Chapter 5 #9
Susan smiles but can’t manage a laugh.
“It was hard for me, too,” Eliza says.
“How was I supposed to know that?”
“I don’t know, Susan, you blocked me.”
“You could have reached out on one of the many different platforms you found me on.”
Eliza makes a pained expression. “I was trying to respect your boundaries.”
They’re quiet for a few minutes. Susan feels physically ill, sweaty and panicked.
Finally, Eliza says, “Look. The truth is I always wondered if I made a mistake. If I should have given us a chance. I was just so triggered, you know? I was having a trauma response to seeing Kyle. Once I calmed down, I realized maybe we could have worked it out. I’ve always wondered about it.
That’s why you’re here, Susan. Because it’s affecting my marriage, to wonder if I’d be happier with you and not Graham.
It was his idea. I think he couldn’t stand it anymore—my regret.
It was like a third person in our marriage. ”
Susan is not sure if she believes this. Eliza seemed so sure, when she broke up with Susan in the train station.
Eliza has grown pale, as though this confession is draining her of life.
Susan feels many different things at once.
Sad for all the years she spent thinking Eliza moved on quickly.
Angry that Eliza hadn’t tried harder to reach her.
Bereft that maybe there’s an alternate universe where they end up together.
Confused that Eliza is telling her all this now, when it’s obviously too late for them.
“I wish I had known this five years ago,” Susan says when she can speak again. “Before you got married. I can’t believe you told Graham all that.”
“We tell each other everything.”
“So, what, are you guys, like, poly?” The thought fills Susan with a queasy mix of hope and dread.
“Not … really,” Eliza says, slowly. “More like our marriage can open as needed.”
“As needed,” Susan echoes. “So you, like, need to fuck me? To see if you’ve made a mistake or not?” She could have fantasized about Eliza for a thousand years and never come up with this scenario.
“It sounds so trite coming out of your mouth,” Eliza says, but she doesn’t correct her. “But what about you? What do you want? What would make you happy?”
“I mean, I’ve wanted you,” Susan says. “I wanted you for so long that I think it might have ruined my other chances at love. Now I don’t even know what I want. I think if you and I were to have sex to measure our feelings, it would ruin my life all over again.”
“I’m so sorry, Susan,” Eliza says. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“I didn’t mean to tell you that.”
“I’m glad you did.” Eliza takes a wobbly step toward her. “I had no idea we were feeling similar things, separately.”
“I’m not convinced we were.”
Susan can’t imagine Eliza acting the way she did in the aftermath: broken and desperate. Eliza was even capable of marrying someone else, something that would have been—is still—unfathomable to Susan.
“How can I prove it to you?”
“Why do you need to prove it?”
Eliza doesn’t answer. She reaches both her arms out and grabs Susan at the elbows, as though she’s steadying herself.
“What are you doing?”
Eliza leans toward her, her lips pursed.
Susan wonders if she’s hallucinating. But her Eliza visions are always hot, and there is nothing remotely sexy about this. It’s painfully awkward. Eliza is without a doubt making a pass at her, but clumsily, inelegantly. It’s a move she’ll certainly regret in the sober light of day.
Still, every cell in Susan’s body is urging her to meet Eliza in the empty space between them, to save Eliza from the embarrassment of a one-sided attempt at a kiss.
And she could do it. She could kiss Eliza.
She could kiss her and then drag her to the bed in the guesthouse, where they could have very quiet, very clumsy sex.
She thinks she could maybe even convince Eliza to leave Graham and they could move to Portugal, get married, adopt three children or just one big slobbery dog.
Or they could fuck all night and then Eliza might tell her, in the morning, that she’s never leaving Graham, that this didn’t mean anything, and now she’s gotten it out of her system at last, sending Susan back into the aforementioned K-hole she spent so many years crawling out of.
The other option is that Susan could just act like an adult.
She can see all the different ways this could play out, how it all hinges on this one moment and what Susan does with it.
She steps to the side, narrowly missing Eliza’s face.
“Eliza,” she says. “Please. Don’t blow up everyone’s life.”
Eliza drops Susan’s elbows. “That’s not what I was trying to do.”
And then—in the weak yellow light from the bulb above the doorway, in the sickly looking shimmer of sweat on Eliza’s forehead, in her skinny frame with its jutting hip bones, in the bags under her eyes and the obvious fillers in her cheeks, in the way she’s looking at Susan so full of regret and embarrassment—Susan sees it: Eliza is a real person.
She’s human.
She’s flawed. She’s only nice when she wants to be. She drinks too much alcohol, doesn’t eat enough food. She’s oblivious to her privilege. She’s pretentious.
Eliza is real and Susan’s fantasies about her are not. It’s all clear now. She’ll never unsee it.
“What’s the plan here, Eliza?” Questions begin tumbling out of Susan’s mouth before she can think twice.
“What do you think will happen if we sleep together and fall in love? Graham will move out and I’ll move in?
Where would he go? Would you get a divorce?
Or do you want both of us? Would I have to contribute to your mortgage?
What if we fuck and you realize you’re over it and I realize I’m not?
Would you just send me back to New York to deal with it on my own? ”
“Susan, I…” But Eliza can’t finish the sentence. She doesn’t have any of the answers Susan needs. There’s a long pause. Above their heads, moths collide with the light.
“Did you factor my feelings into this plan at all?” Susan demands.
Eliza is still speechless, as though she’s never been called on her bullshit.
Susan continues, “I exist outside of the week we spent together.” She’s saying it as much to herself as to Eliza.
“I do, too,” Eliza says finally. “Though it hasn’t really felt like it.”
“Same. And I’m starting to wonder what I missed out on because of that.”
Eliza looks like she’s calculating a math problem in her head.
“I’m sorry,” Susan says, and she genuinely is.
Part of her wishes she could be immature enough to just go with it.
But she can’t. That part of her life is done.
“You do still have a whole husband, though. And, not that I know anything about marriage, but I bet what you guys have is more real than whatever you think this is between you and me.”
“What we gained in physical intensity we lost in time,” Eliza whispers.
“Huh?”
“Annie Ernaux?” Eliza shakes her head, like she can’t believe she and Susan both live on planet Earth. “Simple Passion? It’s a novella about an affair. About how you can lose yourself when you just live for someone else’s fleeting attention.”
“I can’t relate to that at all,” Susan says with a wry smile. “Sounds like a real bummer, though.”
“You really don’t like to read, huh.” She doesn’t say it judgmentally. It’s just an observation.
“We have basically nothing in common,” Susan says. “Other than being queers from Long Island.”
Eliza nods slowly, taking this in.
“Though we were good at fucking each other,” Susan offers.
“I think, if I’m being realistic, we would have stopped having that kind of sex after a few years,” Eliza says. “Something that intense doesn’t last. I don’t think it’s supposed to.”
“How depressing,” Susan replies. “But you’re right.”
“Some other girl will be very lucky to graduate into boring sex with you,” Eliza says.
Susan doesn’t know what else to say. She’s out of words and suddenly very tired.
“I’m going to go to bed,” Susan says. “You probably should, too.”
She doesn’t look behind her as she goes inside the guesthouse and closes the door.
In bed, Susan revisits a montage of red flags she hadn’t noticed until tonight. Or maybe she did see them and liked them. Maybe the things that are repulsive about Eliza now are what originally drew Susan to her.
The ways in which they’re wrong for each other have always been there. It’s Susan who has changed enough to recognize it.
She thinks back to the lightning bolt of understanding that struck her the night they met, as she was driving away from Eliza and toward a new version of herself. Most things end the way they begin. Her obsession has been bookended by clarity.
She pulls out her phone and starts a text: “You’ll never guess who I didn’t fuck.”
But she doesn’t know who to send it to. This is a victory she needs to celebrate alone.
Susan wakes up with a throbbing headache. There is no coffee machine in the kitchenette, a cruelty. With a sigh she pulls on some clothes and makes her way over to the main house where Eliza is nowhere to be found but Graham is sitting at the table reading a book.
“Coffee?” she croaks. He gestures to the counter.
She brings a ceramic mug over to the table and sits across from him.
“Sounds like you had a big night.” He looks up from his book with his brows furrowed and his pretty mouth in a frown.
“Graham,” she starts to say, “nothing happened. We didn’t—” but he interrupts her.
“There are no secrets in my marriage,” he says, dog-earing a page as he puts the book down. “I know that she brought you here because she felt like there was unfinished business. I know she tried to kiss you. I know you put a stop to it.”
Susan has to keep her mouth from falling open. “And you’re okay with all that?”
“I wouldn’t say I’m okay with it, but I love her. I would never hold her back from exploring unresolved feelings. It makes our marriage stronger. I don’t want her to have to wonder if she made the right decision by marrying me. I agreed to host you in my home so she could figure it out.”