Chapter 140
AFTER LAURA’S SHOWER, I grew so anxious about Paul discovering the truth that I began to wish our departure date hadn’t been extended.
This, of course, made me think of Susan Jordan and her bean jar.
I’d made so much fun of her, but maybe I had been too quick to judge.
There were all sorts of reasons to want off an island.
When I was downtown, I was terrified of running into Laura or Mary Lou or anyone else who’d witnessed the confrontation between Laura and me at Il Paradiso. When I was at home, I was hyperaware of Paul’s every move, constantly looking for signs that Bobby had said something to him.
I told myself that this was unlikely. What was Bobby going to do?
Pull Paul aside in the middle of a job to tell him Laura had received confirmation that I was sleeping with Teo?
It’d be the most awkward conversation ever, and I couldn’t imagine Bobby, who was as easygoing as they came, going there.
Now, whether Laura would tell Paul was another story.
She had a mean streak that I’d seen come out on occasion.
Maybe it wasn’t a mean streak so much as an abundance of confidence in her own moral judgment.
She was certain that she knew not just what made for a good marriage, but what made for a good life.
The house, the kids, the trips, the volunteerism.
And that confidence could come off as mean, especially to someone like me, because I often felt like I was just treading water.
My only solution to the Laura problem was to curtail all couples outings so she didn’t have the opportunity to talk to Paul, much less tell him anything.
But after our showdown, it wasn’t like she wanted to hang out with me either.
As for Paul, he seemed the same as ever.
Obsessed with the ins and outs of the tender but not all that interested in me.
I take that back, actually. There were a few times that summer when I sensed he was tempted to make a move but was waiting for some indication from me that I wanted to be touched, and how.
I had to pretend I wasn’t picking up on those signals, because if I had acknowledged them, we might have ended up going to bed together, and the thought of doing so—of doing that to Teo—was enough to make me want to crawl out of my skin.
Laura had accused me of using Teo as an out, insinuating that I wasn’t so much interested in being with him as I was in escaping my marriage.
This suggestion that Teo was, in some sense, a means to an end was one I had never thought of, but once she’d said it, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head.
I wanted to be with Teo all the time, but how was I supposed to know if that was because my marriage was bad, or because what Teo and I had together was actually really good?
I didn’t talk to Teo about this careful calculus I was doing, partially because I didn’t want to hurt him and partially because I knew what he’d say.
He wanted me to tell Paul the truth. And by that, I mean that Teo wanted me to leave Paul and start a new life with him in La Maddalena or maybe Sassari.
We had never talked specifics, but it was evident from the outset that Teo was in love with me and that, while this half-life we’d established was better than nothing, he wanted the whole thing.