Better to Trust

by Frimmer, Heather

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Alison

  September 17, 2019

  “WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO TELL HIM?” Becca texted.

  Alison checked to make sure the bathroom door remained closed.

  “Don’t know” she typed.

  Michael had been back in the bedroom for only a week, but it felt like ages. Every time he woke Alison with his snoring or pulled the covers to his side or flung his arm at her chest, her thoughts turned to Becca. She’d never seen Becca sleep, but she imagined her as the portrait of peace, her lips parted, the muscles of her face relaxed, her breathing soft and even. Becca should be the one sleeping beside her instead of Michael.

  She longed to tell him this wasn’t working, but every time she had almost gathered the nerve, it dissipated. She didn’t want to hurt him.

  Michael opened the bathroom door, wearing a towel around his waist, his love handles pooching over the top. Who came up with that stupid name anyway? There’s nothing she wanted to hold onto less.

  While he brushed his teeth with his electric toothbrush, she wished she could tell him to keep his personal hygiene in the bathroom. His wandering tooth brushing had always irritated her.

  “Want to go for breakfast at the diner?” He finished brushing and returned the toothbrush to the bathroom.

  Michael knew she avoided going out because she still drooled and struggled to eat with her right hand. She hated when people stared. Michael insisted no one was looking, but she knew all eyes were fixed on the invalid with oatmeal on her chin.

  Alison shook her head. The past two weekends had been a drag because Rhea only worked weekdays. Michael used to make meals and help her eat, but otherwise, he would leave her alone. Now that he was back in their bed, he’d been annoyingly attentive, suggesting they go out and do things together, even following her to the bathroom. He saw this move as a sign of hope, while Alison was afraid it was the beginning of the end.

  “You don’t want to go there?” he said. “I thought you liked their oatmeal. We can go anywhere you want.”

  “No,” she said, surprised by the strength of her reaction. A few days ago, she would have gone along with it, powerless to speak her mind. But today, she didn’t want to go with him to the diner. She didn’t want to go anywhere with Michael.

  He threw his towel on the floor and lay down naked on the bed next to her. “I could work up a sweat before I take a shower,” he said. “How about a trip to Funkytown?” He leaned over to kiss the side of her neck. Funkytown had been his euphemism for sex since they’d seen it used on some show they’d watched together years ago. He loved having a secret code word so they could talk about having sex without anyone knowing. She’d found it funny at first, but the term had lost its luster long ago.

  “I … don’t …” She wanted to say she wasn’t at all interested in sex with him right now, and she wasn’t sure she ever would be.

  “Come on, Alison. It’s been forever. I’m not sure how much longer I can take.” It had been a long time. A month ago, she’d let him sleep in the bedroom for one night. When he turned on the Playboy channel and wrapped her left hand around his penis, she decided to go along with it, the only time they’d been close to intimate since her surgery.

  Michael sat up and straddled her chest, bringing his penis to her mouth. If she did what he wanted, he would finish soon enough and then maybe leave her alone. When she started licking him, he took that as an invitation to plunge himself deeper into her mouth, and she started gagging. And then, she smelled it, the recognizable smell of Michael’s genitals when he hadn’t yet showered, a sour, yeasty odor. Gagging and breathing in that smell, she knew she wouldn’t be able to do it, that she couldn’t do this anymore.

  She pushed him off and turned onto her side, trying to catch her breath. Tears came to her eyes as she reached for her phone on the nightstand. When Becca asked her earlier when she would tell Michael, she hadn’t known the answer, but now she did.

  She picked up her phone and tapped the emoji button, scrolling through until she found the one with a tear coming out of one eye. She turned the phone so Michael could see.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, covering himself with the sheet. “I know this is difficult for you.”

  “Enough,” she said, throwing the phone down on the bed.

  “You’re frustrated. When you get better, things will improve between us, too. I know it.”

  What? He thought this was about not being able to perform? About her feeling inadequate in the bedroom?

  “All of your effort is paying off. I can see the improvements with physical and speech therapy. You may not notice, but I see it.”

  “No.” The blood seemed to surge through her arms and legs as suddenly she knew. All the questions that had been filling her mind for months, since before her surgery, disappeared. She knew the answers, or at least enough to take the first step. She had to make him stop talking. With a grunt, she picked up her phone again. She used her left arm to help her sit up and took a breath. This was a crucial conversation so she needed to make sure her meaning came through crystal clear. She typed the letter D and then stopped. She wasn’t sure what came next. She picked an E and then a V. Was the next letter an O or a U? She chose the O and then RS.

  The word, DEVORS, shone at her from the phone screen.

  “What are you spelling?” Michael asked.

  She wasn’t completely ready for this conversation, but at the same time, this moment was long overdue. When she turned the phone to face Michael, his face fell and the finality of what she’d done hit her. Alison’s eyes filled with tears. She felt guilty causing him pain, but she also felt lighter than she had in months. She knew it was the right decision.

  “What do you mean?” he said. “I know we have stuff to work on, but I never thought it would come to this.” He pointed to their wedding photo. “You’re just going to throw us away, after everything we’ve been through? We can get through this, Alison. I know we can.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She finagled herself out of bed and limped to the door with her cane. She needed some space to breathe and she had to text the news to Becca. Now that she’d broken free, she couldn’t wait another minute to see her.

  “Alison? Where are you going?”

  Alison reached the doorway and stepped through.

  “You can’t just walk out on this conversation,” Michael said. “We’re not done discussing this.” Something about what he said struck her as funny and she started giggling. What had just happened could hardly be called a discussion since most of her communication happened through texts, but she’d gotten her point across. There was no turning back now.

  Michael called Alison’s name down the hallway, his voice fading the farther she walked. No matter how many times she and Becca had talked about it, no matter how often she’d imagined how the conversation would go, she never thought she’d get up the nerve to do it. The whole thing seemed like one of her crazy dreams, but with each step she took, the more reality set in. She wiped tears from her face with her shirt.

  When they were newly married, Alison never would have envisioned their marriage ending. Whenever she heard about couples divorcing—family friends, parents from Sadie’s preschool, former professors—she always wondered what they’d done wrong. Maybe they hadn’t taken the time to nurture their marriages, underestimating how much work it took to keep a relationship healthy. She and Michael knew better than to become a statistic. When she looked back on that younger Alison, full of innocence and naivety and false bravado, she now saw the error in her thinking. That Alison hadn’t considered that sometimes things didn’t go as planned, that sometimes people were forced to face situations they would never have imagined, and those things changed who they were and how they saw the world. When bad things happened to good people, those good people were forever changed. If she’d never had the surgery, she might have stayed married to Michael.

  As she reached the front door, she relied less on t
he cane, her right leg able to bear more weight. Whether her perception was a true reflection of her physical strength or purely mental, she didn’t know and frankly, didn’t care. It felt amazing to walk on her own two feet.

  She walked down the ramp Michael had installed while she was in the ICU, stopping at the bottom to catch her breath. She took her phone from her pocket and found Becca’s name.

  “See you,” she typed. As she waited for a response, Michael’s footsteps echoed inside the house.

  The ellipsis popped up on the screen.

  “What?” Becca responded.

  “Need see you,” Alison typed.

  “At the gym.” Alison pictured the way Becca looked when she worked out on the elliptical, the way her biceps muscles tensed and relaxed, beads of sweat collecting on her upper lip. “Should I come now?”

  “Now.” Alison texted. “Did it.”

  Michael opened the front door and stormed down the ramp. “You can’t just walk away like that, Alison. Seriously? It’s like our marriage doesn’t mean anything to you.”

  “No,” she said. To Michael it might seem like she had taken the decision lightly, but her mind was quiet for the first time in what felt like forever.

  “What do you mean, no?” he said. “We have to talk about this.”

  “No.” She wanted to tell him that the conversation was over. It felt so good to be finally free, as if she’d been wearing one of those weight belts from the gym, and she’d finally figured out how to release the clasp and let it drop to the floor.

  “No isn’t good enough.” He reached out to take her hand and then took it back, his eyes making contact with hers for a split second before he shifted his gaze to the house across the street. “I’ve stood by your side for this whole year. I’ve paid for Rhea and put up with her son. And this is the thanks you give me. Really fucking appreciative.” Michael was moving past shock into anger: his voice louder, his tone more clipped, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard him swear.

  Even if her speech were normal, nothing she could say would make this moment better for him. She appreciated everything he’d done for her. It couldn’t have been easy to live with a wife who couldn’t walk, talk or even feed herself. Plenty of men would have distanced themselves or even walked away. Painful silence stretched between them as she waited for Becca to arrive.

  “Where is this coming from?” he asked in a quiet voice.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Alison saw a flash of lime green, Becca’s Volkswagen turning onto the street. With this timing, maybe she could avoid the question. Becca stopped the car in front of their driveway, got out and walked around to Alison’s side. Her tank top was darker under her arms and in the small of her back from her workout.

  “Alison, you can’t run away from me. Let’s talk about this.”

  “Go,” she said to Becca, pointing to her car.

  “Are you sure?” Becca asked. She looked to Michael and back to me.

  “Yes,” Alison said.

  “Is this for real?” he said.

  Even if Alison could talk, she couldn’t possibly answer that question in any rational way, but somehow it all made perfect sense. Maybe not to Michael, but to her. Becca took Alison’s hand and helped her into the car.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Sadie

  March 15, 2019

  SADIE PULLED OPEN THE DOOR to the rink and adjusted her skate bag on her shoulder. As much as she sometimes hated practice, the cold air and the familiar smell, a combination of hockey player sweat and rubber floor mat, comforted her today. Exhausted from staying up most of the night thinking about how Aunt Alison’s surgery would go, she was glad to have practice to distract her from her thoughts. Everyone said her father was excellent at his job, but Sadie couldn’t help thinking there was still a chance that something could go wrong, that Alison’s problem would be too complicated to fix.

  “I’m so glad we don’t have school today,” Emma said, following Sadie through the door. “We need to get ready for the Bay State Games.”

  Sadie nodded and continued to the locker room. She was having trouble focusing on what Emma was saying. “Yeah, why don’t we have school again?”

  “Teacher development day,” Emma said. “I already told you that in the car.”

  “Right.” Sadie didn’t remember hearing that, but she had probably been lost in her thoughts.

  “We need a lot more practice on the precision line routine.” Emma followed Sadie into the locker room. “The intersection and the interlocking circles are still really rough.”

  Sadie put her bag on the bench and took out her skates, practice dress, and leg warmers. The other girls were arriving, too, chatting while they got ready for practice. “That’s why we’re here, Emma. Are we playing ‘state the obvious’?”

  “No need to be nasty.” Emma pulled on her tights and her dress. “I’m just starting to get nervous. Our pairs routine needs work, too.”

  Sadie didn’t respond. She and Emma had been competing together in pairs for five years, but she still felt her face flush every time they stepped onto the ice holding hands. It wasn’t her fault there were so few boys in competitive ice skating, but that didn’t make performing a pairs routine with another girl any less embarrassing. Sadie didn’t feel like talking about it, especially today.

  “What’s up with you?” Emma asked. “Are you worried about your aunt?”

  “No,” Sadie said. “Just leave me alone, okay?”

  “I’m sure she’ll be fine. Your parents will call with an update as soon as they know.”

  “Dad said the operation could take up to eight hours.” She didn’t want to tell Emma how worried she really was, like she might jinx it and make things worse. She would have to stay busy to keep her mind from going in circles.

  “Are you still hanging out with Piper?” Emma asked.

  “Sometimes.”

  “She is such a liar. You can’t believe anything she says.”

  They finished dressing and sat down on the bench to lace up their skates. “I like her,” Sadie said.

  “You don’t even know who she really is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That girl’s secrets have secrets,” Emma said. “Caroline went to her house in seventh grade. Did she tell you?”

  “No.” Sadie finished tying her skates and stood up to make sure they were tight enough. “And I don’t want to know.”

  “Her mother’s in prison, Sadie. Not exactly ideal friend material.”

  “That’s not true. She said her mom’s always on her case.”

  “Maybe in her weekly phone calls, but other than that—”

  “Enough, Emma. I can’t deal with you today.” What Emma was saying couldn’t be true. Every time they’d hung out, Piper had made such a big deal about what a nag her mom was and how lucky Sadie was that her mom gave her space. It must have been the result of the school gossip mill, the story becoming more distorted as it got passed along. Or maybe Emma was trying to sabotage her friendship with Piper.

  “Whatever.” Emma walked toward the rink. Sadie grabbed her water bottle from her locker and took a sip, blinking away tears. If Coach Volkov saw her cry, she would get angry and say something like, “Champions never show their emotions” or “Nancy Kerrigan didn’t cry, did she?” The first time Coach mentioned the former Olympic medalist, Sadie had to Google her on her phone. In the YouTube video she found, Nancy Kerrigan was crying like a baby and screaming, “Why? Why? Why?” so Sadie wasn’t sure what Coach was talking about. If Sadie got whacked with a police baton, she wouldn’t be ashamed to cry.

  She pulled her boot warmers over her skates and followed Emma to the rink. Most of the team was already warming up, some skating around the edge of the ice, others doing back crossovers or simple spins. Sadie stood by the boards and watched the other girls, trying to clear her mind so she could focus on practice.

  “Will you be joining us today, Kaplan?” Coach Volko
v yelled from the other side of the rink. She was wearing the long puffy coat with the fur collar. Sadie hated that coat. Anytime she saw someone wearing a similar one, it brought to mind Coach’s unsmiling face and harsh voice. She hated the way Coach insisted on calling them by their last names and wouldn’t let them talk during practice.

  “Yes, Coach.” Sadie skated out onto the ice, did a few laps to loosen her muscles, and then started her warm-up routine. While she was doing her alternating back crossovers, she looked over and saw Emma in the middle of the rink, always the center of attention here, like she had a spotlight following her at all times. Sadie watched Emma skate backwards on her right leg and then turn her head over her left shoulder and step forward into an effortless double axel jump, landing smoothly on her right leg. Her blade carved a smooth edge into the ice and Sadie was close enough to hear the crunching sound of a perfectly landed jump.

  Sadie tried to catch her eye, but Emma moved right into a gorgeous layback spin, her back arched, arms intertwined up in the air. When they had first started skating together in third grade, Coach had paired them up because they were at a similar level, but as the years passed, Emma had progressed more quickly, mastering jumps and spins much more easily. Sadie had tried to catch up for years, but recently she’d realized it was no use. Some people were just born with more talent, and no amount of practice would close that gap. Sadie wasn’t even close to mastering the double axel and her layback spin was clumsy and travelled too far. Sometimes she wondered why she even continued skating. She clearly wasn’t going to the Olympics, so what was the point of spending so many hours in this frigid rink? But she knew her mother wouldn’t let her quit. Her mother would say something about the importance of commitment or stick-to-it-iveness and then change the subject to make it clear the conversation was over.

  Coach blew her whistle. “Time to work on pairs. Wright and Kaplan, you go first.”

  Emma skated over and took Sadie’s hand. They skated together to the end of the rink so they could go through their routine and make sure they both had the choreography memorized. Normally, Emma’s grip would be firm, but today it felt looser, less committed, like Sadie wasn’t worth her energy. They took their place side by side, their hand on their hips, waiting for the instrumental version of “My Favorite Things” to come through the speaker system.