by Kelly Rimmer
“You went to Marie’s,” Isabel says suddenly. I nod. “This is my favorite poppy seed dressing.”
“I know.”
“And the steaks...”
“Grass fed, organic. Just the way you like.”
“You even picked Riesling again,” she whispers unevenly. “I love it. I love all of this. Even if Marcus would be mortified to see you pair such a sweet wine with these juicy steaks.”
I laugh softly. “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
“I really do feel like you’re blaming me, Paul. It just doesn’t seem fair,” she says suddenly.
I try to survey her body language. Isabel’s gaze is cast down and her mouth is set in a deep frown, but then there’s that hard set of her shoulders and the flare of her nostrils. She looks both defensive and disappointed, and that triggers a memory in me. I’ve seen her look exactly this way at least once before.
“That last wedding anniversary. What did you want me to get you?”
She laughs bitterly, then sips at the wine. “I was really just hoping we’d come out here for the weekend. Things were so strained between us by then. I just wanted to reconnect. Our anniversary was on a Friday and I had the day off...”
“Right. That makes sense.” I drop my fork onto the table and rub my forehead wearily. “And I bought you an iPad.”
“Yes,” she says. She cuts the steak with a little too much force, and the knife screeches across the plate.
“You’re still angry about that, right?” I prompt her gently.
“I...” She hesitates. “Maybe.”
“I found the iPad in the closet after you left, Isabel,” I point out. “It was still in the box.”
Isabel raises her gaze to mine. “Okay. I was angry. I was insulted, actually. It seemed like such a lazy, thoughtless gift. I can barely use my phone, and we already had your iPad in the house... Surely you’d noticed that I never showed a lick of interest in it. What on earth made you think I wanted one of my own?”
“In the weeks leading up to the anniversary, you kept telling me you wanted to read more. You told me at one point that you had taken the Friday of our anniversary off so you could relax and read. I even remember that one night you said you’d ferried so many books out here over the last few years, you really needed to actually finish reading some. You must have talked about reading a dozen times over those few weeks. Right?”
She nods, frowning, and I continue quietly, “You also started talking about the weather...you seemed to be constantly wondering what the weather was going to be like on the weekend...whether it would be nice for a bike ride...and you mentioned a few times about how it seemed like it was going to be a great summer.”
“I’m always so busy in the city. I always did most of my reading out here,” Isabel says defensively. “We only ever rode bikes out here. I was talking about how the weather was here. At Greenport.”
“I realize that now. As in, three minutes ago when you told me,” I say wryly. “But what I heard at the time was Isabel wants to relax more and she relaxes by reading. And Isabel left the books she wants to read at the vacation home and it’s a pain for her to bring them back and forth because books are heavy. And then I was hearing Isabel really wants more convenient access to weather data. So I bought you an iPad, and I set up a bunch of e-reader apps on it and bookmarked some bestseller lists, and then even though I had no idea why you were suddenly so fascinated by weather data, I researched and installed a bunch of meteorological apps.”
Isabel opens her mouth, then closes it. Her eyebrows knit. “I didn’t even turn it on,” she admits weakly. She looks at me. “That’s actually really sweet.”
“On the morning of our anniversary, you opened that gift and I was excited to see your reaction so I was really paying attention, which of course only meant I could see that you were disappointed. So, I said, ‘Don’t you like it?’ And you said...do you remember?”
“I’m guessing I said, ‘It’s fine,’” she whispers, eyes cast downward again.
“That’s exactly what you said. But even so, I knew I’d missed the mark. I just didn’t understand where I’d gone wrong. And then two weeks later...”
“...I left.” Isabel looks back at her plate.
“You got so angry with me today when I tried to talk about this stuff.”
“I was angry because you made it sound like you had no idea why I walked out, Paul.”
“I knew things between us weren’t what they once were. But please believe me when I tell you that I had no idea that they were entirely broken.”
“You don’t remember anything I said to you the night I left? Or the months before that when I tried to explain to you how unhappy I was? I really, honestly felt like I’d tried everything.”
“You never said to me, Paul, I’m unhappy. Here’s what’s wrong.”
She purses her lips. “No. I didn’t realize I needed to.”
“So what had you tried?”
“How many nights did you come home to find I’d made some huge, elaborate meal that was long cold by the time you walked through the door?” she asks me softly. She’s flicking food around her plate now, pushing pieces of steak from one side to the other, but she’s finished the salad. “How many times after we made love did I turn the light back on when you turned it off because you were trying to go to sleep? How many times did I ‘forget’ you said you were going to work on the weekend and organize plans for us?” Her voice breaks, and she pinches the bridge of her nose, visibly struggling to retain her composure. “How many nights did I come to sit in your office on the armchair while you were working?”
“Do you understand now that I didn’t deliberately ignore those things? I noticed them, I just took them at face value. When you turned the light on after we made love, I thought you had things you wanted to do before you went to sleep. When you came into my office and sat on the chair behind me when I was working late at night, I thought, Isabel really likes the armchair in here for some reason. I actually thought about moving it out into the living room so you could sit in it when you watched TV. When you made those big, elaborate dinners and left them on the table to go cold, I thought you’d made something you wanted to eat and then just hadn’t felt like cleaning up afterward.”
“Jesus, Paul.” She looks aghast.
I hesitate. “I’m just trying to be honest here. Am I upsetting you?”
“I’m upset for both of us, to be honest.” She brushes her curls back from her face, then reaches for her wine. “This is what you meant today when you said we weren’t hearing each other.”
“Yeah, it was.”
“And when I left, I felt like I’d been making every possible effort to reach you for months, but you really hadn’t noticed any that?”
“I didn’t even realize you were leaving me until I saw your suitcase. It felt like my world had ended in a single moment.” My voice breaks, but I don’t look away from her.
Isabel’s eyes are shining with tears she’s not yet ready to shed.
The bitterness I was determined to suppress tonight leaks out. “If you had just told me you were unhappy, I’d have moved heaven and earth to fix things.”
“I told you that night why I was going,” she whispers unevenly. “We talked in the foyer before I left. You were staring at me.”
“You’d asked me to be home by six, and I was brainstorming with Audrey on a problem and I lost track of time and didn’t get home until 7:34 p.m. I was still thinking about work when I stepped in the front door, right up until I saw the suitcase—”
“You said, ‘We should talk about this more, Isabel. We should have a meeting.’ You didn’t even seem surprised.”
“I was panicking...in shock. I don’t actually remember what I said,” I admit heavily. “I’m not surprised I said something stupid. I was just trying to hold on to on
e last shred of dignity, because it was all I could do to stop myself from falling to my knees and begging you to stay.”
“I did feel I’d tried everything. And leaving was like a last-ditch, desperate cry for help. I really thought if I left, you’d realize how unhappy I was, and you’d do something to reconnect with me. When you organized for us to see that couples counselor the next day, I thought that proved I’d done the right thing. I figured we’d go to therapy for a while and sort out what was broken and we’d fix it and I’d come home.”
I stare at her in confusion. “You stayed in that room for six minutes. You didn’t even explain yourself then! If you were still hoping we’d reconcile at that point, why not give therapy at least a proper shot?”
“You were brutally cold that day, Paul.” She rubs her forehead, then gives me a pleading look. “You didn’t sound like a man who was devastated. You sounded like an entitled man who was outraged.”
“I didn’t sleep at all the night you left. I was a mess.”
“I felt the same. I guess when we first stepped into that office, I saw that you looked exhausted and I was kind of hopeful that we were about to make a breakthrough. You started to rant and I was getting upset and crying, but you barely looked at me. You were so arrogant and I just...I just couldn’t deal with it. I hoped an impartial third party would help us to reconnect, but the truth is, I was humiliated that day. I didn’t want a stranger like the therapist to see just how bad our marriage had become.”
“I still see her,” I admit.
“Who?”
“Alison. The therapist.”
“Really? You’ve been in therapy?” Isabel’s jaw hangs loose.
I shrug. “Sure. You stormed out of her office that day, I went to follow you, and Alison gave me a reality check. She told me that even in that brief conversation she’d noticed markers that suggested I might...” I break off. Am I ready to talk to her about this?
I look at Isabel, who’s frowning, but she doesn’t seem upset now. Instead, she seems concerned, and I’m suddenly quite certain that despite the ugliness in our past, I can trust her with this piece of myself.
“Markers?” she prompts me gently.
“Alison asked me if I’d ever been through the process of an autism assessment. She said I showed some classic markers in the way I was interacting with you.”
Isabel’s eyebrows shoot up, then she tilts her head to the side as she stares at me. It looks a little like a light bulb just went off in her mind, and that’s exactly how I felt once Alison’s comments sank in that day in her office.
“And...do you think that’s the case?” Isabel asks me cautiously.
“I know it is. I eventually had the formal assessment done and my official diagnosis is Autism Spectrum Disorder, Level One. They don’t use the term Asperger’s syndrome anymore, but once upon a time that’s probably what I’d have been diagnosed with.”
“Paul...I don’t even know what to say. Do I say I’m sorry?” Isabel whispers.
I shake my head. “No, this isn’t a bad thing at all. I am who I am, and I’m proud of who I am. I see the world differently than some people, and sometimes that’s a real strength—take my work, for example. I do have some challenges, too, but I’m aware of them now. I know, for example, that it’s unusually difficult for me to be aware of what other people are thinking sometimes—it’s a form of mind blindness. That’s never going away, and I have to learn how to interact with the people I care about despite it.”
“I just didn’t realize...” There are tears in her eyes, and I’m worried that I’m messing this up.
I reach to squeeze her hand. “Please don’t feel sorry for me, Izzy. I mean...I already knew I was different. I think you probably knew it, too. Having this diagnosis doesn’t change who I am, it just helps me to understand myself. I actually feel relieved because I’d always struggled socially and I could never figure out why.”
“But you didn’t even tell me about any of this.”
“I planned to at first,” I admit.
“Well, what happened?” she croaks. Her gaze is dull with hurt, and I suspect mine is the same.
As Isabel and I stare right into each other’s eyes, openly displaying our pain, this moment is becoming more intimate than anything we’ve shared before. Is this what a true partnership is about? Sharing the heights and the depths of your soul with another person? I can’t help but wonder what might have been if we’d been able to stare into each other’s eyes like this and to speak so freely when we were married.
“You’re right when you said I was angry at first. It didn’t take me long to cool down, but once I did, I started taking a good, hard look at my life, and soon I was embarrassed at my inadequacy. I didn’t yet understand where we’d gone wrong, or what an ASD diagnosis was going to mean for me. For those first few weeks after you left, all I could see were my failures. I saw my relationships with the team at work and with Dad and with Jake and Marcus and Jess and you with fresh eyes, and I did not like what I saw.
“So I kept on seeing Alison and talking it all through, and I started reading and thinking and hell, just searching for ways that I could be a better person...and be a better partner to you. I realized that before I could win you back, I had to learn how to be vulnerable.”
She swallows hard, then looks away.
I rub my forehead wearily. “Fuck, Isabel... I knew I needed to be a better friend to you, because I quickly figured out that I hadn’t fulfilled that role in months. Besides, when you left Alison’s office that day, you said you needed space, so I decided I’d give that to you while I worked to sort my own head out. Then the paperwork came from your attorney and once again, you’d blindsided me.” I’m tensing, just remembering that day, and I can’t help the way my tone shortens. “What was that about? You didn’t even think to text me to tell me you wanted a divorce?”
“I wanted to hurt you,” she admits. “In all of the scenarios I ran through in my head when I left, not once did I consider the possibility that you’d just let me walk away. Jesus, Paul, I didn’t even start looking for a place to live for a month after I left, I just stayed at the same crappy hotel. I slept with my phone in my hand. I’d finish a class or with a client and I’d run to my desk to check my email. It was only when you didn’t even contact me for my birthday that I realized we were actually done. To tell you the truth, that’s when I got angry. That’s when I wanted blood.”
“So that’s why you hired an attorney? I didn’t call on your birthday?” I’m missing something. I know I fucked up, but that seems a serious overreaction.
“If you’d already given up on us, it seemed stupid and embarrassing for me to sit around waiting any longer. I just wanted to move on.” Then she adds flatly, “A month of radio silence seemed to be a message in itself, Paul.”
“This is what I’m trying to tell you tonight. I didn’t go silent on you because I didn’t want you back. I went silent on you because you said you needed space, and I was trying to respect that while I figured myself out. My silence wasn’t a hint. I don’t hint. I...” I struggle for words. “I can code in three languages and interpret design specs and write algorithms and calculate dates in the blink of an eye, but I can not hint. Do you see that now?”
Isabel crosses her arms on the table and leans forward, then slowly raises her gaze to mine. “We were barely even speaking the same language.”
“That’s what I figured out today...tonight.”
Her eyes fill with tears, and she bites her lip. “What a fucking mess we made of things, Paul.”
“I know.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Isabel
WE SIT IN silence for a long time. Paul refills our wineglasses, and we shift back over to the sun chairs, sitting side by side and staring out over the dark expanse of the water.
“That iPad was a final straw for me, you k
now,” I say eventually. “That’s why I left just a few weeks later. I saw it as willful ignorance... I thought you didn’t want to spend the weekend with me, so you’d made some thoughtless purchase as a token gesture instead. I even imagined you sending Vanessa out to pick something up, or maybe you’d had it in the storeroom at the office and you just grabbed it on your way out the door that day.”
“Why didn’t you just say that? Paul, you idiot, you misunderstood me. And why didn’t you just ask me to organize a long weekend out here? I’d have done it.”
“Wouldn’t that hurt your feelings?” I ask, and I glance at him for the first time since we moved to the sun chairs.
He gives me a blank look. “Because you asked for what you wanted? Of course not.” He pauses, then his eyebrows lift. “Wait, you think that just asking for what you want can hurt people’s feelings?” A look of pure horror crosses his expression. “Oh Jesus, Isabel. I must have bruised your soft little heart on a daily basis.”
I laugh weakly. “It wasn’t that bad, but you can be particularly blunt, Paul. Remember when I asked you if I looked okay in that yellow dress I bought?”
I wasn’t sure about how the dress hung—and in an odd moment of self-consciousness about my lack of curves, I was looking for reassurance. Instead, Paul told me that he didn’t really understand fashion, but even so, he thought the dress was awful.
“I remember.” He closes his eyes. “It’s a wonder we stayed together for more than five minutes. You asked me about my new clothes the other day?” I nod, and he laughs gently. “I went to work one day and I’d put on some muscle around my pecs and my button-down kept popping open. Jess told me I looked ridiculous and that I needed to hire a stylist and update my look.”
“Now Jess is a woman who can be extremely blunt,” I concede. “But she’s rare. I think most people communicate the way I do. Most women, especially. I mean, my mom would have an aneurysm if she heard me talk the way Jess talks to people. She’d say it’s not ladylike.”