19. Zelda
ZELDA
Ichoose the chair nearest the café door.
Jeremiah notices. He hangs his coat over the back of his chair and sits facing me. When the server sets down a little metal number, he moves it away from my cup, then draws his hand back.
It is January. I have come from viewing an apartment with a small second bedroom and a window over a laundromat. The agent gave me until the weekend to decide. Her details are folded in my pocket.
“I want the whole account,” I say. “Not the part you think will make me come home.”
He looks down at his hands.
“Candace told me she wanted a relationship with me on December seventh. At my office.”
Three days before the market.
I take hold of my cup. It is too hot, but I keep my fingers around it.
“What did you say?”
“That I was married and trying to save my marriage. She asked if she should wait. I said there was nothing to wait for.”
I let out a breath.
“Then I let her stay for an hour,” he says.
The breath stops.
“Doing what?”
“Talking. About you. About what happened at Suri’s.”
“After she’d told you the truth?”
“Yes.”
Behind the counter, the milk steamer shrieks. I wait until it stops. When I speak again, my voice is lower than I meant it to be.
“Was there more?”
He looks at me.
I have to make myself finish. “Did you touch her? Did you want her instead of me?”
“I didn’t kiss her. I didn’t sleep with her. I stayed behind my desk. I kept answering her calls afterward, and I didn’t tell you what she’d said.”
The relief comes anyway. I hate that it comes. I had been putting them in the room together, trying not to see where their hands were.
I loosen my grip on the cup.
“Why did you let her stay?”
“She kept telling me I’d been fair to you. I wanted to hear it.”
At the market he took my hand inside his coat pocket. I liked the way we had to walk close together. When I got cold, I pressed nearer.
That coat is hanging behind him now.
“I was happy that night.”
“So was I.”
“You could have told me the truth before you took me out.”
“Yes.”
I wait for him to say he was afraid of spoiling it. I want him to. I have an answer ready for that, something angry I could hold on to. He leaves me with the yes.
A woman comes in carrying a bundled child. She sits near the window and takes off the child’s mittens. One is caught on a finger. The child keeps pulling the wrong way.
“When did she tell you there was no slap?”
“December fifteenth.”
I turn back to him.
“The afternoon after you showed me the card,” he says. “She said you never touched her. I asked her again. She said no.”
The fifteenth.
I brought home the book that day. The one with Otto in it. I found Jeremiah’s scrap of paper and put it inside, pleased that I had something of his to keep there.
He called while I was at work.
“You asked me about supper.”
He closes his eyes for a moment. “Yes.”
I can hear my own voice on that call. Your Otto. I had wanted to tell him what I’d found. Afterward I carried the book home against my coat to keep it dry.
“Zelda?”
I look at him. I have lost something he said.
“Eight days,” I say.
“Yes.”
There is a brown drop of tea on the saucer. I wipe it with my thumb. It was there before we started talking; I remember noticing it and deciding it didn’t matter.
“You had your phone.”
“I nearly called you as soon as she told me. Then I put it away. When I rang after she left, I meant to tell you. I asked about supper instead.”
I shut my eyes. I had been glad he’d called. I told him I was about to ring him, as if it pleased me that we’d thought of each other at the same time.
“Why?”
He shifts in his chair. “Everyone had heard me make you apologize. If I said she lied, they’d know what I’d done.”
“So you let them think I’d done it.”
“Yes.”
I want to put the cup down, although it is already on the table.
He waits while I fold my hands in my lap. The woman by the window is blowing on her child’s milk. I can hear every breath.
“The card?” I ask.
“I told Candace to keep it. I said I’d talk to you before the dinner. I didn’t.”
“I said no before the guests arrived.”
“You said no before that too.”
“And you still?—”
“I asked you after everyone heard me admit I knew.”
I look at him until he looks away. I have spent days trying to find a mistake inside that evening. Something he misunderstood, something I could have said differently before I took off the ring.
There isn’t one in what he’s telling me.
“Would you ever have told me?”
“I kept putting it off. I told myself after Christmas. After you weren’t angry. I don’t know when I would have stopped doing that.”
My coat is suddenly too warm. I stand to undo it. Jeremiah starts to move and then stays seated.
“Have you seen her since?” I ask.
“She came to the house on the twenty-eighth. She wanted to go to Suri’s New Year’s Eve party with me.”
I get one button open and miss the next.
“As what?”
He doesn’t make me explain the question.
“As my partner.”
I laugh once. The woman at the window looks over.
“You’d told her there was nothing to wait for.”
“Then I kept letting her in. I told her on the twenty-eighth that there would never be a relationship and we wouldn’t meet privately again.”
I sit down with my coat open.
“She came to Hedy’s for her game,” I say. “We aren’t friends anymore.”
“I’m sorry.”
I nod because I have heard him. I cannot talk about the game, or the cardigan, or the crow. Not with him yet.
My fingers find the folded paper in my pocket.
“I’m taking the apartment I saw today. If the application goes through, I can move near the end of the month.”
He looks at the paper as I put it beside my cup.
“Is Hedy asking you to leave?”
“No. She helped me compare the bus routes.”
“I could have someone find you a larger place.”
“I like this one.”
“I only meant?—”
“It has a little room for the baby. I can get to work. I want it.”
He looks at me, then nods.
“I’m paying the deposit from my own pay and the money I already have access to,” I say. “We’ll sort out household expenses. I don’t want you ringing the agent.”
“I won’t.”
I fold her details along the same crease.
“I’ll keep you informed about the baby. You can ask me things. But don’t come to Hedy’s or the new place unless I ask you.”
“I want to see you.”
“I know.”
“Come home.”
It is too loud for the café. He seems to hear it too, but he can’t stop.
“Zelda, please. I’ll sleep in the spare room. I’ll sleep in the car. I’ll stand up in front of every person we know. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it today.”
I lean toward him. My body has started before I can think. I hold the edge of the table until it stops.
“I’m not going to write you a list.” My voice shakes. “You knew what to do on the fifteenth.”
He puts both hands over his face.
At first I think he is only trying to pull himself together. Then his shoulders move. I have been married to him for three years and have never seen him cry. There he is, between the sugar dispenser and the little metal number, trying not to make a sound.
My hand comes off the table. I press it into my lap.
I know how to hold him. My cheek against his hair, my arm around the back of his neck. I could make him less alone in this café. I want that so much I have to look at the door.
He takes his hands down. His face is wet.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I nod again. It takes longer this time.
We sit while my tea goes cold. He doesn’t ask me to help him stop crying.
“The people at Suri’s heard me say it,” I tell him. “Some of them weren’t at the anniversary. Even the ones who were don’t know why I apologized the first time.”
“I’ll tell them. And the people I told privately.”
“They need to know you promised we’d go home and you’d listen. That you pressured me into lieing, to make you feel better.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t make it a reason I have to come back.”
He looks at the paper in my hand. “I won’t.”
I get my bag from the floor. My coat belt has slipped beneath the chair, and I have to bend to free it. It gives me something to do before I stand.
Jeremiah stays seated. At the door I look back once. His coat still hangs behind him.
Outside, I turn toward the agent’s office. I walk half a block before I stop gripping the folded paper.