Finally, he broke the silence. “You did a great job in there. I always love watching you in court, but that was something else. I bet your parents would have been proud.”
“I suspect their methods were slightly different.”
He smiled. “Maybe.”
“Did Sarah tell you I was here?” He nodded. “How are the girls?”
“Fine. Waiting at home.”
We looked at each other in silence for a moment.
“Miz Moore!” Jorge hustled around the corner. “I got the car. Can I drive you somewhere?”
We crunched across the snow. I wobbled in my heels—Aaron held out a hand and steadied me. Then he let go.
“I found a spot on Center Street,” Jorge said. “It should be right…”
We turned the corner in time to watch a tow truck pulling away with the Fury.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Jorge almost caught up with the truck. But the street was too slippery. He skidded and fell. It turned onto Chambers Street, the Fury bumping and rattling behind it. Jorge knelt in the middle of the street and watched them disappear, the picture of Old Testament desolation.
Then he jumped up and stormed back to the now-empty spot. “This is bullshit!” he shouted. “Tow companies pull this all the time. Hauling off cars that are legally parked? It’s fraud. It’s a crime. There’s nothing wrong with this spot. I found it fair and…”
The sign above the spot was white with snow. Aaron shook the pole it was attached to, and the snow fell away. It was a handicapped spot.
Novartis strikes again.
Jorge’s outrage became abject horror. “Oh, no.”
“It’s not a big deal,” I said.
“Not a big deal?” he cried, wild-eyed. “But that car. It’s…it’s…” He was too choked up to continue.
I took his arm. “Let’s get her back, Jorge.”
The Manhattan sheriff’s office was a few blocks away. Aaron and I had to run to keep up with Jorge. Aaron gave me a curious glance.
“The car makes him very emotional,” I explained.
We arrived at the office on John Street. After waiting in a long line of other restless and aggrieved New Yorkers, we reached the window, where we learned that I couldn’t get the car unless I could prove I owned it. I couldn’t prove I owned it unless I had my insurance and registration. I didn’t have my insurance and registration.
“Because they’re in the car,” Jorge told the haggard, speckled clerk. “Where, like, normal human people keep them.”
She didn’t care what normal human people did with their vehicular paperwork—we weren’t getting the Fury back without mine. We argued. We begged. We showed her the keys. She wasn’t impressed. After a few more minutes of abject pleading, she finally admitted that I could call my insurance company, which would fax the information over.
Jorge pulled out his phone and looked at me expectantly.
“I don’t know who insures it,” I admitted. “I just signed the papers, I didn’t…”
He looked like he was about to lose his mind.
My own wasn’t working properly, which is why I hadn’t immediately realized how to solve this problem.
“It’s State Farm, dummy,” Renfield said, when I called. “What the hell’s going on, anyway? I’m hearing rumors that are even more nutso than usual.”
“I’ll tell you everything. But first, can you fix this?”
She called the sheriff’s office, spoke directly to our tormentor and sent a fax. Ten minutes later we walked out with a vehicle release form.
“Renfield’s a godsend,” Aaron said.
“She speaks fluent clerk,” I agreed.
We got a cab. Jorge sat next to the driver, hunched forward, gnawing on his nails and jiggling one knee up and down. He wouldn’t be at peace until he was behind the wheel of his beloved Fury.
Aaron and I were in the back.
I looked at him. He looked at me.
Where to begin?
“Why did you come?” I asked. “Today, I mean. After last night, how can you even bear to look at me?”
“I didn’t think about it,” he said. “I just came.”
“I’ve put you through hell, Aaron. I’ve said and done the worst possible things to you.”
“We both have,” he reminded me. “But I promised I’d always be there for you, remember? I haven’t exactly succeeded, but I’m still trying.”
“We’ve made such a mess of things,” I sighed.
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you tell me the truth, from the very beginning?”
He looked down at his hands. “Because I was desperate for us to get back on track. Because I knew the truth would make you think the whole…thing, meant more to me than it did. And of course, because lying was easier. It felt safer.”
“You were probably worried about what else I might do to you.”
He smiled a little. “The thought did cross my mind. But the truest, most basic reason? I couldn’t risk losing you again. You used to talk about what I did for you, how you needed me. I don’t think you ever understood how necessary you were to me. Are to me. You’re so smart, so honest. You’re such a good person. So strong.”
“I was never strong.”
He took my hand. “You were. You are. You got me through graduate school. You encouraged me to keep going all those times I didn’t see the point. You had an unbelievably stressful and time-consuming job, not to mention two babies, but you read my dissertation over and over again. You helped me not feel totally defeated when I couldn’t get a tenure-track job. You supported us when I was making no money. You raised two wonderful daughters. Everything I was to you, you were to me. I wrote my first book for you. I write everything for you. You’re the only person I ever want to impress.”
He took a deep, shaky breath. “That’s why I couldn’t tell you the truth. I couldn’t bear to lose any more of your respect.”
We were quiet for a while. I looked down at our joined hands. I said:
“I’m glad you didn’t tell me.”
He started, shook his head. He couldn’t have heard me right.
“I’m glad you lied, Aaron. If you hadn’t, I never would have found myself.”
“Tell me what you mean.”
“My whole life, I’ve put forward an idea of myself as this powerful, tough person. I did it to quell my anxiety, to make me feel strong. But little by little, I began to believe in that version of myself. Everybody around me thought that was the real me—I figured, maybe it was. I think that’s part of why I pulled away from you. I didn’t confide in you anymore because I didn’t think I needed to. Meaning that by being self-sufficient, by not making myself vulnerable, I made us vulnerable.”
Aaron tried to interject, to reassure me, but I kept going.
“That’s where matters stood, all through our attempts at reconciliation, all through my efforts to understand what had happened. I was beginning to see that there were things going on inside me I wasn’t aware of, things I needed to let out, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know how. Until a few weeks ago, when I…woke up. I grasped some truths about myself that I’d never admitted, beliefs I held, things I wanted, ways I wanted to be. All these recognitions came tumbling out, and everything changed. I felt like I was living for the first time, really being myself.”
He had been listening carefully. Now he gave me an uneasy glance. “And so, is that when you…”
“Slept with other people? That actually started earlier. But it’s related. I slept with people I didn’t care about to avoid acknowledging what I really wanted. Or rather, who I really wanted. One particular person.”
Aaron was staring at the floor of the cab, nodding. “And did you…did you…sleep with him?”
“I did. But then I went overboard. I’d hid
den the truth from myself for so long, deprived myself of what I wanted—I think I felt entitled to do whatever I pleased. I got greedy, and careless. I believed I was freeing myself. That I’d finally stopped managing my life, and started living it. I was still hiding things from myself, still denying the truth. And I was such a jerk. Especially to you.”
As I spoke, Aaron had slowly pulled away, retreating into himself. I reached for his hand.
“I’m sorry I shut you out. I’m sorry I came on to you last week in that weird way. But most of all, I’m sorry about what I said last night. It was unforgivable. And wrong. I loved making love with you. I just didn’t let myself enjoy it as much as I could have.”
“I wish I’d helped you,” he said mournfully. “I wish I was the person who…made you realize how much you loved it.”
“You couldn’t do that for me, Aaron. Nobody could. I had to do it for myself. Anyway,” I added, “you did help. You cheated on me.”
“Jesus, Raney!”
“I mean it. If you hadn’t, I would have lived the rest of my life not really knowing myself. Painful as it was, what you did saved me.”
We sat in silence for a while. Then he asked, “Where does this leave us?”
Before I could answer, the cab pulled into the tow pound on Pier 76, and Jorge gave a little cry. The Fury was parked next to a maintenance shed, surrounded by an admiring circle of men in overalls. He leaped out and raced over.
“I’ll be right back,” I said to Aaron.
“She’s fine!” Jorge called out. “Not a scratch on her!”
A bent and crusty old fella with a baseball cap and a leathery face stepped forward. “Who’s the owner?” I gave him our paperwork, and he limped into the shed.
Jorge was beaming, bouncing on his toes. “Can I ask you a question?” I said.
“You bet.”
“Every driver I’ve ever had has quit after a few months. They say the hours are terrible, I’m too difficult. Why did you stay?”
He scuffed at a bank of dirty snow with his shoe. “Driving’s a pretty boring job, Miz Moore. Hauling rich people around, listening to them complain? Having to apologize when they blame you for the traffic, and the weather, and, like, whatever else is wrong in their lives? You never do that.” He grinned. “And you keep things interesting.”
The old man returned with our paperwork. I handed it to Jorge. “She’s yours.”
He’d been gazing lovingly at the Fury. He turned back to me, startled. “Huh?”
“I want you to have the car. I don’t need it anymore.”
He still wasn’t processing. “What now?”
“The car is yours, Jorge.”
He stepped back. “Get the fuck outta here!” He clapped his hands over his mouth.
I laughed. “It’s okay.”
He looked at the car. He looked at me. His eyes were wide. “Oh my God! This is some Karate Kid shit right here!”
Then he lifted me into the air, nearly squeezing the life out of me. “You’re the best! I promise I’ll take good care of her.”
“I know you will.” He put me down. “I’ll see you Monday. In a normal car.”
He grinned. “Bright and early.” Then he jumped into the Fury and took off.
Back in the cab, I directed the driver to the hotel. Aaron turned to me. He seemed energized, eager, full of purpose.
“I’ve sat in here for the last ten minutes, thinking through everything you’ve told me. And I realized something, Raney. I don’t care about what you did. It doesn’t change anything. We’ve made a mess of things, but I don’t want us to end. Let’s try one more time. I know we can get back to where we were.”
“No, Aaron. We can’t.”
He gripped my hand. “Don’t say that!”
“You want us to return to the status quo, right? That’s what I wanted when I came home, and we resolved to work it out. I thought that if I listened hard enough, and talked hard enough, if I studied the problem and figured out where we went wrong, I could get us back to where we started.”
“Can’t we?”
“We never could have gotten back there. You changed when you had your affair. I changed when I had to deal with it. I learned things about myself, and us. I can never be the Raney who loved the Aaron who would never cheat. Those people are gone.”
He buried his face in his hands. “This is all my fault.”
I touched his shoulder. “Things aren’t supposed to change, right? That’s what everybody believes when they fall in love. That we’re solid, and strong. That we’re going to be the ones who make it. It doesn’t always work that way. I wasn’t supposed to pull away. You weren’t supposed to have an affair. I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with someone else.”
He looked up, devastated. “You…you love this guy?”
I’d tried to avoid thinking about it. At every opportunity, I’d pushed the idea firmly away. Just like I’d pushed him away. Maybe permanently.
“I love you, too,” I said.
“How is that possible?”
“I don’t know. It just is.”
“I don’t understand. How can this be us, Raney? How can we be here?”
“This is what happens when something happens in a marriage, Aaron. You pull one thread, and the whole thing might unravel.”
He stared bleakly out the window. I watched him, feeling that old, familiar tug at my heart. For so long, I’d obsessed over the question of who my husband was. How could he be the man I loved and the man who’d betrayed me? The boy at the party and the man in a hotel with another woman?
But then, who was I? Uptight lawyer, or drunken brawler? Dutiful wife, or happy sex fiend?
The cab approached the hotel. I gathered my bag and wondered what I should do next. Immediate goals were easy: bath, food, sleep. But what about the big stuff, the life stuff? I could (a) start over with Aaron, make an effort to show him my true self. Or I could (b) rush to Singer and beg his forgiveness, tell him I’d figured it out, I was ready to be with him. Or I could—
(c) stop thinking about men all the damn time.
Finding a man, keeping a man, choosing one man over another. Honestly, why does it always come back to men?
The bros have the broth. They can’t have my story.
Not right now, anyway.
Because what I’d been through, the ways I’d triumphed and suffered, the good and the bad, the horribly misguided and the deeply weird—it was never really about men. It was about me. Who I was and what I wanted.
So what did I want?
At that very moment, sitting in that cab, what the hell did I want?
The answer, when it came, was surprising, though it shouldn’t have been. It was my constant, my consolation. The cure for what always ailed me. The thing that made me me.
I wanted to work.
* * *
—
And so I worked. And I lived. I hassled my children. I sparred with my therapist. I exasperated my friends. I still swaggered, and I still staggered. I loved, and I let go. I was alone for a long time. I figured a few things out, including that I would never figure everything out. Still, that doesn’t stop me from trying.
Now it’s another Monday morning, another perfect September day. The elevator doors open on forty-five. I stride the familiar halls. I drop my bag and wake up my computer.
I take stock. I get to work.
I send and receive, draft and delete, argue and complain and explain.
I am me. I am happy.
And so it goes, until a few minutes before eleven, when my phone rings. I recognize the number and reach for the receiver.
I pause, hand resting on the worn black plastic.
Answering the phone. Such a simple act to set so much in motion.
I think of everything that�
��s come before, everything leading to this moment. Everything I’ve been, and done, and everything still to come.
Renfield picks up. A few seconds later, her voice comes over the intercom.
“It’s yer husband.”
Yes, it is. And that makes me laugh, because I still can’t quite believe it. I’m still laughing when I pick up the phone.
“Hi, Singer,” I say.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ELIZA KENNEDY attended the University of Iowa and Harvard Law School. She lives in New York. This is her second novel.
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