“Are you sorry you married me?” I whispered.
He shook his head, eyes gleaming with tears. “Never. Everything I said, I meant. I’ve loved you more than anyone else in my life. I was going to say, before—that summer, with Brett. He was over one time, so we could fool around while Mom and Dad were out of town. Except they got back early. They didn’t catch us literally in the act, but it was one stop short of that. I had time to grab my pants but not to put them on, so I remember I just wadded them into my lap to cover my crotch. It was so fucking humiliating. And the way my dad looked at me, Caro—I will never forget it. Just…this…disgust. I doubt you can imagine what it feels like to have your parent look at you that way.”
I had my arms around him before he’d finished the sentence, and he clutched me, tears and breath hot against my neck. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, and held him tighter. “Adam, I’m so sorry. I hate that he failed you like that.”
“It could have been worse,” he said, on a shuddering breath. “It could have been way, way worse. He didn’t hit me or kick me out of the house or disown me. And even afterward—after the initial shock, they just walked upstairs without saying anything, and Brett left, and I went to my room. They came in after a little while, and he sat in my desk chair and he said, very calmly, ‘I don’t want anything like that to ever happen again. You’re young and confused, but things like that are not appropriate. Do you understand me?’ And that was it, Caro, that ‘Do you understand me?’ Because I did. It was all he had to say.”
I understood it too. Adam’s father had always been kind to me, but he was a stern and unbending man. Profoundly intimidating to his sixteen-year-old son in a way that the thirty-four-year-old son had still not fully freed himself from.
He took a deep breath and loosened his arms. “And so that’s—that’s when I started trying to crush it. I’d kissed a couple of girls before, but I’d never wanted to do much more than that, except to satisfy my curiosity. So I figured the problem was that I hadn’t found the right girl. I started looking at porn more, and it was definitely interesting,” he said, a note of wry humor in his voice. “I decided that I was going to get myself a girlfriend. I didn’t like the kind of girls my friends liked, with their giggling and their cliques, but there was this girl in my English class.”
I smiled a little, knowing what was coming.
“She didn’t talk a whole lot, but when she did, the things she said were so smart that I was completely impressed. She was beautiful, but she didn’t draw attention to it like the other pretty girls; it was obvious that her brains were what she valued about herself. And she had this dignity about her, as if she knew full well that high school was nothing but one long embarrassment we all had to get through before we could get on with becoming adults. I liked this girl more and more. So, I asked her out.
“For our first date I took her on a picnic up at the Cloisters, because I knew she liked art. It was one of those fall days that’s so perfect you can barely even believe it’s real. We sat under a tree that was blooming with gold leaves, and talked and talked and talked, long after we finished our food. And then we lay on our backs on the blanket and stared at the deep blue sky through the leaves, and I reached over and took her hand, and I could feel my whole body come alive.” He took my hand, interlacing our fingers. “And then when I kissed her, I knew. This was my girl.”
He cupped my face with his free hand. My eyes drifted closed as our lips met, and I leaned into the kiss with a sigh. I kissed him slowly, committing him to my memory once and for all.
Oh, Adam. My beloved storyteller. How I was going to miss him.
“I know I’ve given you plenty of reason to doubt everything I ever told you,” he said, stroking my cheek with his thumb, “but you should never doubt that I loved you. I still do. I always will. You were everything to me. Everything I wanted to be. My dream girl. So much so that I hated the thought of letting you down by showing you all of who I actually was.”
I clasped his face and shook my head. “None of it would have disappointed me except the cheating.”
He rested his forehead against mine. “And it’s really too late to try again?”
“You know it is,” I said. “I forgive you, but I could never trust you. And you’re in love with Patrick. Something about him reaches you in a way that I never did. You need to follow that.”
His smile was infinitely tender, and infinitely sad. “After all of this, you want me to be happy. Do you know how rare that is? To be that generous?”
“You being happy with someone else doesn’t take anything away from me, Adam. We’re already broken. But I’m always going to love you too, and I want to see you content and at ease with who you are.”
He cupped my head and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “I never deserved you.”
“Maybe not,” I said, getting to my feet. “But I wouldn’t necessarily say so. Ruby says that people can only give us what they have. I think probably, you did your best with what you had.”
“Are you sorry you married me?” he said, echoing the same question I had asked him before.
“There have been days when I have been,” I said. “There were a lot of those days. But today isn’t one of them. I’m not sure how I’ll feel about it tomorrow, but no; today, I’m not sorry I married you at all.”
31
•
The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them for so long.
—Major Sullivan Ballou to his wife, Sarah, a week before his death in the Battle of Bull Run, July 14, 1861
I knew Adam was gone as soon as I opened my eyes. The house was too still, like the surface of a lake at dawn. Even when Adam was “being quiet,” he couldn’t be. He dragged a small trail of noise and motion behind him at all times; his idea of being quiet so as not to wake me was to play his music softly. There was no music this morning; no gush of water into the bathroom sink; no creaking floorboard in the hall; no ring of a dropped spoon in the kitchen, followed by a muttered curse.
When I made my way downstairs, the main room glowed with the kind of pearly morning light that is unique to sunny days in winter. The ashes in the woodstove were gray and cool; the blankets Adam had slept under were neatly stacked on the end of the couch; our wine glasses had been washed and set out to dry, facedown on a towel on the counter. Droplets of water still clung to the bases of the stems.
On the dining table was an envelope with my name on it. The rip as I opened it was loud in the silence, so loud that I flinched. I expected to find a farewell letter from him inside, along with the other thing—it was the Adam thing to do. But no: It was only the papers. Signed.
I guessed we’d said our farewells last night, after all.
The dining chair creaked as I sat down to read. It seemed inconceivable that this document was the one that would end the long tale of our relationship, with all its many stories worn soft from retelling, chapter after fully lived and fully loved chapter. How was it that these words related to me and Adam? Plaintiff and Defendant. But there were those other words, summarizing the adultery, which had happened. And there, my maiden name that I was returning to. This had become our story, somehow.
But there was something else after all, I found. As I leafed through the pages, checking that everything was there, I saw it: Adam’s final gesture of love and kindness in our marriage. Enclosed with the papers was the deed to the house, signed over to me outright, in full. There would be no payment plan required; he was giving it to me. The Hammonds’ lawyer could not have been best pleased with this, but Adam had done it anyway, because he was generous. Always so generous with his gifts: the perfect thing, at the perfect time. Exactly what I needed the most.
As I wiped my tears away with my thumb, my mind returned, inevitably, to the question Adam had asked me the night before. Was I sorry I had married him? Also too, that question’s conjoined twin siblings:
Did I wish that Ruby had spilled her news about Adam and Brett at the time that she’d heard it? And, if I had heard it, would I have gone ahead with the wedding?
I sipped my tea, feeling the welcome warmth slide down my throat. The second two questions were far easier to answer than the first. I did wish Ruby had told me; knowing that critical fact about Adam could have saved us both a great deal of pain in either scenario. Whether I had broken off the engagement then, or continued on with my eyes open—knowledge is power, as I believe a few people have remarked. But I didn’t think I would have broken things off. I cast my thoughts back to Caroline of ten and a half years ago: eager, determined, and deeply in love. Adam of ten and a half years ago would have told me that an early exploration did not indicate a lasting inclination. He would have told me he thought of no one but me, then enthusiastically demonstrated his attraction to me in our grown-up queen bed, and that would have been it. He’d still have cheated on me in college, and, presumably, also during our marriage.
Maybe there was a limit to the power of knowledge, after all.
The only real question to answer was whether I regretted it. Last night, soft with wine and tenderness, I had told him I did not. But even in the bright chilly light of morning, alone, with my hand resting on the papers that would end our marriage, I couldn’t wish the marriage had never happened.
I had been betrayed and lied to and humiliated, hurt more terribly than I’d ever been by anyone or anything before. And it had happened at the very hands of the person I most deeply loved and trusted.
But despite every bit of that, I was still here. Despite my early certainty, I had not expired of pain. I still had my family, and I loved my sister and her astonishing choice of a boyfriend more than ever. I’d grown at work, landing a major donor and securing a residency for an artist who deserved to be seen. Hell, I’d even managed to have a gorgeous fling with a man who wasn’t Adam, thus introducing myself to both the best sex I’d ever had, and the sort of kindness two hurting people can share.
Most of all, there was every year before this one. Every year of joy and laughter and love, full of far, far too many memories ever to count. Adam’s ritually melodramatic driveway shoveling, full of Shakespearean gestures and proclamations that made me double over with laughter even as the raw wind whipped at my face. The way his hand always seemed magnetically drawn to my butt, dispensing little pats and rubs anytime he was within range. His unapologetic pride at introducing me as his wife. The deep pleasure of making our own home together and filling it with things and people we loved. That sense of belonging to another person, wholly and happily; of being one half of a partnership. The simple peace of having someone to rest my head on when I was tired.
I sobbed once, then the tears caught in my throat. Never had I felt the sheer loss of my marriage more acutely than I did in the moment I asked myself whether I regretted it. Because the answer was no, no, no, never. I could never wish we hadn’t had what we did. The extent of Adam’s cheating didn’t sour me the way I would have expected, because it had come from a more complicated place than sheer selfishness; and, aside from Patrick, I knew it had all meant nothing. Hypotheticals were worthless—thinking “Maybe I could have married someone else who wouldn’t have cheated” felt as alien and wrong as “Maybe I could have been born to a different family.” It was like imagining a different face looking back at me in the mirror.
What was mine was mine, flawed as it might be. Adam had been mine; my marriage had been mine. I had chosen it and lived it and loved it.
I nearly knocked over my chair in my haste to reach my phone, and dialed his number with shaking hands.
“I’m driving, so I can’t talk long,” he said. “Didn’t think I could handle saying goodbye to you so I just left. The papers are on the table.”
“The answer is no,” I said. “I am not sorry I married you. I will never be. I am glad.”
Silence, then I heard the huff of breath that meant he was crying. “I love you, Caro.”
“I love you too. Get home safe. Take good care of yourself. And be happy.”
•
Ruby greeted my phone call with a protracted groan of protest.
“Quit grizzling,” I said. “It’s nine-thirty in the morning, not seven-thirty.”
“I went to bed late,” she whined.
“I bet you did. Saturday’s a late night for the culinary industry, I hear.”
She gave a little hiccup of self-satisfied laughter, and I knew I had her.
“Look, Rube, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. You did a really sweet thing, taking me on that trip to try to cheer me up, and I’m sorry I caused such a huge fight when you were only trying to help. I shouldn’t have given you such a hard time about the stuff with Adam. It wasn’t fair of me to blame you. You were young, and you had no idea what to even make of the information, let alone what to do with it.”
“Wow. This is an unexpected topic for an early morning phone call. But thank you. All of these statements you’re making are true.”
“Yes, they are. So, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Care. I get it. You have to know I thought it was for the best not to tell you, right? And if I’d heard anything after that, anything at all—”
“I know. You would have said. I totally believe that. The thing is, though,” I said, staring at the small stack of papers on the table, “it felt like a huge deal when you told me, but I realized it wouldn’t have mattered either way. It would have taken him all of three minutes to convince me there was no reason to worry. I still would have married him. And we still would have ended up in exactly the same place.”
“You think?”
“I know.” Briefly, I filled her in on my long talk with Adam.
After I was finished, she was quiet for a moment. “Wow. So it’s really over, huh?”
“Not over over, not until we get the decree, but I’m giving the papers to my lawyer on Monday to file with the county.”
“Do you feel okay about it?”
“Yeah. I do,” I said, and something slipped loose inside me as I realized I meant it. “We never had a way back up from where we’d landed.”
“No, I didn’t think you did. Soooooo…what’s going to happen with your rebound guy?”
“I broke it off. Specifically because he deserves better than to be the rebound guy.”
“Well, yeah, but at some point you will be ready to actually date again.”
“Sure, but I don’t know when that’s going to be. I can’t ask him to wait for me.”
“I don’t know, Care; if he likes you, maybe he already is.”
The ache at the impossibility of Neil rolled over me like fog off the ocean, dreary and cold. “Trust me, he isn’t. There were bigger issues there than just my rebound. Anyway, can I talk to the Blaster, please?”
After an extremely brief pause that called unavoidably to mind the fact that the two of them had to be naked in bed together, Jonathan came on the line.
“I definitely told you to stop calling me that.”
“There is no way that will ever happen. Especially since your latest and hopefully final blast was directed at such a special target.”
“You know, I’ve gotta tell you, you might want to reconsider your assessment of which one of us did the blasting in this relationship,” he said, then there was the sound of a sharp smack. “Ouch! Damn it, woman!” I heard rustling, then the sound of Ruby’s squeal in the background.
“Oh my god, CUT IT OUT,” I yelled. “I’m never calling either of you again if I’m going to have to listen to foreplay. Jonathan, come back here.”
“Did nobody teach that girl some manners?” he grumbled.
“Yeah, no, we’ve been trying for twenty-eight years,” I said. “Anyway, just listen for a second. I wanted to tell you I’m happy for you guys. You obviously don’t need my permission or my blessing, but I know I freaked out pretty hard when I heard about it, so…I’m over it. You don’t have to worr
y about me being a Grinch anymore.”
“Oh,” he said. “That’s all?”
“That’s all. Why, what did you think I was going to say?”
“Darlin’, I had no damn idea. But, thank you. I get how it could feel weird to you. But me and this little wood rat here, we’re good.”
I smiled. If Jonathan was giving Ruby an unflattering animal nickname, he definitely loved her. He referred to his own sister as “Porcupine”; though, in Kim’s case, that was also down to personality.
After we said goodbye, I set the phone down on the table with a soft clack. And suddenly I realized there was no one else to call. Adam was, finally, really and truly gone; and Ruby and Jonathan were holed up in their love nest in the city, so neither of them was coming to visit me for a really long time. My local friends weren’t close friends, and nearly all of them were couples in whose company I would now be a very ponderous third wheel.
I was going to be alone, and this time it was for keeps. I’d been completely alone for the past few weeks—no Ruby, no Jonathan, no Neil—but somehow the last tenuous link to my marriage that remained had kept me from feeling the full depth of my loneliness. But now that Adam and I had officially said our goodbyes, it was rising like floodwater.
It was just me and the silence again.
32
•
“Perforation problems” by the way means to me also the holes that will always exist in any story we try to make of our lives. So hang on, my love, & grow big & strong & take your hits & keep going.
—Iggy Pop to a fan named Laurence, 1995
In the weeks that followed, I learned something about silence that surprised me. Silence doesn’t kill you.
Much like the initial shock and pain of Adam’s betrayal last summer had gradually dulled to a hollow ache by fall, so, too, did the sharp awareness of my loneliness subside to a more tolerable thing. I kept up my wine-and-book evenings on my couch, and I allowed myself a few more ways to fill the void. I called my parents more. I joined a volunteer group that offered art classes for low-income kids. I was touched and heartened to discover that, once I finally told my local friends that Adam and I had split, they invited me over anyway. I spent way too much money on a glorious pair of shoes, even though there was no one to admire me in them, simply because they were beautiful.
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