Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Natalie
Three nights before Christmas, I am standing in front of the mirror when Adam knocks.
The children are at his mother’s for the night.
Their overnight bags went with them, along with Benji’s usual bottles and the rabbit Lucy claims she no longer needs but packed beneath her pajamas.
Adam checked the bags with them. I checked Benji’s afterward.
We are both aware of that, and neither of us pretended otherwise.
Our sixth counseling appointment was yesterday. We have decided to stop going every week and make another appointment after the holidays. I haven’t asked Dr. Williams whether she thinks we should stay married. She hasn’t offered to decide.
On the bed lies the blue dress Adam asked if I would wear. He said he liked it, then added that I should wear whatever I wanted, which made the invitation so awkward I laughed.
I am wearing it now.
At the door, he holds a single pale flower wrapped in paper. A ranunculus, its petals crowded together around the center. He hands it over before taking off his coat.
“The woman at the store knew what I meant by cabbage flower.”
“I’m glad somebody does.”
“She seemed concerned about the rest of my shopping.”
I put it in a narrow vase by the kitchen window. He watches me for a moment, then looks away when I turn. He is nervous. I can tell from the way he keeps smoothing the cuff of his sleeve, a small movement I remember from before our wedding.
“Ready?” he asks.
“Yes.”
Dinner is at a neighborhood place with good pasta and chairs that don’t make me feel underdressed. He has checked the menu, booked the table, and left enough time that we aren’t rushing. I notice those things, then make an effort to stop noticing and simply sit down.
We talk about Christmas presents. He has bought Owen a construction set and is already regretting the number of pieces. Lucy is getting the art supplies she asked for, including a shade of green she described in such detail that he took the message to the store and handed over his phone.
“Did they find it?” I ask.
“They found something called permanent green light.”
“That sounds right.”
“It sounded like a traffic problem to me.”
I laugh into my glass. He smiles, pleased, and for a while I can see the man who used to wait outside the bakery for me with coffee, the paper cups balanced on top of whatever he had been carrying.
We talk about a neighbor’s inflatable snowman, which has spent most of December bent forward over the hedge in a position the children find endlessly entertaining.
We talk about the book I am finally reading. He admits he has started it too.
“Why?”
“You kept mentioning the brother. I wanted to know what he did.”
“What do you think?”
“He should be arrested.”
“He hasn’t done anything illegal.”
“That’s a failure of legislation.”
I laugh hard enough that I have to put my fork down.
Later, when the plates have been cleared, he asks what I want next year to look like. I look at him carefully, but he doesn’t rush to explain the question.
“I want more work,” I say. “Not so much that I never see the kids. Enough that I stop calling it something I used to do.”
He nods.
“And I want time that doesn’t have to be useful. I had coffee and read for half an hour the other day, and I spent the first ten minutes trying to justify it.”
“You don’t have to justify it to me.”
“I know. I’m telling you what it’s like in my head.”
“Right.” He takes a drink of water. “What else?”
I look down at my hands. “I want not to be scared every time your phone rings.”
He is quiet for a while. The waiter passes our table and moves on without interrupting.
“I can’t promise work will never call at a bad time,” Adam says. “I can promise you won’t be the last person to find out that I’ve changed our plans.”
“And sometimes the answer has to be no.”
“Yes.”
“Even when it costs you something.”
He meets my eyes. “Yes.”
I believe that he means it. I also know meaning it tonight won’t make it easy on a tired evening in February. We will have to live through those evenings to find out what we can do.
“I miss sleeping beside you,” I say.
The admission comes out before I have properly decided to make it. Adam goes very still.
“I miss you too.”
“I don’t just mean in bed.”
“I know.”
“But I do mean that.”
A slow smile starts at the corner of his mouth. He looks down at the table, then back at me, and the warmth in his eyes reaches places in me that have been quiet for a long time.
“I was trying not to assume.”
“Don’t start assuming yet.”
“I won’t.”
We order dessert to share. It takes us twenty minutes to eat something we could have finished in five, because neither of us seems ready to get up.
In the car outside the house, he turns off the engine and leaves his hands on the wheel. The porch light is on. Through the front window I can see the dark shape of the Christmas tree and the small light we leave in the hall.
I should open the door. I don’t.
Adam turns toward me. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yes.”
“Are we going to talk about whether I come home, or are you still not ready?”
I look at the house. He lets me think.
“I’ve been thinking about it.”
“All right.”
“What scares me is how easy it would be. Your clothes upstairs. Your toothbrush. The kids happy. I could let you back in and stop paying attention because it feels better.”
He nods slowly. “I worry about that too.”
“You do?”
“I don’t want to come home and decide the problem’s solved.”
I run my thumb along the seam of the seat. “What happens if you start doing it again?”
“You tell me.”
“I did tell you.”
He looks at me for a moment, then closes his eyes. “Yes. You did.”
I wait.
“That can’t be the whole answer,” he says. “I keep the schedule we agreed. I handle my parts without waiting for you to notice I’ve stopped. If something changes, we talk before it lands on you.”
“And if I get angry?”
“You’re allowed.”
“I don’t want permission to be angry. I want to know you won’t decide it means none of your effort counted.”
He exhales. “I’ll have to be careful about that.”
It is an imperfect answer. I prefer it to a promise he hasn’t thought through.
“I don’t want us keeping score,” I say.
“Neither do I.”
“But I won’t go back to carrying everything so we can pretend we’re easy together.”
“I don’t want that version of easy anymore.”
The car is getting cold. I pull my coat closer, and Adam reaches toward the ignition.
“Leave it,” I say. “I’m all right.”
He settles back. In the dim light, I can see a line beside his mouth I don’t remember being so deep. We are older than the people who sat in parked cars because we had nowhere private to go. We have children sleeping at their grandmother’s and a mortgage and a history neither of us can tidy away.
I still want him.
I turn toward him and put my hand against his cheek. He stops breathing for a second, then turns his face into my palm. His skin is warm beneath the roughness of evening stubble.
“Nat,” he says softly.
I kiss him before he can ask another question.
For a moment he doesn’t move. Then his hand comes to the back of my neck, careful at first, and his mouth opens beneath mine.
The familiarity hurts. I know the shape of him, the way he draws me closer when I pause, the small sound he makes when I touch his jaw.
I have missed this with a part of myself I kept refusing to consider.
When I pull back, his forehead rests against mine.
“I’ve wanted to do that for weeks,” he says.
“So have I.”
He laughs once, quietly, almost in disbelief. I kiss him again because I can, because nobody has asked me to be sensible, because I am tired of pretending wanting him is something I should defend against forever.
The console presses into my ribs. I shift, catch my necklace on his coat button, and swear.
“Hold still,” he says.
“I’m trying.”
He frees the chain with hands that aren’t quite steady. We look at each other and start laughing, the absurdity of being trapped by a coat button after everything we have managed to say finally catching up with us.
“Come inside,” I tell him.
His expression changes. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
He searches my face once, then nods. We get out of the car. He takes my hand on the path, and at the door I give him my key because I am suddenly the one who can’t manage the lock.
Inside, the house smells of the pine branches Lucy insisted we bring in. Adam hangs our coats while I put my bag on the console. The small domestic movements make me nervous in a way the kiss didn’t.
He notices. “We can sit for a while.”
“I know.”
“We don’t have to...”
I step closer and take hold of his shirt. “Adam.”
He stops talking.
I kiss him again, standing in the hall where I have watched him leave so many times. He wraps his arms around me, and I let my weight settle against him. For once I don’t hold myself ready to move away and deal with something.
Upstairs, he pauses at our bedroom door. The bed is made. My book lies on his side because I have been using the space, and a basket of clean laundry occupies the chair.
“I didn’t stage this,” I tell him.
“I’d have been worried if you had.”
He takes the book from the bed and sets it carefully on my nightstand. Then he turns back to me.
The tenderness in his face makes my throat tighten. I touch the front of his shirt, smoothing fabric that doesn’t need smoothing, and tell him I love him. I have said it during these weeks as a fact we were both trying to understand. Tonight it feels like something I am giving him.
“I love you,” he says. “I’m here.”
I bring him closer. Later, when the room is dark and we have stopped trying to make up for lost time, I lie with my cheek against his chest and listen to his breathing. He moves his hand slowly along my back. Neither of us talks for a while.
Just before I fall asleep, I say, “This doesn’t mean you move everything back tomorrow.”
His hand stills, then continues. “I know.”
“I want to do it properly. Tell the kids. Talk about the rooms and the schedule and all of it.”
“We will.”
“But you can stay tonight.”
He kisses the top of my head. “I’d like that.”
In the morning, sunlight reaches the wall above the dresser before either of us gets up. I wake when Adam shifts beside me. For a moment I expect the old rush, the shower running, the phone already pressed to his ear. Instead he asks whether I want coffee.
“Yes.”
“Milk to the color of the inside of an almond.”
I open one eye. “You remember that?”
“I remember some things.”
“Then remember where the mugs are.”
He smiles and gets out of bed. I listen to him go downstairs, then reach for the book on my nightstand. There is time before we collect the children. I turn to the page I marked and begin to read.