30
THE PRESENT
“And then!?” Samantha pushes, as she has about twenty times since I started.
“And then it was sex, sex, sex. So much sex. Everywhere, all the time. Any surface, every position, we—”
“Ew! Stop!” Sally almost yells.
I chuckle and relax back on the couch. We’ve long since moved from Kat’s store to her house. I’ve basically talked all day, and I’m spent.
“Huh.” Skye sits back too. Everyone’s been on the edge of their seats, figuratively and sometimes literally, as we worked on the displays, then took a snack break with the kids, then moved to Kat’s for dinner and drinks.
“So, on your honeymoon you realized you loved each other?” Sadie says, ever the romance author, trying to tie up all my loose ends with pretty, hot pink bows.
I laugh. “No.” They all look at me and wait. “I mean I knew. Like I told you, I’d known before we got married. I was so relieved his uncle couldn’t fix the situation for us. But Adam…you guys know, he’s never really been stellar at communicating.”
“Like Emerson?” Sam asks hopefully.
“I don’t think so.” I answer, picturing her husband, my tall, British painfully introverted but wonderfully thoughtful friend. He’s the kind who you get to know and suspect that behind his shy exterior there’s actually a bit of a poet underneath.
Adam is no poet.
“So, when did you tell him you loved him?” She asks.
I wince. “Ugh, it’s embarrassing.” They scoff and frown and lift their perfectly groomed eyebrows in expectation. “I chickened out. I just started writing it. I left him notes in his backpack, in his truck. I wrote it in his birthday cards and stuff like that.”
“The queen of communication herself wrote I love you to her husband! This is too much!” Skye guffaws.
I nod and grimace.
“But then he said it back?” Kat asks as she brings in a tray of cookies.
Sadie nods, “Right?”
“No, it gets worse. I forced him to say it.”
“No!” Samantha puts her wine glass down.
“Yup,” I go on. “I was about to pop out Jonathan and having a meltdown and shouted at him about having a baby with a man who, and I’m quoting here, ‘hasn’t even told me he loves me!’” All of the girls groan together. The men in the other room probably think we’re watching a video of a guy falling right on his crotch. That’s the level of second hand discomfort these girls are all feeling right now.
“Susan!” Sadie can’t believe it.
“I know! As I said, I was severely pregnant and hormonal and I’m not proud of it. And obviously he said ‘of course I love you!’ And he kissed my head and told me we’d be a good team as parents and blah blah blah. Meltdown averted.”
“But he does love you.” Sally says quietly.
“Does he?” I ask into my wine glass, my voice flat.
“You’re not serious. This is Adam! Where you go, he goes. I think I’ve seen the two of you together more than I’ve seen you apart our whole lives!” Samantha is having her own little breakdown now.
“I remember as newlyweds you were downright gross.” Sadie says, her voice raising on the end as if she’s asking.
“Yeah and you were both around all the time.” Sam adds.
“Adam was working on Mom and Dad’s house back then,” I remember fondly. “He’s a work horse, I’ll give him that. No one asked, he just saw things around that old house that needed work and Dad was so busy at the time. And I think he liked our house, our family.”
“Well the Bells suck. Obviously.” Skye huffs.
“Exactly.” I nod. “It was like he was seeing a real family for the first time.”
“Then when your Mom died…” Kat’s voice is tight.
I sniff. “I know. He was an absolute rock. He did it all. Every errand, every phone call, whatever he could for me or Dad.”
“And then me.” Sally adds, sadness catching up to her too. It’s like they’re grieving the Adam they lost, and I have to just let it happen. It is heartbreaking. It is difficult.
This is divorce. It’s not just two people, it’s two families.
And it really, really sucks.
I nod, eyes burning. “I’ll never forget the day he showed up with a piano at the house. I thought it was there by mistake. Had no idea where to put it. Adam just shrugged and said ‘Sally is here a lot and she needs to keep playing.’ Like, duh. Like, of course we needed a piano.”
“So how can you look at all that and say he doesn’t love you?” Sally sounds surprisingly angry.
“Stepping up to help when needed is not the same as being in love with someone. I know it’s hard for you all to hear this, to envision it, but as mom would say, let’s examine the evidence.” I list the points on my fingers. “Forced to marry me. Never said I love you. Never said much of anything, really, the past few years. Enjoyed the sex, but once that wore off, what did we have? When we were younger we played sports together at the club because we’re both so competitive. Actually, so much so that it probably should’ve tipped me off how badly each of us needed some therapy. I’m not sure it’s healthy.”
“It’s not.” Sadie and Skye say together.
The other girls nod. Our family is driven to a fault. Intense. Everyone is trying to prove themselves. Trying to make our dead mother proud. A.k.a. loaded down with years of baggage.
“Right.” I agree. “Well, those were less enlightened times. So we played together, we slept together, that part was always pretty good. But even that…” I add sadly. “He’d never cheat. But did he ever really want me? Or was he just happy to have sex and I was his only option?”
“Oh, shut up!” Skye throws something at me. I pick it up.
“Did you just throw an entire cookie at my head?”
“Yes, because you’re gorgeous and we’re not going to sit around and act like you’re not.”
“Facts. Also, you always had the best tatas!” Kat shimmies.
I snort. “Maybe before three babies, I did.”
“You’re still stunning. Be serious.” Sadie adds.
“I appreciate what you’re saying and I’m not sitting here thinking I’m some sad, ugly duckling or something. I’m just repeating the facts: he had one person with which to have sex. Me.”
“But it was good, you said. The sex.” Sadie keeps trying to make it better.
“Again: ew.” Sally repeats, traumatized that her basically-second-parents do the dirty.
“Yes, it was. And maybe he did love me in his own way in the early years. He appreciated me as a partner, I think, and always said we made a good team. Actually, I think that’s all he ever said about me or us, other than the time I pushed him.” I pick up the cookie, hoping I have a break in talking to actually eat it. “We parented well together, still do. It wasn’t all bad. We had many good, happy years.”
“Soooo,” Skye draws out the word “What went wrong?”
“Everything. Mom died. Leeland had his stroke, so Adam had to take over years before we thought he would. Then Uncle Lance died.” I lower my voice. “Don’t ever tell him this but Mikey was a huge surprise, we were not in a position to take on anything else, we were both so spread thin already, then I found out I was pregnant. I think,” I shove a chunk of the chocolate chunk cookie into my mouth. “I think that was really the nail in the coffin.”
Sadie shakes her head, “But you guys were so solid through all of that.”
“Yeah, you two are hashtag goals , always have been.” Samantha says softly.
I huff bitterly. “Funny. Sounds like it looked like we achieved all I ever wanted.”
“You seemed happy.” Sally frowns.
“In posed magazine photos and Christmas cards? I mean we went through the motions but it’s been years since we’ve laughed. We don’t date or hug or talk. We’ve just survived, basically.”
“So, you’re telling me life started life-ing and you’re just callin’ it now? That’s a load of malarkey.” Kat shakes her head. “That’s the least Canton, anti-peak-Susan, total crock of crap I’ve ever heard, quitting cause it’s hard. What else happened?”
I swallow my bite of cookie and lift my hands in surrender. “I’m telling you. It wasn’t one big thing that happened. It was death by a thousand cuts.”
All eyes snap to Sally.
She says her involuntary thought out loud, “ Lingchi, translated to mean slow slicing. A Chinese torture method from the tenth century.”
We all recoil.
“Okay, shouldn’t have used that deeply disturbing phrase.” I admit. “Sade, I know opposites attract is cute in books, but eventually I was so tired of being all the freaking sunshine. All the communication. All the planning, all the…trying. I just started to feel like all I did was nag and remind and push and push. Of course he got annoyed back and…” I stand and look up at the ceiling, stopping myself. They love Adam and I don’t want to rant about him. I mean I do. But I won’t.
“He stayed married to me. He’s a great father. But a decade later and that wasn’t enough and,” I look at Kat. “I would’ve kept trying. If I’d had any indication he was willing to actually work with me, fight for me, for us, I would have stayed longer. But he just…didn’t. The whole strong and silent thing just turned into silent. Distant. Cold. Maybe he’s depressed.
“Maybe he’s got low testosterone. Maybe he needs better vitamins and supplements. These are all things I googled late at night. But he’s got to want it, for himself. I want fire, I want joy and laughter and I don’t know… life . I can’t settle for this anymore. There was no life, no fire in him when he moved into the pool house. No fire, even when…” I decide to skip that part of the story. “But nothing, not a flicker. Not for himself and definitely not for me, for us. And that’s why I think maybe it was never there to begin with.”
I sit back down. “It’s not his fault. That’s why I can’t hate him, I can’t fault him at all, not really. We were doomed from the start. And now it’s over.”
Everyone sits in shocked, melancholy silence for a while. A few minutes. An eternity. I fight the urge to say more, to try to backtrack or sugar coat. Everyone needs to process this and I need to let them.
“Something happened.” Skye finally says. “At the office.” My pulse picks up and it’s like she can sense it. I must react somehow, because my shark of a middle sister can smell blood in the water. “Yup. I remember. Something went down and you were weird about it then, and you’re trying to skip over it now.”
I maintain eye contact with her, wishing she’d let it go. She won’t. Everyone else looks between us, their eyes ping ponging back and forth.
“Whewwwwie!” Kat finally breaks the tensions. “Suze, c’mon we all know Skye is not about to let you not tell us. So I’m going to go break out the ice cream tubs and the spoons. I also think we should change into our eatin’ pants. It’s too late in the night for zippers or buttons.”
“Agreed.” Sadie says, already in maternity leggings. “I have to pee again anyway. Let’s take a five minute break.”
Skye and I still stare. She narrows her eyes, I clamp my jaw. Sally and Sam wait, watching to see what I’ll say.
“Fine,” I finally look away.
I go to the kitchen in search of water and ibuprofen. I’m going to need both. Turns out the night is still relatively young. Because Skye is right, there was drama at the office. But I can’t start there. I’m going to have to go back a few years.