The First Husband (18 page)

This stopped me.

“But . . .” I shook my head, totally confused. “Then why were you separated from Cheryl in the first place?”

“I’d gotten her yoga lessons for her birthday. Private yoga lessons. With Theodore. Just Theodore. One name. Like Madonna. Can you believe that crap? He’s supposed to be the best yoga teacher in Boston though. And I never seemed to get her anything she liked for her birthday, so, against my better judgment, I hired him.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s just say that, this year, I finally got my wife something she liked for her birthday.”

My eyes opened wide. “Cheryl and Theodore?”

“Cheryl and Theodore. Though, if you believe her, it isn’t physical between them. How do you even compete with that? After all, if she’s getting so much from Theodore
emotionally
, doesn’t that say something about what she wasn’t getting from me?”

I couldn’t help but think of Nick—Nick and his emotional match, Pearl. How
do
you compete with that? With the possibility of what
might
be? I didn’t even know how to try.

“Jesse, I’m so sorry,” I said.

He ran his fingers through his hair. “Now she doesn’t know what she wants. She came back to me for a minute, she left again,” he said. “She talked about coming back another time, then felt like she wasn’t ready.”

“What does ready look like in that scenario?”

He shrugged. “Cheryl and I . . . we’d been together since we were sophomores at MIT, and she was studying botany. I took three horrible plant and soil classes just to be near her. . . .” He shook his head. “I guess it’s hard sometimes to last . . . when you’ve lasted.”

I took back the bourbon bottle. I held it by my mouth, feeling floored. I wanted to reach out and touch him and tell him it was going to be okay. But I also knew I had no idea if that was true so instead, I put down the bottle, and looked back up. At the stars. At the midnight sky.

“Man,” I said, “you sure know how to put someone else’s problems into perspective.”

He started to laugh, all over again. And then I was laughing too. “Glad to help,” he said. “But I wouldn’t be too high and mighty if I were you.”

“Why’s that?” I said.

“I know what I want. I’m just trying to figure out how to get there.”

I started to ask what he knew he wanted—to go back to Cheryl? Be there to help Jude? But before I could get there, he kept talking.

“You, Annie Adams,” he said, “are still a mountain’s worth of walking behind all that.”

I wanted to argue that that wasn’t true—that I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted to be with Griffin, and make my life work here. I wanted to stay. But in my head, my admittedly bourbonsoaked head, Griffin came out as Nick. So I knew saying the rest out loud was probably not the wisest move right then.

“But consider this,” Jesse said, picking the bourbon back up, “maybe you aren’t in this position because you forgot yourself, but because you started getting honest about who you really might be.”

Before I could say anything to that, Jesse tilted the bourbon my way.

“Welcome to the deep end,” he said.

T
he next morning I woke up to the telephone ringing—ringing in a desperate way that let me know it was certainly not the first time the telephone had rung, not the first time the caller was trying to get through.

My head was spinning from leftover bourbon and not enough sleep. As I reached for the phone, I slowly started to realize what was happening around me: that I was in the bedroom alone, Griffin’s side of the bed not slept in, yet my mostly destroyed photographs no longer strewn across the floor, and somehow cleaned up.

Then, suddenly, all I could do was focus on lying very still, the bourbon moving around my stomach, dangerously close to coming up the wrong way. The phone mercifully stopped ringing.

And then it started again. Because I was in no position to think of another way to make the ringing stop, I picked up.

“Hello?” I said.

“Are you ready to start singing to me?”

“What?”

“I think you should sing to me that Bette Midler song, the one about the unsung hero. The one who holds up your wings? Or if you prefer, you can sing the one by that girl who won
American Idol
. About having a moment in the sun.”

It was Peter. It was Peter, former editor extraordinaire, who was on the other end of the phone making these terrible references to easy listening songs.

My arm was covering my eyes, my elbow pointing straight up, fighting the spinning in my head.

“Peter,” I said. “My head is spinning so badly you are coming out as an echo. Can I call you back?”

“Absolutely not. Not when I’ve been calling you incessantly for the last two hours to tell you the great news.” He paused for effect. “You are unfired!”

I moved my arm off my eyes. “What?”

“There has been an uproar in your absence. Well, uproar may be a bit strong, but the point is that they want you back, my love. They want you and they want me. Thanks to the minor uproar and some crafty maneuvering on my part.
The A-Team!
Peter and Annie. Back in business!”

“I can’t believe it.”

“You’re not the only one!” he said. “But,
now
, before you get all excited, you need to know ‘Checking Out’ is still over. At least in its former incarnation. Caleb Number Two wants to create a real-time travel column. More interactive in a variety of ways that are still to be determined. Though regardless of the details, you’ll like this part. They’ll be paying you more.”

“Really? ”

“Don’t even get me started on how I pulled that off. Just, if anyone ever asks you, a little magazine called
National Geographic
was very interested in having you head their African Bureau.”

“Okay . . .”

“My love, I can go over all the details with you later, but the main thing you need to know is that I got you a three-year contract. A thirty-three percent
raise,
right off the bat, full health benefits back. And they want much more involvement from you. They want you to help the paper create a
travel presence
. Whatever that is supposed to mean,
TBD,
as they say. But, of course, considering the ongoing micromanaging reign of terror, there’s the small issue that they need you to do it from London. Though they will be giving you housing while you acclimate. One of the benefits of being taken over by a massive corporate conglomerate, I suppose.”

“Wait. Slow down a sec. What do you mean, London?”

“My love, if you don’t know what I mean by London, I may have to reconsider fighting so hard for your job.”

I got quiet. I didn’t know what else to do. “I live in Massachusetts,” I said.

“I know you live in Massachusetts, but Beckett Media is very serious about their European bureau. They’re even considering sending me over for a spell,” he said. “They wanted you based out of London, or out of Berlin. Those were the choices. And, let’s be honest, I’m not sure you’re cool enough to live in Berlin.”

“Thanks a lot,” I said.

“All I’m saying is, it’s not forever,” he said. “Can’t you commute home for the time being?”

“From
London?
”

“Go back on the occasional weekend, perhaps. For the occasional silly Hallmark holiday.”

“Peter . . .”

“It’s a great opportunity,” he said. “Perhaps, one could say, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

“What happened to
everything has a season?
” I said. “What happened to your whole speech that my heart wasn’t in ‘Checking Out’ anymore? That it might be time to move on?”

“I would have said anything to make you feel better!” he said. “And this is London, we’re talking about. You
love
London. And, keep in the back of your head, you can always make a demand later about returning to America, once they know how much they need you. Six months, and you’ll be good to head back out to Farm Town, USA. Nine at the most.”

“Peter . . .”

“Farmland? ”

“I can’t, Peter. I just can’t right now. . . .”

“You can.”

I shook my head. I shook my head as though he could see me. And then I said the truth, my queasy stomach seconds away from a win.

“Right now all I can do is get off the phone.”

An hour later I was opening the door to Griffin’s restaurant. I didn’t know how to begin to process the job news, but I knew I had to see Griffin, to make last night right, or more right. I needed to explain to him what was happening with me. And maybe by doing so, I could start to understand.

But when I walked inside, I felt at a loss all over again. Because sitting at the newly completed bar—sitting on one of the beautifully brushed stools in front of it—was Gia. Gia leaning across the bar top, leaning across her tall mug of coffee, toward Griffin, who was leaning toward her too, both of them laughing. Both of them looking happy, together.

I stopped in my tracks. I stopped in my tracks, just as they simultaneously turned to look at me.

“Annie . . .” Griffin said.

And Gia waved.

Uncertain what to do, I waved too, a small hip-side one. Then I hurried—too fast for it to seem natural—right back out of the front door.

Griffin followed me outside, calling after me, and I thought seriously about not turning around. But I had to. For starters, I had walked the wrong way and had no idea where I was going.

“Will you slow down, please? Annie, come on . . .” Griffin said, putting his hand on my arm.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“That was not what she looked like,” he said.

That stopped me. “What it looked like,” I said. “
It.
That’s what you meant to say.”

“What did I say?”

“You said she.”

I wasn’t sure how to explain why that felt worse. Maybe because even when it wasn’t supposed to be about other people for us, it was starting to feel like it was becoming that.

“Annie, please just listen to me for a second. I see where you are going, but I need you to listen to me. Gia had an argument with her boyfriend,” Griffin said. “She wanted to talk to me, get some guidance. That’s all.”

“She wanted to get some guidance from you?” I said. “About her new boyfriend?”

He nodded. “He’s not behaving all that well.”

He’s not the only one,
I wanted to add.

“Griffin, do you really think you’re the best person for her to be confiding in about that?”

“I know it sounds silly,” Griffin said. “But it’s a good thing. It’s a good thing for us to be talking to each other. A good thing for all of us. Putting the past in the past, you know that?”

I shook my head because I didn’t know that. What I did know was that everything was blurring together in my mind, past lives and present ones: Gia and Nick and Griffin and me, Jesse and Cheryl and Jude. “Checking Out” and photography and “Checking Out” again. There was supposed to be a boundary parting them: the past, the present, the time I didn’t understand what I needed for myself, the time I did. The time I felt like I had to keep escaping, the time I wanted to stay still.

“Will you come back inside?” Griffin said. “It’s freezing out here.” He had his arms wrapped around himself, proving the point.

I was still too stung. But I let him know in spite of that, and maybe a little because of it, what I had done.

“I sent an e-mail out for you this morning,” I said. “I sent an e-mail out to all my former colleagues at the paper. All the food critics I know, the style editors, the arts columnists, everyone, letting them know about the restaurant’s soft opening. Inviting them to come then, or anytime in the next few months. As our guests. I thought you’d want to know that.”

“I do,” he said. “Thank you.”

Then I started walking, the right way this time.

Griffin called after me. “Where are you going?”

But I couldn’t say the words. Only he seemed to understand part of what I wasn’t saying, because he moved closer to me.

“You’re my choice, Annie. You have been since day one.” He paused. “Even if you pretend not to, I know you know that. And I know I’m your choice too.”

I shook my head, refusing to let it be that simple. “You keep saying the past is the past,” I said. “But it doesn’t feel past to me when it is immeasurably locked into the present. Then it’s something else.”

“What’s that?” he said, his voice tensing up. “An excuse to walk away?”

“At the very least,” I said, even as I knew it wasn’t helping anything, “it’s a reason to end this conversation.”

That night, when Griffin came home, I pretended to be asleep. I lay there, perfectly still, while he moved around the bedroom, getting undressed and washing up, moving beneath the covers, settling in himself.