31. Zelda
ZELDA
Jeremiah has found a way to praise the rice without admitting I burned it.
“Crisp,” he says.
“On the bottom.”
“A contrast.”
I take his bowl before he can scrape up any more. He catches my wrist and kisses the inside of it. The pleasure goes all the way to my knees, which is inconvenient when I am trying to carry dishes.
Otto is asleep. There is nobody to interrupt us except me.
The old voice note is still in my conversation with Candace. I found it this afternoon while looking for something else. November twentieth. Before the party, before the card, before I left. I didn’t play it.
I have been thinking about telling him since the arcade. In the car afterward, he was laughing about the truck that trapped both our cars. I wanted to keep making him laugh. Then I wanted another evening like that one, and another.
Now he has his coat in his hand.
“Thank you for supper.”
I could kiss him and let him go. I would have this evening to think about when I got into bed.
“Sit with me a minute.”
He puts the coat over a chair.
At the table I turn my phone facedown. The movement makes him look at it.
“Is something wrong?”
“There’s a message. One I sent Candace.”
He sits back a little. I want him to come nearer again.
“Before Christmas. November twentieth.”
I had recorded it twice. The first time I stopped after his name. The second time I kept talking because it was Candace, and she would know how ashamed I was of wanting to say it.
“I said, ‘Sometimes I wish I’d never married him.’”
Jeremiah looks at me.
I wait for something to move in his face. When it does, it is worse than anger: a small withdrawing, his mouth closing over whatever he was about to say.
“You wished?—”
“I meant it that night.”
He looks toward Otto’s room. I follow his glance without meaning to.
“It wasn’t about him,” I say. “He wasn’t here yet. I was talking about being your wife.”
“I know.” He rubs a hand over his mouth. “I know who you meant.”
I put both palms against my knees under the table. I want to take the sentence back and put it somewhere it cannot undo the kiss at the sink.
He starts to speak.
“I was working?—”
He stops. The refrigerator clicks off. I can hear the monitor’s quiet hiss.
“What happened that night?” he asks.
I look up.
“You don’t remember?”
“Not the date.”
“The maps. The children made maps for imaginary expeditions. I stayed late to help clear up, then called you because I wanted to tell you what they’d done.”
His hand comes off his mouth.
“I remember that.”
“You said you’d be home soon.”
He nods.
“At midnight I was eating the leftovers. I’d saved the good part for you, and I was still trying to decide whether to put it away or wait another ten minutes.”
I can see the plate. A blue one, with a space where I had left the serving spoon. I kept taking tiny bites so there would still be something on it when he arrived.
“I wanted to tell you about the maps. When you asked what I wanted you to do about dinner, I heard myself say it didn’t matter. Then I sat there wishing I hadn’t said that, because you believed me.”
He looks at the two bowls drying beside my sink.
“You sounded disappointed.”
“I was.”
“I was angry about that. That you were disappointed with me.” His thumb moves along the edge of the table. “I could have left the plant. I stayed another hour.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want to come home to you looking at me like that.”
I cannot get past the waste of it. All that time, and both of us wanting him to be somewhere he refused to go.
“I wanted you home,” I say.
“I know.”
“When you got there, you asked why I was still awake.”
He closes his eyes.
I stop talking. I need to hear what he will do with the sentence now that he has the night around it.
“It hurts,” he says at last.
“I know.”
“Hearing you wish the marriage hadn’t happened.” He looks at me again. “I keep wanting to ask whether you still wish it.”
My fingers tighten on my knees.
“You don’t have to answer that now,” he says.
My fingers slowly uncurl against my knees.
“Candace offered me her sofa. I stayed at our table. I wasn’t making a plan to leave you that night. I just wanted somebody to hear me.”
“She was your friend.”
“Yes.”
He nods. His eyes are wet, but he doesn’t look away from me.
“You needed one.”
I reach for the phone, then leave it where it is.
“She still has it. I don’t want her playing it for you and telling you I’ve been pretending it was all lovely until she lied.”
“You’ve told me now.”
“I meant it.”
“I heard you.”
I wait for but. There isn’t one.
The monitor gives a little crackle. We both turn. Otto makes one dissatisfied sound and settles again.
Jeremiah’s hand is on the table, close enough to mine. I move my fingers until they touch his.
“I’m not sorry I told her I was lonely.”
“You shouldn’t have been alone with it.”
He turns his hand over. I put mine into it.
For a while neither of us says anything. I can still see where the sentence hurt him. He is still here.
“What was on the maps?” he asks.
I almost tell him it doesn’t matter now. The answer is ready, the old small way of sparing myself asking for any scraps of attention twice.
Then he waits.
“One boy put a river through the moon,” I say. “For the astronauts to fish in.”
“Were there fish?”
“Three. One looked like my uncle.”
He smiles a little. “Which uncle?”
“You know which one.”
The smile grows. I feel mine come, slowly, and have to look down at our hands.
There was a girl who put a library at the end of her map so she could find out whether the thing she discovered had a name. I tell him about her too.
“What did she discover?”
“A talking stair.”
“Did it complain when people stepped on it?”
“Constantly. You’d have liked it.”
He laughs, then I do. It is a little unsteady, and it doesn’t undo what I said.
When he finally puts on his coat, I walk him to the door. I lean toward him and he kisses my cheek. His mouth stays there for a moment.
“Tell me when they do another one,” he says.
“The maps?”
“Yes.”
I nod. I am already thinking of something else I want to tell him, but I save it for the next time.