by Mary Cable
I thought this might bring on the wary captain look, but instead he seemed somewhat relieved. “Oh,” he said. “I thought it might be about a particular thing.”
“What particular thing were you thinking of?”
“Nothing at all important,” he said. “It’s just that two of your friends saw me having lunch with Bishy the other day, and they kept looking at us. So I thought maybe they’d told you.”
“Why should they?” I asked.
“Only because one of them happened to see me lunching with her before. You know Santa Fe. People love to gossip, particularly when a woman is as good-looking as Bishy. I wouldn’t want you to feel hurt.”
“I thought Bishy went to visit friends - to avoid Vincent.”
“The friends she’s visiting live here.”
I said I wasn’t hurt, and perhaps I said it so convincingly that I hurt him.
“As I’ve told you before,” he said huffily, “she’s a wonderful woman and she’s had a wretched time. You can’t imagine-”
“She seems to have made you her confidant.”
“She asks for my advice.” And after a pause, he added, “Which is more than you’ve ever done.”
Then, quite suddenly, he went off into tirades about how detached I always was and how uninterested in him, and how I was never home because I was taking useless courses, and how tired he was of being thrown hand-knit sweaters as if they could make up for all that was missing.
Now I did begin to feel hurt, because I hadn’t thought our marriage was that bad. But he was right about the sweaters. No matter how intricate the pattern or how long it took me to knit them, he needed love instead.
What he was saying caught me completely off guard. I had anticipated a painful dialogue, initiated by me. And that after many hours and thousands of unhappy words, we would agree to give our marriage another try - say, for a year or more. Instead, I now felt as if I had mounted a horse known for its plodding gait and suddenly found myself racing off across rough prairie, heading for the horizon.
I don’t know, and don’t wish to know, the full story about those lunches with Bishy, although helpful friends let me know that there had been dinners, too, and that someone had once seen them in a parked car near Nambe Falls. For me, these occasions had served an important purpose: they had brought Oz to look at our relationship and find it wanting. I respected him for doing so. And it was clear to both of us that we had come to the end of our marriage.
* * *
A week later, I was packing. Oz would continue to live in the house, so I packed everything that belonged to me and left no trace of myself - exactly as my mother used to do. For sentiment, I kept two of the Thai lacquer finger bowls, but I sent the other twenty-two to my sister, whose husband had recently been named Ambassador to Bolivia. One of the many decisions I had reached was that I did not need finger bowls.
I called David and told him what had happened, and that I felt I ought to go away by myself for a while and think things through; also, that I had bought a ticket to Rome.
“I’m coming with you,” he said,
“Not now.”
“When?”
“When each of us has sorted everything out.”
“I am completely sorted out.”
“But I’m changing, David. When you knew me, I used to do everything your way. I doubt if I will anymore, and you may not like it.”
“Try me,” he said. “Alex! For God’s sake, don’t disappear on me.”
“I won’t.”
“I’m coming to Rome.”
“Oh, no!” I said in alarm. “I’ll write and I’ll telephone. It’s just that I ought to think things over. Don’t you believe in caution?”
“At a time like this? What we need now is no caution whatsoever. Total recklessness.”
I thought of my cautious father and my anxious mother, and Ginevra feeding her automatic baby. I decided to say no more about caution.
“It’s just that I’ve been facing in one direction for so many years and now everything has whirled around. Including me.” I paused, trying to think how to explain this better. “I feel as if I must put a puzzle together. A complicated jigsaw puzzle that I’ve never done before.”
“I can help you,” he said. “I like puzzles.”
“But you can’t do this one. It’s mine.”
After that, he was silent. Finally, he said, “Well, darling Alex, whatever you want.”
“It won’t take long,” I said, beginning to waver. “Not long at all, probably. We’ll have to see.”
Flying across the Atlantic, I felt the way I had felt as a child: wondering why I was traveling, but aware that the home I was leaving had vanished, and there could be no going back. Then, at least, I had my parents with me, but now, no one. I had called David just before it was time to board the plane, to say another goodbye and promise to write, but he wasn’t at the ranch. I thought about calling him now, from the plane, but I said to myself, if you’re flying off by yourself to demonstrate that you are brave and independent and don’t just do things to please people, then stick to it.
I dozed for a while and then woke up with an absolute conviction: I was doing this not to be brave and self-directing, but because I was a cautious mouse. To go back to David might be inadvisable (or not), but it was what 1 wanted. I couldn’t spend my life holding back and running away, especially not from love. This, I told myself, is going to be the shortest visit to Rome anyone ever made.
When the plane landed, and I had been through the passport check and customs, I asked the porter to take me to the ticket counter, where I planned to change my return flight to an earlier one. But at the place where the passengers’ friends and relatives were waiting for them, all my loneliness and every vestige of indecision went away for good. I knew I was home at last. David had met the plane.
Copyright © 2018 by Mary Cable. All rights reserved.
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