Chapter 15 – Matt
MATT
The shelves are the first thing I see when I get home Saturday, because I go looking for her in the study before I've taken my coat off, the same as I've done every night for nine days, in case.
Right side, empty. Fiction on the left, untouched. The teaching books gone, and the binder gone, and the two dish towels she wraps fragile things in gone from the kitchen drawer, and on the floor by the shelves a strip of packing tape with Mark's handwriting on it. BOOKS. STUDY. Mrs. T.
She called Mark. She called the movers and had them come while I was at the office, and she took the half of her life I used to think was over, and left the half she decorated for me.
I sit down on the floor of the study in my coat.
Denise finds out Monday. Not because I tell her.
Because I come in at seven with the same shirt on I wore Friday and she looks at the shirt and looks at me and closes my office door behind her, and Denise never closes my door, and she sits down in the chair across from my desk, which in ten years I've seen her do maybe twice.
"How bad," she says.
"She's downtown. She's signed a lease. She's teaching."
"Teaching."
"Ninth grade. Priya's school. She started three weeks ago." I look at the spring board. Forty shoes that all look wrong. "She left on the twenty-second. At the table. I made the pasta."
Denise doesn't say anything for a while. Then she says, "Thirty-eight B."
"You knew about thirty-eight B."
"I wired the deposit, Matt. I know about everything. I assumed you'd told her." She sits back. "You didn't tell her."
"I told her on the twenty-second. As a surprise."
She closes her eyes, the full close this time, not the half one she uses for the Milan people. When she opens them she's already reaching for her tablet.
"Okay. Here's what I'm doing this morning, and you're going to let me.
I'm calling Halvorsen about the president search you've been not-starting since June.
I'm moving the Portugal call to Ellis, who's more than capable, and I'm blocking your calendar after six every day this week, and if you touch the block I'll know, and you'll hear about it.
" She stands. "And I'm not calling her. You told me to stay out of it and I'm staying out of it.
But if you want to know what I think, I think you've had a woman managing your marriage from an office for ten years and calling it love, and the woman was me, and she didn't sign up for it. "
"I know."
"Good. Halvorsen at nine. I've had a name on a list since August. A woman.
She runs retail for the people in Ohio who keep beating us on price, and she's bored, and she'd want a real title and real authority, and you'd have to actually give her one.
" She's at the door. "You'd get your evenings back. You'd have to want them."
"I want them."
"Then say so at nine," Denise says, and goes.
I call Halvorsen at nine. I say so.
Tanya's at forty weeks and lives on the twelfth floor of a building on Fifty-Fourth that Rob's lawyer is still arguing about, and Carla opens the door. Carla is three years older than Tanya, and taller, and has never in thirty-nine years liked me, and I've never known why and have stopped asking.
"She's on the couch," Carla says. "She's been on the couch since Thursday. Take your shoes off."
I take my shoes off.
Tanya is under a blanket with her feet up and the television on, and she puts her arms up for a hug without getting up, and I bend down and give her one, and she holds on, and says into my shoulder, "You look awful. Did June not feed you? Where is she? I've texted her nine times about the nursery."
I sit down on the coffee table across from her. Not the couch. Carla stays in the doorway to the kitchen with her arms crossed.
"June's not at home, T."
"What do you mean, not at home?"
"She left. On the twenty-second. She's got her own place and she's got a job and she's not coming back this week, and she's asked me not to tell you where she is, and I'm not going to."
Tanya's hand goes to her stomach. "Oh my God. Matty. Oh my God. Why? What happened? Did you two get in a fight?”
“Not exactly.”
"Then what? She was fine at the shower. She was amazing at the shower, she was in charge of everything, she was so happy."
"She wasn't happy."
"She looked happy."
"She's looked happy for seventeen years, T.
She's very good at it." I put my hands on my knees.
I've had twelve days to plan this and I've planned nothing, and every sentence I try sounds rehearsed even to me, so I stop planning.
"I bought you the apartment without telling her.
I said yes to the delivery room without asking her.
I told you I'd be right outside instead of telling you no, because you were crying, and because I've never told you no in my life and I didn't know how to start in a car.
And on our anniversary I sat across from her and told her she'd like having you close because she didn't have anything else going on.
I said that. Those words. She packed a bag while I stood in the door. "
Tanya has gone very still.
"You bought me the apartment for her?"
"I bought it for me, to stop feeling guilty about having to divide myself between my two people. But I told her it was for her.”
"So she's mad at me."
"She's not mad at you."
"She's clearly mad at me, Matty, you're sitting on my coffee table telling me she's gone, what am I supposed to think?
What did I do? I asked her to plan a party, she said yes.
I asked you to be there for the birth, you said yes.
I didn't ask for the apartment, you offered, I said, are you sure, I said it twice, Carla heard me. "
"I heard you," Carla says from the kitchen, in a tone that doesn't help either of us.
"I'm not here about what you did," I say.
"I'm here about what I'm doing. So listen, because I've got to say it all at once or I won't get through it.
I'm not going to be in the room. Not outside it.
Not in the building. Carla's your person for the birth.
If you want a doula I'll pay for one, and I'll pay for a night nurse for as long as you want one, and there's going to be a trust for the baby with a lawyer and a number and that's how the money's going to work from now on, on paper, through him.
You're not moving into thirty-eight B. It's going back on the market this week and I'll take the loss.
I'll be her godfather at the church if you still want that, and I'll show up for the birthdays, and I'll love her, T, I already do.
But I'm not going to be the person you call from the parking garage. And I can’t be your person and hers. That's done."
She looks at me. The television goes on talking.
"She made you do this," she says.
"She asked. Once. In plain words, in a car. Then she left, because I didn't listen. Nobody's ever made me do anything, T. That's the whole problem. Nobody's ever had to. She never should have had to.”
“We’ve always been best friends.”
"I know."
"You carried me home when I broke my ankle.
You drove ninety minutes on a Tuesday for a sink.
You were the only person in my life who never left me on my own, and now you're sitting on my coffee table at forty weeks saying that's done.
Because your wife got jealous of a pregnant woman with no fiancé and nowhere to go. "
"She's not jealous."
"Then what is she?"
I think about it. I try to answer it honestly, because I owe her that, and because Carla is listening, and because the answer is the only thing I've figured out in twelve days on the floor of the study.
"She's tired," I say. "You ask, and I answer.
And it feels good, it's always felt good, being the one you call.
Being needed. But my wife needs me too. She just stopped asking.
Years ago. I don't know when. And I didn't notice, because she never made me notice, and you did, every Tuesday.
I liked being needed, T. That's mine. It's not yours, and it's not hers. "
Tanya starts to cry. It's not the crying from the car after the shower, and it's not the crying from the toast. It's the other kind, the quiet kind, the one I've seen twice in all our years of friendship, both times on the floor of her mother's bathroom.
"Get out."
"T."
"Get out! If you can’t even do this for me, I don’t want you there at all. At the hospital, or in my life.”
I stare at her. This is it, the first time in a lifetime of friendship that I’ve set down a boundary, that I’ve said no to anything, and she’s the one who wants to throw it all away.
I’d laugh if I had it in me, but I don’t.
My wife has been putting up with pieces of me for years, and this woman gets told there is one piece she can’t have and she’s done.
Carla walks me to the door. She hands me my shoes and waits while I put them on, and when I straighten up she's looking at me with her arms still crossed.
"She'll be fine," Carla says. "She's got me. She's always had me. She liked you better because you paid for things and I made her split the check." She opens the door. "Tell your wife I said good for her."
The text comes at four-twelve in the morning on November sixth, from Carla's number.
Carla
She's here. 7 lb 1 oz. Both fine. Tanya asked me to tell you.
I sit on the edge of the bed in the dark with the phone in my hand. Her side of the bed is made. I've been making it every morning, both sides, which I've never done in my life, and Mark's strip of tape is still on the floor of the study because I can't bring myself to throw it out.
Matt
Congratulations. I'm so glad. Tell her I'm
I delete it.
Congratulations. Both of you.
I send that.
Then I open the florist's website on my phone, the one Denise uses, and I go through the whole thing myself, the address and the card and the credit card number, which I have to get up and find in my wallet in my coat in the hall, and I pick a white orchid in a pot because the site says it lasts, and I write on the card, Welcome to the world.
Uncle Matt. And I pay for it at four thirty-one in the morning without anyone reminding me, and it's the first thing I've had delivered to anyone in three years without Denise, and it's an orchid for a baby, and I don't know if it's the right one and I send it anyway.
I don't go.
I sit on the edge of the bed and I don't go, and the apartment doesn't make any noise, and at five I get up and make the coffee and drink it standing at the window, and I don't text June.
I've texted June once since her one message, and it said Okay, and I meant it, and she asked me not to say things every day, so I don't.
At eight I call Halvorsen. The woman from Ohio wants to meet Thursday. Helen Marsh. Denise has already booked the room.
At eight-fifteen I go into the study and stand in front of the empty shelves, and I run my hand along the right side where the books were, and there's dust in the shape of them, and I leave it.