Chapter 26 What If It Happens Again? #2
He took a long breath.
“I learned that I love emergencies,” he said.
“I love them. I feel clear and useful and good in a crisis in a way I don’t feel anywhere else.
It goes back a long way. My dad working every weekend.
Me being the kid who shoveled the driveway and changed the light bulbs and sat up with Randy when he was sick.
My mom telling everyone I was her little man.
Then the car on Highway 74. Every time somebody fell apart and I held it together, I was a good man.
It’s the easiest way I know to feel like I’m worth something. ”
He looked at his hands.
“And I learned the other half,” he said.
“That somewhere very early I decided the strong, capable person in a house is the one you can leave. Because I watched my father do it to my mother, and she held everything together, and nobody noticed what it cost her. I married you, and you’re the strongest person I’ve ever met, and I did the same thing.
I treated your competence like a promise that you’d always be fine.
I treated your love like something that would keep.
Like you’d still be sitting there in the kitchen whenever I finally got home.
” His voice roughened. “Understanding the pattern doesn’t make it go away.
I’ve found that out. But I can catch it.
You can feel it starting. That pull when someone calls in crisis.
That little voice that says, Lesley will understand.
I hear it now. I heard it in my own head on Tuesday afternoon last week, clear as anything, and it stopped me cold. ”
“Hearing it isn’t the same as stopping.”
“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t. Sometimes I’ll hear it and do the wrong thing anyway.
But I’ll know. And if I don’t catch it myself, I need you to be able to tell me, and I need to actually listen instead of explaining why I was right.
” He met my eyes. “That’s the other thing that’s different.
If I start drifting, you don’t have to wait until it’s been seven years.
You can say it the first week. And I’ll hear you the first week. ”
“You heard me before,” I said. “In the kitchen. You heard every word.”
“I did,” he said. “I heard you and didn’t believe you. I didn’t believe you’d ever actually go.” He held my gaze. “I believe you now.”
That went somewhere deep, and I let myself sit with it for a moment before I pushed back.
“That’s fear, Hank. You’re describing fear. You’re afraid of losing me. What happens when you’re not afraid anymore? When it’s been five years and you’re sure of me again?”
He didn’t flinch from it.
“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s the honest answer.
I can’t prove to you tonight what I’ll be like in five years.
Nobody can prove that. I can tell you that I’m trying to build it so it doesn’t run on fear.
So it runs on the way my days are set up.
On Diane and Neil and Cheryl and Wednesdays at four, and on you being able to call it the minute you see it.
On me being home at six because that’s simply what time I go home now, scared or not.
” He paused. “And I can tell you the one thing I’m surest of, which is that I don’t want reliability to be something I do for you.
I want it to be who I am. For her, too. I don’t want my daughter to grow up the way I did, watching her mother hold everything together while her father was somewhere more important.
I don’t want her to marry someone like me. ”
My breath caught.
“That’s the thing I think about at three in the morning,” he said quietly.
“Not losing you, though I think about that too. I think about her at twenty-five, sitting in a kitchen somewhere, telling some man who loves her that she feels like she comes last. Because it’s what she watched.
Because it looked normal.” He shook his head.
“I can’t let that happen. Whatever you decide about us.
Even if we’re divorced and I see her every other weekend.
She’s going to know what it looks like when someone keeps their word. ”
I didn’t say anything for a long time. I looked at him across the table, and he let me look.
“Can I tell you what still scares me?” I said at last.
“Please.”
“You’ve given me a very good answer,” I said. “Maybe the best answer anyone could give. You’ve given me structure and therapy and self-knowledge and a plan. And I’m sitting here thinking that it’s a very good speech. You’ve always been good at speeches.”
He winced. He didn’t argue.
“I’m not saying you don’t mean it,” I said. “I know you do. I’m saying that I can’t decide anything tonight based on how good it sounds. I’ve been moved by you before. I’m moved now. That’s exactly why I don’t trust it yet.”
“That’s fair,” he said. “It’s more than fair.”
“I need to think,” I said. “Not about whether I believe you mean it. About whether I’m willing to find out.
Whether I want to risk it again. Because if I try, and it goes back to the way it was, I don’t think I’ll have another suitcase in me.
I’ll have a daughter and a whole second heartbreak, and I’ll have walked into it with my eyes open. ”
“I know,” he said.
“I might say no.”
“I know that too.”
He didn’t ask when I’d decide. He didn’t ask what he could do to help me decide. He finished his coffee, rinsed the mug in my sink, dried it, and put it back in the cupboard where it went, which he knew because it was where I’d always kept mugs, in every kitchen we’d ever shared.
At the door, he stopped.
“Les,” he said. “Thank you for asking me. Instead of just deciding without me. You didn’t have to.”
“I wanted to know what you’d say.”
“And?”
I thought about it honestly.
“You didn’t promise me anything you can’t keep,” I said. “Nobody’s ever answered that question without promising me something. Not you. Not my father. Not anyone.” I leaned against the doorframe, one hand on my stomach. “I don’t know yet what that’s worth. But I noticed.”
He nodded. He looked at me for a moment longer, and there was so much in his face that I had to look away first.
“Good night,” he said.
“Good night.”
I closed the door and stood with my back against it until his footsteps faded on the stairs. Then I went to the window and watched him cross the street to his car. He didn’t look up at my window. He got in, sat for a minute with the dome light on, and drove away.
I called my mother.
“How was it?” she asked.
“He didn’t promise me it would never happen again,” I said.
My mother was quiet for a long moment. I could hear Heather’s television in the background, and the clink of Jo washing dishes.
“Your father promised me that four times,” she said finally. “Every single time, he meant it.”
“I know, Mom.”
“I’m not telling you what to do, sweetheart. I did enough of that when you were small.” She paused. “I’m just saying that a man who won’t promise you the moon might be the first one who’s ever been honest with you about the sky.”
I laughed, and then I was crying, and she stayed on the phone with me while I did both.