The Truth Is a Theory

by Karyn Bristol

  ————

  An hour and a half later, Gavin slumped back into their York Avenue apartment, exhausted and discouraged. With no cab in sight, he had run most of the way to Zoe’s Park Avenue apartment, and by the time he had arrived, panting and sweating in the crisp October night, the paramedics were already wheeling an unconscious Zoe out. Helplessly, he stood and watched them race by him. One of the paramedics had taken pity on him—“There’s no point in following us; go home and check on her later.” She was probably going to be fine, he had added, but she had to have her stomach pumped. The ambulance raced away, sirens screaming, lights flashing, and the revolving colors pulsed across his damp face: red, white, red, white. Then, silence.

  He stood motionless in his grey Erikson sweatshirt, shivering while the sweat dried on him. Then, before he started home, he went into Zoe’s building to call Tess and let her know that Zoe was on her way to the hospital.

  ————

  Tess, still in her blue men’s pajamas, sat stiffly at the round kitchen table with a cup of untouched coffee in front of her. As she listened to Gavin’s voice boom out from the machine, her finger absently ran around the inside of the mug handle, tracing half-circles over and over again on the warm ceramic. When the message ended, she stood up and walked around the apartment, methodically flicking switches, flooding the dark rooms in light. Once every light but Juliette’s was bright, she sat back down at the table to wait. Her finger resumed running mindless laps.

  Gavin took one step into the kitchen and froze. He blinked in the bright light.

  “I packed you a bag,” Tess said evenly, her eyes on her coffee, her finger still in motion on her mug.

  Gavin glanced at the small, bloated duffel bag lying on the floor and then looked back at Tess.

  Tess looked up. “Why would she call you, Gavin? She’s got lots of other friends.”

  “Tess.” He rubbed his eyes. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe… I told her at the party that if she ever needed help, she could count on me.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “She seemed like she was in trouble. Come on, Tess. You saw her, she was a mess. I wanted to let her know we were there for her.”

  “We or you? Just how often have you been there for her Gavin?”

  Gavin began to move towards her. “Tess,” he said gently. “I’m not cheating on you with Zoe.” He paused. “Look, I know we’ve been having a hard time lately, but it’s just a hiccup, everyone has them. We’re good, we’re fine. I love you; I care about Zoe. Big difference.”

  Tess was softening. She wanted to believe him, but she was afraid. Was she just being stupid?

  Gavin began to kneel down next to Tess’s chair. He said quietly, “It’s just ridiculous.”

  Ridiculous? Ridiculous? The bile peaked in Tess’ throat again and she wanted to drown him with it, to choke him with her own vitriolic doubts. “I know all about that big difference, Gavin. It’s like the big difference I feel when I’m with Rob.”

  Gavin stopped mid-kneel and straightened up again. “What?”

  Tess put her head in her hands, suddenly deflated. “Oh, Gavin, this isn’t working. You’re cheating, I’m cheating.”

  “Tess?” Gavin paled.

  “Us. Our marriage. It’s not working,” Tess said, depleted now after vomiting her own admission.

  “You’re sleeping with Rob? Rob Landry?”

  Yes, she wanted to say defiantly, the whole purpose of the admission having been defiance, revenge. But she was too dejected to be defiant; too disheartened about where this conversation and their marriage was going, had gone. “Once. I slept with him once.”

  Gavin’s face crumpled. “Oh my God.” He took a deep breath and leaned on the back of the chair. He was so slumped over Tess thought he was going to lie down on the floor.

  Tess looked up at him. “And you?”

  “I’m not sleeping with Zoe.” He took another deep breath. “I admit, I cheated on you a long time ago with her, but it was years ago, before we were married. I’ve wanted to tell you, but then I thought maybe the past is best left in the past.” He looked her in the eyes, his spine straightened again. “It was wrong, both the cheating and the not telling you. But since we’ve been married, since we’ve been engaged for that matter, I’ve been faithful to you, I swear. I love you. I have no reason to cheat.” He waited. “What’s your excuse?”

  “My excuse?” Her head was stuffed with thick white cotton, all her staunch, lined-up reasons suddenly unwieldy fluff. Why had she done it? Had it really been as simple as the fact that Rob made her feel special? And if so, then that highlighted a malignancy in herself, not in Gavin. “Oh Gavin, look at me. My excuse is that you have a fat, tired, nagging wife. The farthest thing from a Victoria’s Secret model. And there’s Zoe—beautiful, funny, beautiful—the contrast is too striking. And there is something between you two, I can’t be that paranoid.”

  “Wow, Tess. I’d like to be sympathetic here. Maybe another man would come over and hug you, make you feel better, tell you how much I love you, and that oh my God, the way you just described yourself is the farthest thing from how I see you. But you’ve just knocked the wind out of me. To put it mildly.” He backed up. “I think I’ll take this,” he picked up the bag, “and go to a hotel for a while. I need to think.”

  She watched him walk down the hall and peek in on Juliette, sleeping peacefully in her stuffed-animal-filled pink room, oblivious to the damage and destruction right outside her door. He stepped into her room and Tess imagined him leaning way over the crib side, giving Juliette a soft kiss on her cheek, maybe tucking a strand of blond hair behind her ear, the way he always did before he went to bed. Then he re-emerged from her room and gently closed her door.

  He walked back through the kitchen—Tess hadn’t moved from her seat at the table—and clutched his duffel bag to his chest like he was holding a flotation device. He paused at the front door, his hand on the gold knob. Tess watched the muscles in his shoulders tense, and then, without a word, he opened the door and walked out. The apartment door clicked shut behind him.

  ————

  Out in the suburbs a few hours later, the day had burst into a New England postcard—a rare October Sunday where the cool air and the hot sun duke it out with equal muscle, and the deep violet blue of the sky is only outdone by the vivid fire of the fall foliage. Allie and Megan were stretched out on top of a red fleece blanket, toasting their faces in the sun and trying to stay as still as possible so as not to catch the wind’s cool sting. Crumpled white sandwich wrappers stained with mustard and pickle juice were pushed to the side, and two huge bags of just-picked red apples—the product of their morning’s efforts—were parked in the shade of a nearby tree. Dana and Jared (who had 10-month old Maggie in a carrier on his back) were chasing Matthew and Gillian across the worn grass, and once caught, the kids were scooped up for a quick, squealing squeeze-kiss, then released again for a new round of “Can’t catch me!” (catch me Daddy, catch me!). The chase was just far enough away from Allie and Megan that specific words were lost in the breeze, but the melody of ecstasy was loud and clear.

  “So what time does Maggie nap?” Allie said, her eyes closed.

  “She totally missed her morning one, so I’m surprised she’s not asleep in that backpack right now. She’ll probably conk out in the car on the way to my mother-in-law’s.”

  “You’re going to Rose’s?”

  Megan nodded, picking a blade of grass.

  “I thought you guys weren’t making that weekly pilgrimage anymore.” Without turning her face, Allie glanced sideways at Megan.

  “We’ve cut way back to every other week.” Megan laughed, her long copper hair ablaze in the sun. “It’s not so bad. She’s great with Maggie, and we’ll get an amazing meal.”

  “I still salivate when I think of her lasagna.”
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  “I just have to steel myself to all the heavy sighing and oh-so-subtle cracks about my job and Jared’s staying home with Maggie.” Megan reflected back on their last visit to Rose’s. Maggie had been cranky and tired, and when Megan rushed over to soothe her, she’d screamed herself scarlet, arching away from Megan and stretching out her milky white arms towards Jared. Even though Megan understood that she was reaching for the person who most of the time held her when she cried, it hurt enough without her mother-in-law’s, “It’s normal dear. You work such long hours.” The tsk-tsk in her voice had been deafening.

  “She totally disapproves, and doesn’t do a very good job of hiding it,” Megan continued. “Come to think of it, I’m not sure she is trying to hide it. Every time Jared tells a story about something cute that Maggie did, Rose makes a point of looking at me as if to say, see what you’re missing? And most of the time, I’d been there to see Maggie do it! I could’ve been the one telling the story.”

  “You would think she’d be happy that her son is an amazing dad.” Allie paused. “It’s a great reflection on her actually, that she raised such a warm and loving son.”

  “Oh, no. She sees it as a blemish on her, that her kid has a screw loose.” Megan sighed. “The whole thing’s just too unconventional for her. She thinks I’m cold because I’m working, that Jared’s making this huge sacrifice because I refuse to. So she blames me and pities him.”

  “But Jared wanted to stay at home with Maggie.”

  “I know. She can’t see that this, right now, is what works best for all three of us. Here’s my theory: in her mind, what Jared’s chosen to do is unmanly for two reasons—he’s doing woman’s work, and he isn’t providing for his family. That’s unacceptable to her, so she rewrites the script. Rather than thinking of her son as stripped of his manhood, he’s heroic, a martyr that is holding his family together by the skin of his teeth. And I, of course, am the wicked witch.”

  “That’s so unfair. She knows how much Maggie means to you.”

  “It’s not her fault really. She’s traditional; thinking outside the box isn’t her forte. It’s not a big deal.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Sometimes I think her real issue with me is that we didn’t name Maggie after her.”

  They both gazed at their husbands romping in the sun with the kids. A minute or so later, Megan continued.

  “She’s not the only one who looks at us cross-eyed once they hear that Jared stays home with Maggie. I can see the questions popping into people’s eyes like little thought bubbles. ‘Was Jared fired? Was he unsuccessful? And what about that mother? Is she so selfish that she couldn’t take a few years off?’ I know other working moms get that too, but people can write that off as all about the second income. With us, one of us is staying home, it’s just not MOM.”

  Allie nodded.

  “Sometimes I question myself too,” Megan said softly. “Especially after I’m riding home and it’s later than I thought, and I ache to hold Maggie, to see her smile at me, but she’s sound asleep when I get there.” Megan felt a hot flash of anguish. She looked at her friend. “Don’t judge me.”

  Allie shook her head. “Never.”

  Megan sighed. “Well, I judge myself.”

  “You’re doing what we’re all doing. Your best.”

  Megan smiled at her friend. “I know there are times when Jared wishes he was at work, but he loves staying home with Maggie. And I know myself, I would get antsy staying home all day. I need to be busy, I need to work or I might just go crazy. Plus I really love my job. Is that terrible?” She rolled her eyes. “Don’t answer that.”

  “You’re an awesome mom. Maggie’s lucky to have you.” Allie watched Matthew running across the grass, his arms swinging determinedly. Allie smiled. “You’re like the woman who can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and never, ever let you forget you’re a man.”

  Megan laughed. “I think there’s a reason there are no kids in that jingle.” She looked at Allie. “Now that song is going to haunt me for the rest of the day. What was that ad for anyway?”

  “Some perfume, I think,” Allie said.

  Then they dissolved into laughter as the finale of the old commercial rang through their minds and they both sang out the name of the perfume in unison, “Enjolie!”

  “Is there a reason that song has survived in the archives of our minds for decades?” Megan said.

  “It has to be the brilliant lyrics; the copy is always the key,” Allie said, smirking at her friend.

  ————

  Gavin did not notice the gorgeous autumn weather outside his hotel room window. He didn’t notice much of anything. He had been sitting on the edge of a gold-and-brown polyester bedspread for hours, paralyzed with disbelief, unable to lie down, and too exhausted to even click on the TV. Tess slept with Rob Landry. How could I have missed that? Why? Questions knocked back and forth in his head like a racquetball that he couldn’t hit. He wasn’t angry; he assumed the anger would come later. Right now he was in deep shock and he was bleeding.

  The wail of a siren jolted him out of himself and into the morning, and stiffly, like an old man whose joints are shot through with arthritis, he showered and dressed for work. He was halfway down the street before he realized it was Sunday. He slowed—a braking train pulling into a station—and then stood still on the sidewalk in his gray suit, despondence rooting him to the pavement, snuffing out his smallest decision. He lost 15 minutes—a well-dressed statue forcing blue-jeaned strollers to detour around him. Finally, a pretty woman who gave him a wide berth and a wary look impelled him forward, and he trudged back to his hotel, blind to the fat stacks of The Sunday Times on the sidewalk, unaffected by the smell of coffee steaming out from corner delis. He spent the rest of the day in blue jeans, slumped in the armchair of his small, stuffy room, reexamining the old files of every conversation, argument, and romantic exchange he and Tess had recently engaged in. Every so often he stumbled onto a statement or remembered an odd moment that in hindsight raised a red flag, but that in the landscape of their life had seemed completely benign.

  Every so often, he glanced at the phone. He was dying to talk to Juliette—Sunday mornings were his special time with her and they often went out for breakfast before embarking on a toddler-sized adventure together—but he didn’t want to call and have to speak to Tess; he was afraid he might say something that he could never take back. The thought of being cut off from his daughter spurred a fresh wave of sadness, and with it, the first surge of anger.

  By late afternoon he was too agitated to stay in his room, and as he needed more than a bartender to talk to, he found himself back out on the street, his feet marching the well-worn path to Zoe, who he assumed was now home in her apartment. He felt a brief pang of guilt, a single bell toll, once his destination became a clear goal in his mind, but his anger snuffed it out and loudly drummed out a faster pace.

  “A Gavin Keller here to see you, miss.”

  Gavin stood with his hands in his pockets and looked around the lobby, even though he’d seen it hundreds of times.

  The doorman looked at Gavin. “She’s not up for visitors right now.”

  “Tell her “please.” Tell her for just a minute.”

  The doorman hesitated, then relayed the message. He looked at Gavin. “Go on up.”

  “Hey,” Gavin said as the door opened into Zoe’s apartment. He was instantly hit with a flash of Zoe on a stretcher, only a few hours before.

  Zoe smiled faintly, her scratchy voice a decibel above a whisper. “I hope you don’t mind,” she indicated her fluffy white robe, “my comfortable look.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Okay, I guess. Considering my insides are somewhere back on the hospital floor.” She lay back down on the couch.

  Gavin slouched into the chair across from her.

  “But how are you?” She looked
more closely at him. “You actually look worse than I do, if that’s possible.” She adjusted the pillows under her head. “Can I offer you a robe? Notice I didn’t say drink. I think the smell of it might send me leaping out the window.”

  “I’m not going to stay long,” Gavin said. “I just wanted to check on you, see if you were okay.”

  “And?”

  “You seem to be okay… ”

  “No, I meant and what else? You look as if there’s a something else.” She chewed on her lip. “Do you want to tell me what happened last night? I’m braced to hear if rock bottom is just one step lower.” She paused. “Or do I not want to know?”

  Gavin gently sketched out what he knew of her ordeal, and then described his own train wreck with Tess. Zoe listened with wide eyes.

  “Tess had an affair? I’ll be damned,” she said softly.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know. I just never expected it from her.”

  “You sound like you respect her now,” Gavin said.

  “Sorry. It’s not that. Some people just surprise you, that’s all.”

  “Tell me about it.” Gavin slowly exhaled all his oxygen.

  Zoe swallowed hard. “Gavin, why are you here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know if Tess knows you were here, it’s going to make all this worse, right?”

  He shrugged. “I’m visiting a friend.”

  Zoe frowned.

  “And anyway, how can it get worse?” He sank a little lower in his chair.

  Zoe grimaced as she tried to sit up, and ended up just propping herself a little higher up on her pillows. “Gavin.” She waited until he looked her in the eyes. “You know even if I could sit up, I can’t be The Shoulder here.”