Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts (19 page)

It’s like an ache. Only nothing actually hurts.

I try to will myself back into that dozy, sleepy, lazy haze, but that little bit of achiness won’t let me relax.

The achiness takes on a shape. Three shapes actually. Three letters.

Tom
.

The bad feeling is shaped like the word Tom.

As soon as I realize that, it blossoms into something bigger, something that makes me curl up in a fetal position, my heart thudding wildly.

What have I done?

I swivel to a sitting position, grab for my pants, fish my underwear out of them and put both on with shaking hands, then adjust my bra and button my shirt back across my chest. Then I curl up against the corner of the sofa, making myself small, my arms wrapped across my chest. The gnawing, aching feeling has spread throughout my whole body. And now I know nothing I do will make it go away. It can only get worse.

I’ve done something horrible. Something that can’t be undone.

I’ve woken up from a lot of nightmares feeling this way—all sick and worried—and then realize it’s a dream and everything is okay again. For a brief moment, I let myself hope that that’s what’s going on, that I fell asleep on the sofa and had a weird sex dream. But then Jacob walks back into the living room and I see the expression on his face. He’s nervous and exhilarated.

More exhilarated than nervous.

“Hey,” he says softly. I don’t respond. He comes over, sits down next to me, not hesitating or asking for permission this time, just doing it, like now he has a right to. “That was nice.” He’s peering at me, looking for confirmation.

I turn my face away from him, don’t say anything.

“You okay?”

I shake my head and press myself harder against the side of the sofa.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Are you serious?”

A silence falls. I hug myself harder. I want to turn into a hard, small knot and then disappear forever.

What have I done?

Jacob says slowly, “I asked you if you knew what you were doing. I stopped and asked you. I tried to make sure you…For god’s sake, Keats, I
asked
you, and you just kept on—” He stops.

“I know,” I say morosely. “I know. I’m not blaming you. It was my fault. I’ll take all the blame. That doesn’t make it any better for me, just so you know.” The words are slurring. I’m drunk. I’ve been drunk for the last hour. That’s why I let this happen.

But then I think,
That’s not an excuse. You had wine, not a roofie.

I have no idea whether Jacob’s looking at me or not because I can’t bear to look in his direction. I’ll never be able to look at him again. I’ll never be able to look in a mirror again, either. Or into Tom’s loving, loyal eyes.

“Is it really so bad?” Jacob says after a long moment. “It’s not like you’re married.”

“He got a tattoo.” My throat is swelling up, and tears are coming to my eyes. I can’t believe I’ve done this. I can’t believe I can’t undo it. I rub my cheek against the sofa cushion. “He got my name tattooed on his arm. It’s
permanent
.”

“Jesus,” Jacob says and then there’s silence.

Tears are rolling down my cheeks now. I let them spill onto the sofa arm. They soak in, leaving little dark marks in the velvet.

After a moment, he says, “Did you want him to do that?”

“What difference does that make?”

“A lot. Maybe this happened because you’re not ready for things with him to be permanent.”

“‘This’ happened because I got drunk. Because I’m a horrible human being, and I got drunk and did something Tom would never ever in a million years do to me.”

This time, the pause is much longer. It goes on so long that I eventually peek around my shoulder at Jacob. His head is resting back on the sofa cushion, his neck exposed, his eyes closed. His chest is rising and falling regularly, but the muscles in his face are taut, and he’s clearly not asleep. He just looks weary and miserable. His eyes open, and I immediately turn my head away again. “I should go” is all he says.

I think of how he tried to leave earlier and how I stopped him. Why had I done that? What was I thinking? If I had just let him leave, none of this would have happened.

I draw my knees closer to my stomach, curling up even tighter.

I feel something on my ankle. I look down. It’s Jacob’s hand. I instantly and viciously jerk my foot away, and his hand disappears.

Then he stands up.

“I’m sorry you’re so unhappy.” His voice floats down to me from up above. “Do you want me to go?”

“Yes. Please.”

“All right.” For a few seconds, it’s so quiet I can hear him swallow. Then he says, “I’ll just check on your dad first.”

I don’t respond, and after another second or two, I hear him moving toward the back hallway.

I stay in my fetal position. The world has stopped spinning. It’s settling back into hard-focused reality, a reality where I cheated on the guy who’s stood by me for a decade, who waited patiently for me when I was too young, and who gave himself entirely to me when I was ready.

There’s no consolation for me anywhere. Not only have I betrayed Tom, I’ve also ruined my friendship with Jacob. Can I ever be in the same room with him again? Not once Tom knows about this. He probably won’t ever let me get within ten miles of Jacob. He might not even let me visit my father anymore, since Jacob’s around so much.

It’s a mess. It’s a huge, huge mess of my own creation. God, I’m an idiot. An idiot and a bad person. There’s no other way to look at it.

When Jacob comes back into the living room, I still can’t look him in the eyes, but I sit up and manage to gaze somewhere in the general direction of his T-shirt. “Is Dad okay?”

“He’s fine. Slept through…everything.”

“Good.”

There’s a pause, and then we both start to say something at the same time. “I’m sorry,” he says. “You first.”

I say dully, “I just need you to know we can’t tell anyone about this. Not that I thought you would. It’s just… I’m not going to tell anyone.” I can’t bring myself to say Tom’s name in front of him. “Not anyone.”

“Okay.”

The indifference of his tone annoys me. “I hate lying. Just so you know.” I yank hard on a strand of my hair. “I’d tell him if I didn’t think it would only hurt him. That’s the last thing I want to do.”

“He’d survive.”

“I know he’d survive,” I snap, glad he’s said something I can attack. I want to attack Jacob. Badly. This is all his fault. I mean, it’s all my fault. But it’s
his
fault for being here tonight—no one even asked him to come over. Those stupid turkey sandwiches ruined my life. “But he’d never forgive me.”

“He’d forgive you in about three minutes,” Jacob says. “He wouldn’t like it, but he’d forgive you. The guy knows how lucky he is to have you at all. You’re a thousand times smarter and funnier and more interesting than he is, and you can see the panic in his eyes every time someone has a conversation with you at your level because he can’t keep up. He’d forgive you. The bigger question is why you’d want him to.”

For the first time since he’s rolled off of me, I actually look at Jacob. He meets my gaze levelly, his face pale and tense.

I say desperately, “I love Tom. I’m going to be with him for the rest of my life. And you’re wrong. He’s a much better person than I am. I mean, he’d never do this to
me
—”

“Because he can’t afford to risk losing you.”

“I’m the one who can’t afford to risk losing him! God!” I grab hair at both sides of my head now and pull even harder. The pain on my scalp is a relief compared to everything that’s going on under it. “You know how long we’ve been together, how close we are, how good he is to me. You’re only saying all this bad stuff because of what just happened.”

“No. If I really thought you guys belonged together, I wouldn’t have—” He halts, then finishes lamely, “—wouldn’t have let this happen.”

“It happened because of that.” I point to the two empty wine bottles on the table. “Let’s just be honest. We got drunk and I screwed up. That’s all.”

He stands there, his shoulders hunched forward like they’re protecting his thin chest. “That’s all,” he repeats tonelessly.

“I’m sorry.” I hate myself. “I know I sound like a jerk right now. I don’t mean to. It’s me I’m really mad at, not you.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” he says. “I feel so much better.”

“Please,” I say miserably. “Don’t be angry. This is all bad enough.”

“‘Bad enough.’” He gives a short laugh. “The sad thing is, that may be my best performance rating from a girl.”

“You know what I mean.” Part of me thinks I should reassure him—the sex had been great, hadn’t it?—but to tell him so would only be more of a betrayal of Tom. And I can’t bear to think about how much I liked it, how aroused I was. That feels more wrong than almost anything else. I never want to think about that again. “I hope this doesn’t change things with my family. For you, I mean. That’s another reason not to tell Tom. So long as he doesn’t know—”

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s not like there’ll be any awkwardness if you and I run into each other now.”

I lift my hands helplessly and let them drop. “What do you want from me?”

“Nothing,” he says, but at least the sarcasm is gone. Now he just sounds weary and sad. “I don’t want anything from you that you don’t want to give me.”

I stand up. I put my hand out. “Friends still?”

He sighs, but he briefly touches my hand with his. “Sure, Keats. We’re still friends.” He turns to go.

I say to his back, “For what it’s worth, I’m really, really sorry.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m not.”

The door opens and then shuts behind him.

12.

L
ady Macbeth had nothing on me. I get under the shower and scrub myself over and over again, letting the water run as hot as I can bear it. Another man has touched me, has been inside of me. I’ll never be clean again
. O, that this too too solid flesh
—

No, wait, that’s Hamlet, not Lady M. My parents would be disappointed in me. For so many reasons.

Morning takes its time arriving, forcing me to suffer through long hours of lying awake on my father’s office sofa with only a towel to cover me because I don’t deserve to pull open the bed inside and use actual bedding—no, that’s too cozy, too comfortable for someone who’s betrayed the person who loves her most in the world.

Anyway, it’s not like I’m actually going to fall asleep. There’s no way.

I wonder if I’ll ever sleep again.

At some point during the long, lonely night, I segue from Lady Macbeth to Hester Prynne. I’m marked for life. A scarlet letter is carved across my heart, my head, my memory.

Tom has his tattoo, and now I have mine.

I’ve lost something I didn’t even appreciate while I had it, something fine and rare and intangible, something I don’t even know the word for, something that goes beyond fidelity and devotion and honesty but encompasses all of them. A few hours ago, Tom was the only man in the whole world who’d had access to my body. I’ll never be able to say that again and have it be the truth. I’ve lost that forever.

And knowing that Tom would still think it was true but it wasn’t, that I’d be living a lie with him from now on…that makes me want to throw up.

At three in the morning, I check on my father. He’s asleep. At five, I check on him again. He’s awake. He says, “Is it morning? It still looks dark out.” I tell him the time, and he says, “You should go back to sleep.” I go back to the office sofa, where I toss and turn and loathe myself. I’m getting really good at that.

At seven, I get up and make coffee.

I bring Dad a slice of toast and a cup of tea. He’s sitting up now, reading a book. He peers over his reading glasses at me and says, “You look exhausted. Couldn’t you sleep?”

“Not really.”

“I’m sorry. It’s my fault you’re not at home in your own bed.”

“It’s not your fault I didn’t sleep.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No,” I say. “It’s mine.”

“How so?”

“Guilty conscience,” I say and force a smile.
Some joke, eh, boss?

* * *

Mom shows up around eight thirty. I tell her I’m running late and race out the door so her sharp eyes don’t have time to notice anything.

Tom calls me a few minutes later, catching me in the car. He says I sound weird. I tell him I’m exhausted, that I couldn’t sleep in Dad’s apartment. I also tell him that Hopkins isn’t coming so I’ll probably have to spend another night or two there, and he says, “If you sound this exhausted after one night—”

“I’ll be okay.” I ask him about his evening, and he says it was fun, that he and Lou went bowling and had a real guys’ night out.

“Where was Izzy?”

“Lou said she was all PO’ed about something and didn’t want to come with us.”

“Really? Izzy?” Izzy is the last person I think of as a sulker. “I’ve never seen her angry about anything.”

“Yeah, me neither, but Lou says she can really get going when they’re alone—that he’s the only one she lets loose on. He asked me once if you’re like that, and I almost felt bad because I had to say no. Guess I got the one perfect girl in the world.”

When we hang up, tears of self-loathing and regret are pricking at the space behind my eyes.

* * *

Mom calls me around lunchtime from Dad’s apartment to say she’s been there all morning and he’s fine, but Jacob’s coming soon to relieve her. “I think this taking shifts thing is really going well,” she says almost happily. “And when Hopkins comes—”

“
If
  Hopkins comes.”

“She’s coming. She just had a medical emer—”

“I know, I know.” I’m too tired and too dispirited to hear about how Hopkins is performing some kind of miracle back in New York. “How was your date?”

“Strange. Sometimes when we’re together it feels like our spouses are just waiting in the next room, and we’ll all join up again in a minute. And then I remember that it’s just the two of us. But Irv is good company.”

“Does Dad know you’re dating him?”

“Not unless you told him.”