Marriage Vacation

by Pauline Brooks

  “The same road trip?” I asked.

  “The same one. Different van. This one was all-modern. It had all her medical equipment in it. I did all of the driving this time. Instead of climbing the rock we slept in its shadow. But otherwise we took the exact same path. We camped in the same sites. We told all our old stories and we fell in love again, right before the end.”

  I didn’t realize I was crying until Dusty passed me a napkin.

  “It’s not a sad story,” he said, though I could see the tears start to pool in his own eyes. “We had a happy ending.”

  “She sounds like an amazing woman. You must miss her.”

  He finished his glass of wine in one long sip. “Every day. But we got to say our good-byes. She wanted me to live a good life when she was gone. Now I need to figure out what that life looks like. It ain’t easy starting all over again.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “No, it isn’t.”

  Dusty stood and stretched his hand out to me. “I want to show you something. How are those ribs feeling?”

  “Better. Much better, actually. I hardly notice them.” When I took his hand to stand I felt a tingle of electricity run up my spine.

  “Let’s go for a ride. Grab yourself a sweater.”

  “I don’t have anything that warm.”

  “No sweat, I’ll get you one of mine.”

  He disappeared upstairs and returned with a man’s heavy cardigan and another bottle of wine. He grabbed our wineglasses and held them by their stems in one hand.

  I pulled the sweater around me. It smelled like old wool, tobacco, and something sweet, sweat mixed with dirt.

  “Let’s go.”

  Mikey, their spry old sheepdog, tried to jump in the back of the truck, but Dusty shooed him back into the house. The mutt barked at the windows as Dusty climbed behind the wheel and poured me a glass of wine for the drive.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see. Patience is a virtue, Kate. In cassoulet and life.” He sipped on his own glass of wine as he drove and I wondered for a second what would happen if we were pulled over. I’d had enough of dealing with the police in foreign countries. Then I remembered we were driving on Dusty’s land and following his rules. I relaxed and let myself enjoy the wine as I stared into the ink-stained night.

  “It’s a new moon,” Dusty commented, and smiled at me out the side of his mouth. I realized only then that Dusty was flirting with me. I allowed myself to enjoy it.

  After all, Karl had moved on. Remembering Karl’s new relationship made my entire body tense. I finished my glass of wine and squeezed my eyes shut to force the memory away.

  I took in all of Dusty then, his rugged profile, the taut muscles of his shoulders straining against his shirt. He hadn’t bothered with a sweater or jacket and I imagined he didn’t need one. I stared at his hands on the wheel and thought about, just for a second, what they would feel like on my body. I was glad the dark could hide the blush that took over my cheeks.

  We stopped every mile for Dusty to get out and unlatch a gate and finally began to climb up a steep ridge I didn’t know existed. He parked the car at the top and hurried around the back to open my door like a gentleman.

  We walked another thirty yards up the remainder of the hill, sidestepping the low desert shrubs. At some point Dusty reached down and grabbed my hand, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I gave his fingers a squeeze to let him know I was happy he did. I knew how to do this. It was like riding a bike. It all came back to you if you’d only let it.

  Finally, we came upon a large boulder all on its own that rose out of the earth as if it had been placed there specifically by some supernatural force. I squinted at the shape of it and imagined what it would look like if there were a full moon in the sky. It was the boulder from Adele’s painting, the one of Bahloo looking over a young Mia. I was touched and a little apprehensive that Dusty would bring me to such a special place.

  Before I could think any more about it, Dusty placed his hands on my waist.

  “Will this hurt?” he asked in a low voice. “If I lift you up?”

  I shook my head. He gently placed me on the rock as though I weighed nothing at all. I marveled at the smooth, flat surface, polished by years of winds and sands whipping across the highest point for miles. Dusty placed the wine and the glasses beside me and leaped up in one fluid motion.

  “Best seat in the whole territory,” he whispered, and lay down on the rock.

  I lay beside him.

  “It sure is.”

  There were more stars than I’d ever seen. Dusty pointed out the constellations unique to the southern hemisphere. The Southern Cross I knew, but I’d never heard of Vela or Carina.

  “Vela means ‘sails of the ship’ in Latin,” Dusty explained. “It was part of a larger constellation of the ship that Jason and the Argonauts used to search for the golden fleece.”

  “I see where Derek got his love of astronomy,” I said.

  Dusty nestled his arm beneath my shoulder so that I could place my head on his chest. My skull fit perfectly into the space just below his collarbone.

  “Maybe I’ll go back to school,” he said in a voice dreamy from wine. “Get my own PhD.”

  “It’s a good idea.”

  “It’s something.”

  I don’t know how long we lay like that. I listened to his heart echo in his chest and let my breathing match his. I might have fallen asleep. Dusty gave me a nudge.

  “Kate?”

  I tipped my head to his, certain he would kiss me and equally certain I would let him.

  “We need to move. We need to go fast. A storm’s rolling in.”

  I swiveled my head behind us and saw a mass of gray thunderheads cloaking the stars.

  “We don’t want to be caught out here. We’ll be safe in the car.”

  He helped me off the boulder and this time I felt too much pressure on my injured rib. I let out a low yowl, which Dusty couldn’t hear over the whipping wind.

  “The storms come fast out here. I should have checked the radar.” He pulled me behind him toward the truck.

  “We can outrun her. Come on!”

  He sped us down the ridge and back toward the house. I felt the wind rock the cab of the truck. Lightning struck something on the horizon behind us and lit the sky a terrifying purple. The crack of thunder was deafening. I held on to the dash for dear life. We’d abandoned our wine in our haste to flee the storm. We reached the house in less than half the time it had taken us to get out to the rock. The rain came down in sharp sheets, cutting into my skin, and I was soaked in the short distance between the driveway and the front door.

  I squatted, shivering, next to the fire still burning in the living room. Dusty crouched next to me and tossed a new log onto the flames. He swiveled on his heel to face me and began to peel the sweater away from my quivering shoulders.

  “You’ll warm up faster if you take this off.”

  His breath was warm and hot against my cheek. I didn’t say anything as I shrugged the sweater to the ground. He placed his palms against each of my cheeks and drew my face to his. I let myself melt into his kiss. My lips parted. His tongue found mine. We fell back onto the floor in front of the fire.

  His body was broader and more solid than Karl’s, his hands rougher, his lips chapped in a way Karl’s never were. I felt a quickening of my pulse and an urgency to keep going. The wine had gone to my head, making me slightly dizzy. I found myself trying to remember what was supposed to come next.

  We fumbled, a tangle of limbs that didn’t know where to go. Dusty bit down on my lip too hard and I winced. I tried to throw my leg over his hip and kneed him straight in the groin. He recoiled, grunted, and fell away from me.

  “Let’s try this again.” We both leaned in for another kiss and knocked noses. My ribs began to ache. I suddenly felt nauseated from the car ride and the wine and the smoke from the fire.

  When I opened my eyes I realized th
at Dusty has collapsed against the base of the sofa with his hands covering his face.

  “Are you OK?”

  He swiped at his eyes, embarrassed that I’d noticed his tears. The light from the flames glinted off his wedding ring. He still hadn’t taken it off. “You must think I’m an incredible pussy.”

  I shouldn’t have laughed, but I did. And it turned out that was the right thing to do, because then Dusty laughed with me, and soon we couldn’t stop laughing. Just like that the moment passed and it’s like we both knew how ill-advised a tryst was; our hearts weren’t in it. We opened another bottle of wine and continued to dry off by the fire.

  “It used to be so easy with Adele.” He shook his head. “I knew what to do. Not in the beginning, of course. In the beginning, we were kids. But after we got it all working it really worked.”

  I noticed my wineglass was empty and took a swig out of the bottle instead of pouring more. I rarely let myself get drunk, but this felt like the right occasion to have too much to drink. “I know what you mean. How quickly could you make her come?”

  If he was taken aback by my question he didn’t show it.

  “Five minutes,” he said with pride.

  “Yeah. Karl could do it for me in less than two. I used to listen to other women talk about how they missed the kind of sex that went on for hours and hours and sometimes that’s nice, don’t get me wrong. But there’s something to be said for efficiency too, for knowing how to get a job done.”

  “Cheers to that, my girl.” A cloud passed over Dusty’s face as he finished off the rest of the bottle. “Maybe I just won’t find anyone new. Maybe I’ve passed my expiry date.”

  I wanted to invite him to come to New York, where I knew about a dozen single, beautiful, and brilliant women just past their fortieth birthday who were convinced they’d passed their expiry date who would gladly help him get back in the saddle, or climb into his saddle.

  “You’re not going to have any problem once you’re ready.”

  He lay down on his side and propped himself up on his elbow. His cheeks were rusty and his expression loose from the wine. “What about you, Kate?”

  “What about me?” I said, even though I knew what he was asking.

  “Are you going to move on?”

  I didn’t tell him that the entire time we were fumbling around, lips touching, tongues touching, all I could think about was Karl. I thought about how Karl kissed, slow at first, like a butterfly landing on your lips, and then hard and fast, like a starving man desperate to be satiated. I thought about how Karl knew exactly where to touch me to make me aroused, the unusual places like the inside of my thigh and the skin just above my nipple. I didn’t want to move on. I wanted my husband.

  I thought then too about Dusty and Adele retracing the path where they fell in love. They’d put in such effort to make it happen before the end came. They had refused to let fate decide the path of their final days. They made plans. They took action. Maybe that was the answer. I needed to take action, to take control of my life and my marriage. I needed to make a plan.

  If Karl and I could retrace our own path to falling in love, maybe we could start all over again.

  In the moment, I knew just what I was going to do.

  Dear Karl,

  I dreamed about you last night. I dreamed about what you did the first night I didn’t come home from Thailand. I saw you wake up and touch my side of the bed and stare at the ceiling with such an intense sadness in your eyes that when I woke up my own eyes were damp.

  I have no way to know if this is what happened. We never talked about it.

  I know you’ve moved on. I discovered it in the worst way possible. I saw a gossip item about your new relationship and a picture of you with Daphne. Seeing you with someone else was like a dagger to my heart. I have no right to be upset, but the truth is . . . I want you, I want to fight for you.

  When I first left the States I blamed you for holding me back. I blamed our marriage for stalling my career. I blamed becoming a mother for putting me in a kind of purgatory for the past ten years.

  I know now that I have no one to blame but myself. I let inertia get the best of me. I deserted my writing and I lost faith in myself. For too long, I let things happen to me. It was easier, even though it was making me miserable. I became my own worst enemy.

  This time away has shown me that it’s up to me to build my own fulfilling and meaningful life. I will work harder to be the woman who you married, the brave, curious writer who seized life by the balls and made our days a brand-new adventure. Before I came here I beat myself up for becoming a boring stay-at-home mom. Part of me blamed you for allowing that to happen. I know now that I am the one who let those parts of me slip away.

  Please know that I wasn’t running away from us. I was running to find a new version of myself. I know who I am again. It’s hard to put into words exactly how good that feels.

  For too many years you and I have been two vines, both searching for sunlight in different directions. But there is a part of us still twisted together at the roots. We can still find the sunlight together. We can make our future together. We can begin again.

  Love,

  Kate

  Chapter Sixteen

  * * *

  The flight attendant stopped by my seat and asked if I would like a glass of champagne. I said yes, just a little. I pulled down the hard plastic tray from the seat in front of me and put the notebook I was writing in off to the side to make room for the drink.

  “What are you working on?” she asked. European flight staff were so much kinder than their American counterparts, who mostly behaved as if you were lucky they hadn’t smacked you in the face. I wondered if the European carriers paid better, or if their staff were simply less beaten down by demanding American travelers.

  It still struck me as odd to think of myself working again after all these years. But that’s what I was doing. I would have enough of a novel to give to an agent, about twenty thousand words, when I got home. I was a writer.

  “I’m writing a book,” I said.

  I looked up at her as she filled my narrow glass all the way to the top. She wasn’t American, but I couldn’t pinpoint her nationality. She had sharp cheekbones that looked as though they were cut from glass, and bright red lipstick. Her dirty-blond hair was pulled into a high bun with a few perfect wisps that escaped to frame her pretty face.

  “That’s so impressive. I wish I had the patience to sit down and write a book. You should be proud of yourself.”

  “It took me a long time to get here.” I turned back to my notebook. I did feel a surge of pride.

  The plane hit an air pocket and my champagne wobbled. I finished the entire glass in one gulp, worried we would drop again and the contents would spill out and destroy everything.

  I opened my photo app. In the first few years of the girls’ lives I took pictures of every half smile, each twitch toward crawling, every step, every spoonful of peas. I meticulously organized all of them into files labeled by month—Isabel 0–3m, 6m–18m. But, like most mothers, as the years went on I got lazy and stopped taking so many pictures. I rarely uploaded them from my phone, and when that phone fell in the toilet an entire year of photos was lost forever. One thing was so obvious now, staring back at the past few years of our lives. There wasn’t a single photo of Karl and me together. When we’d become parents, at least in these pictures, we’d ceased to be a couple.

  That was about to change.

  I was on my way to Paris. I had e-mailed Karl the morning after Dusty and I failed to rip one another’s clothes off.

  I want to show you the woman I’ve become. I want you to have the chance to get to know her before we make any big decisions. We have a lot of talking to do when I get home, but first . . .

  Let’s meet in Paris, Karl. I bought you a plane ticket. I’m sending the confirmation in an e-mail. I’ll be at Le Select, in the same booth where we had our first date, next Friday.

&
nbsp; In just twenty-four hours we would be blessedly alone. I’d booked the same suite at the George V where we stayed that first time Karl came to visit me when I lived in Paris. I’d have an entire day before he landed to get everything ready, including myself. I’d take a long bath, get a pedicure, maybe a blowout, I’d buy underwear!

  I knew our reunion might be painful at first. I almost hoped for rage, screaming, tears. We needed to release some of that pressure. I thought of Dusty telling me Adele had broken every plate in their kitchen at some point. I entertained a brief fantasy of Karl and I decimating a room service cart, shattering crystal goblets and china saucers, and then falling into crisp linen sheets and fucking for hours. I spent the next hour of the flight imagining all of the various scenarios for our reunion until I nodded off with a smile on my face.

  • • •

  The room at the George V was more beautiful than I remembered and I nearly gasped as the bellhop opened the door into the grand suite. I’d lived the past year in tiny rooms with dirty floors. My own feet were still coated in red Northern Territory dust. Suddenly, I couldn’t get into the claw-foot bathtub fast enough. I shooed the young man out the door and let my grimy clothes fall to a puddle at my feet. I ran myself the hottest bath I’d ever taken and allowed the water to scorch my skin. In all my fantasizing about what I would do here once I saw Karl, I’d never imagined what I would wear. I cast a glance at the beaten-down duffel bag and realized I had nothing that would wow my husband.

  I ordered a double espresso to the room, sat naked on the floor of the balcony, staring at the Eiffel Tower and trying to shrug off my exhaustion. I could step out the door of the hotel and be at Gucci, Dior, or Lanvin within minutes, but I could no more imagine walking into those soulless high-end boutiques than I could making small talk with the salesgirl who would take one look at me and treat me like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman before Richard Gere showed up with his gold card.