Chapter 126
AFTER THE HOLIDAYS WERE OVER and my mother had gone home, the wind picked up and the streets emptied, everyone preferring to remain at home in front of their stufette.
I had resolved to make the most of the time I had left on the island, and not to think too deeply about what would happen when Paul got his next assignment, which he anticipated would come through in the next couple of months.
Given where things stood between us, it was hard to imagine beginning again somewhere new, but it was equally hard to imagine doing anything else.
I continued to drive Paul back and forth to the pier, and most nights I made dinner, which we ate in the kitchen, or sometimes on the back patio when the weather was nice.
Afterward, Paul helped with the washing up and retired to the living room, where he listened to music, and I holed up in the bedroom, where I read.
Often I went to sleep before he came to bed, but on the rare evenings I was awake when he shut down the house, we kept to our separate sides of the mattress.
What we definitely did not do was touch each other.
Paul seemed to understand that he had forfeited that right, so he didn’t ask and I didn’t offer, and all the while, I continued to take the birth control pills Doc Callaway had prescribed, just in case.
Sometimes on a Friday or Saturday night, we went out with friends—Bobby and Laura, mostly, but occasionally, we saw the Stearnses, or another couple, Rafi and Cynthia Badr, who had recently moved to the island.
When Paul and I were in front of other people, it was like we were actors performing something called a marriage.
We finished each other’s sentences, laughed at each other’s jokes, and urged the other to retell old stories, but the whole thing was so exhausting that when we finally said our goodbyes and got in the car to go home, I always felt like I wanted to sleep for a week.
What energized me was the Introduction to Philosophy class I was taking through the University of Maryland Extension Program.
It was taught by a woman named Deirdre Wheeler, a fourth-grade teacher at the newly opened American elementary school, Vista Mare; she had apparently failed out of a philosophy PhD program before going back to school to get a master of arts in education.
She wasn’t a great teacher, pretty quiet and unsure of herself, but I loved the reading list. We read Aristotle and Augustine, Descartes and Nietzsche.
I was put off by the idea that I might not have free will, that everything that had happened to me or would ever happen to me was in some way preordained, but what made utter and complete sense to me were the Stoics—guys like Seneca and Epictetus, who had written about living a life detached from outcomes.
All I could focus on were my own thoughts and actions, and this reminded me of the advice Mary Lou had given me that day in Laura’s apartment.
You’ve got to focus on the stuff you can control.
I thought about this a lot, particularly in relation to what had become of Paul and me.
There was the obvious stuff I could have avoided, like kissing Teo in a dark alley, but then there were the more subtle ways I’d sabotaged my marriage.
By not putting my best foot forward with Mary Lou and the other navy wives, by sneaking around with Bruno and Luca, and by helping Francesca plot publicity stunts that would bring more attention to the families who had lost their babies.
At almost every turn, through my own words and actions, I had worked against Paul.
So it was no wonder that, as the winter months wore on, it began to feel like we were on a sinking ship.