Mia nods. How could she forget his psychotic reaction in this very living room, his belief that he was the creator of all things and the rest of humanity was nothing but musical notes that emanated from him. For hours, he begged them to call Gert Rouffler-- a colleague of Mia’s in the music department—to come to the house to prove his point until finally, Lucien came down off the drug and remembered they were all simply flesh.
“So, when I looked at you and Harper and even my own arm, I saw that we were like the same sound, the same pulsing color. Sort of a red. Dad was like a blue, and he wasn’t merging with the rest of us, kind of held back, the sound low and far away.”
“Lucien,” Mia begins, but he holds up his hand.
“I know, I know. You think it was only a hallucination. My whacked out brain. But I saw it. I saw what was happening back then.”
Lucien has been clean for three and a half years. For three years Ford hasn’t gone to her readings. For three years, he’s been working late. For three years, he’s been trying to tell her something she hasn’t been able to pay attention to.
She thinks of Ford’s hastily taken off ties, looping the kitchen counter night after night after night. He must be waiting for Harper to leave for college. He must make love to her out of anger and fear and because she is there—to keep her there until it’s safe to leave.
Mia rubs her forehead and then pushes her hair back, thinking as she does of Robert, his smooth, thick hair.
“I know this was hard to talk about,” she says, “but I need to talk with your father, just he and I.” Mia holds up her hand as Lucien starts to protest.
“Luc, it’s ours. You and Harper go out. See a movie. I’ll call your father as soon as you leave.”
“Mom,” Harper says, “you don’t have to.”
“Harp!” Lucien says.
“You don’t. Or it can be like your story, with Rafael and Susan. You know, how it ends on the deck. The way it ended?”
“You read it?” Lucien says to his brother. Then he looks at Mia. “It was that story--that’s why I thought you might know.”
Again, it’s obvious. She’s known everything all along, her stories like volcanoes bringing everything to the surface. At night in bed with Ford, she must have stolen into his dreams, his brain waves, taking in all the information she needed, just enough so she could find Robert. But not too much--who wants to see the destruction, feel the fire? Who wants to live through the time when the dead have to be buried, the village rebuilt?
Mia stands up, looks at her handsome, dark boys on the couch, the two who sought to save her.
“You go. I’ll call your cell phone later,” she says, and then she walks away, down the hall to her bedroom to call her husband.
Ford is pale, his tie clamped tight against his neck. He sits at the kitchen table, his hands folded as if in prayer. For a second, she thinks of how he used to sit at their first dining room table, so serious, reading a textbook or editing an essay. Back then, she’d walk into the room, and he’s look up, smile, say, “What’s up?”
But now he doesn’t smile or even really look at her. He sits back and then leans forward again, running his hand through his hair.
“Lucien came home from school to tell you?”
“Harper called him last week. He didn’t know what else to do.”
Ford shakes his head, shifts, stands up, sits down. “Shit. Shit.”
Mia can’t say anything, but knows that shit is exactly the right word.
“Really, I wanted to tell you. I’ve been trying to tell you.” Ford watches her.
Mia stares back at him and knows he’s not lying.
“Ford,” she begins.
“No.” He stands up again, walks into the living room and then back. “I wanted—I thought maybe I could . . . And there’s Harper. He only has two more years of high school. I thought I could make it. And maybe I thought that one day—it would just be over. I’d be here, at home, with you. It’s not like I don’t love you, Mia. It’s not like it’s been bad.”
“Ford.”
He blinks, and she almost cries out. How many times has she seen him looking at her just like this, full of surprise and indecision? Through college and job problems and moves to new houses; when she was in labor, especially with Lucien, the whole event wondrous and strange. There he’s always been, Ford in front of her, his shoulders straight, his mouth slightly open, his entire gaze begging her to give him the answer.
“I’ve been seeing someone, too,” she says.
His body sags; he covers his eyes, sits back down in the chair. For a long while, he is silent, his eyes cast down, his breathing slow and deep.
“What have we been doing, Ford?” she asks finally. “Why have we let it go so long? Why don’t we know each other any more?”
“I know you,” he says quietly.
“But I didn’t know this about you, the part that counts.”
A breeze pushes past the open window, and a squawk and flutter of purple finches fills the air. Mia runs her finger over the oak table, waiting for an answer to her own question.
“I don’t know what happened,” Ford says softly, wiping his face. “Maybe we forgot how to know each other. Maybe—“
“You never wanted to go to counseling.”
“It was too late. Way too late. I didn’t think it would be—“
Mia interrupts, not wanting to hear aloud the truth, the idea that for so long, something was wrong. “Are you in love with her?” she says.
Ford breathes in again, deeply, the sound wet and sad in his lungs. He nods. “You?”
She wants to tell him yes, but when her mouth moves on the word, she sees Robert’s email in her mind, sees won’t work out. “I don’t know.”
“Who is it?” Ford’s eyes narrow, and Mia remembers his old love for her, a possessiveness pinching his face.
Mia looks at Ford, starts to cry, letting her tears fall onto the table. “One of my mother’s doctors.”
He sits back, breathing in. “So it just started.”
She shakes her head. “It could have started earlier, with someone else. It hasn’t been right with us for so long.”
He wants to argue, lifting his hand, but then he doesn’t. He sighs. “I know,” he says finally.
Outside, Mia hears a squabble of squirrels, a high pitched chatter, a scramble of claws. She suddenly feels like joining the animals, scrabbling up a tree, jumping away from the house, Ford, all of this. She hates that her long marriage can end this quickly, in one conversation, on a sunny afternoon.
“It’s too easy,” she says quietly.
Ford looks up at her, his eyes wide. “Too easy? What are you talking about? Too easy. This has been hell.”
Mia feels her tears pool in her chest. “What do you mean?”
“Mia, how do you think it’s been living like this.” He waves a hand. “Here. Knowing I’m lying to you. To the boys. Every single day, I’ve just wanted to . . . .” He can’t finish, swallowing, his eyes full. “I’ve felt like I was disappearing into one of your stories. I would try to talk to you, but you weren’t really paying attention.”
For a moment, Mia feels like she is weightless, floating, her stomach the only thing heavy in her chair. Here’s what she didn’t know. Here’s the story she could have never written because she wouldn’t have wanted to see that Ford was so miserable. That living with her was killing him, draining him. All along, just as she’d thought, they’d forgotten how to know each other.
And he’s right, of course. How easy is it to feel that you are only half, that the part that you’ve wanted to fit into yourself is no where in sight? For how many years has Mia awakened every day, understanding that that piece she wanted for herself wasn’t available. That she could never have it. Because she was married to a man she liked and loved, she hadn’t wanted to hurt him and she allowed whatever that part was called—love, happiness, fulfillment, completeness—to slip away each morning as she left her bed.
How many times had Ford held her, his body moving into hers, and she couldn’t move into him, couldn’t hold him close enough because even if she’d been able to, she’d be grabbing the wrong thing, the wrong man. Mia held his flesh but not his heart. He was pulsing into her, and she wasn’t responding, nights and nights of the wrong movements with the wrong people. Years of time that wasn’t wasted completely because they had their boys--both safe and strong--but wasted in their hearts.
Ford was right. It had hurt; a slow, long hurt.
“It’s never been easy,” he says. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And now I think I’m relieved. It’s not easy. But I’m relieved.”
“Wow,” she says.
“I didn’t mean—“he begins, but she waves away his words.
She hates how easily he can let go of her, even though this is exactly what she wants. She can’t stand that she hasn’t known his story, thinking that she was the unhappy one, the one who wanted to leave. For a strange minute, she wants to fight for him, to write the story differently. But the urge lifts and then falls, evaporating into the truth that today is the last day they will be together like this, married, in the same house.
“It wasn’t easy,” she agrees. “You’re right.”
Ford sighs, the sound loud in the quiet kitchen.
“What are we going to do?” he asks.
In the time that it took Ford to drive home from the city, Mia has figured out exactly what they will do. He will stay here at the house until the boys come home, and they will all talk, just like they learned to do in the days of rehab, each saying what is true. Because she has no choice, Mia will tell Lucien and Harper about her own affair. She doesn’t want them thinking that their father is the one to ruin everything. She keeps hearing the words from rehab, “It’s a family disease.”
But after the talk and all the tears and the anger and disgust and feelings of betrayal, Ford will pack up what he can carry out of the house in one trip and leave. He will move in with Karen, and they can be business partners and lovers. He will hold her all night, and she will react to his body the way Mia’s reacts to Robert’s.
Later, Ford will come back and take the rest of his things, he and Mia arguing—but not too much—about what belongs to whom. Lawyers will take care of the rest of the details and the money, both of them being generous and fair, despite the flare of anger over discussions about when to sell the house and who will buy out whom. When the divorce goes through, Ford and Karen can get married. Mia won’t go to the wedding, but she will encourage the boys to.
In two years, Harper will go off to college—soon after, Lucien will go to graduate school. Mia will keep teaching at Cal and continue writing, maybe finding someone to date, finding this person the normal ways, through well-meaning friends and dating services and personal ads. She will never again expect another exam room door to open and her true love to walk through. She will never again expect her body to flood with feeling when a man steps inside a room, looks at her, shakes her hand. This much she has learned. This much she will carry with her into her divorce.
“You’ll leave,” she says quietly. And Ford—this man she met when he was still a boy, who grew up right in front of her, who gave her two children—looks up and agrees.
Lucien asks smart questions and nods through the entire discussion, but Harper sobs. He doesn’t let either Ford or Mia touch him, holding himself to the edge of the couch.
“I’m so sorry,” Ford says over and over, his hand trying to decide what part of Harper to try to touch now: shoulder, arm, knee. But Harper jerks away, mumbling,
“You suck. You both suck.”
Mia starts to cry then because she knows he’s right. She sucks. She is a coward, was a coward. But she won’t be any more.
“Harper,” she says, “how your father and I did this was wrong. We should have talked to each other. But it’s hard.”
“How hard is the truth?” Harper cries.
“Impossible,” Lucien says. “Worse than anything.”
Ford rubs his forehead. “We lied to ourselves, too.”
“What’s going to happen to us? What’s going to happen to me?” Harper asks.
Ford looks at Mia and says, “You’ll live here. Except for me being gone, your life will stay the same. Then you can come and see me.” He stops, bites his lip, and then breathes in. “If you want.”
Harper sits up, wipes his eyes. “I’m never getting married.”
“If I never got married, Harp, I wouldn’t have you and Lucien,” Mia says. “You wouldn’t be alive. I would have never written what I wrote. I wouldn’t have been able to live in this house I love so much. I would never have been able to know someone like I know your father, even if it ended this way.” She leans over to Harper now, who lets her touch him. “This is a horrible ending. A terrible way to stop. But there were years in there that will always be the best I ever had. I’ve been able to live a certain way because of my marriage, and I don’t regret most of it.”
Ford stares at her, his old expression on her, the one she remembers from when they first met, full of surprise and interest. It’s the same way he looked at her when she walked out of her apartment door and he was locking his bike against a post. “Who are you,” the look said. “I want to know.”
They watch each other for a moment, and then his face settles into the truth of now.
“That’s right,” Ford says. “All of that is right.”
Harper wipes his face, pulls in a ragged lungful of air. Lucien pats his shoulder.
“I hate this,” Harper says, his voice flat.
Mia nods. But even though she is sad and knows that this first night alone without Ford in her bed will feel like sleeping on knives, she doesn’t hate it.
“One day at a time,” Lucien says, whipping out the constant refrain from rehab.
Mia wants to bark out a laugh, but he’s right. Tonight and then tomorrow and then the next day. Nothing more than living through them until she can walk out the door that today’s truth has opened.
“Fuck that,” Harper says, standing up and walking toward his room. “I hate you all.”
Ford throws some clothes and shoes into a duffle bag, lays a few suits into a garment bag. Then he stands in front of the closet, his hands on his hips, and cries.
Mia sits on the bed, looking out the bedroom window at the bay and oak trees, an empty toiletry bag in her lap.
“You’re going to Karen’s.” She turns the bag in her hands and then puts it on the bed. She’s not going to fill it for him this time, making sure he has razor and shaving cream and lotion as she has done so many times before.
“Yes,” Ford says. He wipes his eyes, turns back to the garment bag and zips it up.
“This is horrible.” Mia can’t look at him.
“Yes,” he says. He picks up the toiletry bag and walks into the bathroom. She hears drawers open and close, the sound of him putting containers and bottles and jars on the sink counter. After a couple of minutes, she hears the zip of the bag, and then he’s back in the room.
“I’ve left her number by the phone,” he says.
“Okay.”
“Mia,” he says, and she looks up. She wants to hug him, hold him tight, tell him that it’s still not too late. It’s all a mistake that they can fix. They’ll be one of those couples who renews their vows and then has a mid-life baby, a happy, spoiled child who will graduate from high school when Mia and Ford are in their early sixties. She wants to tell him there is still time to start all over again, make it right this time. Somehow, Mia will fix that part of her that wants something else. He can, too. Maybe through anti-depressants or week long tantric workshops or twice weekly counseling appointments they can stand to live together for the next forty years. Whatever it is, she’ll do it in order to save them from this transition. In order to save Harper. To keep them all from having to change.
“I’m going to go,” he says.
> “I know,” she says.
After Ford leaves, Mia picks up the phone and begins dialing. She thinks she is calling Kenzie, not able to believe that so much has happened in her life that Kenzie is unaware of, when Katherine answers the phone.
“Katherine?” Mia says, surprised, looking at the phone.
“What is it? Is it Mom?”
“Yes,” Mia wants to say, “yes, it’s all about Mom and not about me.”
But she doesn’t. She breathes in and exhales. “No. It’s about me.”
The Instant When Everything is Perfect Page 23