by Mark Rader
We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
“Break through marriage into marriage,” of course, had made her wonder if Jack was talking about finding joy within commitment, rather than setting it aside for something riskier and more honest. Maybe so. But in her case, it served as a reminder of what a social worker friend had once said of the benefits of therapy—that sometimes you had to dismantle a thing completely in order to see it clearly and to be able to build something new. Before you can rise like a phoenix, you need to be ashes first.
In the past months, whenever she needed to feel her struggle was noble, not just some craven midlife crisis, she’d think of her college friend Natasha Barron, a pediatrician in Olympia, Washington, with a flair for theatrics and bold pantsuits. Married with three girls. On National Coming Out Day a few years back Natasha had come out, at the age of thirty-six, as bisexual…and maybe a year later announced that she and Trent were separating, splitting custody, and that with the help of her new girlfriend and Trent and both their extended families, she was confident the girls were going to grow up in an environment of love and support. The comments section had wished her well in her new brave, authentic life. Knowing it wasn’t the same, but wishing it were, Maura hoped the world would support her the same way. If she left for her own truth. But her awakening wasn’t so appealing a story, was it? The unoriginal tale of a straight woman realizing, when it was very inconvenient to realize it, that she needed a certain kind of love to feel whole. Only certain types of awakenings were in vogue now, she’d thought, disgusted at how right wing and intolerant that sounded in her head. How petulant and self-serving. But there it was.
Now though—as her flip-flops hit sand and she moved closer to the shoreline—she thought, I’m past that. I’ve jumped out of the plane. I’m falling, yes, but falling, at least, is moving. Once she landed safely—and the landing might be dangerous, she knew—there would be a morning when she’d wake early in David’s bed in Portland, and walk out with him to his pontoon boat, painted baby blue, and in the middle of his lake sit on the lawn chairs he had with their coffee and watch the morning bleed over the water. They wouldn’t have to hoard time anymore; they’d be present to enjoy the small moments, to talk about their ideas as they occurred to them. If he needed time to work in his studio when she was there, she’d read in the house and go visit him, or no (!), she’d have her own spot in his house to paint. Maybe a spot in her apartment, too. Would she be with him the rest of her life…the way the kids would be? It was dizzying to think of David old, herself old. But this unknown was a better kind of scary than the future she’d dreaded for so long.
Every talk they’d had all these many months was her testing him like an apple for rot, pressing him to find the bruises, the worms. What more could she have done than that?
The only other people within a hundred yards of her here were a young couple to her left, teenagers, gauging by their languid slouches, sitting in the little valley between two sandbanks. To her right, scattered along the long jawbone of coast arching north, were three beach campfires, even though it was a warm night—and at the tip, dim, like a controlled fire, the lights of Provincetown.
Sometimes a clear night sky pulled you up toward it, as if extending an impossible challenge. But tonight, it pushed down, the stars and the darkness a firm weight on her chest. Maura closed her eyes and burrowed deep inside the silence, lowering herself as if by rope into a deep cavern. She didn’t pray anymore, but sometimes at night, most often when she was drunk and alone, she would extend her antennae out into the silence like this, listening not for the voice of God, but for reassurance that there was more to life than what there appeared to be. Wanting that, remembering to want that, whether you got the reassurance, was maybe the point. Nights snug in her bed as a little Catholic girl, she’d sometimes imagine shadowy gangster figures cornering her in the clothes closet she could see from her pillow, asking her if she believed Jesus was really the son of God. If a gun barrel were pressed to her little head, would she say yes and die a martyr, or would she lie and hope God understood her predicament? (She’d lie. Her parents would be very angry with her if she were dead.) A few times a year, their teachers marched them to the church basement beside the school and they’d done their confessions. Those little phone booths with the light fastened above the door—white for open, blue for occupied. Everyone giggling in their chairs, counting who’d been in longest, who was the biggest sinner. Father John, who ended up leaving the priesthood when she was in high school (and no wonder, Father John was a hottie), had listened to her talk about being mean to Shade, about telling Emma Johnston that her hair looked like someone pooped in it. This poor guy—how seriously could he have taken this exercise? These silly non-sins. Yet you didn’t feel it had been official unless there was a penance. Father John got creative, playful with his power. Two Hail Marys and give your brother two hugs this week. Smile at Emma the next time you see her. But what penance, she wondered, would Father John give her if she confessed her sins now? Her stomach puckered: Or Paul?
She didn’t really want to hear the answer, so she opened her eyes. A bubbly scroll of water unfurled along the shore, then receded, as if it had abruptly changed its mind.
She could wade in wearing these clothes; the water would be bracing, but she could take a warm shower when she walked back. She glanced over to where she hoped the teenaged kids had disappeared from, but they were still there, watching her.
To them both (she could feel it so sharply here in the dark) she was nothing but some middle-aged lush with a wineglass at the beach, tank top, hair down to the middle of her back, pinned up but loose in places. To the boy, not even a MILF, so what good was she? None. Maybe they were so naive to have thought this beach was private enough to fuck on. Or no. They just wanted a place to make out that felt big but their own. It warmed her to think that even for this particular weasel, who surely knew his way around internet porn, there was still this ageless romantic notion of lying under the stars. Their animal dislike of her reminded her of Evan, how he yelled at her sometimes when she popped by his room to see what he was doing: her mere existence an imposition. She was off the hook for tomorrow morning, thank God. She felt grateful to Harden for insisting it happen later. But that still meant she’d have to tell them soon. And what she didn’t imagine earlier today, beyond their shock and sadness, was how they’d maybe come to hate her. For a while. Hopefully only for a while. Though it was possible that Evan might, in his black-and-white way, decide that she was the enemy, full stop.
The dim peace she’d lulled herself into was already receding.
Nothing would be clean about this, nothing.
She felt like lowering herself to the sand, lying on her back, and drifting to sleep. That was how exhausted she suddenly was. But though it wasn’t exactly dangerous out here, it wasn’t exactly safe either. She needed to go back home.
The steps from the beach up to the road looked impossibly steep, but she reminded herself she’d walked up them many times this week, carrying far more than an empty wineglass. As she ascended, she wondered: Am I a bad person? It can’t possibly be true, can it? Feeling unsteady, she gripped the railing with her right hand. Narrowed her focus to her feet, like a horse wearing blinders. The farther she went, the more her ass and calves burned.
She didn’t want to stop until she’d reached the top, but halfway there she felt light-headed and stood still. She felt vaguely uncertain, then woozy. For a moment she thought she’d throw up, but the moment passed.
Usually her answer to the question of her goodness was to say, Of course I’m good. Good and bad, tryi
ng my best and flawed, like everybody else. The internet memes about personal strength and self-forgiveness some of her girlfriends posted on Facebook and some of the things her therapist had told her helped her believe that too.
But at the moment, as she looked up at the top of the stairs—a few more minutes’ work—and the starry sky above, such thinking offered no comfort. Of course she wanted to believe everything she wanted and everything she did was, in the big picture, okay—a big, beautiful mess. And of course the people who were in the business of making other people feel okay about themselves would reassure her that this was true.
The truth, Maura suspected, would be far less forgiving. The truth would cause her and her family pain, delivered in ways she couldn’t yet imagine. But, she thought, if that was the cost of finally being true to herself, so be it, and with her tiny light making a path in front of her, she carried on up the stairs.
V. Homecoming
Their plane landed at O’Hare around five in the afternoon, and for the entire four hours it took Britta to drive them from Chicago up to Northfield, Paul slept, hands folded in his lap, head wobbling against the headrest, as if even in sleep he was protesting the situation.
There was plenty of time for her to worry about what lay ahead during the flight, but she’d intentionally avoided it. At thirty thousand feet, she was technically still on vacation, and so—even though it was still only early afternoon—she’d indulged in a few glasses of chardonnay, watched the in-flight movie, read a few chapters of the other murder mystery she’d brought along, then had two cups of black coffee to straighten out. Even after they’d disembarked and were waiting for their luggage to come around on the carousel, Paul standing beside her, grim and withdrawn, she’d distracted herself by scrolling through Facebook on her phone and chatting with the young couple standing beside them. Not yet. Not yet.
But in the silence of Paul’s car, heading north to his home, there was no choice but to face things. Since his little breakdown the morning after his confession—an unburdening that had surprised her by making him feel worse—she’d been trying to be strong for him. Depressed as he was, he needed someone to challenge his misery—and clearly that person was her. But as she stole glances at him now beside her, vulnerable as a child, she wondered if his story was a little tragic. Could that actually be true? History, as she told her students, wasn’t necessarily truth, but a story wrapped around facts by those who held power to control the story, and as new people gained access to power, the story changed. So what was the truth about her brother? What would a cold-eyed journalist decide? How would she weigh the testimony of Paul’s friends and parishioners against Paul’s feelings now? The truth would land somewhere in the middle, probably—somewhere between tragedy and triumph. Like most people’s lives. But the thought didn’t reassure her. If only he’d told her about his struggles years ago. She would have done anything to help him. But he hadn’t said a word, he’d held it all inside, and the time for big changes was long over. All she could do now was help him accept that. And show him all the ways his version of the truth was wrong.
That night, within a few minutes of walking inside his house, his rolling suitcase rattling behind him, Paul said good night and excused himself to his bedroom. After reading the note his secretary, Jean, had left on the table (Welcome back! Lots of frozen food in the fridge! I have mail for Paul at the office!) and taking a long, lukewarm shower, Britta laid on the pullout bed in a fresh T-shirt and shorts but could not sleep. For a while, she thought about Maura, imagined her unable to sleep in her bed at this hour too. Or the couch—maybe Harden had banished her there. She imagined Shade sitting in the dark, playing one of his video games, sunk into his fake leather sofa, legs splayed out the same way Don always sat, colored light from the screen flashing on his face. She imagined her empty house in St. Louis and missed it: her huge king-sized ComforPedic bed; all the space in which there was to roam; the kitchen island where she sat with her black coffee in the morning, listening to NPR and looking out at their side yard, in which her hydrangea bushes would just be starting to bloom. And then, to complete the circuit, she hugged the two big pillows she’d taken from the linen closet, closed her eyes, and imagined she was hugging Don.
In their thirty years together, she’d never stopped feeling lucky to find him, and now that he was gone, she’d never get over it, never. When they’d met, she’d been a broke, single thirtyone-year-old mom. Ray had left them to move to Alaska the year Maura was four. Reason one was that she’d gotten so fat; reason two was because he’d realized he just wasn’t wired to be a family man, as if it were a matter of genetics, not character. When he’d left, she’d been relieved—their fights were exhausting and near the end he’d started shoving her around—but she’d not at all been prepared for life as a single parent, working two soul-sucking crap jobs just to barely get by.
So then to meet Donald Allan Williams, on only the second date she’d been on with anyone since the divorce, two years later—this funny southern gentleman who couldn’t have, but very badly wanted, kids himself; this big, cheerful guy who’d told her she was beautiful two hours into their first date, who was even fatter than she was and therefore in no danger of turning on her the way Ray had; a man who so quickly warmed to Maura and Shade—well, it had felt like returning home after a brutal war. A gift she sometimes wondered if she deserved.
Some of her girlfriends, postmenopause, had confessed to losing their appetite for sex. Just didn’t want it anymore. But not her, not them. Up until the very end, both of them past sixty, their sex life had remained a reliable pleasure. During their life together, she’d come to see their weight as a mutual dismissal of what the world considered weak, even disgusting. They were united in their bounty. They overflowed and didn’t care. As they’d gotten older, Don had gone from 250 pounds to 300 to 325. The last few years of his life, his formidable gut covered all but the tip of his penis when naked, and they’d had to get more creative in bed with positions. But even those accommodations had felt like something uniquely theirs.
Once a week, or twice if the first time was especially good, she’d come up to him and either touch the top of his head, as if in blessing, if he was sitting in his giant Barcalounger, or kiss him firmly on the lips, if he was standing. She’d say she was going into the bedroom to “tidy up”—would he care to join her?—and heart beating fast, she undressed, got completely naked under the sheets, and waited. A bit later, he entered, dark eyes sparkling, and at the foot of the bed, took off all his clothes except for his plaid boxers, which he liked her to remove herself. His chest blushed, the pinkish shape always a diffuse thick diamond. His big teardrop earlobes swelled hot with lust. Atop their king-sized bed, they discovered each other again and again, exchanged reliable and original favors. In the heat of the moment, he sometimes grabbed handfuls of her, gently shoved her flesh around, reveling in it. Oh, Brit, yeah, Britty, you’re so fucking good…in that molasses voice of his, which she missed almost as much as his touch.
After he’d died, some of her friends had suggested, unprompted, that she sell the house. Take the profits, buy a condo, start fresh. Get away, they didn’t have to say, from the room in which Don had lay dead as she’d screamed at him to breathe and the ambulance raced uselessly over. To which she’d thought, Why? Was his death supposed to scare her? Did they think her beautiful home had somehow been spoiled? What she could have told them, putting on her history teacher hat, was that for centuries your dead went right smack up on your kitchen table at home, coins laid on their closed eyes. Your children, your parents, everyone. So no, she wouldn’t sell the house, thank you very fucking much.
And she hadn’t—she’d weathered the temptation and stayed on and had no plans to move. But as fond as she was of it, it wasn’t the same place. Nor would it ever be again.
For three days straight, Paul didn’t leave his room except to use the bathroom and have a little toast and soup. In Sister Bay and Rome, she’d been able to drag
him out into the world, even when he didn’t feel like it; like a child, he’d let himself be led. But when she tried that now, more desperation in her voice despite her attempts to conceal it, he simply said he wanted to be alone, and the dark, drowning look in his eyes told her she shouldn’t push it.
He wasn’t the type of person to kill himself—that was out of the question—and yet Britta didn’t like the idea of him being alone in the house. Even if he didn’t want visitors (and he’d told her that directly—not even Tim or Jean) and was mostly sleeping, or trying to sleep, it seemed important that she was there. He was refusing her help, but she resolved to be useful nonetheless: that was why she’d come.
Their first day back, she called Dr. Shah and asked him to up Paul’s dose of antidepressants and then arranged with the pharmacy to let Jean pick them up. That afternoon—which was, despite the gloom inside, warm and sunny—she vacuumed Paul’s car and wiped down the interior with wet wipes, cut the grass with his little push mower, and made both sweet and dill pickles from the cucumbers she picked from his garden. The next day, she cleaned his house top to bottom: dusted the woodwork with Pledge, mopped all the floors, scrubbed every surface and nook and cranny clear of gunk—even the grates of his oven and the glass shelves of his fridge—with sponges and Brillo pads. By dinnertime she was slick and itchy with sweat, her T-shirt soaked completely through. That night, like the night before, she went to bed early and slept like a stone.