Nocturne (39 page)

“Of course I trust you,” I said again. “That’s like saying
thank you
for breathing. Or …
thank you
for having two arms. You don’t have to thank me. I
trust you.
”

“I hate that she did that to you. That’s not fair.”

I shrugged. There was nothing to say. It wasn’t fair. I hated it, too. One thing I did want was to not talk about it for the rest of the night. “Come here,” I implored with a slight tug of her hand.

Savannah rose, slowly, and with a grace that I’m sure had people often mistaking her for a dancer, slid onto my lap and rested her head on my shoulder.

We spent the rest of the evening quietly talking near the fire, basking in anonymity. Breathing air free of judgment. A place where we could be anybody or nobody.
Together.
We made love that night until we both collapsed in exhaustion, and again when we awoke.

In the morning I drove the rental car down the side of the mountain, taking each switchback through the forest slowly, nearly coming to a stop at each magnificent vista. We were a third of the way down the mountainside when both of our cell phones began to chirp with missed calls, text messages, voicemails, which both of us, wordlessly, ignored. We didn’t discuss it. We didn’t agree to it. We said nothing. But I couldn’t avoid seeing tears that slowly rolled down her cheeks, the tears that reflected the slanting rays of the sun.

I started to say something, and she simply held out a hand, palm up, toward me. Telling me to
stop.
And so I shut up, took her hand in mine, and I drove, back toward the tour, back toward our lives. And she cried. And inside, I did the same.

We got back to the hotel at noon. I returned the rental car then finally checked my messages. I’d been trading voicemails and text messages with Karin for three days. It was Saturday, she wouldn’t be working, and I wouldn’t be able to put it off much longer.

We’d managed to keep our conversations short and businesslike for most of the last weeks. She knew, or suspected, about Savannah. I knew about her coming off the birth control pills and seeing a fertility doctor without my agreement. We were at a stalemate, and I absolutely refused to address the subject on the phone from thousands of miles away.

So that day, when I called from my room, I had more than a little tension and anxiety.

“Hello?”

I swallowed, and said, “Hey.”

“Gregory? It’s been a … couple days.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been busy.” I felt a lump in my throat. Whatever else I was … I didn’t like to think of myself as a liar. And yet, here I was, lying. Because I hadn’t been
busy.
I’d been avoiding talking to her. Because I was sleeping with another woman. No matter how much of a gulf we had in our marriage, that wasn’t right.

“How is the tour?”

I cleared my throat then said, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“It’s going well.”

“Gregory ... what’s going on? You don’t sound like you.”

A stab of irritation flashed through me. I wanted to say,
of course I don’t. You tried to trap me into having children I didn’t want.
I wanted to say,
I’m in love with another woman.
I wanted to say,
I’m leaving.

I said nothing for a moment and simply took a breath because I didn’t want to lose my temper. I didn’t know who was at fault here more or less or what. I knew that I needed to tread very carefully. I knew that whatever
she
had done, I was the one who had been unfaithful. I was the one who had lied, systematically, for the entire summer.

So it didn’t make sense that I was so angry with her.

But I was. I’d never been so angry in my life.

“I’m just not feeling well. The tour has been exhausting,” I said. I was telling the truth. Just not all of it.

She didn’t answer. And so we sat there, in an uncomfortable silence, for fifteen seconds or thirty or a minute or ten. I don’t know how long it was. I only know it was excruciating. Finally she said, “Call me tomorrow?”

“Look ... we need to talk. Can you fly out here? Tomorrow? Our next stop is in Billings, Montana.”

She hesitated. “You want me to fly to Montana? Why?”

“Karin ... please. I’ll make the reservations. Get the time off work.”

In a hesitant tone, she said, “All right. I love you.”

I disconnected without answering, and then sat down, staring out the window. Wishing.

“I know it seems crazy. But I’ll miss you,” Savannah said.

I took a deep breath and said into the phone, “I’ll miss you too.”

I kept the phone to my ear, though for the next thirty seconds or so, neither of us spoke. My eyes scanned the signs for Domestic Arrivals as I turned into the airport.

“I love -”

“Don’t say it,” she interrupted.

I cleared my throat. “Fine. We’ll talk … tomorrow or the next day, then.”

“Goodbye,” she whispered. She sounded as if she was on the verge of tears, and I knew that I was.

I hung up the phone. I felt unaccountably angry, and I knew it wasn’t fair. It’s not as if it were Karin’s fault. But the anger was there, and it sharpened when I pulled up to the curb and saw her coming out of the door of the terminal, dragging two suitcases.

The thought that ran through my head was this:
why does she need two suitcases for a single overnight trip?
Which led to wondering if she was planning on staying longer and just hadn’t mentioned it?

Not logical. Not reasonable. But my anger pushed through regardless.

I pulled up to the curb and stepped out of the car, my eyes squinting from the intense summer glare. I’d left my sunglasses somewhere, and I already had a headache coming on. I left the emergency lights blinking, the car running, and walked across the concrete toward Karin.

She looked fatigued. Circles under her sad eyes. Her hair was tied up in a messy bun. She wore a canary sleeveless dress with matching heels. The dress was a familiar one ... very familiar. She’d worn it three years ago, the day I proposed marriage. Irrationally, I felt angry. That dress, along with hair suddenly bleached to look like she’d had it years ago, felt like giant traps.

My stomach tightened as I approached her. She would expect a kiss. An embrace. Something. It had been a long time since we’d been very touchy. But now? After I’d had Savannah in my arms. After I’d felt that … warmth, that outpouring of love, or longing, of our souls touching? After that, just the idea of touching Karin drowned me in desolation.

I reached out and took one of her suitcases, and she put her arms around me. I returned the embrace with one arm and kissed her on the cheek. Because anything less would be … cruel.

I was rigid as I walked her to the car and opened the trunk, then lifted her bags in. By the time I closed the trunk she was inside the car, and I walked around, got in and cranked it up.

“How was your flight?” I asked. For the time being, neutral topics would be best.

She shrugged. “I’ve been through worse. You know I hate flying.”

I swallowed. Of course I knew that. I hadn’t considered it at all when I insisted on her coming out here. I creased my brows, wondering what that said about me. After all, on Tuesday we had a two-day break in the tour coming. I could have simply flown back to Boston then and had this conversation there.

Except ... Savannah and I had made plans for those two days. We’d talked about them ... breathlessly, because we were both planning to slip away from the tour, which would be stopped in Tacoma, Washington. We had reservations in Vancouver, where we could be assured of being away from everyone for two full days.

Two beautiful days.

I’d not even considered going home during those two days.

I’d not considered Karin at all.

I’d not even thought of her.

What kind of person did that make me? I didn’t know the answer to that. Selfish? Self-absorbed? I didn’t know how to reconcile the intense love I felt for Savannah with the fact that I was married to this woman. This obviously heartbroken woman who sat beside me in the car.

We barely spoke the rest of the way back to the hotel. Inconsequential things. I asked how her job was going. She spoke for a few minutes about the very substantial grant the conservatory had just received from the Rockefeller family fund, or Ford, or some other huge foundation.

I pulled the car into the valet parking lane at the hotel and popped the trunk. I checked my watch. It was 5:30 p.m. “Why don’t we grab dinner?”

I passed a five-dollar bill to the porter and gave him my room number. “Please take the bags up,” I said. Then I led Karin to the restaurant.

Five minutes later we were seated in the restaurant at the edge of the seven-story atrium. Our table was off to the side, away from most of the other tables, and most importantly, away from the bar, where several members of the orchestra were having a round of drinks. We didn’t have a performance until the next night, so apparently it was time for some hard drinking.

When the waitress approached, I ordered a margarita for Karin and a gin and tonic for me. Despite my occasional inattention to her feelings, I knew what she drank.

“So ...” she said once the drink arrived. “You were insistent I fly out. Are we going to continue to dodge the subject? Or are you going to tell me what this is about?”

I leaned back, wincing a little, then rubbed the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. The throbbing in my head was growing louder by the minute.

She shook her head then took a drink from her margarita. “Spit it out, Gregory. It’s not like you to dance around uncomfortable topics.”

I grimaced and said, “Did you stop taking birth control pills?”

She stared at me over her drink and gave a soft, half laugh. “Why do you ask?”

In a very quiet, even tone, I said, “Because we discussed this. We discussed it to the point of nausea. You know I don’t want to have children.”

She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “
We
didn’t discuss it, Gregory. Every time I bring it up, you make pronouncements. That isn’t a discussion ... it’s not a discussion when you refuse to compromise.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? What compromise is there? Either we have kids or we don’t. There’s no meeting halfway on this topic. And I’ve been clear since well before we got married that I do not intend to have children!”

She leaned close, her face tense, and looked at the tables around us. “Can you please keep your voice down?”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. Then I took another one, because one breath just wasn’t enough. Finally I opened my eyes. She was still there. I tried to think through when this had happened. There’d been a noticeable change in her behavior for almost a year. For several months our sex had taken on an almost frantic quality, and the more she pushed, the more I pulled away.

I hadn’t realized then that it meant she was desperately trying to get pregnant. I only knew that the more she wanted to touch ... the less I wanted to. I knew it and she knew it, but neither of us had actually spoken about it.

“When did you stop taking the pill?” I asked. My voice was ragged.

She avoided my eyes. That was a bad sign. I leaned close, reached out and grabbed her hand. “When?” I demanded.

“January,” she whispered.

I sat back in my seat, feeling as if I’d been punched in the gut.
January?
She hadn’t even brought up kids again until sometime in March.

I shook my head. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t you say anything?”

She shrugged, still looking away, and then wriggled her hand out of mine. “I didn’t want to talk about it, Gregory. I knew you’d just get scared again. I thought ... if I … if …”

“Scared? It’s not about being scared, Karin. It’s about wanting the same things out of life. I do not want to be a parent. That’s a commitment I’m not willing to make.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. Her next words came out in a whisper. “You’re not willing to make that kind of commitment to me.”

“It’s not about you, Karin. We agreed before we got married. And then when you started talking about it this year, you … I thought we were
talking
about it. I didn’t know you’d already decided to do it.”