Chapter 19 – Adrian #3
I open my mouth, but before I can argue or plead or beg, she finishes her sentence. “What we have now is better.”
My heart cracks open, flooding my veins with an impossible high, and suddenly, for the first time in months, I feel like I’m sitting straight, like gravity isn’t working against me to drag me down.
What we have now is better. I want her to say it again.
I want her to scream it while I’m inside her. I’m going to tattoo it on my chest.
“Can you tell me more?” Deborah asks. “About what you have now?”
Cora glances down shyly. I think she said more than she intended. “We know each other now. A little. We know each other’s Achilles’ heels.”
“You have intimacy.” Deborah is obviously using reflective listening, but from Cora’s expression, to her, it’s a novel idea, and she’s more than a little ambivalent about it.
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Is that a good thing?” Deborah smiles.
“I couldn’t even begin to tell you.” Cora actually smiles back.
My lungs finally start working properly again.
Maybe we actually have a chance. I torched my marriage to save myself from the pain of caring about someone more than she cared about me, and maybe, even though I’m a piece of shit and don’t deserve it, maybe I get a redo because I did pick the perfect woman—messed up and tough with more layers than an onion. Beautiful. And real.
Cora falls silent again, and I suppose Deborah knows to quit when she’s ahead, because we spend the rest of the session answering innocuous questions about our life and the girls.
Cora doesn’t object when I set up our next appointment for the day after Christmas, and she lets me hold her hand on the way out. I tell Johnson to drive past Rockefeller Center on our way home. Cora loves the tree, and I want more time, just her and me.
My nerves are oddly jangled, like I’ve had too much caffeine. We’re quiet for most of the drive. She agreed to another appointment, and I don’t want to press my luck by rehashing what just happened. There is one thing I can’t let go, though.
I wait until after we’ve left the city to ask. “You said we know each other’s Achilles’ heels. What’s mine?”
She’s sitting beside me, and she glances over to answer, her eyes shyly downcast, her lips curving ever so slightly at the corners. “You love me,” she says softly. “And you don’t know it.”
Something clicks into place, not a realization, a new word getting matched to a feeling that has been inside me for a long, long time.
“You’re wrong,” I say back, my voice low, even though the divider is closed. “I do know.” I grab her hand and pull it into my lap. “How did you find out?”
Her smile curves higher as she strokes the inside of my wrist with her thumb. “I crashed your car on purpose, and you went to therapy.”
“So I did.”
“So you did,” she repeats and lets herself rest against my shoulder.
The snow holds off until we’re home and gathered in the library in the matching pajamas that Cora bought us last year.
Pearl’s bottoms make her look like a castaway now, but she doesn’t mind.
Of course, Cora thought ahead and bought a matching onesie for Winnie.
Out of deference to me, they are a tasteful red plaid.
If I wasn’t a consideration, I’m sure Cora and Pearl would be in reindeer suits with antlers on the hoods.
We’ve already had dinner, and now we’re sitting on the floor around the tree. Neither of us came into the marriage with Christmas traditions, so we make our own. Cora heard from another mom about opening one gift on Christmas Eve and immediately adopted it.
The rug has been replaced, the fireplace cleaned, and the photos rearranged on the mantel. Stockings are hung there now from metal hooks. The remnants of the blue and yellow bouquet are in a cigar box in my locked desk drawer.
“This one,” Pearl declares. She’s dragged her biggest present from the back of the stack.
“Are you sure?” Cora asks. Winnie is sitting on her lap, lounging while she observes the scene. She loves the tree lights.
“Yes!” Pearl’s already ripping off the wrapping. “Oh! Daddy! Look!”
“Wow. That’s awesome.” It’s a plastic espresso machine that lets you make drinks out of Play-Doh.
I don’t understand the appeal, but Cora knew it would be a hit, and she was right.
Pearl is already pushing the huge box toward me like a bulldozer.
It’s my job to open boxes since I’m the one who carries a pocket knife.
As soon as I slice the top open, she takes over, wrestling the toy out and tearing through the packaging, exclaiming all the while.
At one point, she dashes away to get her Play-Doh, but Cora calls to her before she flies out the door, reminding her that there’s no Play-Doh outside the hot mess zone, and that it’ll have to wait until tomorrow.
The hot mess zone is the area of the nursery with a rubber mat covering the carpet.
Pearl is excited enough that she doesn’t fuss too much, quickly pivoting to a game of fulfilling pretend drink orders.
She babbles happily to herself, totally immersed.
Winnie has drifted off to sleep, reclining on Cora’s belly.
I move from the debris field of wrapping and packaging to sit next to them.
“Hey,” I say. “Which one are you going to open?”
“I can’t pick. I’m stuck.” She glances down at Winnie.
“Tell me which one. I’ll get it.”
“You pick.”
“I get to decide?” I catch her eye. She flushes. I can’t wait to get her to bed, and she knows it.
I bend forward and grab a small rectangular box from under the tree. If I remember correctly, they’re jeweled barrettes from a hot new designer with a new boutique in SoHo. I had them made with yellow and blue sapphires.
Before I hand her the box, I reach into the breast pocket of my pajama top and slip the rings I’ve been carrying for weeks, at this point, onto my thumb.
My chest tightens. Anxiety is not my usual reaction to the unknown.
I’m aggressive and always have been. Still, my throat tightens and my pulse races.
I have no reason to think she’ll take the rings back. Nothing, in essence, has changed. I haven’t reversed time. I haven’t undone what I did.
Still, I offer her the box, her rings stacked on the tip of my thumb.
Her gaze jumps to meet mine, a question in her eyes. I guess she hadn’t discovered they were missing from her hiding place.
“These are yours,” I say because I don’t have enough breath in my lungs to say the rest—I am yours. Whether you’ll have me or not. Even if you hate me, even if I don’t deserve you, I belong to you and always will.
“Yes,” she says, slipping the rings off my thumb and onto her left index finger. “They’re mine.”
She rests her head on my shoulder. For a while, we watch our daughters in the warm glow of the tree lights while the wind whips snow against the windows.
And then, because apparently miracles don’t care if you’re a bastard or not, my wife murmurs in my ear, “So are you.”