I smile, too. “Hi.”
“Hi,” he says. I put my arms around him and hug him tight. His arms encircle me and we stand like that for a minute, not speaking. Finally, we let go. He closes the door behind me and I follow him to the couch. My favorite blanket is folded neatly and draped over the arm. I’m not surprised; I’m the only one who ever used it.
“I’ve been so worried about you,” he says.
“I know,” I say. I tell him what happened, explain about the DKA.
“Is he taking care of you?” Daniel asks. “Making sure you’re okay?”
“Yes. He stayed home for a week. He’s back at work now.”
Daniel nods and looks away. I know what he’s thinking: If you were my wife, I would never leave you home alone, especially after something like this. But he would. He just doesn’t know it. Chris didn’t want to leave either, but I told him he had to. The world doesn’t stop spinning because I got sick.
I take a look around the room I’ve spent so much time in. It’s a room where there are no lost jobs or marital discord. No one discusses paying the bills or argues about whose turn it is to take out the trash. We brought the best, the most uncomplicated, aspects of our world into this room. Who wouldn’t want that? But we fooled ourselves into thinking that our relationship was uncomplicated because of it.
“Do you want to go for a ride?” he asks. “It might be a little cold.”
I smile. “Going for a ride is exactly what I want to do.”
So we go. It’s not a long ride, but I hold him tight and try to remember every detail: The way the sun shines down on us. The air that smells like fresh soil as the hard ground softens and readies itself for the grass and flowers. The way his shoulders feel when I lay my head on them. When I look back on this day I want to remember it all, no matter how much it hurts.
When we get back Daniel parks the bike in the driveway. I climb off and wait for him to do the same. We both know it’s time for me to go. He stands in front of me and I look into his eyes.
“If things had been different, I would have given my whole heart to you.”
He nods and gives me a smile. “I know.”
My eyes fill with tears. “Good-bye, Daniel.”
“Good-bye, Claire.” He doesn’t walk me to the car the way he always has before.
I’m almost at my door when I stop and turn back around. To hell with this reserve, this formality. I want a messy, emotional good-bye, to let everything that’s been pent up inside of me out.
I could have loved this man. Maybe I already do.
It’s as if he knows what I’m going to do because he opens his arms at the exact moment I start to run. He catches me when I jump, and I wrap my legs around him and hug him tightly. The tears start to fall. When he finally sets me down and both of my feet are back on the ground, he holds my gaze and I know what he’s going to do, but I don’t stop him. He takes my face in his hands, leans down, and slowly presses his lips to mine. The kiss is brief, gentle. Filled with love and longing and what will never be.
“I don’t regret a single minute that we spent together,” he says.
“Neither do I.”
He wipes my tears and this time I make it all the way to my car. When I pull out of the driveway I head toward home, and I don’t look back.
57
daniel
I watch Claire drive away. I’ve always been fairly certain that this day would come, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. I tell myself it doesn’t matter that I laid my cards on the table; she was never available in the first place and she never tried to make me think she was.
It will be hard not knowing how she’s doing. If she’s okay. That was the hardest thing about losing Jessie. The way she felt about me didn’t change the way I felt about her, and it didn’t mean that I stopped caring. I let her go only because I thought it was what she wanted.
Claire’s the second woman in a row that I’ve lost and I don’t know how much more of this I can take.
58
claire
I’m quiet the next morning when Elisa and I drive to yoga. I wait until we’re seated on our mats before I tell her about Daniel. “I’m not going to spend time with Daniel anymore.”
“You’re not?”
“No. It turns out that men and women can’t be friends. Not really,” I say.
Elisa takes a drink from her water bottle. “How do you feel about that?”
“Sad. There’s this space that he used to occupy and now it’s empty.” I stretch my arms over my head and exhale. “It was the right thing to do, though.”
“Are you going to tell Chris about Daniel?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to hurt him, and I’m not sure what would hurt him more: telling him about it now that it’s over, or not telling him about it at all.” The instructor is moments away from starting the class when I say, “Elisa?”
She looks over at me. “Yes?”
“Do you think it’s possible to love more than one person? At the same time?”
“I think just about anything is possible when it comes to love,” she says.
59
chris
It’s late when I get back to my hotel room. I’m so goddamned tired of key cards, plastic-wrapped glasses, and ice buckets that I’d be happy to never see another hotel room again. They even have a smell I can’t stand. I don’t know what it is, only that it doesn’t smell remotely like home.
Being back out on the road these last three weeks, after staying home with Claire and the kids, has been hard. Jim made a big deal of welcoming me back and asking about Claire during our last conference call, but that was for the benefit of the twenty other people who were also on the line. I know this because when I called him from the hospital to tell him I was taking a week off he acted like a complete dick.
“It isn’t a good time, Chris,” he said.
“This is my wife, Jim. I’m staying home.” Fuck him. It makes me nervous to leave Claire alone now. It’s been so long since there was a problem that I got way too comfortable. If I hadn’t found her in time . . . well. I still can’t get it out of my head.
Claire assured me that she would be fine. “Mom and Dad will be checking on me,” she said. “Elisa is close by.”
I haven’t said anything to Claire yet, but I’ve been spending a lot of time with Seth, one of the senior software engineers who’s been traveling with us and assisting the implementation team. He joined me for drinks one night and we started talking. He doesn’t say much, but when he does open his mouth, what comes out is brilliant. What he told me the other day, what we stayed up until 4:00 A.M. discussing, blew me away. The possibility of what it could mean for Seth, for me, for my family, is the only thing that’s keeping me motivated right now.
I loosen my tie and sit down on the bed to call Claire. “Hey. How are you?” I ask when she answers.
“I’m fine,” she says. “Feeling good. Are you at the hotel?”
“Just got back. We took the clients out. Some sports bar they wanted to go to. Same old shit,” I say. “How are the kids?”
“They’re good. Josh is building a volcano for science class.”
“The kind with the vinegar and baking soda?”
“Oh, yeah. It’s a regular rite of passage.”
“How about my daughter?”
“She’s okay. A little quiet tonight. She spent a long time in her room rearranging her stuffed animals. I think it soothes her.”
Jordan struggles the most with my absence. I sigh and walk over to the fridge. Use the opener to pry the cap off a bottle.
“Minibar?” Claire asks.
“Amstel,” I say.
“Everything will be fine,” she says.
“Yeah.” I’m no longer satisfied with fine. I used to be, but I’m not anymore. “You should ge
t some sleep. It’s getting late.”
“Okay,” she says. “I’ll see you when you get home.”
“Sleep tight,” I say.
“You, too.”
Later, when I’ve shut my laptop and I’m lying in my hotel bed alone I think about Claire and how much I’ve missed her. I think about how Jim says, “Jump,” and until now, I’ve always said, “How high?” All this for a man who couldn’t understand why I wanted to stay home with my wife after she almost died. If I hadn’t pulled my head out of my own ass and figured out what was really important, how long would it have taken before I turned into someone just like him?
60
claire
I lift the lid on the pot and inhale the smell of basil and tomatoes. The water in the other pot is just coming to a bubble and I grab the box of pasta out of the cupboard. After giving the marinara a final stir, I turn the heat down to low and replace the lid. The door that leads from the garage into the kitchen opens. “Wipe your feet,” I say, without turning around. It rained earlier and the kids have been tracking in mud ever since they got home from school.
“It’s me,” Chris says. I didn’t hear his car pull in, and I whip around, surprised that he’s home so early on a Friday.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to land until eight?”
“I wanted to get home sooner,” he says, setting down his suitcase and his laptop. “I had to fly standby, but I got lucky.” Yawning and rubbing his eyes, he joins me at the stove and lifts the lid on the marinara, inhaling just like I did moments earlier. “That smells good.”
“I used your mom’s recipe,” I say. “It’s the best.” I dump the pasta into the water that’s finally come to a rolling boil and set the timer. “I thought I’d be heating it up for you hours from now.”
Chris loosens his tie and says, “Nope. I can eat with you and the kids tonight.” He removes the tie completely, throws it on the island, and unbuttons the top two buttons on his shirt. “Are they outside?” he asks.
“They’re at Elisa’s, playing with Travis.”
I cross the kitchen to the cupboard where I keep my colander and after I locate it I set it near the edge of the sink. I need a bowl for the pasta and I finally spot the one I want on a high shelf, but I can’t quite reach it even when I’m standing on my tiptoes.
Chris walks up behind me and reaches over my shoulder to grab the bowl. His front is pressed up against my back and he doesn’t move after he sets the bowl on the counter. We don’t speak and suddenly the only sound in the kitchen is the sound of our breathing. He uses one hand to brush my hair to the side and then nuzzles my neck.
“I came home early because I missed you, and I couldn’t stop thinking about you. The other night, when we talked on the phone—after we hung up I laid in that hotel room bed all alone and I couldn’t remember what you smelled like. How you taste. I couldn’t remember, Claire.”
His words make me feel cherished and I want to stand there in the kitchen with his arms wrapped around me and just bask in them. But then something shifts and I feel him. I feel what he’s saying, and the physical side takes over. The side that wants him the way I always have. My desire pushes his affection away and replaces it with something more primal.
Chris flutters a series of soft kisses along my neck and pulls the collar of my shirt to the side so he can reach my shoulder. And he is hard. Very hard. I can tell how much he wants me and a wave of desire reaches the innermost parts of my body. Turning me around, he cups my face in his hands and kisses me as if his life depended on it. I kiss him with just as much intensity, my tongue meeting his and our mouths moving instinctively into the right position, the right angle, the way they have been since he kissed me for the first time over a decade ago.
The edge of the countertop digs into my back, but I don’t care. Chris is sucking on my neck, biting softly, and I run my hands through his hair and press my body as firmly against him as I can. He lifts me up on the counter and starts unbuttoning my shirt. I help him with the buttons and it takes only seconds with us working together for the job to be done. He doesn’t bother taking my shirt off, but once my bra is exposed he reaches around to unhook it and then shoves it up toward my neck so he can get to my breasts. I nearly scream when his tongue makes contact with my nipple. He licks it a few times and then takes the whole thing into his mouth. He’s pulling gently on my other nipple with his thumb and forefinger, and I grab the back of his head and wrap my legs around his waist. The edge of the hard granite countertop prevents him from grinding our lower bodies together and he finally gives up and pulls on the button of my jeans instead. He plunges his hand inside them before he gets the zipper even halfway down. “Oh, Jesus,” he says, when he touches me and discovers how wet I am. He strokes me and the sound of my whimpering fills the kitchen. This only seems to fuel his desire because his breathing is out of control and he starts making a few noises of his own.
I’m reaching for the button on his pants when Josh bangs on the locked sliding glass door off of the kitchen; I can see him out of the corner of my eye. At the same exact time the doorbell rings. It’s Jordan. I know this by the ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dong that reaches the kitchen and will continue until someone goes to the front door. Why don’t they ever use the same entrance? Thankfully, Chris shut the garage when he got home, otherwise they would have burst into the kitchen and caught us in flagrante delicto. The timer for the pasta goes off and the telephone rings, because apparently there’s not enough going on.
Chris groans in frustration and I want time to stand still, because Chris and I desperately need to finish what we’ve started. But instead I remove Chris’s hand, jump off the counter, and quickly zip my jeans and button my shirt, leaving my bra unhooked, focusing only on covering up my nakedness so my children won’t be traumatized. Chris opens the back door for Josh and I go to the front. Ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dong.
“Stop ringing the doorbell,” I say when I unlock the door and fling it open.
“Hi, Mommy,” Jordan says. “Whatcha doin’?”
I step aside so she can come in. “Nothing,” I say. “Just making dinner. Go wash up.”
I turn off the stove, drain the pasta, and combine it with the marinara, then dash into the bathroom to fasten my bra and button my jeans. When I come out, Chris is standing there with rumpled hair and a smile on his face.
“Hungry?” I ask.
“You don’t even know how much,” he says.
I set the salad and pasta on the table and Chris and I transition into parenting mode. Jordan wants butter on her pasta, and a sprinkling of parmesan. “I don’t like Grandma Canton’s sauce. It’s too spicy,” she says.
“It’s not spicy at all,” I say. But Jordan thinks everything is spicy, and I knew this was coming, which is why I scooped some of the pasta into a separate bowl before I added the sauce. I decide this battle is not worth fighting and grab the butter and cheese.
Josh informs us he’s not eating any salad. “I only like ranch,” he says. He points to the bottle of Italian dressing. “I don’t like that kind.”
I get up and grab a new bottle of ranch from the cupboard and hand it to him.
“Thanks, Mom,” he says. Harmony restored. “How come you’re home so early, Dad?” Josh asks.
“I took an earlier flight. I missed you guys,” Chris says, reaching over to ruffle Josh’s hair. “Tell me about what’s going on at school.”
They take turns regaling Chris with their accomplishments and he splits his attention equally between them. At the end of the meal, when he asks them to help clear the table, they do his bidding eagerly, fighting over who gets to carry more dishes to the sink.
I send them off to play while I clean up the kitchen. A thought occurs to me when I’m loading the dishwasher, and I wipe my hands on a towel and open the cupboard. No matter how much I move things around, no matter how har
d I search, I can’t find Chris’s bottle of antidepressants. I’d bet money that I will not be able to find the other bottle, the one he keeps in his suitcase, either.
At eight we give the kids a five-minute warning. We can perform this bedtime routine in our sleep: pajamas, brushing teeth, reading, and tucking in. Tonight, Chris takes Jordan and I take Josh. We field requests for one more kiss, a drink of water. Finally, we turn off their bedroom lights and reconvene downstairs.
“Goddamn it,” Chris yells. He’s gone into our home office to check his e-mail one last time.
I pop my head in. “What’s wrong?”
“Jim needs my reports. The ones I didn’t finish because I caught the earlier flight.” Chris exhales in frustration and pinches the bridge of his nose. “He said he didn’t need them until Monday, so I didn’t work on them on the plane. For once, I didn’t want to work on the plane.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’ll wait for you.”
Chris gets out of his chair and walks around to the front of the desk, where I’m standing. “I’ll be up as soon as I can. I promise. Give me one hour, two at the most.” He pulls me toward him and puts his arms around me. The kiss he places on my lips is tender and my joy knows no bounds because I feel as if my husband is finally trying to make his way back to me.
61
chris
My hatred of Jim grows every day. I have no doubt that asking for the reports is some kind of power play designed to make him feel as though he has the upper hand. He’s been extra difficult since I took that time off after Claire got out of the hospital.
I power up my laptop and open my spreadsheet, working as fast as I can. But then it hits me. If Claire is upstairs waiting for me, why the hell am I down here? Shouldn’t Jim be the one who has to wait? Hasn’t Claire waited long enough? I slam the lid of my laptop shut and take the stairs two at a time.
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