Results May Vary (27 page)

“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.”

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 worry 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.

“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.

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, unstoppable 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.