Results May Vary

by Bethany Chase

  Out of faith in the power of exposure therapy, I visited Ruby and Jonathan (!) in the city over the long Presidents’ Day weekend, and managed to return home three days later without having experienced the slightest urge to kill either one of them or even myself. It actually felt…surprisingly normal. It felt like the three of us hanging out at my house in September. Yes, they were holding hands and saying “we” a lot, but Ruby was clearly on notice to tamp down on her typical level of unrestrained PDA, and I was damn sure Jonathan didn’t want me making fun of him for any of the girlfriend-related stuff I usually did.

  The strangest thing, really, was being on the outside of a “we.” I recognized how exceptionally spoiled it meant I was, to be experiencing that sensation for the first time at the age of thirty-three, but nevertheless it was as unpleasant as I’m certain everyone who had felt it before me could attest. It felt like standing outside someone’s house on a snowy night, looking in through their warmly lit windows, with no invitation to come inside. But my sister and my (god help me) brother-in-law-apparent were good comrades, and they didn’t make me feel pitied. They just made me feel welcome.

  I missed Adam, of course, but it was manageable. A little duller every day. Slowly, it was becoming less about missing him as my husband, and condensing down into just…missing him. One day after work I flopped down on the couch with my wine and book, and without stopping to second-guess the decision, I called him.

  “Hi, Caro,” he said, and the guardedness in his voice made me flinch.

  “Hi,” I said. “It was kind of spur-of-the-moment for me to call you, I guess—but I was thinking about you and wondering how you were.”

  “Oh. I’ve been wondering about you, too.”

  “Well, so,” I said, “how are things going?” It was an intentionally open question—he could make his response as general or specific as he wished.

  “It’s so weird to hear you say that. Know what I mean? I’m getting more used to not having you in my life, but to actually have a conversation where we catch each other up on our lives…”

  “Yeah, it’s completely weird,” I said. “But still. Tell me.”

  “Well,” he said slowly, and I had a sudden, vivid memory. Adam and I, at a few points in our marriage, had gone hiking together. Now, two true things about us are that we are both born and bred New Yorkers, and that neither of us has a naturally outdoorsy bone in our bodies. I had no more idea what I was doing on our hikes than he did, but I can truthfully state that he was a hell of a lot more helpless. If the trail was flat and dry, he was fine. But when, every so often, the trail inevitably ran into a source of moisture, he would stop. I would leap ahead like an eager Labrador, gleefully squelching into the goo, but Adam would stand there, for anywhere from thirty to ninety seconds, trapped by the importance of choosing exactly the most squelch-free route on which to place his feet.

  It was what he was doing now.

  “It’s okay. You can tell me. I asked.”

  “So, how’s work?” he said, mimicking a phony small-talk tone, but I could hear a smile in his voice.

  “Sure. Start there.”

  “It’s actually great,” he said, and the happiness in his voice made me smile in return. “Richie’s book hit the Times list. Near the bottom, but still.”

  “That’s your second one now, right? You’ve got to tell your parents about it.”

  “I did.”

  I sat upright on the couch and tucked my feet under me. “Oh wow! What did they say?”

  “My dad was pretty confused, but he read the book, and he actually liked it. And you know he wouldn’t have spared my feelings if he thought it was a pile of shit.”

  “Of course he liked it. It’s a great book.”

  “It really could have gone the other way.”

  “But it didn’t,” I said.

  “It didn’t. It went way better than I expected. Honestly, it opened up my whole life, to be able to let go of what I thought he thought I should be doing.”

  “That’s great, Adam. It must feel so good.”

  “It’s a huge relief,” he said. There was a pause in which both of us, on our separate ends of the phone line, peered at the deep and impassable swamp ahead on the trail. “I also told them about Patrick.”

  “Are you serious?” I whispered.

  “And the funny thing is,” he said, laughing slightly, “once I started telling people, I couldn’t stop. I told my whole family, I told my friends, I told Father Kelly; I even told my agent.”

  “What, exactly, were you telling?”

  “That you and I split up because I had an affair, with a man, and that I am in love with him.”

  “Wow,” I said softly.

  “Dad didn’t take that quite as calmly as he did the ghostwriting.”

  “Ugh, Adam, I’m sorry.”

  “It had to be done. Aside from what happened with you, I was just so sick of myself. Thirty-four years old and crushed by my father’s opinion. It’s no way to live.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “So, right now I’m trying to get him to understand that I haven’t turned into a different person. I don’t listen to Madonna or want to work in fashion or whatever the hell he thinks guys who like guys are into. It’s…challenging,” he said. “I think it’s going to be an ongoing process for the rest of our lives.”

  “Yeah. Sadly, I’d say you’re right about that one.”

  “But honestly? It’s actually fine, because I’m figuring out the balance in my own life at the same time. I’ve never been open about this before, so I’ve never had to evaluate what it means to me. It’s part of who I am but it’s not everything. It’s not my definition as a human being.”

  “No, it’s not. And maybe this is a weird thing to say, but I’m proud of you. For opening up about it. I truly believe you will be much happier in the long run.”

  “I do, too. And thank you. It’s not a weird thing to say. It means everything to know you still want the best for me.”

  “Of course I do,” I said, staring down at my empty left hand. “It’s my instinct to wish that for you. I meant it when I said I’d always love you.”

  “Me too, Caro,” he said softly. “And that’s something good.”

  •

  As I grew accustomed to the silence, I also spent more time with Farren in her studio, while she worked on her maze, and we talked about it. All the corners and the false instructions that had lain in wait for us, and for everyone we loved. Marriages ended for the right reasons, and the wrong ones; too soon and, sometimes, far too late. Jobs led in good directions and bad, to dead ends and long, wide-open straightaways.

  Sometimes, life just works like this: You plan to see the Grand Canyon on a romantic trip with your husband, and be moved by its majesty. That is what you reasonably expect, based on the decisions you have made in your life and where they’ve taken you. And then what actually happens is that you break up with your husband, and you see the Grand Canyon on a bonding trip with your sister, accompanied by a shattering hangover; and your overall impression is that this particular example of nature’s majesty is a bit underwhelming and frankly fucking scary. And while the dream was nice, the reality is—well, it’s reality. That trip of mine had been the best my current reality could possibly be, actually, and that was pretty damn cool.

  It was what I had to do. Enjoy the life I actually had, because the life I’d thought I’d have was gone. The change had the appearance of being my choice, but it wasn’t. It had never really been. The old life I’d thought I’d have was based on an Adam who never existed in the first place. So all I could do was walk forward. And keep an eye out for the beauty along the way.

  •

  After a while, a day arrived where the calendar said it was a week away from the first day of spring, which, in western Massachusetts, meant it was the kind of raw, bitter, late-winter day that can make you lose your will to keep on living. The only sign of warmer weather was the steady, unstopp
able lengthening of the days; so, as I approached my car in the parking lot after work that afternoon, there was enough light left in the sky to let me see right away that someone was leaning on the small burgundy Impreza next to my ancient Volvo.

  Neil, leaning on Neil’s car, next to mine. He wanted to talk to me. In the relative privacy of the parking lot, after work. Did that mean what I thought it might? What I found myself wishing, badly, that it did?

  He smiled when he saw me, and I picked up the pace, scuffing my heavy winter boots over the salt-stained pavement. My warm breath dampened the scarf I’d pulled over my face against the cold. Skirting a sooty snow mound that our caretaker had built in an adjacent parking space, I screeched to a graceless halt in front of Neil and shoved my scarf aside, but that lovely smile of his just grew.

  “Hey, Caroline.”

  He was wearing his woolly knit cap with the earflaps, and the unexpectedly adorable effect of a sexy guy in a dorky hat nearly undid me right then and there. “Hey.”

  “Do you have a minute to talk?”

  I let myself have a moment to take him in, to absorb him. To sift through all the layers of what he was to me. My colleague, whose encouragement had led me to achieve things I hadn’t known I could. My friend, who had given me kindness and understanding. My lover, whose laughter and tenderness and desire had lit up the darkest winter I’d ever known, replenishing what Adam had taken away from me. I respected this man, I admired him, I enjoyed him, I desired him, I cared about him—and I missed him.

  Yes, I had a minute to talk.

  “Do you want to get in the car so we can warm up? We can go somewhere else if you want. I just didn’t want to make a big deal out of this for no reason.”

  Oh. Maybe it wasn’t the kind of talk I had been hoping for. Maybe he was about to inform me he was seeing somebody else and would not be available in case I ever developed any ideas about restarting our—whatever it had been.

  I circled his car and sat down on the passenger side. It was, in fact, delightfully warm; and it smelled a little bit like him. Neil pulled his hat off and stuffed it into the console next to a broken purple crayon.

  “So, listen,” he began, then took a deep breath and released it. This was something he’d thought about beforehand. Whatever it was he wanted to say. “I just wanted to tell you that I miss you,” he said. “A lot. And I’m so goddamn tired of missing people. If you need more time to get your head into a better place, I understand, believe me. Just…don’t wait forever. It’s like people say about having kids: There’s never a perfect time, and if you keep waiting for that moment when everything’s exactly the way you want, then you’ll never do it, because that moment will never come. You don’t have to be one hundred percent ready. I know I’m not one hundred percent ready, but I like you so damn much, Care. And I trust us to figure it out as we go along. I hate the thought of not trying at all because it might be confusing or it might get a little bit messy.”

  Oh, glory. This was what I’d wanted him to say. This was it, exactly. And yet.

  “I’m tired of missing people, too. Definitely including you. I’m just scared that I don’t have enough distance yet,” I told him. “You deserve to be treated as your own person, not a stand-in. A relationship between us should be its own thing, not me trying to fill the void that Adam left.”

  He reached his hand across the console, and I met him, circling his warm fingers in my chilly ones. It felt so good to touch him.

  “I’ve never once felt like a stand-in with you. Which is more than you can say for me. That first time we slept together…I’m so sorry. I want you to understand it was not intentional; my brain was so out of whack, it was like a muscle memory, it just—”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It really is. I understood all of that when it happened. I meant it when I said I didn’t blame you.”

  He stroked his thumb across my knuckles. “I figured out after my brother died that loss splits your world into people who get it and people who don’t. It’s human nature to try to make things not feel as awful as they are, which is why people say garbage like ‘Everything happens for a reason.’ But you’ve never done that. You never tried to pretend. Even that night—I’d done something you should have been angry at me for, but instead, you saw that I was hurting and you gave me comfort. You weren’t trying to make me talk about it, you weren’t telling me it was going to be okay; you were just…there with me. It was such a relief. You’ve been so generous to me. The least I can do is offer you the same thing.”

  I raised my gaze from our joined hands so that I could meet his eyes straight on. “What are you offering, though? What can you offer?” It was a question I knew to ask, now.

  “A lot more than I thought I could,” he said softly, leaning forward until he could stroke his free hand over my hair. “I’ve thought about this a lot, and here’s the thing. Part of me will always love Eva, and that’s the way it should be. But I’m ready to let it not be all of me. I’m ready to let it not even be most of me. Something I never realized before is that accepting that she’s gone is not the same as…actually letting her go.”

  His voice quavered slightly, and when I squeezed his hand, he squeezed mine back, hard.

  “But what you said to me before, about always playing second fiddle, it made me realize that I have to let her go if I want to have any kind of a future. So, I’ve been making room. Because I want to try this with you, for real. I won’t always get everything right, but I’m going to do my best, because you’re important to me. I promise I will make you feel that.”

  Another promise. Another choice. An extended hand I could grasp, or walk past.

  “And as for your divorce baggage,” he said, voice warm with that humor I adored, “you don’t scare me. If you can give me and my loss baggage a shot, then I’m up for whatever weirdness you’re worried you might splash around. Lay it on me.”

  I made a motion as if I was scooping a handful of liquid from my chest and tossing it at him, and he rubbed it into the skin of his throat like sunscreen. For a long moment we just smiled at each other, then he spoke again.

  “So, listen. We will take it slow. As slow as you like. All I want from you is to let me take you to dinner sometimes, and make love to you a lot, and cook you and the girls pancakes on Sunday mornings. That doesn’t sound like too much to handle, does it?”

  “Knowing your pancakes, no.”

  He slid his fingers slowly between mine. “Only the pancakes?” His voice had the deep, smooth, coaxing cadence of an upright bass.

  Oh, god. Down, girl. “Also the saxophone,” I croaked out.

  “The girls were asking about you, you know.”

  I fixed him with a grim stare. “Neil. Don’t lie.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. “Annie did,” he amended.

  “Clara hopes I have been permanently relocated to Chattanooga,” I said, and he laughed again.

  “God damn, I’ve missed you. Are you in a better place with Adam these days?”

  “Yeah. The papers were signed about six weeks ago. I’m expecting the judgment pretty soon, and then there’s sort of a last-chance period before it becomes final. But, uh, neither of us is going to be having any second thoughts on this one.”

  It was Neil’s turn to squeeze my hand, this time. “I’m sorry, baby. I know you know it was right, but it must have still been hard to do it.”

  “It hurt, but it wasn’t hard to do it. There was no place else for us to go, and by the end he knew that too. I miss him. But I think we’ll be able to be friends before too long.”

  “If anyone can do it, it would be you.”

  His voice trailed away into silence, and for a moment, all there was was the hypnotic rub of his knuckles against the back of my hand.

  “So. Care.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Now that I’ve unloaded all of that, what do you think? Come back and give it a try?”

  And here it was. That choice again. To offer
trust, without a guarantee of safety, simply because there was someone asking for it.

  As shattered as I’d been by Adam’s betrayal, I knew I had no true reason to fear the same from the man in front of me. Neil had kindness, empathy, integrity, and a steadiness I could see now that Adam had always lacked.

  He also had a wall full of photographs of his dead wife.

  And a child who didn’t like me, and in-laws who wouldn’t welcome my presence in his life. But the thing was, he also had another child who did like me, and I badly missed the flame that lit inside me when I made her laugh. Then there was the way he was looking at me right now, like I was the first daffodil of spring and his favorite part of his favorite song, all rolled up in one. And, most of all, there was the answer I could feel ringing inside me, ringing so loud I was surprised I couldn’t hear the sound.

  We always make the same choice, don’t we? As terrifying and often foolish as it is, we do it over and over and over, because the other way is just too cold to bear. We take a deep breath and square our shoulders and take that left that leads us deeper into the maze.

  I stacked my other hand on top of Neil’s and locked our fingers. “Of course I will,” I whispered.

  And when he kissed me, even though it wasn’t my first kiss or even our first, it still felt like a beginning. I had no idea what the story of my future would be without the man I married in it, but this was, as Neil himself had said last fall, the first of many steps. And I liked the direction I was headed.

  For Allen, the original good-hearted man