Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
It wasn’t till Ada pulled into the driveway and cut the engine that Hannah called her back.
There was a light on in the kitchen and two lights on upstairs, in Kade and Olivia’s bedrooms, but it looked more or less like the Bushner house was shutting down for the night.
Rather than go in right away, Ada answered her daughter, eager to hear her voice.
It pulled her back into a world she’d understood.
“Mom,” Hannah said, giggling, “what’s up?”
Ada’s heart lurched in recognition: she knew without a doubt that her daughter had drunk alcohol. She pictured her in half a dozen awful situations, remembered news reports, and considered all the things that could go wrong on college campuses.
Ada cleared her throat. “Are you all right?”
Hannah laughed again. She sounded carefree and entirely lovely.
Ada reminded herself that plenty of kids experimented with alcohol when they got to college.
It was the norm, and Hannah was responsible.
But a sharp part of her wanted to start the car, drive to the ferry, and take the first one that would bring her to the mainland.
She’d pack up Hannah’s things in a jiffy and have her back here by tomorrow morning.
“Mom?” Hannah was confused by Ada’s silence.
Ada cleared her throat. “How are you, honey?”
“I’m great! We were just hanging out in Bethany’s dorm.”
“But you’re not far from home?” Ada asked, hating how frightened she was.
“Nah. I just got back to my room,” Hannah said. “I have a class tomorrow at ten. Isn’t that crazy? I don’t have to wake up till, like, nine.”
Ada smiled and let her head drop on the seat. Hannah was back in her room, safe and making friends. Through the kitchen window, Ada could see Peter’s shadow, moving from one end of the counter to the other. He was always a late-night snacker.
Ada begged Hannah for more details about her first week, and Hannah supplied them, yawning between explanations of various Vassar traditions and how good or bad the food was depending on where you were on campus.
Ada listened intently, wanting to absorb it all.
But just before she was about to ask another question about the university gym, Hannah surprised her.
“But actually, I’m calling to see if you’re okay, Mom,” she said.
“What?” Ada laughed.
Hannah groaned, as though Ada were forcing her hand. “You know, Mom. You haven’t been exactly yourself this summer.”
Her heartbeat quickening, Ada decided to play dumb. “What are you talking about?”
“Come on. Kade, Olivia, and I know something is going on with you. But we know you won’t tell us,” Hannah said, her words slightly slurred.
Ada closed her eyes, thinking about how “covert” she’d thought she was all summer long, hiding her broken heart while sleeping down the hall from their father. It was clear that the kids had noticed something. They weren’t dummies. They’d just been too polite or too confused to say anything.
“I don’t want you to be sad,” Hannah said gently, as though she were sitting right beside Ada, whispering to her in the car.
“I’m not sad, honey,” Ada said, her voice breaking and giving her away.
“Okay. But imagine if you were one of your patients,” Hannah suggested. “What would you tell yourself?”
Ada sniffed, thinking, She’s too smart for her own good.
But before Ada was forced into an answer, Adelaide returned to Hannah’s room, and Ada said she had to go. “I love you, Hannah,” she said. “I love you so much.”
Hannah said she loved her, too. But she added, too quietly for Adelaide to hear, Ada hoped, “Make sure you’re okay.”
Ada hung up, closed the garage door, and entered the kitchen to find it empty.
The counter was filled with crumbs, and the dishwasher was half cracked because nobody had thought to run it.
But Ada didn’t care. Rather than spend the three minutes required to clean everything up, she walked upstairs and hovered outside of the bedroom she’d shared with Peter for twenty years.
She felt shattered, but she knew she couldn’t go on like this.
Hannah, Kade, and Olivia saw the truth, or a version of it. Ada had to be brave enough to claim it.
She knocked on the door, and Peter said, “Come in.”
Ada entered, just as she had a thousand times before, and closed the door behind her.
Peter was propped up in bed, reading a sports memoir.
He watched her intently, so surprised to see her that he was unable to speak.
Ada sat on her side of the bed and stretched her legs out in front of her.
The room smelled different since she’d stopped sleeping here.
It smelled purely of Peter. It smelled like Peter’s bedroom back in his apartment in Manhattan, like they’d gone back in time.
“Hannah called me out,” she said quietly.
Peter closed his book and put it on the bedside table. “She’s been asking me what’s wrong with you. She’s worried.”
Ada let out a wry laugh. But she didn’t want to be cruel, not now. “What did you say?”
“I told her you’re going through a lot right now, but I left it at that,” Peter said.
“She knows it isn’t just about her,” Ada said. “She’s smarter than we are.”
“Thank goodness,” Peter said.
Ada eyed him, her heart pounding like a bouncy ball. “I’m surprised you’re here.”
“What do you mean?” Peter cupped his hand over his chest. He looked adorable, which was something Ada hated and loved at the same time.
Ada twisted around, burrowing her head in the pillow that she’d picked out herself at that beautiful home store on the mainland.
“I mean, I’m surprised you didn’t go see her.
After the kids went to bed.” She swallowed, studying his face.
“You must sneak out a lot these days, now that I’m down the hall. Now that I know.”
Peter didn’t say anything. Ada decided that meant he often sneaked out.
“Where do you go together?” she asked, feeling brave.
Peter groaned and put his arms over his eyes, as though he couldn’t possibly face what he’d done. But through his forearms, he murmured, “We go to bars. We go to restaurants.” He paused. “We hang out at her place.”
Ada was quiet for a moment, trying to visualize her husband with Katrina, laughing and drinking wine. Feeling like she was dangling over an abyss, she asked, “What do you like about her?”
Peter forced his arms away from his face, perhaps recognizing that he was a child. “She goes after stuff,” he said finally. “Like, when she wants to do something, she tries it out. It’s infectious.”
Ada was taken aback. Throughout all their sessions, Katrina hadn’t talked about “going after” anything except friends and her husband. “What kind of stuff?”
“She’s been writing a book all summer,” he said. “It’s about the history of Nantucket, but it’s also about so many other things. About who we all are as people, about why our ancestors came to the island, and why we continue to stay.”
Ada sat up, intrigued. During all their sessions, she’d thought of Katrina like a pathetic woman who needed a man desperately. However, in fact, Katrina was both a thinker and a doer.
“That sounds really interesting,” Ada said finally.
“It is.” Peter rubbed his temples and still couldn’t look Ada in the eye.
“Do you love her?” Ada asked.
Peter raised his shoulders, unable to say.
“Do you tell her that you love her?” Ada asked.
Peter looked sick to his stomach. His cheeks were turning green. But to his credit, he didn’t get out of bed. It was like he knew he couldn’t run away anymore.
Ada would remember this night for the rest of her life.
“Can I ask you something else?” Ada asked, her voice small.
Peter nodded. He was in over his head.
“Why did you do it? In the beginning,” Ada asked.
“I don’t know if I can remember,” Peter said. “It just happened, you know.”
But Ada ordered, “Try.”
Peter turned in bed so that his chest was facing hers, so that his nose was a few inches from her nose. If this had been any other year, they might have begun kissing. They might have slept together. But Peter was with someone else. Ada’s husband was with someone else.
Peter closed his eyes, but opened them again, as though he knew Ada needed him to face her when he said it. “I haven’t felt like myself in a really long time.”
Ada’s face crumpled. She’d heard this excuse from many of her patients: that their husbands hadn’t felt like themselves and they’d cheated; that they hadn’t felt like themselves and then cheated. Like you could find “yourself” in another person.
But then Peter added, “And I haven’t really felt like you and I have connected. Not in a really long time. I’ve felt like you’re a stranger. Like somebody I don’t know very well who lives in my house.” His voice broke, and tears drained from his eyes. But here it was, the truth.
Ada decided not to make a big deal of it, not openly. Inside, she was breaking apart. But soon, she would be out of this and on a road to a different life. Maybe this was the first step.
“What do you mean?” she asked, because she needed to know.
“I don’t know,” Peter said finally. “You were so magnetic when we met.”
“I was an opera star,” Ada reminded him, trying not to be mean. “Of course, I was magnetic. It was part of the job.”
“Yes.” Peter frowned. “But you were living for something so much bigger than yourself. You were living for music, and it mattered so much to you.”
Ada waited, hoping he would give her what she needed: understanding.
But Peter remained quiet after that, too frightened to go on.
She wanted to say that he’d been different when they’d met, but it wasn’t true.
He’d been the same, minus one thing: he’d been in love with her back then.
He’d thought she was incredible. But she’d thought she was pretty incredible, too.
When her voice dried up, when she was ostracized, when she was forced from one doctor to another who all told her that she’d never really sing again, Ada hadn’t known how to think of herself.
She’d fallen into Peter and into the life he’d offered her here in Nantucket.
They’d had Hannah. They’d continued, as Ada’s identity had drifted away or become something else.
“What are you living for?” Ada asked Peter, furrowing her brow. It felt unfair that she had to live for something all the time, something beyond her children, if he wasn’t.
“I’m looking for it,” Peter whispered. “Maybe I’ll find it soon.”
Shifting around in bed so that her eyes found the dark ceiling, Ada considered the fact that, when she met with patients struggling with their marriage, she didn’t always recommend divorce.
Sometimes she recommended meditation, couples’ therapy, and couples’ activities.
Sometimes she recommended waiting out the first year to see what happened.
But she saw, now, that she and Peter were done for.
And she didn’t know what to think about it.
“Please,” Peter whispered. “Don’t hate me.”
But Ada found that she couldn’t hate him, not even if she tried. “I’ll probably always love you,” she said to the dark room. “And maybe I’ll find a way to thank you for seeing how unhappy you were. Maybe it’s the only way forward for both of us.”
Ada didn’t want to be with someone who loved someone else. It was an act of self-harm to stay in something like that.
She deserved love, feelings, beautiful days, and laughter.
She hoped that soon, her children would look at her and see a changed woman, someone they could respect.
She hoped that, if she ever fell in love again, her relationship would be one that would show Hannah, Olivia, and Kade what it meant to prioritize one another.
Soon, she heard Peter’s breathing slow and deepen.
A part of her itched to get out of bed and walk down the hall, but another told her to stay here and enjoy her marriage bed for the last time.
All through the night, she slept peacefully, never reaching for Peter’s hand, never allowing him close to her.
They slept more deeply than they had in months, perhaps because something within their bodies was telling them they needed to heal and move forward.