44. Zelda
ZELDA
Jeremiah hits the rock for the third time.
“That isn’t a car,” I tell him.
“It’s badly designed.”
“It’s a boat. Let it float.”
“An excellent theory. You try.”
I take the controls. My boat goes sideways, strikes the same rock, and overturns.
He makes a noise behind me.
“Don’t.”
“I was admiring the floating.”
I elbow him without looking away from the screen. He laughs close to my ear, and I lose another boat.
I chose the arcade because I wanted this before I told him.
Noise, a foolish game, his hand at my waist when someone squeezes past us.
I have spent two weeks with an answer that is simple when I wake and frightening when I try to say it aloud.
Tonight I want to enjoy being with him before I ask for more.
We play until we can both manage the first turn. The last still defeats us. When we finally leave, he maintains that my advice was sound and the river was at fault.
Over dinner I nearly tell him while the waiter is taking our order. Then while he is pouring water. Then while I have a mouthful of food.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing.”
He lifts an eyebrow.
“Not nothing. Give me a minute.”
He puts down the pitcher.
I look at his hands. There is a pale nick across one knuckle, almost healed. I want to put my mouth against it. The wanting is so ordinary now that it catches me off guard when I remember how impossible it once seemed.
“You asked me a question two weeks ago.”
“Yes.”
His fingers close together on the table.
All week I have been noticing things I will miss about the apartment. The window that sticks until I push the left corner. The shelf I put up crookedly and refused to take down. The quiet when Otto is asleep and everything in the room is where I chose to put it.
I thought wanting to leave might make a fool of the woman who needed that room. I had stood at the window one night and tried to be angry with myself. It would have been easier if I had been lonely. I wasn’t. I had a book open and a warm mug in my hands.
I still wanted Jeremiah to come through the door.
“I kept thinking I had to stop loving the apartment before I could want to come home,” I say.
He stays very still.
“I don’t want to stop loving it. I want to take the life I made there with me.”
“Yes.”
I shake my head a little. “Let me finish. I’ll lose it.”
He presses his lips together and nods.
Last Tuesday he had come over with an awful cold and insisted he was not ill. We had argued about whether his voice had changed. Otto had stared at him as if somebody had replaced his father with a much less satisfactory instrument.
I had laughed so hard that Jeremiah started laughing, then coughing, then accusing both of us of ingratitude.
I had wanted to keep the whole evening. Even the tissues. Especially the way he had fallen asleep while I read, one hand still resting against my ankle.
And there had been the sandwich after I told him I needed to think. His disappointment had been there. So had he.
I reach across the table.
“I want the marriage,” I say. “I want to live in it with you again.”
His hand turns under mine, but he does not close it at once.
“You do?”
I start laughing. There are tears in it, and I am suddenly incapable of the composed answer I had practiced.
“Yes. Jeremiah. Yes.”
He gets up and comes around the table. I stand too quickly and catch my knee against the leg. I don’t care. He puts both arms around me, and I cannot get close enough through our clothes.
“I love you,” he says, his lips beside my ear.
I have missed being held without part of me counting what it might be taken to mean. I hold him harder. It can mean this. I have said so.
“I love you too.”
He pulls back far enough to look at me. His eyes are wet. I wipe one cheek with my thumb, smiling so much my own face hurts.
“We’re blocking everything,” I whisper.
“I don’t care.”
“The waiter does.”
We move, still holding each other, and the waiter gets past with an expression of professional patience that makes me laugh again.
When we sit down, Jeremiah keeps my hand. He tries to pick up his fork with the other one and nearly drops it.
“I’m not moving tonight,” I say.
“I know.”
“And I’m keeping the rental until the lease ends. I want time to bring my things properly.”
“Of course.” He looks at our joined hands. “I’m going to be very bad at not looking pleased.”
“You can look pleased.”
“Good.”
I order dessert. When it comes, he takes a bite of mine without asking. I steal the better half of his in return.
We spend the night at the rental. Hedy already has Otto because we planned a late date. I call her from the kitchen while Jeremiah is in the bathroom.
“I said yes.”
“To which part?”
“The marriage. Coming home.”
She is quiet.
Two cups stand beside my sink. His coat is hanging over the chair. In a few minutes I will go into my bedroom and find him there, and after that there will be mornings I don’t have to invite separately.
“I’m happy, Hedy.”
Her breath catches.
“Say it again.”
“I’m happy.”
“Good.” Her voice is thick. “I wanted that for you so much. That’s all I ever wanted for my sister.”
I sit down because I have started crying again. She stays on the phone until I can laugh at myself, then tells me Otto has shown no interest in his parents’ romantic developments and is asleep with one sock off.
Afterward I find Jeremiah beside the bookcase, looking at the arcade photograph I asked him to bring in the spring. I take it from him. In the picture I am leaning toward him, and he has turned his face to me just before the flash.
“We’ll take this with us,” I say.
“Yes.”
I put it back for now. There is time to pack it. Tonight I catch his hand and lead him to bed.
In the dark I fit myself against him, then turn over because I am too warm. He complains quietly when I take the sheet with me.
I give him a corner. He kisses the back of my neck.
I fall asleep wanting the morning.