The Sunshine When She's Gone: A Novel (22 page)

“I think she’ll be all right. I do, I do,” he said, protesting too much. He opened his coffee. Steam surrounded his face as he watched the TV. She, too, had gone away. She had been cut, turned into a set of parts. But the sum,
the sum of the parts,
remained.

“How many nights were we here? Was it two or did it turn into three?”

John blew his drink. The coffee was too hot to touch. “Nine, if you count your week of recovery.”

“Was it that bad?”

“It could’ve been.”

They rested there and cautiously sipped. It was their first effortless moment together in months. She knew it could be their last.

Before they finished their coffee, Arthur bounded out. “She needs bed rest for a few days and then—well, then she should be fine,” he said. He and John hugged each other before he hugged Veronica too tightly, lightly crushing the baby between them.

“What did they say?” Veronica asked.

“It was what they thought. Some fluid. Leaking. The placenta is leaking, so it needs to repair. To heal. If she rests, it’s supposed to heal.”

Ines then emerged, looking pale and almost chastened.

“Hey,” she said, leaning into Veronica. “Thanks for coming. The baby, according to the sonogram, is fine. Who knew! I need to rest for five days and then be seen again.”

“I’m so relieved,” Veronica said. She hugged Ines, haunted by the extreme delicacy of a life. “Should we go put you to bed? Can we bring you some dinner?”

“No, no, we’re good,” Ines said.

“We’re so
not
good,” Art said. “Come over and we’ll order Thai. It will be good for your hangover,” he said, looking at Veronica.

John glanced at her. “We got a little drunk,” she said. Her cyber moniker: Lusty Liver.

*   *   *

During dinner, Veronica was a helper. She helped, bringing Ines a pitcher of water for her bedside and a tray of dinner, emptying Ines’s trash, and straightening up for the days of convalescence ahead. Clara, up ridiculously late, lay on floor playing with Art’s red Puma. The two men were in the living room. For the first time since they’d met, Veronica didn’t confide in Ines. The bedroom, the black modernist chair in the corner—Dr. Weiss had had the same one—the framed poster of a movie by Antonioni, Ines sitting in her bed and eating pad Thai, was the last hiding place.

They lingered there, inside the larger, more-forgiving unit: friendship. Clara drank a bottle and fell asleep in her mother’s arms as Veronica sat in that black chair. They left when Art announced that he was going to bed.

*   *   *

In the elevator, John’s earlier solicitousness had vanished. He leaned in one corner, holding the railing as if for balance and staring stonily at the floor. He was
physically
so familiar to her. Yes, she knew this body, but what was he thinking? How had his mood changed so quickly? His body was this mysterious container, this shield, yet it was all she could see. She reached up and touched his cheek, and he pushed her hand away. Mystery was romantic, but this total mystery, his withdrawal, was shattering. Finally he looked up. “Art mentioned you ran into Satan,” he said.

“No we didn’t,” she said. Later she would regret this simple lie.

She looked up at each lit number as they descended. If they could just get to the lobby and out of this space.

“How drunk were you?”

“What? Well, a bit drunk, I suppose.” The enclosed space grew smaller, its wood paneling marbled with age, with years and years of arguments and wax, shattering news, polite silences, followed by good shiny rubbings.

“So did you see him or not?”

“Yes, I guess we did. He was at Isabella’s,” she said, trying not to visibly crumble.

“He was?” he said.

She was aware that her innocence was over. “My shoulders are killing me,” she muttered, adjusting the straps of the carrier and looking away again, this time up to the honeycomb grate on the light fixture. There were little golden octagons, as if bees would buzz out and she and John could open their mouths and catch honey on their tongues.

They passed 3 and then 2. “Then why’d you say he wasn’t?” John asked, pressing 17.

“Because I forgot.”

“You forgot?”

“Nothing happened,” she said. She needed him to stop this. She was never going to tell him.

“Who said anything happened? Wait—”

She started to shake lightly, holding on to the sleeping baby to steady herself.

“Well, Art said you did see him and that he’s still a complete prick,” he added, his eyes on her.

Had his uncertainty faded, pivoting into knowledge? But she hadn’t let on, she hadn’t said a word.

“I suppose he is,” she answered quietly. “I don’t know.” She looked at the numbers, which had reached 5 again when John pressed 16.

“Can you stop doing that? I just want to go home.”

“You didn’t answer the phone last night when I called.”

“I told you, I ate dinner with Art and Ines.”

“They were home asleep by ten. What the hell?
You
tell me, Veronica. Is he a complete prick?” The elevator hit the lobby and she started to head for the door. He shoved her back and smashed his hand over the numbers, pressing a couple at once. The lit box zoomed back up expertly, quietly, to 5; with a gentle ping, the doors opened briefly to a mirrored foyer and then closed and catapulted to 8.

John kept pressing buttons, staring, demanding her answer. “You tell me.”

She ignored him as tears fell freely now in a soundless, unstoppable torrent, and reached across him and pressed the
L
button for the lobby, with what were perhaps the last traces of the cold composure of
after.

“There’s nothing to tell. Please,” she said, imploring him to free her, to let it go.

“I know you,” he said. “Don’t you see that?” She had never meant to do it. “You tell me!” She faced him, his amber eyes pinned to hers. He let the elevator sink to its descent while she told him. Like the last bit of sand in an hourglass, it came out surprisingly straight and fast, the unadorned fact of her betrayal.

As the words escaped, she saw his face change completely; like a paper bag, it collapsed around the hollow of his mouth. The roses drained from his cheeks. His eyes were glassy inside their newly bony sockets, the very presentiment of death. She wanted to go to him, to help him, but he was gone.

21

Six Days Later

John

It was not Evan who watched approvingly while John said no to butter on his popcorn; Veronica had become the ghost. She approved of the dry popcorn but not the movie—the sequel to a cult thriller. She was the only person he knew who could fall asleep during a car chase. How he had loved that, her fragrant hair resting on his shoulder, her sleep complete and deep. And her explanation for it later was something he knew was cogent, even extremely intelligent, but he couldn’t remember, because he had been too busy staring at her lips as she explained how boring and predictable a car chase actually was. He accepted the bottled water he’d purchased instead of a Coke, pocketed the change, and then stood there, unsure of what he was waiting for. Art came and stood in his line of vision.

“Oh, man,” Art said, “we have got to get you a good shrink.”

“I’m fine. I guess I could use a drink.” It was Saturday night and Veronica had been uptown for four nights. He had asked for some time alone. But the weekend was enormous, monstrously long. She had to come back.

“No, a
shrink
! Not a
drink
,” Art said. “You’re crying again. I don’t know if you realize that.”

It had been happening a lot; he’d be buying a newspaper or walking in to the subway or taking a shower, and he wouldn’t convulse, but his eyes would fill, then overflow without a sound. After his initial rage, he didn’t have much to say to go with these tears. He was heartbroken, dumbfounded.

“I can’t believe I’m a
cuckold.
Here.” He offered Art the popcorn. “I got this for us—no butter, for my gut.”

“Good boy. She’s
not
here. See, one of the advantages of this time apart would be actually
getting
the butter.
Getting
the steak.”

“I don’t want the steak, okay?”

“Jeez!”

Art was able to lay off it once they’d found their seats. The stereo boomed its deafening ads. Ads on movie screens? He remembered the feel of Veronica’s head on his shoulder. When they’d met, there were no ads before movies. There was a past, and it contained such beauty.

John fidgeted in his seat, threatening to explode. The explosion ended as it always did within his uncomprehending mind: How could she do it? He had been away for only two nights. There was a gaping hole in his life, an error that didn’t compute.

All week he’d been scrambling to catch up at work; he’d fallen behind on two due dates. He told Lloyd Miller that he’d had to go visit his mother. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was that his report on Lancelot’s sleep aid was sloppy. Miller said it lacked clarity and the data on Lancelot’s earnings was disorganized.

In the name of research, John now took a pill every night, curling to sleep on the awful sofa to avoid sleeping alone in their bed. Veronica’s affection, her sweet depth, that Sunday afternoon reunion, had been so unexpected. He tried to remember the tenderness of their encounter. Was it real? It was. Then, retrospectively, knowing what he now knew, it wasn’t. Finally, the yellow underwear destroyed him. He tortured himself thinking about it and wondering if Damon had noticed it too.

Derek had called and left a message on the machine, and John had been avoiding calling him back. He fucking hated Derek. Derek had said it: “You left her?” And he was right. If he hadn’t left, none of this would have happened. Yes, he had told her to go, but the wait, the open-ended separation, was becoming unbearable.

As Art and John walked east on Houston after the movie, people everywhere held phones to their ears or thumbed them in their palms, as if those devices could actually connect you to a person. Art asked John what he thought of the movie, but it had begun and ended without him being able to follow the plot. They walked in silence before Art said, “You don’t have to sit in a bar with me with tears running down your face, okay? Go home. I’ll walk you there.”

“What are
you
going to do?” John asked, bereft to the point of confusion, his own voice like cotton in his dry mouth.

“I’ll have one beer, then go home. Man, listen, you need a plan, something very definitive, to tell her what it is you want, that you want her back. Practice saying it. She’ll listen to you. Women like that, being pursued.”

“How could she do this to me?” he said, but as he said it, he saw Art’s eyes roll just a bit. Soft breezes had tickled his face and neck when he saw Monika standing there with her strong tanned legs. Despite his exhaustion, despite everything, he
had
desired her. Desire was like a sweet tooth, a pull. It was human.

“You have to put Satan out of your mind. You’ve got to tell her you want her. Woo her.”

“There has to be, like, this waiting period. I’m punishing her, I guess.” There were glimmers of hope. Her remorse was full and he could tell, almost confusing to her, as if she were truly a person who had been overcome, who had stepped briefly into another life and was surprised by what she’d done. She had asked forgiveness and had put Clara up to the phone to hear her dad’s voice. She called often and said she was worried about him. The lights of the street doubled, jumping ahead of him through wet eyes. He passed a homeless man on Thompson Street and gave him five dollars. Veronica always admired this kind of generosity.

He would have to explain it to her, the way she was there even when she was not. Her vision had become a part of his own. Memory, the cascade of years, made time elastic, and everything they’d shared—watching a car chase in 1994, or refilling a wipe warmer in 2004—was converging. They had been young and slept late and now they were somnambulant, so tired they were practically dreaming as they moved. That was all Barbados had been: a lucid dream. He’d tell her eventually. She had to understand this: There was no absolute starting point. He was old enough to see that all of experience was one shimmering mass, fluid, not static.
Before
and
after
was a fiction.

22

The Same Night

Veronica

The sun set at four-forty on Saturday. Veronica watched it disappear, sinking into the reservoir, set up Clara with a life-size Italian leather pig on the floor of the Edelsons’ kitchen, and started to cook some sweet potato for the baby’s dinner. John’s face, the shocked hollow of his mouth, stayed with her. She poured the last bit of white wine into a glass, took a sip, and then reconsidered, dumping it down the drain.

She’d arrived uptown on a Tuesday and Annalena had been out. Veronica had harbored a sliver of hope that her mother would be there for her with comforting words and all the right distractions for Clara though this was completely unlikely. “
Accept reality as it is, not as you want it to be,
” Dr. Weiss had repeated; Veronica was alone. John was too. They were not one. But they had once chosen to be together.

The pot bubbled on the stove. The waiting was terrible. She understood how John felt but couldn’t help him. He would relent, but what if by some accident of fate, or stubbornness, he didn’t?

After dinner, she put Clara to bed in the guest room with the bumblebee wallpaper. She held the baby and went through their lengthy bedtime routine with the bottle, the short narration of the days’ events, the incessant pacing while reciting hypnotizing words about sleep. Finally, at the point when Clara began to droop, cleaving to her mother’s neck and shoulders, Veronica felt like she was splintering from the inside with hunger. It was true, what she’d told John: She often didn’t know what she needed, didn’t know whether she was hungry or tired, but now she was feeling those things again, bumping into them as they prickled up like crocuses beneath a deep freeze. She was starving.
Go to sleep
, she willed her daughter,
go to sleep.