Love in Mid Air

by Kim Wright

  The ruin is dark, imposing. The man standing at the top of it looks as small as a splinter, barely recognizable as human against the bright blue sky. I turn the card over and over in my hands until the writing on the back, Lynn’s neat round letters in heavy black ink, turns into a blur. Whatever Lynn has seen, I will have to see it in my own way. Whatever she knows, I’ll have to figure it out for myself. I throw the postcard into the trash and begin to rinse the salad in the sink.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Everyone’s talking about us,” Phil says.

  Actually, everybody’s talking about Lynn. We’ve finally been knocked off page one, but there’s no point trying to explain that to Phil. “Well, if they are, whose fault is that?”

  Phil frowns. “I never tell anyone anything.”

  “Come off it. I know you call Nancy and basically ask her to spy on me. And then there are all these so-called counseling sessions. I’ll bet we were hardly out of Jeff’s office until he was on the phone. I’ll bet he’s called Nancy every time we’ve gone in and given her a blow-by-blow account of everything we said. We talk to him, he talks to her, she talks to everybody else, and I go out to lunch with my girlfriends and look like a fool. I’m sick of it. It’s a sick situation.”

  For a moment, Phil looks guilty. It’s not an expression that comes easily to his face. “You think we should get a different counselor? Someone we don’t know? I could make some calls.”

  Perfect. I’ve begged him to go into counseling for three years and now all of a sudden the idea has just occurred to him. He is standing in front of me, the very embodiment of a concerned husband, eager to do everything he can. I suppose I should take comfort that I’ve done a good job breaking him in for his second wife. But as for us—it’s too late to even bother explaining why it’s too late. I shake my head. “I don’t see why we’re in counseling at all.”

  “You want to quit?”

  “Phil, we already have quit.”

  “Because Jeff called me this afternoon and had a suggestion. I think we really upset him with all that stuff about the cat, and anyway, he said that Nancy could sit in on our sessions too, if that would make you more comfortable. You know, so you wouldn’t feel like the men were ganging up on you.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “They’ve done couples therapy together. Back a long time ago, before their kids were born, but he said in our case he was sure she’d be happy to—”

  “Jeff and Nancy have a shitty marriage.”

  “You think everybody has a shitty marriage.”

  “No, just me and you and Jeff and Nancy.” I can think of a few others too, but it’s not the right time to go into it. “I don’t want them working with us. I don’t want what’s left of our privacy to go completely down the drain. Have you managed to somehow forget our entire last therapy session?”

  “Nancy’s your best friend.”

  “God help me if that’s true.”

  “She cares about you.”

  “In her own little tiny way, I guess she probably does. But the fact that she’s married to your best friend doesn’t make her my best friend.”

  “Jeff wouldn’t have told her if he didn’t think—”

  “Do you really want to be having this conversation?”

  “No,” Phil says, but he’s uneasy. He remembers the days when I would do anything to get him to talk to me. He remembers me curled up in a fetal position, pleading with him under the bathroom door. He remembers the brochures for bed-and-breakfasts I’d leave lying around the house on the off chance he’d see them and suggest going away for the weekend. The way I’d reach for his hand in movies. Now he’s got a wife who walks out of the room while he’s still talking.

  “Maybe you should reconsider and come to Florida with me and Tory,” he says, following me out through the garage.

  “No. We need the break.” This is my chance to prepack a few things for the June 2 move and take them to Kelly’s. I don’t want to be actually lugging boxes around while Tory is in the house. I’ve given this a lot of thought and I believe it would be better to only tell her we’re moving about a week before the actual event. But that doesn’t mean I can’t get a few things out while she’s in Florida.

  “I’ll be back by Easter.”

  I turn to him, trash in my hands. “Is that what you’re worried about? How this is going to look to the neighbors?”

  “We’ll actually be back by Saturday. In time for the cookout.”

  “Well, I certainly hope you’ve made sure that Jeff and Nancy have a copy of your flight schedule.”

  “It’s not just that,” he says. Phil takes off his glasses and pretends to clean the lenses. He makes a great show of blowing on them and wiping, but his eyes are lowered. At some point he has become afraid to meet my gaze. “I thought you might get lonely.”

  It would be enough to make me cry if I had any cry left in me. “Don’t worry about it,” I say, raising the heavy gray lid of the garbage bin and dropping the bag inside. “I don’t get lonely as much as I used to.”

  I can’t believe he’d even think of coming here. This is your town.”

  Kelly has begun wearing her hair up and it makes her look like a schoolteacher, or maybe more like a porn star playing a schoolteacher. I imagine her releasing the clip from the back of her hair and tossing her head. Pulling off her glasses and being suddenly beautiful.

  “I’ve been to Boston.”

  She rolls her eyes as if she can’t believe my stupidity. “That’s completely different, you know it is. If some guy he worked with happened to run into the two of you together, he would’ve just turned away. Hell, next time he saw Gerry he’d probably high-five him. But what do you think would happen if somebody saw you here, walking with some man that nobody knows? Do you think they’d just snicker and turn away?”

  “They’d probably chase me down with bows and arrows.”

  Kelly’s eyes narrow. “This isn’t funny,”

  “I wasn’t joking.”

  She pushes away her uneaten muffin. “You don’t even have enough sense to be scared. You’re not thinking of taking him to your house, are you?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, why not? Phil and Tory are leaving tomorrow.”

  Kelly reaches across the table and grabs my wrist. “For once just slow down and listen to me. If Phil decides he wants Tory, what will you do? You don’t have any money, Elyse, you don’t have anywhere to go.”

  I start to say, “Not even to your house?” but I don’t. Her house isn’t really her house. It’s Mark’s house, and he wouldn’t want me there. Much less me and my daughter and my cat and my pots.

  “Nancy’s seen bruises on your arms,” Kelly continues, her voice dropping a little as she leans toward me. “She was talking about them back around the holidays, months ago, and despite what you might have told yourself, Nancy’s not an idiot. If you give her enough time she’ll put it together. And if Nancy could see marks on you when you’re fully dressed, how can you pretend that Phil isn’t going to notice anything?”

  I don’t tell her that the bruises Nancy saw were from the night Phil handcuffed me to the bed. “It’s fifty-two days until June first,” I say. “That’s when the apartment will be ready.”

  “A lot can happen in fifty-two days.”

  “Is it really so wrong for him to come to my house? I want him to see who I am.”

  “You want him to see what you’re giving up. It’s a dangerous game, that’s all I’m telling you. That you’re playing a dangerous game.”

  Kelly thinks I haven’t got enough sense to be scared, but she’s wrong. Ever since I said the D-word the whole world has begun to look like a dangerous game. I threw up twice yesterday. I slept three hours last night. All my friends are married. They might not be my friends if I’m not married. I only have four thousand in my checking account. Last night Tory went straight to Phil with her certificate for placing second in the spelling bee. She crawled on his lap. Maybe sh
e loves him best. Maybe she would want to stay with him. I turn on the news and there’s been a plane crash in Brazil, an earthquake in Taiwan, a woman from a nearby town who ran out to the grocery store and ended up locked in the trunk of her car. This woman was just like me, just somebody who was going to pick up a few things and all of a sudden they find her in the trunk of her own goddamn car. Fear swirls around me, invisible but real as air. I try not to breathe it in but I do, every day.

  Kelly sighs, pushes her hair back. It falls into her face again immediately. “So when is Wonder Boy flying in?”

  “Wednesday.”

  “Will I meet him?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if he even exists.”

  Sometimes I wonder if he even exists.

  “There’s a chance he doesn’t love you, Elyse.”

  “Maybe I don’t love him.”

  “No,” she says. “Listen to me. There’s a chance he doesn’t care about you at all. No matter what he says, no matter what you feel, this isn’t real.”

  “He does cartoon voices,” I say. “He does Pepé Le Pew.”

  Kelly refastens the wayward strand of hair back into her bun. “Are you talking about that skunk?”

  “Yeah, the French skunk in cartoons. Pepé Le Pew.”

  “Pepé Le Pew was a rapist.”

  “Pepé Le Pew was not a rapist.”

  “I can’t believe we’ve gotten to the point in our lives where you think something like that is romantic. Jesus Christ, what’s happened to you? You used to be Homecoming Queen.”

  “No, really, he was putting my legs around his shoulders and he saw I had this bruise. He pulled my ankle toward his face and he said it all French, he said, ‘She has injured herself to prove her love to me. It is strange, yes, but romantic, no?’ ” I wait for a moment, but Kelly doesn’t react. Her face is blank, as if she’s having trouble even following the story. “You don’t think that’s cute?”

  “You don’t speak French.”

  “He wasn’t speaking French, he was speaking English with a French accent.”

  “Oh yeah, that’s totally different.”

  “You’re just pissed because I’m happy,” I say. “You’re afraid I might actually get what I want and you can’t stand it. Because you’ve always been the golden girl. You’re supposed to be the one who gets the Pepé Le Pew.”

  “This isn’t about me.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You think what happened back then is going to happen again, but you’ve got to know this, Kelly. I’m not you.”

  “You don’t have to sound so damn pleased about it.”

  “You’ve forgotten. You’ve forgotten what it feels like. Try. Just for a second. Do you remember the day we called him on the patio?”

  “Do you remember the day you drove me to the clinic?”

  “Gerry’s not Daniel. You’ve never even met him.”

  “I don’t have to. Men like him use women, they use them completely up.”

  “Is this what you tell yourself late at night? Is this how you justify marrying Mark and going to live in that big marble house?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “When I get there, be sure to open the gate and let me in.”

  We push away from the table in one move, as if we’ve planned it. I pull out my car keys and, just as abruptly, she sits back down. “He’s playing you,” she says. “Someday you’ll wake up and see this for what it is.”

  That night, I dig out Daniel’s letters to Kelly and read them all again. I read them slowly, in sequence. I read them out loud. Somebody has to remember. I sit on the floor as I read them, squinting in the dim light until I hear Phil’s car pulling into the garage. Then I run into my closet and cram them into the first bag I can find.

  But it isn’t Phil at the door, it’s Kelly.

  “Don’t be mad at me,” she says. “You don’t know how much I hope I’m wrong.”

  Chapter Forty

  It’s no longer possible to meet someone at the airport in a romantic way. Modern security measures forbid going to the gate, much less standing on the runway with your arms full of flowers. Gerry and I have lost each other in airports all over the country and when he flies into Charlotte we manage to get really separated. The arrivals board says his plane touched down twenty minutes ago but I can’t find him in baggage claim.

  My phone rings.

  “Where are you?” he asks.

  “Upstairs, walking away from the US Airways counter.”

  “Okay, we’re close. Oh, wait a minute, maybe we shouldn’t even try to get together today, because I’ve just spotted this gorgeous woman. She’s walking right toward me, wearing this bright red jacket…”

  I laugh, look around, but I still don’t see him. “Where are you?”

  “Oh shit, forget it, she’s on the phone. Maybe she’s already got a boyfriend. Yeah, yeah, she’s definitely looking for somebody. She’s turning, doing a 360 just like a ballerina…”

  Then I see him, leaning against a ticketing kiosk with his carry-on thrown over his shoulder and the phone pressed to his ear. His face is split open into a smile and it’s like looking into the world’s best mirror because I am smiling too and I feel beautiful, incredible, bright, thin, young. I walk toward him and he catches me in a kiss, the cell phones still wedged to our ears so that we are connected, through satellites high above us sending out signals through space and through our skin, through a series of nerve impulses that still snap and shudder as he presses his mouth against mine.

  You’ve changed,” says Gerry. He is looking at a picture of me and Tory, just a couple of Christmases ago.

  “Not much. My hair’s shorter.”

  “It’s more than that. Why are we here?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  He is standing in front of the refrigerator, reading Tory’s softball schedule, the list of upcoming Easter activities, menus from the local Chinese and pizza places. Garcia weaves herself around his ankles and he bends down and picks her up. She settles over his shoulder like a baby waiting to be burped. In this house even the cat is unfaithful. There is a cartoon on the fridge, one I cut from the New Yorker months ago. A husband is sitting on a couch saying, “I really don’t understand what’s bothering you,” while behind him the wife spray-paints on the wall NOTHING EVER HAPPENS.

  I wait to see if he laughs. He doesn’t.

  “I have to tell you something,” he says. I put my arms around his waist and listen to Garcia purr.

  “I know.”

  “If you do this, I can’t go with you.”

  “I never expected you to.” And, like everything I’ve ever said to Gerry, I realize it’s true while I’m saying it. Does he think I will cry? I don’t feel like crying. It’s not the end of anything, although it may be the end of the beginning of something. I thought that bringing him here would help him see me more clearly, but the opposite has happened. He is so overwhelmed by my pots and pictures and schedules of family activities, that he has shut his eyes. I pull him to me a little tighter and shut my eyes too. My knees are slightly bent, my legs are apart, and I realize, not totally to my surprise, that I am holding him up.

  I planned to cook for us tonight. I’ve bought pasta and truffle oil and prosciutto and Parmesan but this sudden domesticity has been too much for him. I tell him that it’s funny, considering I am such an old-movie buff, but I have never seen Casablanca all the way through. So I rented it for us tonight and I bought stuff to cook. But we don’t have to stay here. We can go to a restaurant. We can find a hotel for the night.

  He opens his eyes, lets his arms slide from my shoulders to my hips. “If that’s what you want,” he says, but his voice is relieved. We are not pasta and Blockbuster. We are foie gras and wake-up calls.

  “Actually bringing you to my house,” I say, “it was a little too much, wasn’t it?”

  “No,” he says, “it’s just that it looks like my house. We’ve got the same
stuff stuck on our refrigerator. You’ve got our bathtub. I know exactly how much that bathtub costs.”

  “You can’t believe there’s a woman in America stupid enough to leave that bathtub.”

  “You know I’m not talking about the money. Not just the money. I’m talking about the way it feels when it’s all together. You and this man—”

  “Phil.”

  “What?”

  “My husband’s name is Phil.”

  “If you’re willing to leave all this stuff that you and Phil have accumulated—do you think I’m just talking about money here?”

  “Not really.”

  “But to leave this… you must have been unhappier all along than I realized.”

  “It’ll be all right,” I tell him, and I feel something shift inside of me as if my heart is resettling into a different, deeper part of my chest. He’s talking into my hair. I think he says that he’s sorry, but he has nothing to be sorry about. He was clear with me from the start. He’s a climber. He is good at holding on to things but just for a second. He holds on long enough to catch his balance and sight the next grip. And then he lets go.

  Hold and release, hold and release. This is what my time with him has taught me, this rhythm of moving from one scary place to another, this rhythm that allows you to cross great divides without falling. It’s the cliché of climbing—don’t look down—but he has told me, many times, that looking up is risky too. Don’t think about what you’ve left or what’s ahead, because safety comes only from focusing on the thing right in front of you. This is what my time with him has taught me, so why does he seem so surprised that I know it now? I think of the first conversation that we ever had, somewhere in that dangerous air between Phoenix and Dallas, how he told me that you never lose your grip on someone who’s in trouble. But if you are the one in freefall, it’s considered honorable to pull your clip, to make sure that you do not take anyone else down with you. These sorts of games, he told me, they require such a high level of trust. Not just believing that the other person will hang on, because hanging on is the easy part. The harder part is trusting that the other person will know when to let go.