47. Zelda
ZELDA
The cake has four candles, and this time I am going to eat some of it.
It is the twenty-third of December. Eleven blue plates are on our table.
Hedy has Otto on her knee at the far end, and he is reaching for a bread roll that she keeps moving just beyond his fingers.
Suri is across from me. Jeremiah’s mother is on my left, telling me she warned him how sweet this cake would be.
“You warned us last year too,” I say.
“And nobody listened.”
“I’m looking forward to being wrong.”
She laughs and squeezes my wrist.
We chose the dinner three weeks ago at the kitchen table. I chose these people. Suri accepted without asking me to add Dax; the friends around her are the ones who kept calling after I left, who asked about my work and meant it.
Nobody has brought Candace’s name through our front door.
The card is in Jeremiah’s jacket. I know the color, the little gold tree, and what he intends to do with it. I asked him to keep it there until he was ready to read his own words. My ring is with him too.
I have thought about it while ordering the cake, while setting out the plates, while carrying Otto downstairs tonight. I have imagined reaching for it so often that I am surprised my hand is still bare.
Jeremiah looks at me. I nod.
He stands at the head of the table. He doesn’t tap a glass. Suri sees him rise and sets down her fork; the conversation quiets around her.
He takes out the card.
Cream. Gold tree.
My stomach turns over. The dining room seems to draw inward around the small rectangle in his hand. I knew it would look like that. I chose it. My body remembers the other one anyway.
Jeremiah pauses. His eyes come back to mine.
I put my hand flat on the table and nod again.
He looks down and begins.
“Zelda never slapped Candace. When she tried to tell me that, I wouldn’t listen. I believed Candace, instead of my wife. I told Zelda that if she apologized, we could go home and I would hear her side privately.”
He stops for a breath.
“She did what I asked. Then, when she tried to explain, I used her apology as proof she’d done it. I made it impossible for her to get me to listen.”
The card trembles. I can see the movement at the gold tree.
“Eight days before our anniversary, Candace admitted there had been no slap. I should have told Zelda immediately. Instead, I kept quiet. I didn’t want to face her and admit that I’d trusted someone else over her. I didn’t want to be wrong.”
I hear my own breath leave. Beside me his mother has gone very still.
“A year ago tonight, I stood at this table and demanded that she apologize again. By then, I knew she was innocent. I wanted the dinner to go ahead. I wanted everyone to stop talking about it. I was willing to make my wife stand here and repeat a lie so I wouldn’t have to stand here and tell the truth. ”
He grips the edge of the card.
“She took off her ring and left. She was right to leave me.”
My eyes fill. I keep looking at him.
“I’m sorry, Zelda. For not believing you. For knowing you were telling the truth and still making you defend yourself. For making you feel that staying married to me meant accepting that.”
He lowers the card.
“You didn’t owe me another chance. When you let me spend time with you again, you weren’t promising to come back. I know that. And I know how fortunate I am that you chose to.”
For a moment he looks down at the words. Then he looks at me.
“I love you, Zelda.” His voice breaks. He swallows and tries again. “I love being your husband. I’m so glad we get to have this anniversary.”
He puts the card beside his own plate and sits down.
Nobody asks me anything. Hedy shifts Otto on her knee. He makes a small complaining sound because the bread is still out of reach, and the ordinary little noise almost undoes me.
Jeremiah reaches for the cake knife. We agreed this too. If I am not ready, there is still dinner. There is still cake. He will sleep beside me tonight with my ring in his pocket, and I will not have failed our anniversary.
I watch his hand close around the handle.
I want it back.
“Jeremiah.”
He looks up at once.
“Bring me my ring.”
His mouth opens. He sets the knife down so carefully that the pause makes me start crying before he gets out of his chair.
He kneels next to me and I move my chair a little, making space beside me. His mother moves her glass out of his way without saying a word.
He opens his hand.
There it is. Such a small thing to have carried all this time. I remember it on the gold tree of the other card, the relief of getting it off followed by the terrible lightness of my hand.
“I’ve had it with me since Christmas Eve,” he says.
“I know.”
His fingers curl slightly around it. “You told me to keep carrying it.”
“You can stop now.”
I hold out my left hand. It shakes badly enough that I nearly touch his palm instead of the ring. He steadies my wrist.
“Put it on,” I say. “Jeremiah. Put it on me.”
He slides it over my knuckle. It goes on easily now. I look at it where it belongs and cannot make the shape stay clear through the tears.
He bends his head and kisses it. His shoulders move once, hard, and I pull him toward me because I cannot bear that little distance anymore.
I have one arm around his neck and the other caught between us, the ring pressing into the back of his shoulder. I am crying into his collar, loud and ugly, and he is holding me so tightly that I can feel him trying to breathe.
“I love you,” I tell him. “I love you. I’m so glad I came home.”
He holds me close and says my name. I keep my eyes shut and stay there.
When I finally lift my head, Hedy is wiping her face with Otto’s cloth. He reaches for it, outraged that she has found a use for something he wanted to chew. Suri is crying quietly. She smiles at me through the tears, and I smile back.
I look down at my hand again. I have to touch the ring with my other thumb to believe how ordinary it feels there.
“There’s cake,” I say. My voice cracks. “I ordered a new one because I never got to taste the last one. Nobody leaves until I’ve had two slices.”
Hedy laughs first. His mother says she will stay, but she accepts no responsibility for the second slice.
Jeremiah cuts the cake. He gives me the first piece, then puts a piece on his own plate and brings it to the chair beside mine. His knee touches me beneath the table.
I lift my fork.
It is dark and soft and far too sweet.
“Well?” his mother asks.
I close my eyes for one extravagant second, then take another bite.
“You were right.”
“At last.”
Jeremiah tastes his and laughs. I turn toward him, laughing too, and get a little frosting on his mouth when I kiss him.
He wipes it away with his thumb. Under the table, my left hand finds his.
We eat our cake.