Chapter 28 Lesley Chooses
Lesley
I made the decision on Saturday morning, on the Highland bridge, at seven o’clock, with a decaf oat latte in one hand and the other on my stomach.
I hadn’t meant to make it there. I’d gone for a walk because my back hurt and the baby wouldn’t settle and I’d been awake since four.
Dr. Kessler had told me at my appointment on Thursday that the baby had dropped, and that it could be any day now or it could be two more weeks, and that walking was good.
So I walked. Slowly, the way I did everything now, down the hill from my condo and out onto the bridge, where the morning runners flowed around me and the barista at the coffee cart handed me my latte and asked if I was still holding out.
“Still holding out,” I told her.
“Any day now,” she said, and I agreed.
I stood at the railing in the middle of the bridge, over the rushing brown water of the Platte, with the mountains behind me and the city in front of me, and I thought about everything I’d been thinking about for four days.
I’d done it properly. I’d done it the way I’d done every other decision since November. I’d sat at my table with a legal pad and written it all down.
On one side of the page, I’d written what I knew about the man Hank used to be.
It was a long list. I didn’t need to write most of it; I knew it by heart.
Seven years of dinners and promises and good reasons.
The pottery class. The counseling. The anniversaries.
Ten o’clock. The long, slow drift back every time, after every beautiful apology.
On the other side of the page, I’d written what I’d seen since November. I’d made myself be exact. Not how it felt. What happened.
He’d been early to every appointment. Every one.
He hadn’t come to the condo once without being asked.
He’d accepted every boundary I set without arguing, and he’d never once tried to use the baby to get past one.
He’d started therapy without telling me and kept going without telling me.
He’d cut Priscilla out of his life before he knew she’d lied, and then cut her out completely when he did.
He’d stopped asking me to breakfast when I said no, and stopped asking for anything at all when I said I wasn’t asking anymore.
He’d agreed with me in Dr. Kessler’s waiting room without a single defense.
He’d shown me the footage and then stopped himself from using it.
He’d built a nursery for our daughter at his house, and he’d made the choice on a Thursday in May, with nobody watching, that I would not be the easiest person to disappoint.
And on Tuesday night, when I’d asked him the hardest question I had, he hadn’t promised me anything he couldn’t keep.
I’d looked at both sides of the page for a long time. Then I’d drawn a line under both columns and written a third thing at the bottom.
Six months is not seven years.
That was true. It would always be true. I couldn’t know, standing on that bridge, whether the man I’d seen since November would still be there in five years. Hank couldn’t know either. He’d said so himself.
But I understood something on the bridge that morning that I hadn’t understood at my table.
I’d been waiting for certainty. I’d been waiting to feel sure.
And I was never going to feel sure. Nobody ever does, about anyone.
I’d married him the first time without being sure, and I’d have left him the second time without being sure, and I was going to choose now without being sure either.
The question wasn’t whether I was certain. It was whether I was willing. Whether the evidence was strong enough that I wanted to take one more careful, bounded risk, with my eyes open and a way out if I needed it.
It was.
I stood there with that for a long moment, the traffic roaring beneath me and the sun coming up over the city, and I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time.
I felt free. The decision wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t safe, but it was mine.
Nobody had told me to do it. Nobody had talked me into it.
I’d looked at everything I knew, and I’d chosen.
I finished my latte and walked back up the hill.
I’d been careful, all week, not to let anyone decide for me.
On Wednesday, I’d had lunch with Heather at a diner in Highland. I’d told her about Tuesday night, all of it, and when I finished, I’d asked her straight out what she thought I should do.
She’d put down her fork. “No,” she said.
“No, you won’t tell me?”
“No, I won’t tell you. I told you in November I wasn’t going to tell you what to do, and I meant it. I’m not starting now, at the end, when it matters most.” She’d reached across the table and taken my hand. “You’ll know. You always know. You just need to stop waiting to feel certain first.”
I’d stared at her. “Did you just read my mind?”
“I’ve known you since you were eighteen,” she said. “I’ve been reading your mind for eighteen years. It’s mostly spreadsheets.”
My mother hadn’t told me either. She’d sat with me on my sofa on Thursday evening, with her feet tucked under her and a cup of tea, and told me about my father.
Not the leaving. I knew about the leaving.
She told me about the four times he’d promised to stay, and how he’d meant it every time, and how she’d believed him every time until the fifth, when he left for good and she finally stopped waiting for him to come back.
“I’m not telling you this so you’ll say no,” she said.
“Your Hank isn’t your father. I watched him at your party, and I’ve watched him with you since I got here.
He’s not your father.” She’d set down her tea.
“I’m telling you because you asked me once, when you were about fourteen, how I knew it was time to stop believing him. And I never gave you a good answer.”
“What’s the answer?”
“I stopped believing him when he stopped changing,” she said simply. “He never stopped promising. He just stopped doing anything different.” She looked at me. “That’s what you watch for, sweetheart. Not what he says. Whether he keeps doing different things when he thinks it doesn’t count anymore.”
Nancy hadn’t called. Randy hadn’t called.
Evelyn had sent me a card that said only Thinking of you both.
Whatever you decide, I’m on your side, in her careful, old-fashioned handwriting.
Courtney had asked me on Tuesday what I was afraid of, and I’d told her, and she’d asked what I’d do if the thing I was afraid of happened.
I’d said I’d leave again, and that I knew I could, because I already had.
Walking home afterward, I’d turned my own answer over and understood what I’d just told her.
I wasn’t choosing between safety and risk.
I was choosing between two things I knew I could survive.
And the baby had nothing to do with it.
I’d made sure of that. I’d asked myself over and over whether I was doing this because I was thirty-seven weeks pregnant and frightened of doing it alone.
I’d looked at the nursery I’d built, and the life I’d built around it, and the legal pad of plans that would work perfectly well without him.
I could raise her alone. I’d proven that to myself before I ever asked Hank a single question on Tuesday.
If I’d thought for a second that I was choosing him because I needed him, I’d have said no.
I didn’t need him. That was exactly why I could choose him.
He arrived on Sunday at four o’clock.
I let him in, and he stood in the middle of my living room the way he had in April, except that this time his shirt was buttoned correctly and his face was very carefully calm. He didn’t sit down until I pointed at the sofa. I took the armchair across from him, slowly, with a hand on each armrest.
“I’ve made a decision,” I said.
“Okay.” His voice was steady. His hands, on his knees, were not.
“I’m going to tell you all of it before you say anything,” I said. “Can you let me do that?”
“Yes.”
I took a breath.
“I want to try,” I said.
He didn’t move. I watched him not move, very deliberately, as though he were afraid that if he breathed too hard it would change.
“I want to try,” I said again. “But I need you to understand exactly what that means, because it’s not what it would have meant before. I’m not moving home. I’m not taking off my coat and walking back into the old marriage like the last six months didn’t happen. I’m not doing that.”
“Okay.”
“Here’s what I want.” I had it written on the legal pad beside me.
I didn’t look at it. “I want us to date. Actually date. Once a week, at least, the way people do when they’re getting to know each other.
Dinners. Walks. Whatever we can manage with a newborn.
I want to find out who you are now, and I want you to find out who I am, because I don’t think either of us is the person we were a year ago. ”
He nodded slowly.
“I want us to go back to counseling,” I said.
“Together. Not with Dr. Morrow. She’s yours, and she should stay yours.
I want someone new, someone who’s never met either of us.
I don’t want to go back to the room where we gave up last time.
I want to start somewhere else, and I want it to last as long as it takes. Not three sessions.”
“Yes.”
“And I want you to keep seeing Dr. Morrow on your own. Whatever happens between us.”
“I was always going to,” he said. “Yes.”
“I’m keeping the condo. For now, I’m living here, and you’re living at the house.
After she’s born, you’ll be here as much as you want to be during the day.
You can do nights with her at your house when she’s ready, the way we talked about in February.
But we’re not living together. Not yet. Maybe not for a long time. ”
“Okay.”
“The boundaries stay,” I said. “If I tell you I need space, you give it to me. If I tell you not to come over, you don’t. Being her father doesn’t make you my husband again automatically. We’re going to figure that part out separately, and slowly.”
“I understand.”
“And Hank.” I leaned forward, as far as my stomach would let me.
“If it goes back to the way it was, I’ll stop.
I won’t wait seven years this time. I won’t wait seven months.
If I see it starting, I’m going to tell you.
If you listen and it changes, we keep going.
If it doesn’t change, I’m done, and I won’t explain it to you again. You already know everything I’d say.”
“I know,” he said quietly.
“This isn’t me forgiving everything and starting over clean.
The seven years happened. The fire happened.
I’m not pretending any of it away. I’m choosing to take one more risk on you, with my eyes open, because of what I’ve watched you do for six months.
And I’m choosing it knowing I can take it back.
” I sat back. “That’s it. That’s the decision. ”
He was silent for a long time.
I’d wondered, lying awake, what he’d do.
Whether he’d try to negotiate. Whether he’d ask if we could move faster, or if he could come over more often, or if the counseling could be every other week, or if the separate houses could be a few months instead of open-ended.
The old Hank would have. The old Hank negotiated for a living.
He’d have found the pressure points in my terms and worked them, gently, charmingly, until he’d gotten a little more than I’d offered.
He didn’t.
“Yes,” he said. “To all of it. Exactly the way you said it.”
“You don’t want to change anything?”
“No.” His voice broke on the word. He cleared his throat and tried again. “No, Les. It’s yours. You get to set the terms. You always should have.”
Then he put his face in his hands, and his shoulders shook, and I sat across from him and let him cry.
After a while, I got up, which took a moment, and crossed the room, and sat down beside him on the sofa.
I didn’t say anything. I put my hand on his back, between his shoulder blades, where I used to put it when he couldn’t sleep.
He went still under my palm. Then he lifted his head and looked at me, and his face was wet and so open that it hurt.
“I didn’t think you would,” he said. “I’d made my peace with it. I thought I had.”
“I know. I could tell.”
“Can I ask you one thing?”
“You can ask.”
“Why?” he said. “I don’t want to talk you out of it. I just need to understand.”
I thought about how to say it.
“Because you stopped trying to win me back,” I said.
“Somewhere in the last few months, you stopped. You just started being the man you should have been. And you kept being him even when you thought I might never come back. That’s the only version of you I could ever trust. The one who’d keep doing it anyway. ”
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he looked down at my hand, which had moved from his back to rest on the sofa cushion between us.
“Can I hold your hand?” he asked.
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. It was so careful. So completely unlike the man who’d once walked into rooms and taken whatever he wanted.
“Yes,” I said. “You can hold my hand.”
He took it. His palm was warm and a little damp, and his fingers closed around mine carefully, as though he’d forgotten how. We sat there on my sofa in the late afternoon light for a long time, not saying anything, holding hands like teenagers.
The baby kicked. Hard, right under where our hands rested.
He laughed, a wet, startled sound. “She approves.”
“She’s objecting to the pressure on her foot,” I said. “Don’t read too much into it.”
“I’m reading everything into it,” he said.
When he stood up to leave, around six, I walked him to the door. He turned in the doorway, the way he always did, and looked at me.
“Thursday?” he asked. “For our first date? If you’re up for it. If she hasn’t come yet.”
“Thursday,” I said. “Somewhere close. I can’t be far from a bathroom.”
“I know a place,” he said. “Near here. I’ll pick you up at six thirty.”
“Six thirty.”
He hesitated. I watched him decide not to lean in. I watched him start to turn away.
Then I reached up, put my hand on the side of his face, and kissed him.
It wasn’t long. It wasn’t the kind of kiss that erases anything. It was careful and a little clumsy, because there was a very large baby between us and I’d forgotten how to do this with him. But it was mine. I’d chosen it, the way I’d chosen everything else that afternoon.
When I pulled back, he was looking at me as if I’d handed him something he’d never expected to hold again.
“Thursday,” I said.
“Thursday,” he said, and went down the stairs.
I closed the door and leaned against it, and put both hands on my stomach, and laughed out loud in my empty living room.
“Well,” I told her. “That’s done. Now it’s your turn.”