by Mark Rader
I wish we’d gone through with it that night, David said one night when she was a block away from home.
I know, she said. I’m sorry.
A fluffy white Maine coon was stretched out on the windowsill of the house she’d been passing by, face in shadow, furry back lit by the ambient lamplight of its owner’s living room. The air was damp and thick, like cold jelly.
There is something we could do instead, she’d said, and immediately her neck had flushed.
What do you mean? he asked.
Over the phone, she said. We could pretend.
For a few long seconds, David hadn’t responded, and she wondered if she’d proved herself unworthy of him with this smutty talk. Then he’d said, Where could you even do it?
She’d already ruled out going down to the basement once everyone was asleep; doing anything while they were in the house seemed wrong. However, the garage could be seen as a separate building from the house: if she just got into the Wagoneer and sat there with the lights off, her ears half aware of the door to the inside….
When she called him back, she asked him where he was, and he said, In bed, where do you think? and that made her laugh out loud. And when he asked her where she was and she told him, that was enough to get them going—the ridiculous wrongness of it. David wasn’t good at dirty talk. Twice he said, I’m bad at this, until he saw how his reticence wasn’t helping. So he opened himself up to the awkwardness of it because, for her, he’d be willing to feel ashamed and to fail—another thing Harden would never do. His words were the only things available to get her off, so he found the words she needed and meant them, and she found the words he needed back. At one point, she inclined the seat back to create more room. And when they were both finished, David let loose a beautiful little moan.
You’re sitting in an SUV with your pants down right now, aren’t you? he said.
And together they’d laughed at the absurdities people submitted themselves to for love.
All three months of winter—a period that saw her walks in the snow at night evolve into talks in her heated car in the parking lot during lunch—they spoke futilely about a way to meet up, if only for half a day somewhere, a ruse.
Maura began thinking about the mechanics of being with David for real—not just in secret, but openly. She was building her case (for herself and maybe, subliminally, she realized later, for her mom): millions of marriages break up every year, and many people, knowing themselves better now than they had when they were young, were much happier the second time around—this wasn’t just true for her mom, it was true of half her parents’ friends. People of her generation were supposed to be savvier about marriage than their parents, having been children themselves of divorce; most were careful not to jump in too early. Instead, they’d bided their time, dated around a bunch, figured out what they really, truly needed in a person, married in their late twenties, early thirties, had kids a few years later, if that’s what they wanted. So many of her friends, but not her and Harden. The divide between the sexes had collapsed; couples were friends, equals, as much as lovers.
You saw this dynamic presented so well in commercials, on TV, in indie movies. Honest communication and authentic friendship were the great new magic available to the modern couple. Men at least understood the importance of it, even if they sucked at it. Women demanded it, in a way their mothers—even the hippie moms—hadn’t. This, so the theory went, was why her generation’s marriages were more likely to last.
Except that she and Harden had never been good at talking to each other—that had always been their relationship’s great weakness. He’d been there for her from the beginning: reliable, handsome, funny in a dry, half-assed, slightly superior way that made her feel safe. He was salt of the earth; with him around, she’d known she wouldn’t need to change a single thing about herself, which was one kind of freedom. He legitimately admired her talents, even if he didn’t understand them. But he didn’t care about his own inner life or hers; he wasn’t curious or forthcoming or funny in the ways she wished he was; after college, he’d fallen far too eagerly into the mold of his brothers, his dad. The Williams men were like World War II veterans who hadn’t been through anything particularly traumatic, just looking for a comfortable life, a place to call home. Wry, TV-loving providers. Good with their kids, but not passionate or ambitious. And no way would that ever change. That was the fucking killer.
In May, eight months after she and David met—after she’d shared her worries about her mom’s drinking and the news about her uncle’s cancer diagnosis; after she’d been there for him, virtually, checking in every hour, when Ralphie had to be rushed to the vet after eating some guacamole he’d left out after a party; after sending Ralphie get-well biscuits she found and shipped online with the old Bank One credit card she never used anymore; after probably a dozen more trysts over the phone, in the car, in the tub when she was alone and working from home in the afternoon; after sharing three topless pictures (stored in the Taxes 2003 folder on her work computer); and after many more long, deep, conversations, more brazen now, stolen as she drove home from work and sat idling in the driveway or at work in a spare conference room—they finally set it up, a rendezvous.
She had a meeting in Boston with a client in the morning that was done at eleven a.m. Instead of going to the lunch, she’d taken the rest of the day off. He was already in the hotel room on the seventh floor; she knocked, and the door opened, and there he was, fully clothed and smiling. They hugged a long time, squeezing and squeezing, her cheek roughed by the bristly scruff he kept trimmed to a week’s growth, and then she kissed him, a warning shot. And then they were finally doing with bodies what they’d done only with words. What she expected and what actually was happening flickered back and forth. In the heat of it, she said the same things she said when they were pretending, as did he, and the syncing up of the imagined and the real was its own pleasure. Afterward, they showered together and ordered room service from under the covers. Lying beside him, his heavy arm across her chest, she realized she would never again be a fully faithful wife; in a matter of minutes she’d been relocated to a different corner of humanity: the land of cheaters.
They ate their tiramisu; David took two forkfuls and let her have the rest. Then, for an hour or so, they slept. On waking to the alarm David set on his phone, as if it were morning instead of three in the afternoon, he put his jeans back on, pushed the room’s huge, ugly, heavy, shiny teal curtain aside and looked at the harbor. Lying there alone, she felt lonely, even with him and his strong back a few yards away, so she got up and stood beside him, slipped a hand in his back pocket, like some tween girl at the mall with her boyfriend. Below them was a cove of still water, a scattered assortment of sailboats stuck to it like toothpicked hors d’oeuvres left over after a waiter’s first pass through a crowd. One yacht looked asleep under the hazy late spring sun.
There really is a place for you up in Maine, you know, he said, as they embraced before she left.
I know, she said.
In fact, he said, hesitating, pausing, gathering strength, I could even live here half the time. So you could be closer to your kids.
She stepped back to look at him, eyes big; this was news. Really?
Yeah, he said. Someone I know in the classics department has an arrangement like that. You’d just have to get an apartment.
You’re serious, she said.
We could try it out, at least, he said. If—he paused—that’s something you’re willing to do.
David, she said, that’s so nice. It’s amazing you’d do that.
Well, David said, what can I say? I’m in it to win it. But you knew that already. And he smiled a little lovesick smile.
On the elevator ride down—she went by herself, just in case she saw someone she knew—the woman reflected in the tall, narrow mirror looking alarmed but happy. She had feared, she was realizing now, that she was part of some ego trip for him, some fling. But if anything, he might wa
nt her more. How about that?
Two weeks later Harden went through her purse while she was asleep and found the many, many text conversations (but not the photos and videos from David—those she offloaded on to her computer immediately). And thus the era of her double life ended and a new torturous era of exposure had begun.
Around four, Maura helped the kids gather up their beach stuff, and by ten after, they were walking into the driveway of the cottage. Ella and Evan poured into the front door recharged by the sun, but she was exhausted.
Harden was on his laptop at the kitchen island, drinking coffee. Blue golf shirt, cargo shorts, flip-flops that revealed his thick yellowing toenails. (David had beautiful olive toes, beautiful olive fingers.) Ella grabbed a plastic cup and filled it at the sink; Evan went to the freezer to grab a frozen Snickers bar.
“See any sharks down there?” Harden asked, just as he’d asked the last three days.
“We made a bunch of moats,” Evan said. “I called it Moatapalooza.”
“We didn’t fight once either,” Ella added.
“It’s true, actually,” Maura said. “You guys did really well.”
Evan was already gnawing on the Snickers with his back molars. Ella jerked her head back to down the last of her water.
“You feel like doing takeout?” Harden asked her.
“I wouldn’t mind that, no.”
“Anything in particular?”
“I don’t really care.”
“Okay.”
“I’m actually feeling pretty wiped,” she said. “I might go lie down for a little while if that’s all right.”
“Sure,” Harden said. This was fair. She’d had them for hours now. It was his turn anyway. She smiled her eyes at him, the tiniest possible amount in thanks, then shut that down and looked away: the kinder she was toward him the harder it would be to do what was necessary later. Soon.
For two hours she slept, dreamless. On waking, she was sweaty and hot, so she took a cold shower. The kids and Harden were gone when she walked into the kitchen; a note on the table said, Out shopping, in Harden’s blocky handwriting. When the Wagoneer pulled up in the driveway, Maura was standing at the kitchen sink with a glass of water, watching a red squirrel undulate along the power line in the backyard. Instead of two white pizza boxes or two white plastic sacks of Chinese, Evan walked in the front door proudly holding a paper grocery bag on its side, awkwardly against his belly, one hand pinching shut the top, as Ella skipped alongside him. Their faces were alive with suppressed glee. Something was up. Evan set the bag on the dinner table and said, “Want to see what we got for dinner?”
“I’m almost afraid to look,” she said. “You guys are acting very strange.”
Unable to wait a second longer, Evan quickly opened the top, then slid out, on a piece of white butcher paper, two big whole fish, each at least a foot and a half long. Green-brown skin, rosy spots, dull here, shiny there. Mouths open as if in shock. Their smell hit her faintly at first, then expanded like a sponge.
“We got them at Shaw’s,” Ella said.
“They’re sea bass,” said Evan. “We can each share one. You and me, and Ella and Dad.”
Harden had come in past the doorframe with one more grocery bag in his arm, his keys in his free hand.
“What happened to getting takeout?” Maura asked.
“It was Evan’s idea,” Harden said. “I stopped for some booze and he asked if we could eat these instead. He said he saw something on TV where they caught and cooked a whole fish over a campfire and wanted to try it.”
“Bear Grylls,” Evan said. “He did it when they went to Tahiti.”
“Oh. Okay. Did you get a say in this too?” she said, looking at Ella. Sometimes Harden and Evan railroaded her, she who was so eager to please.
She nodded. “Yeah. I picked one out. That one. Rosie.”
“You named them?” Maura said.
“The one with the poking-out eyes is named Bug-Eye,” said Evan.
Oh, these kids. She couldn’t not go along now. But the project annoyed her a little. Now they’d have to figure out how to cook them, when all she wanted was to be fully awake to this last night of their innocence, stress-free.
“So what’s your plan?” she asked Harden. “Just throw them in the oven?”
“Yeah. Should be super simple. Some lemon, oil, salt, and pepper. Maybe some of that rosemary we still have from the chicken you made.”
“By ‘we’ you mean who exactly?”
“Me. And the kids. They wanted to help. You can just sit there and man the wine.”
“Mom can’t ‘man the wine.’ She’s a lady,” Ella said.
“Woman the wine,” said Evan.
“It’s just an expression,” Harden said.
“So you’ll do it?” Maura asked.
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Okay,” she said. “Thanks.” Civility would be necessary once they parted ways. Couldn’t hurt to practice that too.
“We’re still all good with this plan?” Harden said. “Evan? All systems go?”
Evan made a dramatically confused face. “Why would I change my mind after it was totally my idea?” he said. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
Harden grew up fishing with his dad but didn’t know the bone structure of sea bass, so he watched a quick instructional YouTube video on his laptop, his nose scrunched as he took mental notes. First, he sawed swiftly down their dirty-white bellies. Then he scraped away the bloody black, white, and beige guts with the side of his knife onto the cutting board and into the trash. Almost tenderly, he lifted each gutted body up, thumb hooked under the head, and rinsed the body cavity clean. Then he placed the fish—each still very much a recently alive creature—on a clean towel, patted them dry, before setting them, heads and tails intact, on a sheet of tinfoil. He knew the kids wanted to be involved in some way, so he sliced some lemons and told Ella to stuff them into the body cavities, along with a sprig of rosemary. He poured olive oil on top of the carcasses and asked Evan to wash his hands before he rubbed the oil around the skin with his fingers. He gave Ella the saltshaker and told her three shakes on each. Then Evan with the pepper. So it would be even. This man who knew them so well. Their one and only father.
Watching him from where she sat at the kitchen island, drinking the not-great Pinot Grigio he’d bought at the store, Maura felt a flare-up of the old affection. He wasn’t the right partner for her, but he was a good man. About that there had never been a doubt. Someday—probably it would take years, once his heart had healed from their divorce—he’d find a more easily satisfied woman who would appreciate him for that goodness more than she could. His future, better partner was out there for him, Maura thought, feeling generous. He just didn’t know it yet. As David had been out there for her.
They ate at the picnic table set in the weedy backyard as they had the past three nights. The trees swayed ever so slightly in the wind the ocean sent up the coast. The mosquitoes showed mercy. Eating the sea bass was difficult, what with the endless bones they had to pluck out of their forks and their mouths, but even Evan found this to be novel and interesting rather than a pain in the ass. His weird, spontaneous idea had been honored and made real, and that blessed the entire thing. Maura was quiet and watchful: her family’s happiness and the golden light warming their faces were making it all too hard. How much easier tonight would be if they were at one another’s throats! If Harden hadn’t been making such a point, the past few days, to be so goddamn nice.
After Harden went in and returned with a tub of ice cream and four bowls, Evan said, “I want to do go-carts next time we come.”
“Who said there’d be a next time?” Harden said.
She looked at him, wondering if this was meant for her, but it wasn’t. He was looking at Evan.
Evan raised his eyebrows. “Why? Is it too expensive?”
Now Harden shot Maura a look: he was aware of her lie to them about money troubles.
“No
,” Harden said. “We just might want to go somewhere else next year.”
“Aw, man!” Evan said.
“Hey,” Maura said. “Be thankful we could even do this.”
“That’s right,” Harden said. “Listen to your mother.”
After dinner, Harden offered to do the dishes, but when Maura offered to dry (maybe showing she was decent was a better approach, she’d thought), he said he had it covered. Which meant he either was trying to impress her with his goodness or merely didn’t want to be forced to talk to her. Even though he’d been softer in his demeanor toward her here, they’d still found ways of avoiding each other. They sat at their laptops in different rooms; he went to bed first, she followed later. For a while, she and the kids watched Animal Planet together, and then Evan suggested they keep the games going and play some croquet. They’d played at her sister-in-law’s place last summer and he’d kicked everyone’s ass, so this would be, Maura knew, a chance to end what had been a good day for him—a great day, really—on a high note.
“I think it’s a bit late for that,” Harden said. Which was technically true. It was eight fifteen, and their summer bedtime was eight thirty.
“Come on. Just one game,” Evan said. “It’s our last night here.”
“We’ll let you go first,” Ella offered.
“We could probably do just one, couldn’t we?” Maura said, wanting to be on their side this one last time.
“Okay, fine,” Harden said. “Just one.”
Evan set up the course. White wickets in each hand, he moved around the lawn like a little robot, pacing out distances, crouching to eye up whether this wicket was even with that wicket over there. Every time he stuck one in, Maura enjoyed the satisfyingly soft puncture it made in the ground—boop!—like sticking candles in a birthday cake. His intense need to have things just so, his disability, would serve him well, if properly channeled: that was what she liked to believe. Some kids with what he had became engineers and computer programmers. Thomas Edison—some people on Asperger’s blogs thought even he had it. You had to stay hopeful. There was no other choice.