by Kelly Rimmer
All of the rage and frustration inside me gradually settles, until all that remains is a muddled regret. A bewildering desire to reconnect with Paul draws me to rise. I pause at the door, my hand on the doorknob, my heart thumping against the wall of my chest.
I know exactly what I’ll see on the other side of that door—I’ve been here dozens of times. Even so, this time, there’s a question hanging over exactly what’s going to happen when I step out of this bedroom. That’s where my fear lies.
I open the door anyway. It’s still and quiet in the living room. My gaze drifts past the table and the ostensibly still-neglected laptop, past the sliding glass doors and to the large deck that sits on the shores of the Long Island Sound. We keep the furniture on the deck packed up to protect it from the weather, but it’s all set up now—even the fairy lights around the railing have been hung and are on, giving the space a romantic glow.
The grill lid is open, and I catch a hint of smoke on the air, mingling with the scent of citronella candles. Bugs don’t bother Paul much, but my body tends to react badly to mosquito bites, leaving me with itchy welts that take days to fade. On the outdoor table, a bottle of wine is chilling in an ice bucket.
Paul himself is sitting in one of the outdoor chairs. He’s facing away from me, but I can see that his legs are propped up on the table, crossed at the ankle. Soft music plays on the Sonos, a quiet, gentle folk soundtrack that I know he would never in a million years have chosen for himself, given his preference for silence over background noise.
He’s designed this tableau just for me. In the first few years of our relationship, this was the kind of scene I’d set up for us—all of my favorite things together: eating alfresco on the deck beside the ocean, wine, steaks on the grill...and, once upon a time, him. I have a shocking suspicion that the wine will be sweet and the steaks will be grass fed and the salad will be dressed in my favorite poppy seed dressing, too. Without a single word, Paul has just sent me a series of messages.
I was paying attention to you, Isabel.
I did notice the things you loved.
Join me out here for dinner.
I want to spend time with you again.
“Are you going to join me?” he calls quietly, without shifting on the chair or turning back to face me.
I wrap my arms around my waist and slowly walk to the deck. I don’t know what to say, so I slide the screen door open and step outside without a word. I take a seat beside Paul, and he sits up and reaches for the wine. Silently, he pours two glasses, and only when he hands one to me do we make eye contact. Paul looks thoughtful and guarded and sad, somehow all at once.
“This morning, I honestly thought the best way to go about this was to just move toward a friendship without us looking back at where we’ve come from,” he says, straight to the point as always. “I thought we could just let bygones be bygones, you know?”
I take the wineglass from him, but I don’t raise it to my lips. Instead, I cradle the glass between my palms, and I stare down into the pale liquid, as if it holds some kind of desperate interest for me.
“But maybe, before we take that last step and become friends again, we need to hash this out. To actually talk it all through, so ghosts stop jumping out at us every time we speak,” Paul continues. He turns to me, and I can feel his gaze on my face. “I know you said today you had explained yourself enough but, Isabel, please believe me when I say that I didn’t always hear what you wanted me to hear.”
Yesterday, maybe I’d have leaped at the suggestion of a postmortem for our marriage, motivated by the righteous indignation that’s fueled most of my decisions this year. I’d have sat him down and forced him to hear things from my perspective again—a tirade steeped in bitterness that would have launched at him like a sermon, or a long, rambling diatribe, like the one he inflicted upon me at the therapist’s office.
But tonight, I feel almost bruised. There are butterflies in my stomach and my palms feel hot against the cold of the wineglass.
“I know I’ve been asking just one more thing from you all weekend,” he murmurs, “but please, could we talk about where we went wrong? And then, and I promise you this, I won’t ever ask you about it again.”
“Why would we do this?” I whisper, still staring down at my wine. “Why would we put ourselves through this?”
“The same reason we both came here. The same reason we both stayed. The same reason...last night happened. The same reason you’re still here tonight. We both need closure, Isabel.”
We fall into silence as I consider this. After a while, Paul stands and sets the steaks on the grill. He’s standing to my right, staring down at the steaks as if they need his full attention, just as I’m staring fiercely out over the water as the sun sinks lower in the sky. I try to imagine how this conversation can possibly end in anything other than one of us—almost certainly me—storming off.
“Do you think we can have this conversation without it getting ugly?” I ask him hesitantly.
“I was just thinking about that, too,” he says, turning back to me. “Perhaps we just need to set some ground rules.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Paul
“LET’S PROMISE EACH other that however hard this is, we’ll see it through to the end of the conversation. If we’re doing this, let’s do it properly and honestly. We tell each other the truth. No matter how painful,” I say.
Isabel sits bathed in the golden rays of the dying sunlight—and she’s radiant, despite the anxious, uncertain expression she’s wearing. It’s still and quiet out here this afternoon, other than the soft music playing.
After Isabel stormed off on our bike ride, I spent a lot of time sitting alone by the water, trying to figure out how we find our way out of the emotional maze we find ourselves lost in. The answer gradually became clear. Sometimes when you’re lost, the only way out is to retrace your steps.
I knew instinctively that if I burst back into the vacation house, guns blazing to demand Isabel take this trip down memory lane with me, she’d say no. Instead, and for once in my life, I set up an inviting space for her and let my actions speak for me, trying to send an unspoken message: it’s far too late to fix what once was, but you still matter to me. I still want you in my life.
Because if there’s one thing I’m sure of right now, it’s that I don’t want this weekend to be the last time I spend time with this woman. Yes, she’s stubborn and apparently bad-tempered and utterly bewildering sometimes, but despite all of that, I miss her in a way that just hasn’t improved even with time. I know it’s too late to save our marriage, but I still want to be her friend.
“Okay,” Isabel says suddenly, and she sits up a little straighter in the deck chair, as if she’s made her decision and she’s happy with it. “I agree to that. But I’d like to ask that nothing be off-limits. We promise each other we’ll answer any question, even if they make us uncomfortable.”
I draw in a sharp intake of breath, then exhale, puffing out my lips. I don’t like this rule, but I can’t very well ask Isabel to push herself if I’m not willing to do it, too.
“Fine,” I say, and I pick up my wineglass so I can return to the chair beside her before we begin, but she doesn’t wait.
Instead, she simply blurts, “You pulled away from me. We were so happy over those first few years, but then somewhere along the way, you pulled away. Why did you do that? Was it something I did?”
I look at her in surprise, but it takes a second for my mind to catch up to why that question is so surprising, given I actually do know how to answer it.
No, the question itself doesn’t surprise me...the way she delivers it does.
I’ve never been so conscious of it before, but right at this moment, it occurs to me that Isabel is rarely this direct. And just like that, something in my mind shifts, and it’s like the last four years swim into a whole new focus.
Isabel speaks gently. She doesn’t always say exactly what she means.
I sink into the chair beside her and take a slow, thoughtful sip of the wine, trying to process this startling realization.
“Well?” she prompts.
“It wasn’t intentional,” I say slowly. “Remember this morning, I told you about the night I proposed... How nervous I was?”
Her gaze softens. “Yes.”
“That was eight months into our relationship, Isabel.” I smile sadly. “I was already hiding things from you, even then—not that I have ever lied to you, but there were certainly aspects to my personality I didn’t feel I could show you.”
“But...why?”
“Mostly because I didn’t actually understand myself, I think. At the time, all I knew was that sometimes I felt out of my depth in our relationship. Can I explain why with an example?”
“Of course.”
“I remember this one night when we were out with everyone at that bar Jess likes with the crazy hipster cocktails.”
“I hate that place. Remember when I ordered a gin and tonic and they served it deconstructed?” Isabel grimaces, then we both laugh softly. I vividly remember the look of sheer horror on her face when the bartender passed her a wooden tray containing glasses of ice, gin and tonic water, alongside a knife and a whole lemon.
“We all hate that place, except Jess, but she’s very persuasive.” I laugh, but quickly sober. “But no, I’m talking about a different night. You, Abby and I were sitting in a booth, Marcus and Jess were at the bar ordering us all drinks. You told me to go and see if they needed help, so I walked over and asked them, and they said no.”
In fact, they seemed bewildered by my offer, which, to be honest, I was, too. And it was crowded at the bar, so it seemed stupid for me to wait with them, so I went straight back to Isabel and Abby at the booth.
“Do you remember the night I’m talking about?” I ask quietly.
She concentrates for a moment, then shakes her head.
“Abby was upset about something that had happened with her ex-boyfriend, but I hadn’t noticed that she was especially quiet. You had. You wanted me to give you some privacy, so you could make sure she was okay. But when you asked me to help with drinks, I didn’t hear the inference that you needed time alone with her to check in on her. I heard the literal meaning. It was only when I came back to the booth and sat back down and you glared at me and kicked me under the table that I realized I’d missed the point altogether.”
“But...” Her brows knit. She turns to stare at me skeptically. “You’re the smartest person I know, Paul.”
“Sure,” I agree. “I’m very, very good at one or two very specific things. I mean, I remember the date that happened and...” I pause, complete the calculation and tell her, “It was five hundred and sixty-five days ago, and about twenty-two hours, although I didn’t note the exact time of day, so I can’t tell you the minutes. That is easy for me. That’s how my mind works. It’s the same with coding—it’s effortless for me to do things that even my smartest coders have to work to understand. But frankly, that’s it for me. I’m hardly smart when it comes to some of the things that come naturally to almost everyone else I know.”
“So...you’re saying you sometimes take speech too literally?” she says, brows knitting.
“There are layers to communication. Sometimes what people say isn’t at all what they mean, and a skilled communicator looks at context and body language and tone and even the speed with which a sentence is delivered. You, Isabel Winton, are a master at that shit.”
Isabel is watching me closely, and I know that she’s reading and understanding all of those things in me, and she doesn’t even have to think about doing it.
“You subconsciously pick up on the subtle clues that reveal when a person is upset or excited or angry or confused. But for the most part, unless I’m really making an effort, I just hear words. You see conversations as a spectrum of colors and shades and patterns, and to me, it’s completely black-and-white. I’m probably smart enough to bluff pretty well sometimes, but I guess in the close confines of a marriage, that only gets a guy so far. And...you...” I watch her closely as I add, “You can be quite indirect.”
Her eyes widen. She pauses for a moment, and then the quietly curious expression she’s been wearing shifts, until her gaze narrows, then she turns to face the water again.
“So this is my fault, then?”
I sit up from the sun chair and walk back to the grill. The steaks are sizzling nicely, not really in need of my attention, but I remain beside them, looking away from her. I’m about to split myself open in a way I just haven’t done with Isabel before, and it feels risky. It’s the only way forward, but even so, I can’t make myself watch how she reacts.
“In the second year of our marriage, there was this period at work where things were ridiculously full-on. And I’ve developed this awful habit of getting involved in every little project my team has on the boil instead of delegating, so I was struggling to keep up, which just made me want to work more. At the time, I told myself you believed in me and believed in the vision of the company every bit as much as I did, so you would understand.”
“I probably did understand. At first,” she says. Her tone is still tight.
I stare at the steaks some more. “You know I’d had girlfriends before you.”
“Yes.”
“You also know they were all in the tech industry, too.”
“I know.”
“In hindsight, what I had with those women was casual sex. I don’t think I’d had a real relationship until I met you. I’d never had to balance someone else’s needs with my own. When I’m intrigued by a problem, it’s all I think about. I don’t even stop to eat if I’m really engaged in my work.”
“Yeah.” She sighs. I glance at her, and find she’s drawn her knees up to her chest, and she’s staring at her toes. “I do remember that.”
“Before I met you, I was just a software developer with a growing startup and so my tendency to hyper focus was a strength, not a weakness. When I hit that first really busy period at the office after we got married, those problems at work consumed my entire mind. And when I emerged from those weeks, something felt off between us.”
I glance at her again, and this time, I find she’s looking right at me. Her brows are still drawn in, but she looks slightly less defensive.
“I was worried, Paul. You’d barely spoken to me in weeks...and yes, it was because you were consumed by the issues at work, but it scared me.”
“It was careless and completely unfair of me to just disengage with you like that. But at the time, I couldn’t see it quite so clearly—I felt like what I was doing was important, and I just assumed you’d respect that. I did gradually notice that maybe you weren’t as affectionate as you once were or that you weren’t smiling at me the same way. I’d ask you what was wrong, and you’d say, ‘Nothing,’ and I’d take that at face value, especially at first.”
Isabel has wrapped her arms around her knees, and her chin rests atop them. She looks angry again.
I try to soften my tone. “Isabel, you must remember the dozens of times we’d have that exact same interaction. What’s wrong? Nothing. It became a pattern for us. Something was wrong, I asked what it was, you shut me down, and as we repeated that pattern over time, our relationship was becoming yet another social space where I didn’t understand the rules of the game.”
“So you are blaming me. Because you worked hundred-hour weeks long after you had to and that hurt like hell, but it seemed obvious enough that I didn’t think I had to say to you, ‘Paul, when you work fifteen-hour days, seven days a week for months on end, your partner starts to feel neglected,’” Isabel says bitterly.
“I’m not blaming you,” I say, but I’m already struggling to keep my frustration in check
and my tone is shortening. I just don’t understand why she’s so unreasonable sometimes. I’m not talking about emotions here—I’m trying to explain to her a pattern in my thought processes, and a dynamic in our communication. What do I have to do to get through to this woman?
“It sure feels like you are,” Isabel mutters.
“If you wanted to learn to code, I could teach you. We’d spend a few weeks learning the basics, then a few months extending your understanding and you’re smart enough that a year or two from now, if you immersed yourself in that world, you’d be holding your own with the best of them. But if you and I both quit our jobs and you spent the next few years trying to teach me how to listen and relate to people the way you do, it would still never become natural to me.”
Isabel sits up, then shakes her hair back from her face and turns to me. She surveys me for a moment.
“So what you’re saying is, even though I was telling you how unhappy I was, you didn’t listen to me. You couldn’t.”
“Maybe if you’d married someone like Marcus or Jake, they’d have realized that you saying ‘nothing’ or telling me you were ‘fine’ all of the damned time was a message in itself. But you didn’t marry someone like that. You married me, and I had no fucking idea what was going on between us, so I guess I withdrew into my work more and more because I felt in control and capable there, which of course made everything else worse because the more I worked, the more distracted I became...and the less I focused on you, the harder it was for me to read you. The situation started with a small disconnect, but soon compounded itself.”
“And your theory is that all of this started because I didn’t explicitly sit you down and say, ‘Paul, once or twice a week, you should actually have a conversation or a fucking cuddle with your wife,’” Isabel says grimly. She picks at some fluff on her yoga pants, then tosses it into the breeze.
“Let’s keep talking while we eat.” I run my hands through my hair. The steaks are ready now, so I flip them onto two plates and bring them to the table, where I take the seat opposite her. We silently serve the sides I prepared onto our plates.