The Half-Life of Everything

by Deborah Carol Gang

  “It does matter.”

  “Why?”

  “Why does anything matter? Because otherwise what the hell are we doing here? We don’t have to resume. We’re free agents. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Free? Free to do what? I love you, Kate.” He heard himself almost yelling and started again, softly. “I love you and I want you. I think you sort of want me, which is good enough right now.”

  She turned to face him straight on for the first time. “I want a cigarette. If I could, I would smoke a cigarette right now.”

  “Well, you’re free, right? You can smoke.”

  “I might.” She got up from the floor and he made room for her on the couch. Her face softened. “You waited so long for me.”

  “I don’t think I was waiting. I just didn’t know what to do.”

  “Those beautiful grad students.”

  “Do I ever remember to tell you that you’re beautiful? You’re as pretty as you were at sixteen.”

  “You didn’t know me at sixteen.”

  “Oh, yes I did. All the guys knew who you were. I watched you. And then I lost you in the metropolis of the university. I went to a lot of bad parties until I found you.”

  She scrunched her forehead as if she was counting something. “My high school sweetheart?”

  “In a stalker kind of way,” he said, and he put one hand on her cheek. She held it there.

  Then she got up, walked towards the stairs, and began to climb them slowly. David jumped up and followed her so closely that when she paused to straighten a photo of the boys on Halloween, he stopped short and bumped against her. She leaned into him from the next higher step and started a little when she felt his erection. “We’d better get you upstairs,” she said.

  In their bedroom, she stood facing him, her expression uncertain, and he began to unbutton her shirt, his hands shaking slightly. Freed from the last button, she shrugged the shirt off and led him to the bed. He lay on top of her and they kissed, eyes open. He pulled away from her to unsnap her jeans and work the zipper. It had been decades since they began to make love while still dressed. In movie after movie, the man, even with a struggling victim, easily pulls the woman’s pants off, but he didn’t see any way to do it without her help, and just as he had that thought, she lifted her hips and tugged on one side while he did the other.

  He tossed her clothes aside and then scrambled out of his own. She waited for him to unclasp her bra, remembering he liked the job—it was a high school thing, he had told her. It made him feel like he was getting away with something. Naked now, he lay down again, his weight half on her, and she said, “Welcome back.”

  It wasn’t the sex of their previous life, but it was sex—until David thought she winced. He withdrew, prepared to use saliva or perhaps just stop, but she produced an unopened tube of lubricant from the bedside table. The foresight reassured him. She wanted him, or at least wanted to want him. He let himself relax and finish, then used his hand. She did come once—so briefly and quietly that she seemed like another woman—and then she moved his hand away and held it with both of hers.

  “Well, at least that broke the ice,” she said.

  “God, yes,” David said, and then they both started laughing, having noticed for the first time that both kittens were staring at them from the doorway. “Do not climb on this bed,” he said authoritatively, but Kate was already up and the cats sprinted toward her. Kate grabbed them, set them outside the door and closed it, then got back in bed and lay close to him, her head against his chest. It was a few moments before she spoke.

  “When did you miss it most?”

  “All the time,” he said. “It was god-awful lonely here. Everywhere, really.”

  “I mean before you met Jane. When did you miss it most?”

  “Oh,” he said. “The gym.” It wasn’t exactly true, but he didn’t think full disclosure was required.

  “Is the one with the breasts still there?”

  “I’d forgotten about her. No, she’s gone. Possibly why I don’t get there as often.”

  “So you’re saying you want me to wear cute workout clothes next time.”

  “Would you do that? How about right now?”

  “Oh, I think I’m done for today.” Her tone was apologetic.

  “That’s okay. I don’t have many second acts either anymore.”

  “Even with Jane?”

  “Even with Jane.”

  “I guess time didn’t stand still for any of us.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Can we just get together to talk? I need to know you’re okay.” David realized too late he had forgotten any small talk or even a greeting.

  “I can’t be the person you cheat on Kate with,” Jane said. “And I can’t be your friend.”

  “No, I know that.” David knew he sounded despondent, the most unappealing of emotional states.

  “Jack called me.”

  “No! I’m sorry. Was he rude?”

  “He was lovely. He wanted to know how I was. He wanted to tell me that he thought you and Kate were going to be good together again.”

  “He shouldn’t have called you.”

  “Of course he should have.”

  “You take his side as if he has an actual position here.”

  “I know what it’s like to be cheated on.”

  “I am not cheating on Jack,” he said, with his jaw clenched, knowing he sounded petulant.

  “I’m not sure that’s exactly an accurate thing to say. Are you sure you know where you stop and the boys begin?”

  He wasn’t actually angry with Jack. He had to admire him for going after what he wanted, not playing it safe but taking David on. He used to think Jack had too much confidence, but maybe, what he had seen in him was bravery.

  “You’ll be okay, David.” She made a small sound that could have been a cry, stifled, then she paused. He could picture her collecting herself. In a quiet but sturdy voice, she said, “Absence makes the heart forget.”

  “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “Yes, it is. You’ll see.” Her voice was even smaller now, but resolute, and they said goodbye.

  He loved the goodness in Jane, and now he couldn’t have her precisely because she was good. Was he still good? He had been good at being untested. He had rigorously avoided temptation—that most slippery of all slopes—and there was goodness in that. Even now, he knew he pushed her to see him because it was safe: He could count on her to turn him down. It wasn’t entirely fair to ask her, but he couldn’t think of any other way to talk about how much he loved her. He had reverted to a primitive gender role in which he pursued—and she maintained—virtue. She was almost entirely gone from his life except for brief phone conversations that would end soon. He knew she was being kind, letting him have a small fix here and there before her final absence.

  He was almost home before he remembered the groceries. He turned around in someone’s driveway while the owner looked out curiously. He went back to the store, where as usual, he could only remember two of the three items. It didn’t matter what the trio was—60 Minute segments, movies, a gift list—you only remember two.

  At home, he pulled into the garage and sat, his phone in his palm as a prop so he could say he had just taken a call or gotten an important email, but Kate didn’t come to check on him. How surprising to learn that loving her again did nothing to stop him from loving Jane. In fact, he didn’t even really forget her except for brief moments when Kate was right in front of him. He supposed that eventually the fire, unfed, would cool. Regardless, he couldn’t have Jane believing she was interchangeable, or that what happened hadn’t happened. Because it had.

  He sat, his eyes closed, for what seemed like a long time, and though it wasn’t, it was long enough that he was ready to go inside and hold his wife, and laugh together about something, and make dinner together and get back to the business of starting their lives again.

  The Ambien hadn’t worked, an
d now it was too late to take anything more. He’d been drinking multiple glasses of orange juice and water, which meant he had to keep using the bathroom just outside the kitchen, flushing only every second time, in the hope that their old house plumbing wouldn’t wake Kate. He didn’t pretend to be doing anything; there was no newspaper spread out or essays to grade, just him sitting. He thought he should go to bed soon, even though, like anyone with insomnia, he hated lying awake next to someone sleeping. Before he had a chance to move, he heard Kate say softly from the doorway, “What can I do?”

  Happy to provide an answer that was completely true, he turned and said, “Nothing. There’s nothing you need to do.” And then, with the manly conviction he had learned to use during terrible thunderstorms or while driving on snowy roads, he said, as he had many times to his wife and young children, “We’re going to be fine.” And maybe it was true.

  In the middle of their mother’s first week home, Dylan called Jack, and when he didn’t reach him, tried again a few hours later and then an hour after that. He knew Jack barely looked at his phone, so he didn’t actually expect a return call.

  “What’s up, Dylan. Did somebody die?” Jack sounded worried more than sarcastic.

  “Not that I know of. I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

  “Okay. Kind of weird, though, for you to ask.”

  Jack was right. They weren’t quite at the point of having a close friendship now that their time together had to be arranged with effort. Growing up, it was easy when all one had to do was throw a ball at the other. Or one would come home to find the other parked on the couch and soon they’d be talking—maybe only during the commercials—but talking nonetheless.

  “Yeah, you’re right. I don’t really care about you. I actually want to see what you think about them.” Dylan also wanted to know what Jack thought about Lily coming home with him to meet their mom—perhaps not this weekend but sometime soon. He didn’t know if he’d bring it up because then he’d have to admit he was afraid she would relapse before Lily had a chance to get to know her. Jack wasn’t big on that kind of negative thinking. Or to be more accurate, Jack knew how to worry too, but he was a worrier who believed those kinds of statements should be left unsaid.

  “Mom seems good. I call her cell. She won’t talk about Jane.” Jack sounded indignant.

  “Imagine that. Your mother doesn’t want to talk to you about her husband’s lover.”

  “She shouldn’t have to talk about it. I realize he had to come clean, but it should be an asterisk by now and I don’t think it is, or he wouldn’t be hiding from us. Have you heard from him?”

  “I called once about the car insurance,” Dylan said, recalling the quick and awkward conversation. “But other than that, no.”

  He decided not to say anything about Lily.

  “Kate, where are you?” he called loudly.

  “I’m in the living room,” she called back. “Come in here. I guarantee the cats will follow you. I think they’ve been waiting. You should have seen them when they heard the car pull in.”

  He went to find her, the cats one moment in front of him, then circling behind. She was sitting in an armchair, and he sat on the corner of the couch nearest her. She gave him an anxious smile.

  “I need to say something and you just need to let me say it.” Her voice was tight and low. “You and I, we’ve had a lot of happiness together. I mean, maybe more than the normal share. Not that we didn’t deserve it, but we’ve been very lucky too. I admit I occasionally noticed men that I thought would be fun to have sex with, but I never imagined loving anyone but you. I mean, after I finally met you.”

  He had no idea where this was going.

  Kate took a deep breath. “I won’t be the one to make you give up Jane, like she was…” She didn’t finish her sentence and added less forcefully, “And you know I’m sort of lost sexually.”

  “But that could change.” He should have said something different, he thought. He should have said it didn’t matter.

  “I’m not going to mess with the medications.”

  He’d never asked her to. Where was she going with this?

  “I don’t want dutiful David, honorable David, David the martyr. Maybe it’s arrogant of me, but I want to feel loved by choice, not obligation.” She took in a gulp of air. “I don’t think you’re going to stop loving Jane.”

  “You know I’m not leaving you. You can insult me for it if you want, but—”

  “I think you know that’s not what I’m talking about.”

  Know what? And then he knew.

  “No way!” That was all he could manage. Surprise was muffling his vocabulary. She waited for him, and he continued, calmly this time. “People end up hating each other. I don’t want that for you. For any of us. And I won’t live like some reality show—”

  “I don’t give a fuck if you’re embarrassed,” Kate said. “I lost my mind for what—five years? I don’t even know exactly how long I was gone. I can spend my remaining time replaying it—suffering over it, or I can work really hard at not caring. Not caring what people thought, or what I said or how I looked. I was always smart. Whatever my flaws, I was always smart. And then I wasn’t. I was empty and stupid.”

  David stood, pulled her from her chair, then held her in a tight hug as he whispered, “You were always beautiful. And dignified.” Maybe it wasn’t always true, but he could make her believe him, and he said the words again, changing the order, but the same words, like a prayer. He held her and she cried, but finally she leaned into him.

  Then she drew back, fished for a tissue, and blew her nose quickly before saying, “I don’t plan to have sex with her or with the two of you.”

  He stared at her. Had he always been this bad at predicting what she would say?

  “No, maybe I will. Maybe I’ll wake up lesbian tomorrow. Look, I know you’re trying. Trying not to think of her, trying not to call her, trying to feel nothing but lucky.”

  There had to be many questions he should ask her, but he could only think of one: “Why are you offering this?”

  She looked him squarely in the eye. “Because you are trying so hard. And because you are so damned sad.”

  David drove home late the next evening and, at a four-way stop, found himself in a trance, perhaps waiting for a non-existent red light to change. When he came to, it seemed that the other drivers were also lost in reverie, and even the drivers second in line in each direction hadn’t honked. Finally, one took his turn and the rest sorted out the order, slowly it seemed to David, like a well-ordered folk dance. Was it providential—watching people negotiate and share?

  He found Kate in the kitchen reading a recipe, a presence that felt equal parts familiar and impossible, and set down his laptop and briefcase, propping them against the wall. The laptop slid quietly to the floor but he left it.

  “I can learn to forget her,” he said firmly.

  She shook her head. “You’re not really very good at that.”

  “Are we talking about this because you love me? Or because you don’t? I know you don’t want me. I understand that.”

  “I want to want you,” she said, using the same words he had imagined. “I want things like they were. Do you doubt that I love you?”

  “Well, there’s habit and then there’s love.”

  “Sometimes habit is love.”

  “Perhaps you mean love is a habit?” They seemed to be talking nonsense. “Then explain jealousy. The thought of you with anyone else has always made me crazy. I would not be making this offer.”

  “No one ever really knows what they would do,” Kate said.

  He walked across the kitchen and sat across from her at the counter.

  “Are you resisting because you only want one woman—and it’s Jane?” Before he could answer, she said, with some panic in her voice, “Are we still married? Did you start a divorce?”

  “Jesus. No, I did not start a divorce. You think I would have hidden something
like that?”

  She looked down at the table, embarrassed. “That was horrible of me to say. I don’t know where it came from.”

  He stood and walked the few steps towards her. She stood too and he put his arms around her. After a while, she tilted her head back to look at him. Then she said, “Haven’t you suffered enough? Wouldn’t you like a long stretch without suffering?”

  He didn’t like to hear that his pain was visible when he’d spent so much effort hiding it. “You have to think for both of us.”

  “Casablanca,” Kate said, and then added, “I wish I didn’t love you so much.”

  “Also Casablanca, but why?”

  “Your grief wouldn’t hurt me like it does.” She gave him a sad smile.

  “That’s not Casablanca, is it?”

  “No, just me.”

  “And your grief?”

  “I don’t have any grief that can be fixed.”

  They were quiet, and then she stood up very straight, the way she did when she wanted to seem taller. “You know, the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this world.”

  He didn’t speak.

  “Just because it’s a movie line doesn’t mean it’s not true,” she said.

  “It’s not true. Your illness killed me. It killed everyone who loved you. Or even liked you. Maybe the world didn’t care. But your world cared. And now you think that with your optimistic ways and this idea that everyone can get along—you think that your generosity can fix this?”

  She took a few steps backwards. “If you don’t like my generosity, then you have a problem. I am not going to be your cross to bear. I am not your ticket to the Good Husband Club. And this may seem weird to you, but you do not get to decide this by yourself. This is my problem too, and I have a say in it. And Jane has a say. And we are not going to pretend she doesn’t exist. Or that she isn’t the person you would have spent the rest of your life with.”

  She walked quickly to the kitchen door, but turned back before she crossed the threshold. “Fractured,” she said. “Whether you admit it or not, you are torn in half.”