Chapter Fifteen #2
“No, you talk to him.” Joan went upstairs and changed into a black dress, one she had bought with Misty, which had a deeper V than Joan would have ever selected on her own. She fluffed her hair and found a pair of silver sandals and returned downstairs.
Bill was still at the kitchen table. She saw him register her change of clothes, her dark eye shadow. He watched her leave.
Joan shut the garage door and sat in her car.
She wanted Bill to believe that in her dress and heels she was going out someplace; she wanted him to fear that in her rage she might sleep with someone.
And yes, oh yes—there were times she’d been tempted.
When she’d looked at Bill and smiled at him warmly, tenderly, all the while thinking: This, this, and only this? And nothing else? Ever again?
She turned on the car and sat with her hands on the wheel.
Her breath was steady and she counted in and out.
One. Two. You know why you’re so calm. Three.
Four. You’re calm because you aren’t surprised, because it’s already happened before, maybe during our marriage but certainly earlier; it’s part of why he’s divorced so many times.
You just never wanted to admit it. Because it would be inconvenient.
You like this life, yes, and you like him reading Narnia to Jamie at night, the way he dotes on Lee.
And there’s no easy solution without ruining a good part of that, and so why think about it now.
Five. Six.
“Joan?” Bill stood in the doorway. He wore his long navy coat, the cashmere one she had thought so beautiful when they first met. “Joan, I don’t want you to sit there. It’s not safe. The exhaust.”
He thinks I’m trying to kill myself, Joan realized with a start. He thinks him sleeping with someone is enough for me to end my life! She gaped at him, suddenly furious, and opened the garage door and reversed.
“Joan, wait!”
But she was already off, zooming down the street.
Now, where to go? The realization that she had no actual destination made Joan feel pathetic; she really had made pitifully few connections so far in America.
She had dedicated all her efforts to Bill, she had believed their relationship was everything she required.
How embarrassing to assume that he felt the same.
Down down down the long avenue. She wound up on the expressway, which in the late hour was empty, and she zipped on through the dark. Joan chose an exit and the following side streets at random.
The road she drove on was narrowing, with no option but to turn back or continue.
Soon a long driveway was revealed, one blocked by a metal gate, and Joan recognized where she’d driven.
It was Dina and Trevor’s house. She’d been here just yesterday, admiring Dina’s jewelry.
By this point, Joan had been visiting their home with Bill for eight years.
Joan parked though left the engine running.
She must have come here deliberately. But no, more out of routine; the streets were familiar, but only vaguely, because it was always Bill who drove.
She debated ringing the gate. Joan knew Dina would be sympathetic; she would listen and invite Joan in for a drink.
Bill cheated on me, Joan could say. I’m so sorry, Dina would tell her, or something similar. She would want to hear all the details.
And of course Dina would tell Bill, maybe not right away but eventually; she would do it discreetly though in a way that made Joan look a little foolish, naive. This too Joan knew about Dina.
Thankful to have caught a bad idea before its execution, Joan shifted into drive. She had just started to make the turn and was passing the gates when they opened. A man in a gray sweater appeared from the driveway, wheeling a garbage can to the curb.
He waved, and Joan braked. She saw it was Trevor.
Joan rolled down her window. “Hi,” she said. “Hi. It’s me. Joan.”
“I know who you are.” He seemed amused by her introducing herself. “In the neighborhood?”
“Yes,” Joan said. And then, not wanting to appear rude; “I was driving around.”
“Ah! I do that sometimes.” It was the friendliest Trevor had ever been to Joan.
He usually ignored her, including last night, during which he’d spent most of the dinner speaking with Bill about something-something bond yields.
Joan occasionally tried to engage Trevor on music, the one topic she knew he liked, but even then his answers were sparse.
He was polite, and always asked her something back, but it was clear he didn’t really care.
Joan realized he was waiting for her to explain her presence. “I thought I might talk to Dina.”
“Right.”
“So,” Joan said reluctantly, “is she here?” She hoped not; she hoped Dina was out, maybe at one of her “girls’ nights.
” Dina mentioned these periodically, describing them as necessary to pierce the monotony of marriage, and Joan always laughed, although it was a little awkward (though perhaps only for Joan) that Dina never invited her.
“Yes, she’s here,” Trevor said, but he didn’t say he would get her. Instead he opened the car door and sat inside. At the door’s opening, the light went on and his gray sweater was revealed to be a cable-knit cardigan on top of pajamas.
“What’s going on?” Trevor asked. He shut the door.
The entire situation was so bizarre that Joan figured she might as well continue. She had come to speak with someone, after all. And Trevor was someone.
“Right,” Trevor said when she was done telling. He massaged the back of his neck. “I see.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
This was the maddening thing about him, Joan recalled, how he often lapsed into quiet, though he always seemed to have plenty to say to Bill. The silence stretched until Joan couldn’t take it any longer. She kicked off her sandals. “He does cheat, doesn’t he? He must do it all the time.”
“Well,” Trevor said again.
“Don’t just keep saying that. What do you think?”
He sighed, the irritated noise of a man being put upon by a woman. “I don’t think the interactions matter to him. I know it’s not easy, but I wouldn’t take it personally.”
“This might surprise you, but I’m having a bit of trouble not taking it personally.”
“Bill’s crazy about you. From my experience, these sorts of aberrations—they often mean less to a man than a woman.”
Joan sagged. Oh, she was so tired of being a woman.
No matter where in the world she might be, Taiwan or California, the odds always seemed stacked the same way.
Joan wondered if there was a specific point in each young man’s life when he realized just how much had been tilted in his favor.
When he looked at himself in the mirror and simply thought: Thank God.
“It might sound naive,” Joan said, “but I really didn’t think this would happen. Bill’s been married so many times. I suppose I thought it would be out of his system.”
“It’s never out of your system. It’s just how you manage it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that you keep having the same thoughts and urges; it doesn’t change just because you got married.
It’s only now you aren’t supposed to follow them.
The problem is, you don’t get a gold star for not cheating.
And then the thought arrives: I’m going to die one day, I’m going to be lying on my deathbed knowing there’s probably nothing coming next, and I’ll have missed out on all of this. ”
Joan raised her eyebrows. He was talking to her, frankly, in a way that Milton or even Bill never had.
“I’ve felt that way before too,” she said cautiously. “But I know it might hurt my children, so I wouldn’t do anything.”
“Well, but that’s you. Bill might be older, but you’re more mature.”
He stared off, back in the direction of the house.
Trevor was closer to Joan’s age than Bill was; he had young features, round eyes, and smooth skin—a baby face, they called it.
I could kiss him right now, Joan mused, and she was surprised by the impulse, its suddenness and ferocity.
Was this the desire that Bill experienced?
The thought didn’t soften her toward Bill but did increase her understanding of him—some of the questions he might have been answering for himself.
Is it worth it, to be good in such moments?
And the next moment, and the next? Forever?
Better to be a bad husband, then; better not to be good and to wring more pleasure from life.
Joan continued her observation of Trevor, who appeared to be regretting his decision to enter the car; his back was slouched in a posture of resigned endurance she recognized from squabbles with Bill.
How ridiculous Joan was. Just moments earlier she’d been thinking how it was only out of choice that she hadn’t cheated, but it wasn’t as if she’d had any opportunities.
No one wanted her; it was only because she was still (a little, barely) young that she assumed people did.
Suddenly bereft, Joan closed her eyes. A moment later there was the sound of the door opening. Great, she thought. He’s leaving. She sat up and saw that while Trevor had opened the door, he was still seated. He was closer to her now and grasped her right hand between both of his.
“If you stay with Bill, I don’t think you’ll regret it,” he said. Joan was focused on her hand. Even though he’d never touched her, the gesture seemed so natural as to be part of his usual communication, the same as pulling out a chair at dinner.
“Try to be the bigger person.” His eyes were light and his skin tan; she had never noticed how naturally tan he was. “As we’ve established, you’re the mature one.”
“Yes,” Joan said, breathing shallowly.
He ran his thumb lightly against her palm. “You’re okay, aren’t you?”