Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties

by Camille Pagán

  “I’m afraid I would,” said Rose stoically. She turned to me. “Maggie, you’ve been a gracious host, as ever.”

  “Thanks, Rose,” I said. “I appreciate your coming. Adam—”

  I was about to thank him for coming, too, when he turned to Zoe. “Would you and Jack mind taking my car and driving Grandma home?”

  Had he just suggested what I thought he had suggested? He actually wanted to spend time with me, alone? Maybe he was rethinking things even faster than I had ever allowed myself to dream of.

  “I’d be happy to,” said Zoe.

  “Only if it’s not too much trouble,” warbled Rose.

  Jack put his arm around her. “Of course not, Grandma.”

  “Great,” said Adam. “We’ll have dessert when you return. In the meantime, your mother and I can take this opportunity to catch up on a few things.” He met my eye and pursed his lips into a sheepish half smile.

  I knew this expression well. It was the one Adam made when he realized he had made a mistake and intended to fix it.

  SEVEN

  “So.” Adam was standing in the foyer in front of the framed map of Chicago I had bought for him for his forty-fifth birthday. The map was drawn in 1870, the year before the Great Chicago Fire that reshaped the city, and Adam had said it was the best gift he had ever received. He was a cartophile—that was the word for a map enthusiast, he had told me when we were still dating. I wondered if Jillian, who had probably only ever oriented herself with a GPS, knew this about my husband.

  “So,” I said quietly. “I’m surprised you stayed.”

  His pinpoint pupils belied his casual shrug. “We haven’t really had a chance to talk.”

  Not for my lack of trying. “No, we haven’t,” I said.

  “How have you been doing?” he asked, making no indication that he intended to leave the foyer.

  Awful, I wanted to say. Worse than after Jack had officially moved out of the house and into his New York apartment; worse than almost any other point in my life other than my mother dying.

  But I was trying to put my best foot forward, and admitting any of this would be the opposite of that. Also, it occurred to me suddenly that I was not actually doing awfully—at least not in that moment. After all, Adam was back in our house, even if he was lingering in the entryway. He was here to be with me, on purpose. “You first,” I said.

  “I feel bad,” he said, and as I stared at him, I saw that he really did; in spite of his sharp outfit and manufactured pleasantry, he looked like a man who was slowly being flattened beneath the weight of his own self-loathing. As much as it pained me to see him like this, I was still glad he was suffering. Redemption was only possible after contrition and confession.

  “Yes, well,” I said, still standing with my arms crossed over my chest so I wouldn’t leap toward him and embrace him.

  “That’s why I wanted to talk to you,” he added, glancing into the living room. “I wanted to make things right between us.”

  My heart swelled. Adam was a man who clung to the principles of morality and justice, or at least he had been before he put his pelvis in charge of his life. But everything in his face told me he was again allowing his frontal lobe to guide him. He was returning to himself—and me.

  “Should we go sit?” he said.

  “Let’s.”

  I had just sat on the sofa when Adam held up a finger. “One second,” he said, and dashed into the dining room. I heard clanking; when he reappeared, he was holding two tumblers, one of which he handed to me. “It’s the twenty-year Glenlivet Reddy bought me when I turned fifty,” he said.

  I almost blurted out that I was not drinking, but if I had, I would have followed it with an explanation of why, which would have led to a confession of just how low I had dipped since he left. I was trying to show Adam that I was better than ever—not a sad sack who had to give up booze. Anyway, wasn’t this an alcohol-infused olive branch on his part? I could hardly turn down such a thing.

  But Adam, who seemed to have mistaken my momentary hesitation for denial, frowned. “Come on, Maggie. You can’t expect me to have both of these.”

  “You’re right.” I took the crystal tumbler from him; I would just have a small sip. “What are we drinking to?”

  He sat on the sofa, and though he was not a large man by any stretch of the imagination, he sank into the cushions. When he came home again, we would need to pick out new furniture. “To peace,” he said.

  I began to give him a skeptical look, but as our eyes met, my tough front immediately gave way to longing. Even after the way he had hurt me, I loved him. And I had counted on him. How would I ever trust again if he reneged on the most important promise anyone had ever made me?

  I wouldn’t. And that hinted at a future even darker and bleaker than the one I occasionally allowed myself to picture.

  I ran a finger over the tumbler’s cut-glass pattern. “To peace.” Then I tossed my scotch back, managing to swallow the majority in a single gulp.

  Oh—

  Oh my.

  The amber liquid was at once searing and delicious. I finished the sip left at the bottom, then handed my glass to Adam. “Pour me another,” I said. I almost added please, but it was probably the single word in the English language that I had used more often than he had during our marital tenure.

  He took my glass, nodded, then drained his own. “Think I’ll do the same,” he murmured as he stood and disappeared into the dining room.

  When he returned with a glass in each hand, a surge of warmth came over me. While this was perhaps one part liquor, it was also equal parts love, familiarity, and the sort of heightened desire one has when one has not known a man intimately in more than half a year.

  “You seem like you’re doing a lot better than the last time we saw each other,” Adam said, handing me my glass.

  Did I? I smiled softly and took a sip. “Maybe I am,” I said, and then I had another sip, and a third. At dinner, I had unintentionally emulated Rose’s favorite calorie-curbing technique and had mostly pushed my meal around on my plate. The Glenlivet hit me fast and hard, opening one of memory’s strange chambers and pushing me into the past.

  Adam and I were lying in bed one morning in his law-school apartment. I don’t remember much about the apartment anymore, but he had dark blue flannel sheets that somehow made his small studio feel like the safest place I had ever been. The sun was streaming down through the high window, and Adam was tracing a finger up my bare spine. “What do you want most in life, Maggie?” he asked, his touch sending waves of goose bumps across my skin. “Whatever it is, I want to give it to you.”

  I remember that I could only offer myself as an answer, because I could not find the word for what I was feeling. What I wanted was what he had already promised and provided, except I wanted it forever: Shelter, in the most all-encompassing meaning of the word. A family. Love.

  I pushed that mental door shut and looked at Adam, who seemed to be gazing at me not as the person who had left me, but as the steady, loving man who intended to grow old with me. His pupils had all but swallowed the green of his irises, and I let myself sink into that dark place. You still love me, don’t you? I asked wordlessly. Are you ready to again offer me whatever I want? Because I’m prepared to take it.

  Emboldened, I moved toward him on the sofa. Jillian Smith was now so far in the distance that she was practically the horizon itself. I, however, was Adam Harris’ wife, the woman who had birthed his children and shared his life.

  Adam reached forward and touched my arm, and his fingers were electric on my skin.

  “Maggie,” he said gruffly, and I could feel his gaze move from my face to my neck and down to my cleavage, which had been highlighted by my wrap dress and, per Dionne’s suggestion, the slightest dusting of First Crush Baby blush.

  Then I unintentionally glanced at Adam’s hand on my forearm, and in doing so, at his stainless steel watch. The drive to Rose’s retirement home was just forty-two mi
nutes—thirty with Zoe behind the wheel. The kids would be back soon; I needed to move fast.

  Adam’s hand still on my arm, I inched even closer and let my own hand rest on his leg. His thigh was solid beneath my fingers, and he glanced up at me.

  Was he . . . interested? Yes. Aroused? It wasn’t out of the question.

  But I also saw something different in his eyes—something I didn’t recognize. Maybe he really had changed, as he had implied at dinner, and it was for the better. Maybe we both had. I had recently read something in the Tribune about a couple who had been married for fifty years. When asked about the longevity of their relationship, the wife said she’d had three different marriages with the same man; in order to survive, they had needed to change with each other again and again. Adam and I could learn to transform together.

  “Maggie,” he said quietly, taking my hand off his thigh and grasping it in his own. “There’s something I need to tell you.” His jaw was peppered with stubble, which reminded me of nights on the dock at the lake house we used to rent each summer. Adam let himself fully unwind while we were there. It only lasted one week, but it was glorious. The kids stopped going with us when they started college, and soon after, we stopped going, too. Adam said we would find another vacation spot—a smaller, more romantic place for just the two of us—but it had been years since we stared at a placid lake, feeling right about ourselves and the world. “About Jillian . . .”

  The optimism I had been feeling seconds earlier evaporated. Adam and Jillian were serious. So serious that even though he and I weren’t divorced, he had already asked her to marry him. Maybe she even had a baby on the way. Poor Jack and Zoe—this would be such a terrible adjustment for them.

  He grimaced. “We’re not together.”

  Thank God. “Why didn’t you say so?” I said breathlessly.

  “The thing is, there is no Jillian,” he said. “Not really.”

  In an instant, the sofa beneath me was a waterbed. “What do you mean, there is no Jillian?” I could not manage to translate what he had said into anything that remotely applied to me. “Are you saying . . .” I stared at him, my mouth gaping open. Why wasn’t he filling in the blanks and making this easier for me? “Does Jillian Smith not exist?” I managed.

  “Jillian Smith exists. She’s just not my girlfriend.”

  I continued to stare. This was good news—wasn’t it? So . . . why wasn’t I happy? “Adam,” I said, “I honestly don’t understand what you’re telling me.”

  He rubbed his forehead. “We had coffee a bunch of times, and dinner a few times, too. We were friends at first, and then I guess it was like we were dating, sort of. But I—” He looked up and gave me a woeful look. “I thought about sleeping with her. I wanted to. She wanted to. It was literally the first time I ever actually wanted to cheat on you, Maggie. I couldn’t do it, but wanting to felt like a sign, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I needed to end our marriage.”

  I’m not sure when or how, but I had risen from the sofa and had backed myself against a bookshelf. “You never even slept with her?”

  He shook his head. “I kissed her. Nothing more.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” This came out as a scream-cry, as I used to describe my children’s temper tantrums. Had Adam just informed me that all the erotic and not-our-style acts I had assumed he was doing with one Jillian Smith were but a torturous figment of my imagination? I could barely process the barrage of garbage coming out of his mouth.

  “I’m telling you now,” he said. “That’s why I agreed to come tonight. I wanted to make peace. I don’t want any more lies.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “This does not make peace. It makes—” I wanted to say war, but that wasn’t right. What it made was my life even worse.

  He hung his head. “I’m sorry, Maggie. I know I screwed up. I don’t want things to end on this note.”

  End.

  My eyes shifted from Adam to the crystal tumbler sitting on the coffee table and back again. The glass was thick enough to do serious damage if I lobbed it at Adam, and to be honest, I was considering it.

  It would have been better, I thought suddenly, if he had dropped dead instead of leaving me. Then I could have enjoyed the pure, unadulterated grief of being a widow.

  “Adam.” A sob was lurking in my throat. “How could you possibly be so cruel?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said lamely. “I should have come clean a long time ago.”

  No, you should not have, I thought, my stomach churning. If he was really going to leave me, he should have stuck with his lie. Now I had two terrible truths to live with: not only did my husband no longer love me, there was no other woman to blame. I, Maggie Halfmoon Harris, had simply not been enough. And if I had not been enough for the man who had always claimed to love me more than I loved him (“Don’t feel bad about it,” he used to tease), then—well, there was no hope for me.

  “Go,” I said, pointing toward the foyer.

  “I’m sorry,” Adam said again.

  It was like a bomb had gone off. Static reverberation rang through my ears; all I could see before me was destruction. “GO,” I yelled.

  Adam, who seemed shell-shocked himself, just stood there staring at me. So I ran to the closet, grabbed his coat, and threw it out the front door into the snow.

  It was a wretched night, and the wind sent snow shooting into the house. I stood in the spray, barely feeling the cold stinging my skin. Because I could not speak, I glared at Adam and pointed outside.

  There was hesitation in his eyes; he probably thought I was going to hurt him or myself, and at least one of these things was a strong possibility.

  Then he looked at me once last time and marched into the dark. The kids still had his car, and nothing within walking distance was open on Thanksgiving. But his well-being was no longer my concern. Now—finally—I understood that.

  The minute I shut the door behind him, I fell to my knees and put my forehead on the cold tile. I couldn’t even cry; I just lay there moaning like I had been mortally wounded. In spite of my gift for imagining ghastly possibilities, I had dramatically underestimated my own worst-case scenario.

  My husband hadn’t replaced me at all. He simply didn’t want me to be a part of his life.

  EIGHT

  The house I had been desperate to keep suddenly became the most unbearable place I could imagine being.

  “You can come stay with me in New York for a while,” Zoe had said the day after Thanksgiving. I had managed to pull myself off the floor before she and Jack got home from dropping off Rose, and I had not told either of them what had transpired with Adam. But they were smart enough to know that his walking around the neighborhood on an eighteen-degree night meant it couldn’t have ended well. Now instead of gloating that she had told me so, my daughter was inviting me to disrupt her overpacked schedule.

  “I really appreciate the offer, sweetie,” I said to Zoe. “And maybe I’ll take you up on it at some point. But I can’t just call off work and fly to New York right now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Terry is counting on me to be at work.”

  I could tell she was trying hard not to roll her eyes at me. “Screw Terry. For once in your life, Mom, it would do you good to focus on what you want.”

  I had done exactly that with Adam, and look where that had landed me. “Zoe Halfmoon Harris, that is not appropriate,” I said.

  She scrunched up her nose. “Yeah, well, screw Terry, and screw Dad, too. I don’t know what happened between you, but I know it wasn’t good.”

  No, it wasn’t. I felt like I had been buried up to my neck in the sand and was watching the tide begin to roll in. But I didn’t want to give my children reasons to resent their father. “I’m going to be fine,” I told Zoe. “Just wait and see.”

  The afternoon after Jack and Zoe returned to New York, I drifted through the house like a ghost, a large glass of wine in hand. Five
o’clock was hours away, but what was the point of self-care now?

  Once bustling with noise and activity and real live humans, our home had become a museum of Harris family history. The faded red walls of Adam’s home office bore dark rectangles where his diplomas had hung. Our bedroom was strewn with clothes, which I could not bring myself to hang in my half-empty closet; across the hall, Jack’s bedroom was stuffed with belongings that he swore he would retrieve as soon as he settled down. Then I let myself into Zoe’s room. The quilt Rose had paid someone to sew using fabric scraps from Zoe’s old baby clothes was draped across her daybed. The sight of it made me want to weep. I had been so fortunate to raise two healthy, interesting children, but my fortune seemed to resurrect as loss. How had it all flown by so fast?

  Zoe had taken most of the framed photos from her old dresser, but had left behind one of Adam, Jack, Zoe, and me, decked in outlandish Christmas sweaters that Adam’s brother, Rick, had bought us as gag gifts.

  It was a rare photo of me, and I had been ridiculously happy when it was taken. Of course I had; I had been with the people I loved most.

  I was still staring at the photo when the phone rang. I assumed it would be Rose. But caller ID revealed a local number I didn’t recognize, and I was curious enough to pick up.

  “May I please speak with Maggie Harris?” The person on the other end sounded like she was going to ask me to share a few pertinent details about my identity so that an almost-legit-sounding company would claim to lower my mortgage rate while enabling a woman in Arizona to purchase bedazzled Victoria’s Secret thongs using a credit card registered in my name.

  “Yes,” I said cautiously. “May I ask who this is?”

  “This is Barbara Kline from Bridgewater Travel. I’m calling on behalf of Mark Johnson, who arranged your upcoming trip to Rome. Mark is no longer with the company, so I’ll be working with you from here on out.”

  The woman may as well have reached through the phone and slapped me, and I stood there blinking. In the chaos of the past few months, I had completely forgotten about the romantic trip I had planned back when I was under the impression Adam and I were happily married.