She, Myself & I

by Whitney Gaskell

  “And what’s been holding you back?”

  “I just never met the right nice Indian girl. It’s silly, really, how hung up they are on it. But they emigrated to Britain from India in the sixties, and still live near and socialize with other Indian families, so they have a hard time getting away from traditions,” Vinay said.

  “What do your parents do?”

  “Both doctors. My mother is a psychiatrist and my father is an anesthesiologist.”

  “Wow. And they’re still married?”

  “Yes. Are your parents divorced?”

  “Sort of. They divorced when I was in college, but they just recently got back together. They’re dating now, if you can believe that,” I said.

  “Bloody hell. That must make for interesting family get-togethers,” Vinay said.

  “You have no idea,” I said.

  The waitress arrived with our hamburgers and two more glasses of wine, and dinner passed in a pleasant haze of good, greasy food and amiable conversation. The wine was making me light-headed, but in a pleasant, loose-limbed kind of way. And it seemed from the way that Vinay was smiling at me that flobby stomachs were the last thing on his mind.

  Maybe he’s the one I’m supposed to be with, I thought. Maybe Aidan was just the wrong man for me all along. I couldn’t remember when—if ever—Aidan’s touch had made my heart speed up or if his smile made my senses hum with possibility. Sure, maybe back in the beginning it had been like this, but if it was true love and meant to be, would those feelings really have eroded over time, a mortgage, and a baby?

  Yes, another part of me—apparently one unaffected by winsome smiles, candlelit dinners, and the rich timbre of a British accent—said. It’s entirely normal. The heightened senses and sweet obsessions of early love never last. It morphs and changes and grows. And even if my frayed bond with Aidan has snapped for good, and this flirtation with Vinay grows into something meaningful and permanent, the flutters that I get when he smiles at me across the table will eventually dissipate, too.

  I couldn’t decide if this thought was comforting or depressing.

  Vinay paid the bill, slipping his gold American Express card into the plastic billfold, and the annoyingly thin waitress tried to catch his eye as she returned the receipt for his signature. I felt a stab of triumph when Vinay responded to her coy smiles and hair flips with a polite disinterest.

  We walked out of the restaurant, and unseasonably chilly air rushed by us, eager to pass into the warm recesses of the restaurant. I hadn’t thought to bring a jacket.

  “Brrr. When did it get so cold out?” I asked. “Wasn’t it in the eighties today?”

  “I’ll keep you warm,” Vinay said, wrapping an arm around my shoulders.

  For the first time, I felt a little uncomfortable with him. It was a borderline-smarmy line, just one step removed from the horrible yawning-then-arm-stretching-then-boob-feeling move my freshman high school boyfriend actually tried on me.

  “I’m parked right over there,” I said, pointing at my SUV in the alley at the side of the restaurant.

  “Did you want to get some coffee somewhere, or maybe we could rent a movie and take it back to my place?” he said. He rubbed his thumb against my shoulder in a repetitive motion that irritated my skin.

  “I wish I could,” I said. “But my sister is sitting with Ben, and she’s expecting me back.”

  “You could call her, see if she’d mind staying a little later,” Vinay said, stepping closer to me.

  I knew then that he was going to kiss me, and every last inch of my body went on high alert.

  “No, I can’t. She’s pregnant and hasn’t been feeling well,” I said.

  He was now standing so close that I had to tip my head back to see him. The glow of the streetlights cast a bluish light over his face, and he looked so different than he had in the restaurant. I wondered if I did, too. Candlelight is so much more flattering, more seductive.

  And just as I was thinking that this could be the most ingenious invention of modern mankind—some sort of device to secure a candle under your chin, so that everyone could walk around in dark rooms with their faces glowing in the light (and yes, the high rate of singed hair and stubbed toes might be an issue, but it was still a brilliant idea)—Vinay leaned forward and pressed his lips against mine.

  The pressure was soft but insistent, and as he kissed me, he rested a hand gently on the back of my neck to draw me closer to him. I closed my eyes and leaned into the kiss, catching my breath as the tip of his tongue flickered against my lips. And I waited for the falling-from-a-high-height-while-simultaneously-melting first-kiss feeling to hit me.

  It didn’t come.

  I’d always loved first kisses when I was single—they were what made the horrors of first dates worthwhile. Nine times out of ten, you wouldn’t click, but on those rare occasions when you did, the first kiss was the jackpot payoff. So I gave it another minute, forcing my body not to tense up, and instead rested my hands on his waist, where I could feel warm skin through the heavy cotton of his shirt.

  Still nothing.

  Instead, I was starting to become all too aware of the hint of onions on his breath. And that the fine hairs on his upper lip were tickling me. And then his other hand was suddenly on my lower back, teetering on the brink of heading toward my too-large bottom. That was it. I didn’t mind letting the lukewarm kissing go on for a while—maybe I was just out of practice or too stressed out to enjoy it—but I wasn’t about to let him get anywhere near my ass. I took a step back, breaking off the kiss.

  “I really should get going. Thanks again for dinner,” I said.

  Vinay looked at me, and his dark, still eyes were so kind, I started to think that maybe I should give him a second chance on the kissing. For all I knew, he was the best kisser to have ever puckered lips, and the lack of reaction on my part was just one more lovely little postpartum side effect.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. He ran his hands up my arms until they were both resting on my shoulders. A few hours earlier, the very thought of this sort of close proximity to him, this casually intimate touching, would have thrilled me. Now I just felt tired and wanted to retreat back to where it was safe and quiet.

  What I really wanted to do was to go home. Not to my mother’s house, but to my home, the one I shared with Aidan. And suddenly, just like that, I was missing my husband. I missed the soapy scent of his aftershave, the way he always closed his eyes and took a deep breath when he cuddled Ben, and Saturday afternoons spent lazing around the house in our sweats together, watching videos and screening phone calls. I missed that he knew I never drank coffee at night since it keeps me up. I missed how he always made sure my gas tank was full and my cell phone charged. I missed how he always got up with Ben in the morning, and carried him into the bedroom, so that the first thing I saw every day were my two smiling, sleepy-eyed guys.

  “I really have to. But, I mean it, thanks. This meant a lot to me,” I said.

  “Right then.” Vinay cleared his throat and thrust his hands in his pockets. “I take it there’s not going to be a second date.”

  “I haven’t been completely honest with you,” I said. “My husband and I are separated, but only just recently. I still don’t know what’s going to happen with my marriage. But it’s probably a little early for me to start dating.”

  “I understand. And I don’t want to sound as if I’m rooting for the collapse of your marriage, but if things don’t work out, why don’t you give me a call,” he said.

  I felt a burst of affection for him, and immediately began to think of someone I could set him up with. There was Vicky, one of my few remaining single friends, but then again, she was a depressive. And then there was Allison, my sister-in-law, but no, no way was I going to hook her up with anyone, not after her tummy-tuck comment. Mickey, maybe? She’d be home for the summer soon, and since she was headed to medical school, they’d have that in common.

  “My little sister is graduating
from college in two months and then will be home for the summer. If you want, I could introduce you to her. She’s absolutely amazing—she’s funny, smart, beautiful. And she broke up with her boyfriend a few weeks ago, so I know she’s available,” I said.

  “It’s got to be the ultimate rejection when your date tries to fix you up with someone else—her sister no less—at the end of the night,” Vinay said wryly, and I must have looked stricken, because he laughed, and tapped me on the arm. “I’m just kidding. Is your sister as pretty as you are?”

  “Prettier. And she’s much nicer than I am,” I promised.

  “All right then. You’re on,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  I’ve never felt more lonely than I did as I drove back to my mother’s house. Lonely and tired. My fantasy about Vinay had been just that—a fanciful break from the cold reality that the rest of my life was in tatters. I didn’t have a home or a job, my marriage was likely shattered beyond repair, and I was just sitting around waiting for everything to sort itself out on its own, which apparently wasn’t going to happen.

  First, I had to talk to Aidan. I was angry at him, but we had a child together, and if there was any way we could salvage our marriage, we had to try. For Ben’s sake. The kiss with Vinay had made me realize something—as angry as I was at him, I was still in love with my husband.

  And no matter what happened with my marriage, it was time to get serious about my career, time to do something about starting up my photography studio. I needed to network with other moms, and maybe offer to do some free sittings so I could build up a portfolio. And I’d look into going to the baby expo that Cora had told me about. Where I was going to run my business, I had no idea—if Aidan and I were going to permanently separate, we’d have to do something about the house—but that was more decision making than I was up to facing tonight.

  I turned onto my mom’s street, and started to pull into the driveway, before I realized that it was already full. My dad’s car was there—they must have returned from the ballet already—and Paige’s car . . . and Aidan’s car. My stomach jolted with nerves, but then I remembered that he was here to see Ben, not me. In the excitement over my date, I’d completely forgotten. I put the car in reverse and parked on the street.

  I walked up the driveway, wondering what was going on inside the house. Mom and Paige knew about the porn incident, which meant Dad probably did, too, even though I’d been too embarrassed to tell him. I wondered how they’d reacted when Aidan showed up. Were they being hostile to him? Or chillingly polite? I hoped that they weren’t being too hard on him—it was important that he feel comfortable when seeing his son.

  But wait, I thought. Why did he come over this late? Ben must be asleep by now, Aidan knows that.

  “Sophie,” Aidan said, and I started. I hadn’t noticed that he was sitting on the darkened front steps, lit only by the small lamp beside the front door. He was slumped forward, his long legs sprawled out in front of him.

  “Hi,” I said, but he didn’t respond. It wasn’t until I took another step forward that I saw he’d been crying.

  I had never seen my husband cry before. Not once.

  Did he know where I’d been? Had my mother or sister somehow figured out and told him, or had he maybe followed me? Although I would have thought he’d react to the news that I was dating—or had gone on a date—with anger, not tears.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” I asked, and I sat down next to him on the step.

  “I screwed everything up. For you, for Ben, for me. I was such an idiot. I don’t blame you for hating me,” Aidan said.

  “I don’t hate you,” I said softly.

  “You don’t?”

  “No. I’m pretty ticked off at you, though.”

  Aidan nodded, and he clasped his hands in front of him. “I know,” he said.

  “Are you having an affair?” I asked. My throat felt raw and itchy as the words squeezed out. It was a question I had to ask, I knew, even if I wasn’t at all sure that I wanted to hear the answer.

  “No. I never touched another woman. Not even a kiss,” Aidan said, and I felt a rush of guilt.

  “What was going on with that Cherry woman?” I asked.

  Aidan sighed and rubbed his hand over his mouth. “Nothing. Well, not nothing nothing, just . . . sending each other private messages that were . . . sexual in nature. It’s really embarrassing, but . . . I don’t know. I don’t want to justify it, because I can’t, but you and I had become so distant, and every time I tried to touch you, you’d move away, and I was just trying to fill the space. But it was a stupid, juvenile thing to do, and I’d do anything to take it back,” he said. “Anything.”

  “You were still cheating on me,” I said.

  I couldn’t help picturing Aidan sitting in his darkened study yet again, looking at pictures of naked women or exchanging lascivious notes with Cherry the Whore and getting off on it. The thought sickened me. I’d never understood what was remotely sexy about a close-up of a cheesy, mustachioed man penetrating a silicone-injected, hard-faced woman. It always seemed so impersonal and sordid, and the idea that Aidan would find it so arousing disturbed me.

  “I’m so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you.”

  “Are you going to stop doing it?”

  “Yes, absolutely. I’ve already canceled my memberships to those sites and cleared it all off of the computer. It’s gone,” he said. “Does that mean that you’d consider giving this . . . us . . . another try?”

  I looked down, and remembered how it had felt to drive home alone, leaving behind the man who had been my fantasy. Were my daydreams of Vinay really all that different from Aidan’s porn surfing? Wasn’t I just as guilty of looking outside of our marriage for fulfillment? And then I thought of Ben and Aidan, and how even if things didn’t always function perfectly, on the nights that they did—when we were all sitting together on the couch, and Aidan and I were smiling down at our son, charmed by whatever his most recent accomplishment was—that it really couldn’t get any better than that. And I wanted us to be together, to be a family again.

  “Yes. But I think that we need some help. Maybe we should start seeing a marriage counselor,” I said slowly.

  “Anything. Whatever you want,” Aidan said, and he took my hands in his and then brought them to his lips. “I love you. I won’t let you down again. Oh shit!”

  “What?”

  “I totally forgot. Wait here,” he said, and then he jumped off the step and bounded down to his car, opened the door, and got in.

  “Aidan? Where are you going?” I called after him.

  “Just wait one second,” he said, and then he started his car. I could see him leaning forward, fiddling with something on his dashboard. And then there was a burst of music, a pause while Aidan fiddled some more, and then suddenly a familiar song was started up. “Love I get so lost, sometimes . . .”

  Aidan turned the music up and then walked back up the path toward me, looking shy and pleased with himself.

  “ ‘In Your Eyes,’ ” I said. “How did you know?”

  “Paige told me. She said you’d always wanted someone to play it for you,” Aidan said.

  “Not someone. You. But you’re supposed to be standing under my window, in the rain, holding a radio up over your head,” I said.

  “I knew I’d get it wrong,” he said, and looked so let down that I stood up and wrapped my arms around him.

  “No, you didn’t. You got it just right.”

  Mickey

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  I honestly meant to tell my parents the truth when they picked me up at the airport. I figured, I’d just get it out of the way early, so I wouldn’t have to spend the entire summer pretending that I was about to launch on this great future. The lie was getting out of hand.

  I’m not even sure exactly how it happened. At some point I mentioned that I might possibly be sort of interested in maybe considering attending medical school, and I even
went so far as to take some preliminary steps, such as sending out some applications and taking the MCATs. But then I got my acceptance letter to Brown, and everyone started congratulating me, and the whole thing got away from me. Suddenly, my entire life had been decided for me—the years of studying, a sleep-free residency, hours of mind-numbing scut work. And my parents were telling everyone they knew that my getting into medical school was a dream come true for all of us, an announcement that I couldn’t seem to argue with. Instead I just smiled and said thank you when people gushed on about how wonderful it was, and tried to ignore the sluggish sickliness that washed over me whenever I let myself think about it.

  I don’t think you can even be a doctor when the sight of blood makes you woozy. A sloppy, drunk girl in my dorm sophomore year stepped in her shower basket and cut off the top of her big toe on her razor. She was screaming, there was blood everywhere . . . and when I saw the sticky red trail she left behind as she limped to the health center, I felt so nauseated I thought I was going to hurl. I spent the rest of the night curled up on my military-style cot bed in the fetal position. Which is just not doctor material. Obviously.

  And seriously, there are a lot of careers out there that don’t require you to take a class where you cut into dead people, which I can almost guarantee I would not survive. In every television show I’ve ever seen about medical school, there’s always that one loser who faints during a surgical instruction, and if I did end up in medical school, that loser would undoubtedly be me.

  And that’s what I fully intended to tell my mother and father when they met me in the baggage claim area at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. I was not, nor would I ever be, matriculating at Brown Medical School.

  But my parents weren’t there.

  Instead, bizarrely, my ex-brother-in-law Scott showed up, dressed in a tight black T-shirt and black leather pants.

  “Let me guess. You’re running away to join a motorcycle gang,” I said.