The First Husband (9 page)

“They’re having a silent contest right now,” Jesse said, gently pushing both boys in Griffin’s direction. “Go on, guys. No talking necessary.”

The twins ran to Griffin, who scooped them up into his arms, holding both of them close—one hand cupped under each small body, his eyes still drilled into his brother.

I noticed it, right on the other side of Griffin and the boys, at the foot of the stairs: several enormous suitcases and piles of clothes. Sporting equipment. Children’s toys. All of it partially unpacked and spilling up the stairway, spilling all the way down the upstairs hallway, which, from my angle at least, was a total and complete disaster: paintings falling from their hangers, carpet ripped up. And the distinct smell of grape juice, coming from somewhere that I wasn’t sure I wanted to visit.

Griffin must have followed where my eyes went because he looked that way too, and then back at his brother.

“Jesse, how long have you been staying here?” Griffin asked.

Jesse shrugged. “Not long.”

“How
not
long?”

“Not long,” he answered. “Like five weeks.”

“Five
weeks?
” I said.

It was the first thing I’d said. And Jesse turned to me—for the first time—as if just noticing I was there. Standing in front of him. After falling out of his brother’s arms.

“Hey there,” he said.

“Hey there,” I repeated.

Then I gave him a small wave, more than a little surprised I had opened my mouth at all.

“How could you not have told me you were here?” Griffin said.

Jesse tuned back to his brother, offering up a shrug. “Didn’t want to worry you,” he said. “Seemed unnecessary.”

Griffin put down the twins, who raced wordlessly up the stairs, fighting back their laughter, fighting hard not to tumble and trip over the massive amount of belongings covering the floor. I watched them go, my eyes shifting back to Jesse once they’d disappeared, a bedroom door slamming behind them. The only noise.

“What do the kids get for winning the silent contest? ” I asked. “They seem incredibly committed.”

“A hundred bucks,” Jesse said.

“That’s some prize,” I said.

This made Jesse smile. “I believe it breeds a certain level of commitment,” he said.

Griffin drilled his brother with a look. “Where’s Cheryl, Jessie?”

“Cheryl kicked me out,” Jesse said.

“She kicked you out?” he said.

Jesse nodded, his voice getting smaller. “Sammy hasn’t put down Cheryl’s watering can since. The kid even sleeps with it. That means he’s traumatized, right? We’ve probably traumatized him. Dex seems to be handling it all a little better, but last night he took a hard swing at Sammy to try to get that can. So I can’t really take that as a sign of progress.”

Griffin just stared at his brother. “Cheryl kicked you out? Why would she do that?”

“Well, she needed to catch her breath for a minute,” Jesse said. “That can happen.”

“When, Jesse? When can that happen?”

“You know,” he said, “when you find out your husband got someone else pregnant.”

I looked at him in disbelief—
what did he just say?
As if reading my thought, Jesse nodded again.

“It’s complicated,” Jesse said.

I looked at Jesse for so long that someone might have wondered if I were thinking it was possible that he was going to take his words back, say something different instead. But maybe I was also looking at him for that long because I was scared to look any other way—to catch Griffin’s eyes and see what he was or wasn’t thinking about what his brother had just revealed.

But Griffin wasn’t saying a word. The next several, I was guessing, were going to have to come from Jesse. Then they did. And they were for me.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Griffin’s a little rude. I’m Jesse. Griffin’s brother. Who are you?”

He held out his hand, which I imagined was sticky from the Fudgsicle. But I took it.

“Griffin’s wife,” I said.

“
H
e’s actually a genius, believe it or not,” Griffin said. “Like a certified one. His IQ is off the charts and he skipped two grades in school when we were growing up. Got a full ride to MIT at sixteen years old. Though maybe that did more damage than good. . . .”

We were lying in bed—my first night in our bed—and I was staring at the ceiling, only a bedside light still on. I was blinking too quickly, trying not to give into the tight ball taking hold in my chest, trying not to focus on the little-person-size hole in the wall near our bedroom door—the result of a paintball fight gone awry. It was now covered with a bedsheet that was unequal to the task of keeping out the outside world.

Instead of focusing too hard on any of that, I tried to make out the designs on the ceiling overhead, still mostly visible in the soft light: the intricate and beautiful designs, interstitial numbers and words, stand-alone letters, an entire system I couldn’t quite comprehend, right above my head. Griffin had just come to bed, after a longer conversation with Jesse, one I didn’t partake in, one in which Jesse provided some details about this other woman—he knew her from graduate school—and fewer details about what he was going to do now.

Now Griffin was whispering. I knew why and I wasn’t sure why. Jesse and the kids were in a bedroom across the hall, watching a movie—
Raiders of the Lost Ark,
I believed—the volume turned to high. They were laughing and shouting at the screen, shouting louder than the movie itself. Silent contest apparently over.

“I just wish that you hadn’t gotten such a bad first impression of him,” Griffin said.

“It wasn’t so bad,” I said. “Really . . .”

Then I cleared my throat because I wasn’t sure what to say next. A bad first impression, though, seemed like the wrong terminology. Someone’s mother being loud or eerily quiet was a bad first impression. Someone’s childhood friend drinking too much wine and getting silly. But finding a married brother-in-law living in your new house with his young twin sons because he’d impregnated a woman who wasn’t his wife? That seemed like something else.

Still, I tried to think of something supportive to say—something to get both of us out of our heads. But, the truth was, I was feeling judgmental of Jesse. And that wasn’t the only problem. This was the first time since I’d met Griffin that I was aware there was something I didn’t know how to say to him.

Griffin turned onto his side to face me, resting his hand on his elbow.

“They just don’t have anywhere else to go right now,” he said. “I mean, I guess they could go stay at my mother’s in New York City, but Jesse hasn’t really told her what’s going on yet. He doesn’t want to deal with her reaction and I can’t say I exactly blame him for that.”

“I get it,” I said.

And I did. From what Griffin had told me about his mother. She was a geology professor at New York University. A fitting profession being that she was so steady for the family, filling the house with so much love. But while she was apparently incredibly loving, she was also incredibly emotional. Especially when it came to her sons. And high emotions right now wouldn’t help anything.

“He just needs some time to sort this all out. And with the twins going to a kindergarten near here for now and Jesse feeling good about that . . .” Griffin said. “I don’t know if I feel right asking them to leave right now.”

“No.” I shook my head, gaining some resolve. “No, of course not. I’d never ask you to do that. I’d never ask you to ask him to leave. He’s your brother. And he needs you.”

“But you’re my wife,” he said. “And so do you.”

He wrapped his arm tightly around me, so I could hear that that mattered to him too.

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I promise you.”

“This is just such a bad time for all of this, you know? We just got here. We’re trying to settle in. You’re trying to get used to everything. It’s just such a bad time. . . .”

I moved closer to him. “Griffin,” I said, “I’m not sure there is ever a good time to move in with your brother because you got a woman pregnant. Really not sure that’s ever making it on to a greeting card.”

Griffin laughed, kissing me sweetly on the forehead. “You’ve got a point there,” he said.

“We’ll be fine,” I said. “We’ll just, you know, have to lock the door when we have sex.”

“And make sure the sheet is secure,” he said.

I smiled.

Then that was what he did.

I
woke up the next morning disoriented and more than a little confused. It wasn’t unlike when you take a nap in the afternoon and wake up in the evening, no daylight left to help you out, the scrambling starting in your mind: Why am I asleep right now? What day is it? Am I home?

Part of the reason for my confusion was that Griffin’s bedroom was still so dark—middle-of- the-night dark—due to the brown, floor-length curtains that apparently could keep out all forms of light. It was probably not a bad system for a chef who often needed to sleep during weird hours. But as I started coming to, I didn’t like not knowing what time it was, whether I had even made it through the night yet. Why Griffin was gone.

I flipped over onto my stomach, pushed a thick curtain out of the way, and peeked beyond it, out into the world. The winter sun was streaming in hard and fast. It was so strong, in fact, that it reminded me of a California morning. I put my hand on the windowpane, waiting for warmth to hit my palm, but it was ice-cold. Burning me. The little thermometer on the pane’s edge weighing in a minute too late at a whopping six degrees.

I got out of bed, threw on sweatpants and an extra pair of socks, and headed downstairs to the kitchen, where I found Jesse and the twins at the kitchen table, having breakfast. Jesse was dressed in a wrinkled suit, working hard on tying a tie around his neck while the twins focused on eating their Eggo waffles. Or, rather, Dexter was focused on sticking his tongue through the circle he’d made in the middle of his waffle, and on spinning the waffle around his face. Sammy, meanwhile, was stuffing his waffle into the watering can. The maple syrup—or what was left of it—was in two puddles beneath their feet.

“Good morning,” I said.

Jesse looked up and smiled at me in the doorway. “Hey there, sis-in-law,” he said.

“Hey there,” I said, still standing in place, somewhat awkwardly. My feet, even through the socks, were getting pretty cold on the wooden floor. So, while I was trying to stay still, I was also moving from one foot to another.

“You like coffee?” Jesse asked.

“Only the first four cups I have each day,” I said. “The fifth starts to lose me.”

“Then you’re at the right place, come sit for a minute,” he said. “We’ve got some great freaking coffee.”

He pointed with his tie in the direction of the thin, silver thermos in the middle of the table. His proof.

I headed to the table, taking the empty seat next to him, as Jesse let his tie go for a second and reached over to screw open the thermos for me, pouring some coffee into the cuplike top, handing it over.

The steam was piping out the top and I breathed it in, cupping it in my hands and taking a long sip.

“Whoa,” I said. “You weren’t kidding. This coffee is good. Out of this world good, actually.”

“You’re not wrong. I have approximately three things I’m really good at and making coffee is one of them.” He looked back down at his tie, tugging it into a knot, and then undoing it. “I brought my French press from home. It’s about a thousand years old. That’s part of the trick.”

I smiled as I blew on the top, took another sip. “And why the silver thermos?” I asked. “Is that part too?”

“No, just good for carrying it into Boston,” he said. “I have a meeting in Cambridge this afternoon.”

I stopped midsip. “Oh, I thought . . .”

He put up his hand to stop me. “Please, with my current behavior, offering up the good coffee is the least I can do,” he said. “It’s also, unfortunately, at this particular moment, the most.”

He gave me a sweet smile, his hand holding his lopsided tie, still completely undone.

“You need a hand with that?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I’ll get it,” he said. “Probably when it’s already too late. But I’ll get it.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said.

He was looking back down at his tie, going for it again, as I drank the coffee.

“But I would enjoy if you’d entertain me with the story of how you and my big brother fell in love,” he said. “I can’t believe I didn’t know anything about what was happening with you guys. In another world, I could be pretty pissed off about that.”

I laughed. “It just happened so quickly,” I said.

“ ‘The only laws of matter are those that our minds must fabricate and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.’ ”

I looked at him, completely confused.

“James Clerk Maxwell. The guy who created classical electromagnetic theory,” he said. “I like to think it’s another way of saying great things tend to happen all at once.”

I smiled. “I like that,” I said. “A lot . . . Is that what you’re in graduate school for?”

“In a way,” he said. “An updated version. I’m working with a scientist named Jude Flemming, have you heard of her? I’m guessing not unless you’re up on the world of optical physics.”

“Not so much recently, no.”

“Well, Dr. Flemming is amazing, inspirational really. She’s only in her mid-forties and she already heads the department. Not to mention that she’s considerably changing how we understand optical fields,” he said.

“Those of you who understand it,” I said.

“Exactly.” He laughed. Then he pointed it in the direction of the counter. “By the way, Griffin left you a little love note over there. He didn’t want to wake you, but he had to head over to the restaurant to meet a contractor. He left you directions in case you want to go by and say hello.”