains it. He doesn't excuse it.
The boy decided the roses were a lie — fine.
The man had thirty years and a wife who kept setting a table, and anywhere in those thirty years the man could've looked at me instead of his father and asked, one time, what does this actually cost her.
You never asked. You had your rule, and the rule was comfortable, and you kept it.
" I wiped my face with the back of my hand.
"I'm not going to forgive you tonight. I want that clear, because I can feel how badly you want me to, and I love you, and I still won't. You told me the truth — the whole truth — and I'm grateful, and that isn't the same as it being fixed.
Fixed is going to take a lot longer than one good confession by a fire. "
"I know," he said. "I don't want the fast version."
"Can I ask you something," I said, "and will you tell me the truth even if it's ugly?"
"Yes."
"That night. The phone call, the nineteenth hole, when you asked me if it was all right to stay over." I made myself get it out. "Did you know? Right then, on the phone — did some part of you know what you were asking me to do?"
He didn't come back fast, which was how I knew the answer would be honest.
"Yeah," he said. "Not all of it. Not thirty years of it — I didn't see that yet.
But when you said yes on the phone, there was a second.
Half a second. Something in me went wrong, and I heard how easy your yes was, and I knew — that easy yes was a thing I'd built.
It wasn't free." He held my eyes. "And I ordered another beer to make the feeling go away.
You asked for the ugly one. That's the ugly one.
I felt it, I drank on it, and I went back to the game. "
I nodded. That was the reason I could stay in the chair — because he'd quit guarding the ugliest thing in him and put it, at last, in my hands.
"Good." I got up and set another log on the fire.
Sparks went up when it caught and I watched them wink out before I said the rest. Then I straightened the things on the mantel that didn't need it — the clock, the little dish, the photograph of the kids.
"December twenty-first," I said, with my back to him.
"You keep asking what it is. I'm still not telling you.
Don't plan anything. Don't buy anything.
Don't prepare one single word. Be home, all evening.
Attend." I turned around. "That's the next thing. Not forgiveness. The next thing."
"What do you think I want," I said. "On the twenty-first. You've had weeks now of getting it wrong. What do you think I actually want?"
He thought about it. I watched him not reach for the room, the roses, the plan.
"Nothing," he said, slow. "I think you want me to bring nothing.
No flowers — flowers'd make it mine. No speech, because a speech makes it a performance.
No reservation, because a reservation makes it a thing I arranged instead of a thing I showed up for.
" He looked almost scared of how plain it was.
"I think you want me to walk in with empty hands and just — be a person who stayed. "
"That's the closest you've ever gotten," I said.
"It's terrifying." And he laughed, a small cracked thing. "Thirty-one years selling. Thirty years of gestures. And the one thing my wife wants is for me to turn up with nothing in my hands. I don't know how to do nothing, El. Nothing's the hardest close there is."
"It isn't a close," I said. "That's the point of it, Jack. Nobody's buying anything. You just come, and you sit, and you find out what it is, and you let it be small."
He nodded. He didn't reach for me. He didn't make a speech either.
We sat by the fire a while longer without talking.
He didn't put his arm around me and I didn't lean into him, because we weren't there yet, and pretending we were would've been its own small lie.
So we just sat, two people at the end of a hard true hour, breathing the same warm air.
It was the closest we'd come in thirty years, and for once I didn't stop to measure the distance still left.