Chapter 10 #2
My throat closes. I press my hand against my mouth and breathe through it.
“Don’t disappear on me again,” she says. “Two weeks of voicemail and texts that say nothing... Don’t do that.”
“I won’t.”
“Call me tomorrow. Not a text. A call.”
“Okay.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
I hang up. I sit in the study with the door closed and my sister’s voice still in my ears.
I don’t feel like I’m carrying this alone, but I also won’t let myself lean too much on her.
That’s not my style. Instead, I’ll pack lunches, check homework, fold laundry, and go to bed.
Laurel knows this. She offers anyway because sisters offer the lifeline and don’t take it personally when you don’t grab it.
She just needs me to not disappear again, and now that she knows the worse, I have no reason to.
SATURDAY AFTERNOON. I’m at the grocery store on Libbie Avenue, the one with the good produce section. Alex is at Diego’s for the afternoon. Hope is home with Elliot. I’m alone for the first time in days, pushing a cart through the dairy aisle with a list on my phone and my headphones half in.
I’m reaching for the Greek yogurt when I see Catherine Ferguson, a surgeon’s wife.
I know her from the hospital fundraisers I used to attend.
She ran the silent auction for three years, always wore the same pearl earrings, and always asked about the kids first, which I appreciated.
She never made me feel lesser for not having a degree.
We weren’t close though. Just four-times-a-year friendly, exchanging pleasantries without real conversation.
Catherine sees me. Her smile starts, stops, then returns too carefully. “Andi, hi.” She puts her hand on my arm. “How are you?”
“I’m good. How are you?”
“Good, good. How are the kids?”
“Great. Hope’s finishing sixth grade. Alex is wrapping up fourth.”
“Time flies.” She’s still holding my arm. “Listen, I just wanted to say, if you ever need anything, or if you want to grab coffee sometime, Doug and I are always around.”
Doug. Dr. Doug Ferguson, orthopedics. He sits in the same surgeons’ lounge Elliot sits in.
He probably heard a rumor from a colleague, or from a nurse, or from the quality of silence that follows Elliot through the department now.
Doug would have told Catherine at some point, because most married people have real conversations, and she happened to walk into the dairy aisle to see me reaching for yogurt this morning.
I could be generous and think she’s just being kind, but I’m sure she’s offering coffee with an agenda of a woman who has information she’s pretending not to have. “Thank you. I appreciate that.”
“Of course.” She squeezes my arm and releases it. “You look great, by the way.”
The compliment is genuine and misplaced.
You tell someone they look great at a party, after a vacation, or at a reunion.
You don’t tell them they look great in the yogurt aisle unless you’re compensating for something you know, and the compensation is so transparent that I have to work to keep my expression neutral.
She means well. She’s not trying to hurt me.
She just can’t help broadcasting that she knows something awful about my private life.
I smile and thank her again. She wheels her cart toward the bakery section, and I stand in front of the yogurt with my phone in my hand and my public face intact.
I don’t cry. I don’t leave the store. I finish the list. Greek yogurt, milk, chicken thighs, broccoli, pasta, the crackers Alex likes, and the granola bars Hope pretends she doesn’t eat but goes through at a rate of two a day.
I check out. I load the bags into the car.
I sit in the driver’s seat and grip the steering wheel.
The affair was private. I chose to keep it private.
I told Jill and Laurel, and those were my choices, made on my terms. This is different.
This is Catherine Ferguson knowing that my husband slept with a fellow, a younger woman with an MD, while I was at home packing lunches.
Catherine will tell her husband tonight, casually, over dinner that she saw me, and I’m not holding it together.
He’ll tell a colleague next week at a departmental meeting.
The colleague will tell his wife. The story will move through the hospital, the school community, and the neighborhood.
Everywhere it goes it’ll look the same, like a successful man enamored with a younger woman, giving in to what they felt while ignoring the wife he forgot.
I didn’t get left behind. I carried everything.
I carried it alone for years. I’m still carrying it now, in the grocery store parking lot, with six bags of food, a list of things my family needs, and an expression that hasn’t cracked in public since the day Elliot sat down at my kitchen table and told me he slept with another woman.
I start the car and drive home. Tears stream down my face, forcing me to pull over, cry them out, and wipe away the evidence before I can continue on.
ELLIOT HAS MADE DINNER. When I walk in with the grocery bags, the kitchen smells like garlic, and the table is set for four. He’s at the stove with a dish towel over his shoulder, stirring something in the large skillet. “I made chicken and rice,” he says.
I put the groceries on the counter and start unpacking them. “Thank you.”
“Hope helped with the salad.”
I glance at the counter. Hope’s salad is in a bowl.
It’s just lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumber, but she washed the vegetables and cut them herself.
Hope doesn’t usually volunteer for dinner prep.
Elliot must have asked, and she said yes because saying yes to cooking is easier than saying yes to conversation.
Making dinner gave them a task to share without requiring them to share anything else.
We eat. Elliot asks Hope about the coral reef project, which she finished last week.
She tells him about the bleaching section and the recovery images she found.
He asks a follow-up question about coral spawning, and she answers at length.
I sit across the table listening to my daughter talk to her father about marine biology and count the real questions he asks.
Two questions prove he listened. That’s better than what he would have done a month ago.
Alex talks about laser tag at Diego’s house, which is not the same as actual laser tag but involved flashlights and hiding behind furniture. He is delighted. Elliot listens.
After dinner, Elliot clears the table. He loads the dishwasher slowly, checking where things go.
He puts the glasses in the right cabinet.
He figured it out. Or Hope showed him. Either way, the glasses are where they belong, the dishwasher is running, and my husband is standing in the kitchen wiping down the counter with a sponge.
He’s doing it wrong. He’s using the dish sponge instead of the counter sponge, which is the green one, not the yellow one, and the difference matters because the dish sponge touches raw chicken residue and the counter is where Alex puts his elbows.
I don’t correct him. I’ll wash it again and switch the sponges later.
He’s trying, which is visible and what makes my decision complicated.
A month ago, he didn’t know where we keep the glasses.
Now he does. A month ago, he couldn’t name Alex’s teacher.
Now he can. A month ago, he kissed my cheek on autopilot and walked through the kitchen without touching anything.
Now he’s wiping the counter with the wrong sponge, and the effort is real even if the execution is flawed.
I don’t know what to do with real effort from a man who gave me years of nothing.
I go upstairs to sit on the bed. Sadie settles beside me.
The divorce papers will arrive next week.
The attorney is drafting them now. They’ll sit in a drawer the way the pro/con list sits in the drawer.
The papers are tangible proof of options I’m holding, doors I can open, and remind me I can leave whenever I decide to.
Downstairs, Elliot finishes in the kitchen. The faucet runs. A cabinet closes. He’s learning where things go.
I’m not ready for that to matter. I’m not ready for anything he does to count toward something I haven’t decided to give him.
I open my book to the same page I’ve read four times and keep my gaze there.