The Stuff That Never Happened

by Maddie Dawson

  “What are we doing?” I cried. “Why is this all right?”

  He looked at me with cold eyes. “Good question. Why is it all right with you?”

  “It’s all right because I love you. Because I have … a soul that finds expression in you … in this. Because when I’m here, I feel … I feel like I never want to be anywhere else. Like I’m in the right place.”

  “And you don’t feel that with Grant.” It was a statement.

  “It’s different with Grant.”

  He laughed. “It’s different with Grant? Wait a minute.” His eyes went opaque on me. “Wait. Are you—are you saying that you and Grant … do this? You sleep with him?”

  “Jeremiah. Stop it.” I swallowed.

  “You fuck him.”

  “Yeah. Come on, Jeremiah. We just got married. I sleep in the same bed with him every night. It’s going to happen. It’s not like this. It’s not anywhere near what this is, but it has to happen sometimes.”

  “No,” he said, “it doesn’t.”

  “What are you saying, that you and Carly never …?”

  “Never. Well. Once in a blue moon. Like, how old are the twins?”

  “Come on. You did not sleep with her last when she got pregnant with the twins!”

  He laughed bitterly. “No, of course not.” He looked off into space again. “God damn!” His mouth was twitching. “I can’t fucking believe this. You’ve got two guys loving you, and I’m just one of them. Who the hell do you think you are?” He let out a bitter, tight laugh.

  Who, indeed, did I think I was? I sat there and thought that what I was supposed to do now was to tell him that he was the only one, and that sleeping with him meant more to me than anything that had ever happened with Grant or with anyone else, and it would be true, but I couldn’t say it. I was furious now, furious and hurt.

  I didn’t say anything. I started putting my clothes back on.

  He came over and silently started undoing my buttons as soon as I had fastened each one. He said, “So when you and he go into your room at night …”

  “It’s not all the time,” I said. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not what you’re thinking.”

  “I know. I’m being ridiculous. Come on back to bed. It doesn’t matter anyway.”

  But things started to unravel after that. I could feel Jeremiah’s eyes on me whenever I said anything to Grant. It was so unexpected, this jealousy, the way he would darken if there was even the slightest positive interaction between Grant and me. It came out in our lovemaking, too. He was more insistent, more emotional. He would hold on to my arms too hard; there would be moments when the look on his face actually frightened me.

  One day we were in Linnea’s bed, and we made love and it was intense and passionate and almost angry, and when we finished and were just lying there—a time I had once adored, with its easy, drowsy talk, his reading the novel to me—he said, “So. Did you and he … last night?”

  As it happened, we had.

  “No,” I said. “No.”

  “Yes. You did.”

  I bit him playfully on the arm. “Then why are you asking me this if you don’t believe my answer?”

  He pulled his arm away. “Because I want to see if you’re being honest with me.”

  “Look, why are you being this way?”

  “Because I heard you. You were making love.”

  I stopped short. “We’ve been over this, haven’t we? He’s my husband. He expects that sometimes he’s going to get laid. Do you want me to have to explain to him that I can’t have sex with him because I’m sleeping with you? Is that what you want?”

  He stared up at the ceiling for a long time. I held my breath and watched his eyes flicker. “That might be interesting. Interesting and inflammatory. Certainly unconventional.”

  “Jeremiah! What do you want from me? Huh? What am I supposed to do?”

  He got up, all in one fluid motion, and started getting dressed, turned away from me.

  “What?” I said. “Just tell me what you expect.”

  “If you don’t know, then I can’t possibly tell you,” he said. He put on his jeans and buttoned his shirt, a soft blue flannel plaid one that I’d always liked. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t trust you. And I don’t have the stomach to just sit by and watch this play out.”

  “No. Stop. Tell me what you think I’m supposed to do. Tell me and I’ll do it.”

  He smiled, a cold pitying smile that made me want to hit him. “I’m not going to do any such thing, Annabelle.” He picked up his backpack and walked to the door. I couldn’t believe it.

  “Fine!” I said. “Then I think the time has come for Grant and me to move out.” My mouth was dry. I waited for him to say that I shouldn’t do that, to beg me to stay the way he had the last time. But all he said was, “Well, suit yourself.”

  “We’ll start looking for a place immediately.”

  “Excellent idea,” he told me coldly, and walked out and closed the door.

  I WAS so mad that I got dressed and went to the building next door and, lo and behold, rented us an apartment. It was that easy. I was shocked. Would it have been that easy all along? Were there apartments simply for the plucking?

  We moved out of Carly and Jeremiah’s place two weeks later, and I made up my mind that I would not have any more to do with him.

  Magda came to visit right after we moved. Grant was too busy, so she helped me with the necessary settling-in stuff, buying a dish drainer and a mop, bath towels and pots and pans—all the things that I hadn’t had to think about before now.

  She tended to both Grant and me, in her vast, comforting way. She was big and bosomy and knew how to talk as though she were spreading a healing balm over everything. She told Grant he needed to pay more attention to me now that we were living by ourselves. When he didn’t care what couch we bought, she actually went and chucked him under the chin and said, “Dahlink. You have to care! It’s what you signed up for, back there in California in that dust storm of a wedding you guys had. One of the vows was caring about the couch. Don’t you remember that one?”

  She made him laugh. He said okay, let’s get the green couch with the gold-flecked pillows.

  When she and I were alone, her pronouncements were firm and sure.

  “Thank God you’re through with Jeremiah,” she said. “See? It’s perfect. You had your affair, your minor scandal, and you got away with it. So now you can go back to your marriage and keep it your own little secret. And you even have a new green couch.”

  What a simple way to look at things! But, of course, I wasn’t through with Jeremiah.

  [thirteen]

  2005

  He is sitting in Starbucks when I get there. Which is good. I couldn’t possibly have sat there waiting and watching for him. There are some things I know about myself now, and I know I would have left.

  As it is, I almost didn’t come. I woke up with my heart pounding, realizing I’d dreamed about him all night long. Without even thinking, I rolled over and grabbed my cell phone and called Grant. I just wanted to hear his voice. Maybe I wanted him to reach through the telephone and stop me from going to see Jeremiah, to say something that would give me some kind of sign. I believe in signs, and the sign I got was not good. He said, “Is everything all right?” instead of hello. Who answers the phone, “Is everything all right?”

  “Yeah. It’s fine,” I said to him. “I just wanted to say good morning to you.”

  “Good morning,” he said and then fell silent.

  “Did you get a lot of snow last night?”

  More silence. Then, “Annabelle …”

  “I know. The book. Sorry.”

  He let out a tight little laugh, annoyed as hell. “It’s just that I’m trying to finish so I can come next week for spring break. And, as you know, this is my time to write.”

  After I hung up I lay there for a moment waiting to see if he would call me back, and when he didn’t, I got up and went to tak
e a shower.

  Then there was the getting ready part. I put on and took off four different outfits, which was tricky in such a small apartment, with Sophie in the next room drinking her morning orange juice and watching Good Morning America. I decided on my long black skirt and boots and a rust-colored sweater with flecks of brown and gold, because the outfit didn’t make me look too frumpy and because the flecks bring out the colors in my hair, at least according to the mirror under the light in Sophie’s bathroom. I had stood there staring at myself for the longest time trying to decide how I wanted him to see me. I put on powder and blush, eyeliner and eye shadow, but then I wiped everything off and just wore lipstick and a little mascara. I didn’t want to look as if I was trying too hard. God forbid he should know what seeing him meant to me.

  And now—well, here he is. When I step into Starbucks and see him, for a moment I can’t even breathe. He’s sitting forward in an armchair, talking on his cell phone, and when our eyes meet, he snaps his phone closed. We just stare at each other, and he smiles slowly, a smile that rises up out of 1980 just the way it shows up in my dreams—and I have no idea what my face is doing. Damn. All I had needed was a moment before he saw me, even just a second in which I could have pulled myself together. I feel weak when he starts coming toward me, threading his way among the tables, and then he’s there, gathering me up in a hug that’s tentative and guarded, but then tightens as he sees that he will be received and accepted. I am so scared. I hate and love this feeling all at once. Hate the way his eyes look right into mine as they always have. Hate that we are known to each other, that we fall together in what could be simply a friendly hug but isn’t. And hate that I catch a glimpse of us in the window and see that I look much older, and eager and desperate. I shouldn’t have worn this long skirt, I should have lost five pounds, I should have put on makeup, after all. His soft blue sweater is against my cheek, and it smells like the past.

  I am so fucked.

  “Come, sit. Sit down,” he says in his courtly way as he releases me. “By some sort of miracle, I have actually managed to reserve a table over here by chasing people away whenever they looked in this direction. So tell me. What would you like to drink?”

  “Just tea,” I say. “Green tea.”

  He lifts his eyebrows and grins. “Really? No coffee? I seem to remember you always took it with—what? Extra cream and three sugars, wasn’t it? It was more like candy than coffee.”

  “I’ve given that up,” I say, but it throws me that he remembers. “Just tea now. I don’t want to be jittery.”

  He laughs and holds out his hand and pretends it’s shaking. “Then I guess I’ll have to have the jitters for both of us. Tea it is. And do you take extra cream and three sugars with that?”

  “No, no. Black is fine.”

  “But it’s green,” he teases.

  “I meant—no, green is fine.”

  He laughs, and then he’s gone, and I am grateful for a break from having to look right at him. I sit down and watch the back of him, the lazy way he walks. Loping, I used to call it. He still lopes, in that way that men who are confident move. He leans down and says something to a woman in line, and I see her turn toward him, smiling, caught by his charm. Don’t, I telegraph to her, and then am surprised at myself.

  When he comes back, he hands me my cup and sits down across from me, and we take sips simultaneously. He leans forward and says softly, “So I can’t believe this, that one day I was there, on a routine errand, in my regular old market buying apples, and I look up and there you are. Queen of my past.”

  “Well. Yes. It’s amazing.”

  “With a daughter yet! A pregnant daughter.”

  I smooth my skirt down and nod. Soon we’ll be asking where the years have gone, like a couple of old people.

  “Sophie, right? And how is she doing?” he says. “There’s some … complication. Or did I make that up?”

  “No. Yes, there’s a complication. Placenta previa. She had an incident of bleeding and had to be put on bed rest, so I came—”

  “From New Hampshire. You’re living in New Hampshire now?”

  “Yes.”

  “With Grant, yes? Is he here with you?”

  I shake my head. “No, he’s still there. He’s teaching and writing a book. It takes up all his time. The writing. You know.”

  We stop talking and take sips again. We’re both being so polite it’s putting my teeth on edge. It’s because I know he doesn’t care about any of this. It’s just a script he has to get through. It’s as though—and I remember this from before—our bodies are having quite another conversation running simultaneously. I have to put my cup down on the table because my hand is trembling. I feel him notice that, and when I look up, he’s gazing at me. “Is this too weird?” he says.

  “Well, it is weird, I know that, but how could it be any different? We haven’t seen each other in twenty-something years—”

  “Twenty-six years, eight months, two weeks, and four days,” he says in almost a whisper.

  “You did not figure that up.”

  “Shall I tell you the minutes, too?”

  “No, please don’t,” I say. “We can’t—I don’t want to talk about all that.”

  “No?” he says. “Okay, well then, let’s just be two old friends meeting at a Starbucks for a cup of coffee and a cup of tea.” He sits up straighter and puts his knees together in a pantomime of propriety and grins at me and I see the old mischief. “And how have you been, Mrs. McKay? I trust that you and Mr. McKay have been well.”

  “Quite well, thank you,” I say. “And you?”

  “Shitty, actually.” He’s still smiling. He lowers his voice and reaches over and takes my hand, and the world tilts. “You, however, are like a vision. You look—may I say this? To hell with it if I can’t. You are lovelier than ever, Annabelle.”

  See? I want to say something to that, but my throat sticks shut, and I have to lean forward to keep from coughing, and he’s holding on to me, and—oh, this is so stupid! And there’s no other place to look because every time I let myself glance at him, he is just gazing at me, looking more intense and antic than I ever remember. Like he’s going to start laughing. I don’t want to do this. This is not why I came to see him again. Or maybe it is. Isn’t this what I really wanted—to know once again the way it feels when the world slips off its axis?

  “Jeremiah,” I say, and even saying his name aloud turns something loose inside me. I pull my hand back. “We have to be normal. I need this to be normal. Tell me—tell me what you’re doing now. What your life is like. You can start with why things are shitty.”

  At last he talks, telling me about his writing and his consulting work; he does a little of this and that. He worked for a foundation for a while that tried to start a museum, but the funding has all but dried up. Nobody really cares, least of all him. He’s lost interest in museums. He tells me that he writes a bit, he sees friends, he does some traveling.

  Then he trails off and smiles at me. He is paying such attention. I have forgotten what it’s like to have someone look at me this way.

  I realize I’m shivering.

  “Are you cold? Should we move to a table near the window where it’s sunny?” he says.

  “Oh, no. No, really, I’m fine.” I talk about New Hampshire cold then. A safe topic. Everybody can relate to cold and ice. He listens, nodding and smiling, but I feel myself babbling. I tell him about Grant’s grandparents’ homestead with the orchards, and the pond with the ice-skating, and the apple-picking and the small-town celebrations and all the rest of it.

  “I had no idea people actually lived this way,” I say. “It—it’s like something out of a novel.”

  “Certainly not our novel,” he says and laughs.

  “Hey, that novel was all yours, buddy. I barely recognized it by the time it came out.”

  His eyes light up. “Oh my God. Don’t tell me you actually read it in print. I know for a fact you didn’t buy a cop
y. I have the names of both the people who bought copies, and one of them was my mother.”

  I laugh. “No, I didn’t buy it. As you can imagine, I couldn’t very well have it in our house.”

  “Why? Don’t tell me Grant considered me that much of a threat, even so much later.”

  “I think he’ll always consider you a threat,” I say quietly. And then because it feels as though I’m being unfair to Grant, I add, “I mean, it was quite a betrayal … he was understandably very hurt and angry.”

  “As hurt and angry as you were?” he says and bites his lip and looks right at me. I remember that—how he would bite his lip when he felt bad about something. Those times when we talked about what we might be doing to Carly and to Grant, when we would make up our minds that we should cool off a little. I would be nearly wild with hysteria, and he would simply bite his lip, speaking volumes.

  I feel myself flush, and for a moment I can’t speak. I take a sip of tea and then I look away and say, “Well. Yes. I was very angry for a long time.”

  “Well, but then you went back to him. And from the looks of things, you and he seem to have worked things through rather fabulously. The family homestead, kids and all. The whole nine yards, as they say.”

  “Yes,” I say slowly. “We did. But it took a while.”

  He leans back and looks at me for a long time. “How could he not take you back? Come on. You’re the best thing that ever happened to him. I turned out to be just a sad but ignorable footnote in the long and happy marriage of Grant and Annabelle McKay.”

  “Well,” I say, “we didn’t have it easy for a long time.”

  “Oh, who ever has it easy in marriage? Nobody. But you, Annabelle, at least got just what you wanted: all the safety and security and stability that somebody like Grant has to offer. And I say, congratulations to you for that.” He lifts his paper cup. “Here—let’s have a toast to the safety of Grant McKay. Angry or not, the man comes through.”