Tear You Apart (20 page)

“I can’t find my other sock,” he explains.

I want to laugh and cry at the same time, mostly because his look of consternation is as charming as everything else I ever discover about him. “It has to be around here. Did you look under the bed?”

He lifts the dust ruffle, but the bed’s the sort that sits on a platform, and nothing can be lost beneath it. He’s clearly annoyed, so I don’t laugh. I look under the desk, the chair. I look on the other side of the bed and, finally, peeking beyond the armoire, I discover his single sock and hold it up, triumphant.

“How’d you do that?”

“I just kept looking until I found it,” I tell him.

This is what it would be like, I think suddenly. Me and Will. Sharing a bed, a bathroom, looking at his sleep-rumpled hair in the morning. Having to help him find his socks. Domestic and normal and everything you already know you kind of hate.

But it doesn’t feel as if I’d hate it with him, it feels exactly the opposite, and even though I know it’s all fantasy, I am overcome with emotion strong enough to make me sit on the bed. I can’t look at him. I can’t leave with him, both of us sneaking out in the clothes we came in with, hailing separate cabs in the rising light of day.

“I’m going to, um....you go on ahead,” I tell him. “I need to finish getting ready.”

But I can’t let him go without saying goodbye, so I walk him to the door, where we stand and stare at each other as if we should be shaking hands instead of embracing. He does, in fact, try to leave that way, and at the last minute I refuse to let this be the way we part. He sees it on my face, that look, and he pulls me close to kiss me. Once, twice, passion beneath sweetness, and even though it’s brief, the kiss takes my breath away.

I hold on to him longer than is necessary, but then I let him go. Of course I let him go; there’s no other choice. He has a life, and so do I. No matter what I want, the sun has come up and the world will not fade away.

When the door closes behind him, I put that song on repeat and listen to it ten times in a row while I shake and cry, pressing my fingertips to my eyes until I see color bursts of red and green and gold. Until I can force myself to breathe.

Chapter Thirty-Four

When I let myself in through the front door, I’m not expecting anything beyond the possible hum of Maria’s vacuum and the sanctity of my bed for another few hours of sleep. My eyes are grainy, throat raw. If I feel like shit, I can only imagine what I look like.

“I didn’t think you’d be home until later.” Ross, his suit rumpled, is in front of the fridge with a carton of orange juice in one hand. No glass. He looks appropriately guilty.

I’m so happy I took the time to shower and make some semblance of order to my hair and face before I came home.

“You know how Naveen’s kids are. Up at the crack of dawn. I figured I’d duck out early and get home. Lots to do today.” The lie tastes like butter and is as smooth. “I didn’t think you’d be back until tomorrow.”

“Finished early,” my husband says. “Got a different flight.”

We stare at each other across the kitchen, and I can tell he’s waiting for me to say something. About the juice, about his schedule, I don’t know what. But the truth is, I have nothing to say.

In our bedroom, I strip out of my clothes, taking one surreptitious minute to lift the fabric to my face and breathe in the scent of Will’s cologne. It’s faint and fading away, and I can’t get enough of it. I shove my panties and bra to the bottom of the pile and go naked into the bedroom, where I dress myself in plain white cotton underwear. Sweatpants. I pull my hair on top of my head. I don’t look in the mirror.

“What are you up to today?” Ross comes up behind me and, unexpectedly, puts his arms around me. He juts his chin into my shoulder blade.

Every part of me tenses. “Not much. I thought I’d organize my office a little bit. Get caught up on some paperwork. I need to get to the grocery store. Do you want anything special?”

His hands are moving over me. Rough and possessive. He presses between my legs. “How about some of this?”

I can’t.

But I do.

And I give it everything I have, every talent or skill I’ve ever learned about how to lick and suck and caress. I know this man, every part of him. How to make him squirm. How to make him explode.

I try to take the same from him, because Ross knows my body, or at least he used to, and sex was one thing that was always good between us, even when the rest of it wasn’t. But no matter what he does, how he touches me, all I feel is a growing sickness in my guts that becomes an actual physical nausea by the time he’s collapsed on top of me, panting and sweaty. I’ve never once felt guilty about being unfaithful to my husband, but this feels like cheating is supposed to.

In the bathroom, forcing myself to sip water, I clutch at the sink with one hand and try to keep myself from puking. Ross, typically, doesn’t notice as he gets in the shower, talking the entire time about his business trip and the golf game he picked up for later in the day, and oh, by the way, the girls are coming home for dinner tonight, so I might want to get something good for dinner when I hit the store later.

“Wait, what?” I splash my face with water and try to imagine turning around and saying “I’m leaving you.”

I’m leaving you.

He leans out of the shower. “Yeah. Message on the machine from Kat. She and Jac are both coming home with what’s-his-face and the other one.”

Their boyfriends, part of their lives for years, now. “Jeff and Rich.”

“Yeah. They’re all coming home tonight for dinner.” Ross closes the shower door. “How about your lasagna, Bethie? You haven’t made that in a long time. You make the best damn lasagna.”

I’m leaving you.

But I can’t say it, just like that. Not mere minutes after I had him inside me and he was saying my name over and over again like a prayer when he came. Not with our children on their way toward us right this minute for some unexpected reason.

“Sure,” I say aloud. “Lasagna. That sounds great.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

I haven’t been able to say it, but I have decided to do it. Leave him. And with that, everything is brighter. Somehow sharper. I’m looking at the world through a new filter, and feel off-kilter. Giddy, my stomach sick, and yet so much lighter I find it hard to believe I could ever have been anchored to the ground.

I’m not happy, not exactly. But I am hopeful. Relieved. And, eventually, as the kitchen fills with all the delicious smells of the lasagna that’s Ross’s favorite, and chocolate chip cookie pie that Jac loves, and the special garlic bread with cheese Kat always requests, I’m at last calm.

When Ross comes in to snag a sliver of pie the way he always does just before we sit down to eat, I don’t shoo him away as I’ve always done. I take a knife and cut him a piece, put it on a plate. Hand him a fork.

“Life’s short,” I tell him when he looks surprised. “Eat dessert first.”

I do not hate my husband, but I am going to be so, so glad to leave him.

Dinner is cacophony. Jac and Kat, their boyfriends. Me and Ross. His parents, surprise guests who won’t stay more than an hour after dinner’s finished, even though Jac asks them to, specially.

That’s a little suspicious, but I don’t think about it as I’m filling the dishwasher as full as it can get and eyeing the sink and counters full of dishes, estimating how many more loads to go and if I should bother hand-washing some of the pots and pans now, or wait until tomorrow. I’m voting for tomorrow when Jac peeks into the kitchen. She’s started wearing her hair differently, framing her face, and I’m just about to tell her how much I like it when she sighs.

“Mom, c’mon. Come in and sit, have some coffee and dessert.”

“That was my plan.” I straighten and turn on the dishwasher, listening for the familiar hum. She’s looking at me oddly and shifting from foot to foot. When she was a toddler we called it the pee-pee dance, but I’m sure Jac’s grown out of her pants-wetting habit.

She doesn’t wait for me to finish but takes me by the elbow to hustle me into the den. She has indeed managed to convince her grandparents to stay, though they don’t look happy. Not that they ever do. Ross is deep in conversation with his dad, both of them looking so much alike it’s eerie. Kat sits on the arm of the couch, her fingers linked with Rich’s. He’s talking to Jac’s boyfriend, Jeff.

It’s the perfect picture, and the last one, I think with sudden clarity. This is the last time we will all be together this way. Even if Ross and I come together at the holidays for the sake of the kids—an idea that seems both impossible and necessary—it won’t be the same. It will never be the same as it is right now.

I take it all in, every detail. Every sight and scent, every sound, every flicker of candlelight and glitter of laughter.
This is the last time,
I think, and I want to remember every single second.

“Mom, Dad. Nan, Pop and everyone.” Jac’s stopped the shifting, but her grin’s a little too wide, too manic. Everyone turns at the sound of her voice, so loud above the soft mutter of classical music coming from the stereo. “Jeff and I have something we want to tell you.”

Jeff looks put on the spot, but stands to wrap his arm around Jac. He’s a nice kid. They’ve been together since their freshman year, so it’s not a surprise when she announces that they got engaged a week ago. Amid the applause and congratulations, though, there is a surprise.

“Everyone.” Kat doesn’t talk as loudly as her sister, but nevertheless we all pause in our well-wishing to look at her. “Rich and I...well, we have some news, too. We got engaged last night!”

Jac squeals and hugs her sister, dancing. “I knew it! I knew it!”

Kat, laughing, tries to get out from Jac’s grip and can’t. “I didn’t want to step on your news, but...”

“No!” Jac’s eyes shine. My daughters have always gotten along as sisters do, better than some and not as well as others despite the fact they shared the womb, but there’s never been any doubt that they love and support each other. “It’s perfect! We can have a double wedding!”

There is more hand-shaking and backslapping and cheek-kissing. In the midst of this, I find myself standing with my girls on either side of me. White light flashes. A picture. Then Ross is next to me, and we’re posing together, too.

“Merry Christmas,” my husband says. “Guess what we’re doing instead of going on that cruise.”

“Congratulations,” I say to Jac as I hug her. “I’m so happy for you.”

Jac is buzzing, fluttering, to and fro-ing, while her sister sits quietly with her fingers linked in her soon-to-be-husband’s. She’s not my huggy daughter, but I hug her, anyway. She clings to me for a moment longer than I expect.

“So happy for you,” I whisper in her ear.

“Mom, don’t cry.”

I swipe at my face, embarrassed. “Oh, you know me. I get all broken up over Hallmark card commercials.”

I excuse myself to go into my bathroom, where I sit on the toilet with the lid down and my face in my hands, and I press the heels of my hands to my eyes to keep myself from dissolving into sobs. Minutes pass. I can’t make myself get up.

“Hey.” Ross knocks lightly on the door before he comes in, which isn’t like him. Toilet privacy isn’t something he’s usually concerned about. “You okay?”

I should get up. Wash my face. Stop crying. I do get up, moving like an automaton. I go to the sink. Run the water. Stare at it. Stare at my face.

“It was coming for both of them—it’s not such a shock.” Ross sounds worried. “I was only kidding about the cruise, Bethie. We’ll be okay.”

It’s not the cruise or the shock or the cost of two weddings.

It is the taste of joy and pride and happiness for my children, and it is undercut with the bitter, rancid taste of my personal grief. I can’t share this with him, or anyone. Even I can’t be that selfish.

So I straighten my shoulders. Draw a breath. I put a smile on my face, and I force myself to focus on the happiness and push away the selfish sorrow.

“Yes,” I tell him. “We will be fine.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

That life and this.

This life.

That life.

The one beneath is drawn in solid lines and bold strokes; it is a picture drawn in permanence with ink. It’s a tattoo. Indelible.

The one on top of it is sketched on vellum in soft brushes of charcoal, easily smudged. It covers the one beneath, but can’t hide it.

That life.

This life.

It looks as if you can have both. I mean, they’re both right there, one on top of the other, and it looks as if they’ll blend.

But they never will.

So, you take this thing.

You take this thing you want,

and you put it in a box

and you close the lid.

You can let your fingers trace the cracks, the places where the light gets in, the dark gets out, but the lid stays on. You don’t look inside. You don’t look at this thing you want so much, because you can. Not. Have. It.

So there’s this box, you know, with the thing inside, and you could throw it away or bury it or shoot it into space; you could set it on fire and watch it burn to ashes, but really, none of that would make a difference, because you cannot destroy what you want. It only makes you want it more.

So.

You take this thing you want

and you put it in a box

and you close the lid.

And you hold the box close to your heart, which is where it wants to go, and you pretend it doesn’t kill you every time you feel yourself breathe.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Stolen minutes. That’s what we have. When it becomes harder to find them, all the more precious.

I always dress carefully for Will...the jewelry, the panties and bra, the exact curl of my hair, thickness of liner and shade of lipstick. Always, I take such care. Dressing for a lover.

I’ve taken even more time now because this is the last time I will see him in person. Always I’ve made certain that what we do never overshadows anything else, and now with wedding plans and travel and work and my life, my messed up, messy life, there will be no more time for Will.

I wear a black dress. Not new. A favorite, though. It clings to me and flatters curves. It dips low in the front to show off cleavage.

It ties at the hip and he’ll be able to slide his hand inside, if he wants.

Oh, God. I don’t want Will to ever stop wanting.

Under the dress, a teal bra with a leopard print stripe along the edge. Teal panties. Leopard print garter belt—again, not new, and not my style, usually, but the pieces seemed fun when I picked them up so long ago. The stockings are sheer and black, with lace tops. None of this is new, but putting it on layer by layer, covering my body, all I can imagine is how it will feel when he takes it off.

In all the long months we’ve been doing this, we’ve never had a date. How could we? Every time we meet, we pretend it’s for some other reason.

He doesn’t know the reason now. All I said was “I need to see you,” and this time, he gave me no argument. He just agreed. So here we are in a nice restaurant neither of us has ever been to, in a town someplace between us in which we’ve never met, but where I had to be for another of Naveen’s auctions.

Will’s dressed up, too.

Dark dress trousers, a dark blue shirt with faint silver stripes. His shoes are black and shiny, not the boots or sneakers I’ve always seen him wear. He’s combed his hair. Shaved. When he leans to kiss my cheek, chaste as any casual acquaintance, I catch a whiff of his cologne.

He did this for me, and it makes my knees weak.

The waitress, seeing my dress and Will’s suit, or maybe the way we can’t stop staring at each other, asks us if it’s a special occasion. “A birthday?” she suggests, bright-eyed and intense, her smile more a baring of teeth than a grin. “An anniversary?”

It’s a special occasion, yes. But can it properly be called an anniversary when it hasn’t happened yet? The anniversary of a death...while we are still alive.

“I’ll have the steak,” Will says. “Elisabeth will have the lamb.”

Startled, both at his use of my name and the way he orders for me—he ordered for me? Should I be affronted or aroused?—I hide my grin behind my hand.

“What?” he asks when the waitress is gone. He reaches for my hand, and I let him take it.

Our fingers curl together right there on the table for all the world to see.

“Maybe I wanted the chicken,” I say.

At first he looks apologetic. Then slowly, he smiles. Shakes his head. “You didn’t.”

“I didn’t.” Our grasps tighten. Palm to palm for a second.

Oh, God. His touch, even this simple, subtle touch, still makes everything inside me melt. Liquid. I am soft as butter. Soft as clouds.

The food comes on pretty plates with fancy garnish. As always with him, my appetite is not for food, but he cuts into his steak and offers me a piece, which I take from his fork as his foot rubs my calf under the table. I share my lamb and the slab of potatoes that have been ground and seasoned and pressed into a block and sliced, then fried. Everything is delicious, but none of it as lovely as the flavor of his laughter.

Coffee, dessert. We each order and share tastes. And finally, when I can’t put it off anymore, I say, “I have to tell you something.”

Two things happened when I was sixteen.

First, Andrea’s parents split up. Her mom moved out, leaving behind four kids and an angry, embittered husband who had no idea how to run a house. Nobody had clean laundry or packed lunches or got to where they needed to be on time, and they spent hours alone in their big, increasingly filthy house while their father worked. And why? Because Andrea’s mom had developed what her father referred to as “a little love affair with the slots.”

In private, Andrea told me that it would’ve been better if her mother had run off with another guy. Maybe her dad could at least get over that. What he couldn’t forget or forgive was the thousands of dollars her mom had lost in the casinos on all the trips she’d taken with girlfriends to Atlantic City, or the money she’d spent in secret on shoes and clothes and spa treatments, running up their credit card bills to insufferable, unpayable amounts. Andrea’s mom had left the family destitute with her addiction, and though she’d moved into a one-bedroom mobile home and had taken two jobs in order to support herself, she didn’t stop the trips to Atlantic City and Vegas. She couldn’t quit. Her addiction tore their family apart. To this day, Andrea had very little to do with her mom—not because she was angry or hated her, but because the woman had failed her when Andrea needed her, too many times. She’d ruined her daughter’s trust.

The other thing was that Becky Lazar’s mother killed herself. Becky sat in front of me in English lit, and we’d gone to school together since kindergarten. That sophomore year we had the same lunch period and had migrated to the same table because she was friends with a couple kids who were friends with a few of mine. We weren’t close, didn’t hang out after school or anything, but we’d become friendly. I liked her. She was smart, with a dry sense of humor, and once she’d lent me lunch money when I’d forgotten to bring mine.

I’d met her mom only once, a few months before, after a performance of the school musical. Becky’d had the role of Eliza Doolittle in
My Fair Lady.
She had an amazing voice. I’d gone to the show with Andrea not because either of us were into musical theater, but because she had a huge crush on the guy playing Henry Higgins. Also, it was an official school activity, so Andrea’s dad, who’d gotten a little out of control with rules, wouldn’t restrict her from it. We giggled our way through the entire show, when Andrea wasn’t sighing with the heartache of crushing on a boy who’d never give her the time of day. And after, when the cast members gathered in the lobby to sign autographs and receive flowers and generally bask in their tiny, high school level of fame, Becky waved us over to meet her parents.

Her dad was tall, with a permanent frown and a crease between his eyebrows. Her mom was petite, and out-of-fashion in a floral print dress, and hairstyle that looked like it hadn’t been changed since she herself was in high school. She didn’t say much, just smiled and nodded at us. But she did smile, and that was all I could think about when Kathy Bomberger told me what she’d done.

“Where’s Becky?” I’d asked, sliding my tray onto the table. “She sick today?”

Kathy looked surprised. “No. Didn’t you hear?”

Becky’s mother had run a garden hose from the exhaust pipe of the family station wagon into the cracked-open driver’s side window, and left the car running in the closed garage. Becky’s younger brother, a fifth grader, had been the one to find her. She’d done it in the middle of the week, on a school night, and all I could think about was that smile. She’d seemed happy enough, that one time I met her, but obviously she hadn’t been.

That was when I really learned that smiles can hide a lot of secrets.

I learned a lot of things that sophomore year that followed me into adulthood. The burgeoning power of sexuality, the importance of personal responsibility, how simple it is to break a heart. And also, how easily a mother can destroy her children.

“When I had my children,” I tell Will, after the rest of this story is finished and he’s listened quietly, his green-gray eyes never leaving mine, “I vowed that I would never, ever fuck them up the way Andrea’s mom did. Or Becky’s. I’m not saying I believe in sacrificing everything for your kids or anything like that. It’s important for them to know their parents are human beings. But I did vow I would be there when they needed me. That I would never, ever let my selfishness make a mess of them.”

I draw in a breath. Then another. I want to kiss him, but there’s a table between us.

“My daughters are both getting married. A double wedding, something I never thought I’d be doing. They’re twins, but I always tried to make them their own people. But that’s what they want, so that’s what they’re doing. They need me, and their dad, to be there for them. They deserve that. They deserve—” My voice cracks and breaks finally, and I have to look away from him. “They deserve a mother who hasn’t dropped her basket. So if I have to white-knuckle my way through this, to make sure my kids are taken care of...if I have to...keep it all together for just a little longer... Well. Then that’s what I’ll have to do.”

“I understand.”

“A year,” I tell him. “I have to make it through this next year.”

I look at him then, not sure what I expect to see. Not tears, of course. Disappointment, maybe? Will he ask me to reconsider, to stay? Will he say we can work it all out?

Will he tell me that he’ll wait?

“You should find a real girl,” I tell him, not for the first time.

“Are you breaking up with me?” Will puts a lilt into the words, making them light so I can laugh and shake my head.

“Oh, Will.”

He leans back in his chair. “I understand, Elisabeth. I do. You have to be there for your kids, and this isn’t right, anyway. We both know it.”

I know it. I don’t care. “Yes. Of course.”

So formal. Now we’re done. So this is the end, and all the pretty pieces of me are dying inside.

I let him pay the check.

Outside, the sun’s gone down but the late summer heat weighs us. We walk along the quaint street, looking in the windows of antique shops filled with junk. The sidewalk’s made of cobblestones that threaten to snag the heels of my shoes, and I use it as an excuse to hold his hand. And then we’re at the parking garage and there are no more excuses to keep this night from ending.

In the backseat of his car, we sit inches apart. The heat is unbearable, a sauna. The light, orangey-white, creeps in and makes it all too bright when I would rather have shadows.

I don’t know who moves first, just that his mouth is on mine and it’s still so sweet. So fucking good I can’t stand it, and I open for him. My mouth, my arms, my legs.

My heart.

We’ve done more than this, but somehow this furtive, somewhat frantic kissing is more erotic than anything we’ve ever done. I am greedy for it, and him, and I want to imprint every second, every breath, into my memory forever. Because I am leaving him. Ending this.

“We have to stop,” I tell him.

Will’s mouth is still on mine. “I know.”

We kiss again.

Again.

How can I stop this? How can it end? When everything I am and have become is wrapped up in him, when I breathe from one second to the next because I know each breath brings me closer to the time when we’ll be together?

He is on his side of the car. I’m on mine. We look at each other across the brief expanse.

“This is ridiculous,” I say. “Like teenagers making out in the backseat.”

His hand curls against the back of my neck. We kiss. His hand slips over my panties, touching me just right, always just right, and before I know it, before I can stop it—not that I want to stop it, I do not, I want it to go forever on and on—before I know it, I am breathless again.

Mindless.

“Give me your tongue,” Will says, and I do.

I will give him anything he wants.

He doesn’t know this and I can’t tell him, because it’s not fair. It’s a responsibility he doesn’t want. And because I love him, a burden I can’t bear for him to carry.

My hands are in his hair, his cupping the back of my neck while the other moves slowly, slowly, slowly between my legs.

How many ways are there to describe pleasure? How many different words can express how it feels to come in the backseat of a car on a hot summer’s night, and the only reason you can breathe is because someone you love is offering you his mouth and his own breath?

Green and gold, the sound of bells, the smells of sunshine.

My orgasm is more than the rush of blood and twitch of muscles.

My mouth moves against his. “Do you want to make me come?”

“Yes.”

We whisper though nobody’s around to hear us.

“Just a little more,” I plead, not caring that I beg. “Just a little more.”

He thinks I mean the stroke of his fingers against me, and I do. But I also mean all of this. Everything. I don’t want this to end, for this to be the last time.

“Please,” I whisper into Will’s kiss. “Just one more.”

These are the words we say, one after another:
I want to eat you like a peach, eat you all up. Put your hand under my shirt, kiss me while you touch my stomach. You wanted me to touch you. Oh, God, yes. Fuck, yes, I want you to touch me now. I want you to burn for me.

I want to tear you apart.

The air is so much cooler outside the car, where we stand with inches of distance between us, as though that can take away what we spent an hour doing. I still taste him. I’m sure I smell of him, and of sex. My hair’s a mess. I don’t care.

“Are you okay?” Will asks.

And this is what I think:
No, I’m not okay. I’m stuck in a place I don’t want to be, and I don’t see any way to get out of it without hurting everyone around me. And I hurt you, too, just by being me. By all of this. So I make a change and hurt everyone in my life, or I don’t make a change and I hurt you instead, and no matter what happens, I hurt.

No matter what I do, there is casualty.

“I have to go,” I say. Ross may or may not be home, but I promised Jac I’d go over some wedding plans with her via video chat. Oh, technology. “Goodbye, Will.”

Will nods. And, so formal, so distant, we do not touch again.

Not even one last time.