When Autumn Leaves: A Novel (15 page)

After that, the lying began. A situation turns itself inside out, and the mind excuses the body. Ana left the nursery that day more confused and excited than she had ever been. Infatuation consumes, but it doesn’t settle. Not the way Finn wrapped around her, making her feel both lit and secure all at once. She wanted to tell someone, wanted to tell everyone. She found herself pressing her hands into her chest, as if to close an opening that her feelings for Finn had created, but there was no stopping it. It poured out of her and into every action she did and every word she said.

They did not kiss that day; they did not even touch apart from when Ana touched the small of his back, and when she reached out her hand to his on the table. But they did agree to meet for lunch the following day.

Ana remembered going home with her plants, remembered feeling nervous as she opened the door, afraid that what had happened would be written all over her. But when she saw Jacob, she felt oddly relaxed. It was so easy to conceal. That was the moment when she felt herself break in two. There was her life with her husband, her son, her job, her home, and then there was this other self, the part of her that belonged to Finn. She felt no one had a right to that part; it was strictly her own.

From that point on, Ana became more tolerant, nicer to be around. But if she ever felt anyone coming close to intruding on that other self, she was all at once guarded and defensive. Jacob had known his wife well enough and long enough to understand something had shifted inside of her, but she became so angry when he tried to approach her about it that he let it drop, intuiting that there were some things people had to figure out on their own.

They began the kitchen garden that day, and Jacob marveled at Ana’s vigilance. He had no way of knowing that Ana felt close to Finn when she dug into the earth, when she watered the plants he had given her, that to Ana, the garden was Finn.

Ana and Finn met the following day outside Avalon, a restaurant both of them liked on Mabon Road. They played their parts to the hilt for the lunchtime crowd bustling inside.

“Ana? What are you doing here?” Finn said. He was glowing. Ana didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone who was so happy to see her.

“Oh, Finn, hello! I was just doing some shopping and I realized that I was about to faint with hunger. I haven’t eaten all day. What are you doing here? Are you with Ginny?” said Ana, her voice catching slightly on his wife’s name.

“No, she’s at home. I had a consulting job close by this morning and I was just going to grab a quick bite before I headed back. Would you like to join me?”

“Yes, that would be lovely. I just hate eating alone.” Both of them understood the need for the big show, or at least they thought they did. They figured that to look at them was to conclude they were lovers. It never occurred to them that they had tucked themselves so deeply, so neatly into their own little world that no one else really noticed them at all.

They put their names in with the hostess and after five minutes or so were shown to a perfect table far away from the window and set back almost in the corner. Avalon was not the fanciest restaurant in town, but it was one of the quaintest. As the name suggested, it had a somewhat medieval theme, reinforced by the one-hundred-year-old house it used to be. Even the cutlery looked somewhat primitive. But there was cutlery, proof positive that Avalon did not go overboard with its theme.

Ana and Finn sat down in a surge of nervous energy. Call it whatever: they were on a date. Ana lifted up her napkin, shook it out and placed it on her lap. Finn strummed his fingers lightly on the table.

“So . . . ” Ana said.

“So . . . ” repeated Finn.

“You know, I think we should eliminate that word from our vocabulary.”

“I agree,” Finn said, smiling.

Ana lowered her voice a little, aware of the people sitting close by. “God, I feel like I’m back in high school. Like I’m breaking curfew and I’m afraid my parents might catch me.”

“Me too. Come to think of it, where did you go to high school?” Finn asked.

“Right here, Avening High. Obviously, you didn’t, though. Where are you from originally, Finn?” Ana wondered if Finn was a man who disclosed easily.

“San Francisco.” Finn looked up like he was remembering. Ana liked that look, filled with longing and nostalgia. He obviously wasn’t bitter about his childhood. At least they wouldn’t have that baggage to carry around.

“We moved to Avening about six years ago. I had an aunt who lived here, and I always loved it when my family visited her. We were pretty close; she was married but didn’t have any children. When she died, she left everything to me, including her house, which was in pretty bad shape.” He shrugged sadly. “She went a little crazy after my uncle died. I remember it used to be such a beautiful place, but it would have cost us so much money to renovate. I ended up tearing it down and building Bellaverde there instead. I’m sure she would have approved.”

“I was wondering where you got that lot from! And now I know. So . . . Ginny’s from Frisco, too?”

Ana saw him stiffen, just a little. “Oh God, are we really going to do this, Ana? Talk about them?”

She knew she probably shouldn’t ask, but she was greedy for him. Greedy for any bit of anything that she could learn and take with her to think on later. “Well, I want to know you. I want to know everything about you. You’ve been with Ginny since you were a kid, which means that she’s been involved in most of your life. I’m not trying to be morbid or anything. I just have to know why . . . why you chose her, and why you stay with her.”

“Okay, but let’s make a pact: let’s talk about this now, and then let’s never mention them again. This has nothing to do with Ginny or Jacob.” Ana watched him purse his mouth, searching for words. “I know it’s crazy. But . . . for some reason, I don’t feel like my feelings for you are betraying my wife. I mean, you can’t control the way you feel about someone. But to talk about her . . . I guess I feel like that is betraying her in some way. I know she would hate it.” Finn was uncomfortable, and it made Ana feel secure. He was not a naturally disloyal man, even as he was betraying the one person he promised not to.

“Good point. I agree,” said Ana, nodding.

“Okay, well.” So Finn began to tell Ana about Ginny, how they had started dating in high school, when Finn was only sixteen. She’d had a hard life, a bad childhood, and there was something about her that made him want to protect her. When he was around her, he’d felt like a man. They’d graduated and went to SFU together, where Ginny, being her practical self, had majored in accounting. He’d loved her, but in a day-to-day way, not a soul-searching one. “I mean, if you had asked me back then if we would still be together now, I would have said no way,” he told Ana. “But it just became easier to stay together than be apart. We grew used to each other.” When they had moved to Avening and started the nursery, it was Ginny’s genius with numbers and good head for business that got the place off the ground. It was still Ginny who kept Finn from accidentally running them into the ground; she kept the books perfectly balanced, knew exactly how much money they could afford to risk on new plant buys each season based on their net profit from the season before, and found creative solutions for discounting or donating their unsold stock.

“There is a side of Ginny that no one has ever seen except me,” he said. “I mean, I know people don’t get her. They think she’s cold and . . . awkward, I guess. But the truth is she has too much love to give. She never got to really give it to her parents, so she gives it all to me. Well, to Janey, too. I stay with her because I’m afraid of what would happen if I left. She’s a fragile woman, Ana, and the mother of my daughter. I owe her a lot. I love her, I do, really, but it’s a hard thing to be responsible for another person’s happiness.” A look of sadness settled on Finn’s features.

Ana was torn: she felt sorry for Ginny, who had obviously had a tough life, but she was angry as well, furious that her weakness hung around Finn’s conscience like dead weight. He deserved so much more out of life than a relationship more about duty and obligation than love and freedom. Afraid that her opinion would insult him, she said nothing.

“So what about Jacob, Ana? You guys seem, well, pretty happy with each other.”

Ana thought for a moment about how to frame her answer. She was happy, on some level. Though now that she thought about it, contented might be a more appropriate word. She wished for a moment that she actually was miserable. That Jacob were a drunk or that he hit her so she would have some kind of a justification as to why she was sitting at that restaurant with a man who was not her husband.

“Oh, we are happy in a way. I mean, I love Jacob, but I’m not sure I ever really was in love with him. But we’re good together. What was it that Gibran said in
The Prophet
? ‘Let there be spaces in your togetherness,’ I think. There are a lot of spaces in our togetherness. We married young, but we grew in the same direction. There’s a lot of freedom in our relationship, to be our own people, to do our own thing. I think that’s why I married him. I knew he would never try to control me.”

“Do you think he’s ever cheated on you?”

“He might have, but if he has, I don’t want to know about it, and I know it hasn’t affected our marriage in any way that I can tell.”

“Have you ever cheated on him?”

Here it was, the subject that was woven around every word they had said so far, an invisible thread that both of them knew had to be pulled out and examined. “No, I haven’t. What about you, Finn?”

Finn looked down at his hands. By his energy alone, Ana knew the answer.

“Yes, I have. I’m not proud of it but . . . I needed to connect with someone normal, you know? Ginny might go for days without really communicating with me. Some days she’s just plain old mean, she puts me down, tries to make me feel bad about myself. I used to wonder why. I think it’s because she hopes I’ll think I’m not good enough for anyone else. Then there are some days, the good ones, when I think she realizes what a total bitch she’s been and she absolutely smothers me with love. But it doesn’t feel right, it feels forced, like she’s playing the role of a good wife.”

Ana sat back in her chair. Finn was making it very easy to dislike this woman, maybe too easy. But he had clearly given it a lot of thought, which was important to Ana. He was involved in his dysfunction, trying to sort it out as opposed to letting it happen all around him. The cheating made her nervous, but she kind of understood it.

“So you’ve seen other women,” Ana said. It wasn’t a question, just an open-ended statement, implying she needed more.

“I needed to feel intimate with someone without a past, you know?” He was looking down at his hands unhappily. “It’s happened more than once, but certainly isn’t something I do with any kind of frequency. I got glimpses of normal, and that has helped me gauge where I’m at in my marriage. It’s messed up, I know, but . . . I’ll tell you, Ana, if what’s between you and me were just about sex, I would have been all over you yesterday at the nursery. Or at least given it my best shot. It’s more than that, more complicated. I’m not sure I could just sleep with you. I’m afraid I’d want more.”

Luckily, there was a lull in the conversation then as the waitress came and took their orders. Ana realized this was not the right venue for this particular conversation. But what could they do?

“Finn, sex is sex,” Ana said after the waitress walked away, “but there are a thousand ways to betray. I have already cheated on Jacob mentally, and sitting right here, right now, sharing my life and my past with you, that’s a betrayal, too. I don’t know what to do, either. As much as I want you, I’m not sure it’s the wisest thing to jump into right now. Maybe we should take it slow, see if this is just an infatuation or something more. Something that could really change our lives.”

There was a tenderness in the way Finn looked at her, but there was a hint of skepticism too. Ana knew there was no “right way” to proceed. She allowed for the idea that she was misguided in the whole thing.

“I guess you’re right,” he said softly, “but in the same sense, you’re talking about beginning a relationship, Ana, and that’s a lot more duplicitous, in my eyes, at least, than having a quickie in some motel. Are you ready for that . . . that kind of lying?”

Was anybody ever ready for such a thing? She wasn’t ready. But she was willing. She leaned in a fraction of an inch closer to him. “I am if you are. Because I know that if I were to walk away from you right now, I would regret it later on, I’m sure of it. I don’t want that. I think we have to see this through to its natural conclusion.” She nodded to punctuate herself. “Maybe we’ll discover that it is really about companionship, maybe we’ll figure out that it’s all about sex, maybe it will be more . . . I don’t know, but we have to find out.”

“Okay, then,” Finn said, almost angrily. He let a long breath escape.

Over the next few weeks, Ana and Finn saw each other as much as their lives would allow. It was hard to get away, hard to keep track of their excuses. They never talked on the phone, never sent e-mails or letters. They arranged each meeting at the rendezvous before. If one of them didn’t make it, there was never anything more than disappointment. They would find a way to bump into each other and set a date for another time.

They rarely touched, using their words to reach out to each other instead, letting their stories penetrate in a way that sex simply could not. They soon found themselves bound to each other, but still unable to put a title or name to their relationship. And then there was one afternoon when everything changed, when Ana became instantly dissatisfied with their platonic arrangement, a day that set in motion everything that was to follow.

A parent of one of her students had given her a gift of an orchid, one she suspected was very rare. As soon as she set eyes on it, she knew she had to give it to Finn. He would appreciate it more than she ever could, and there was much less of a chance of it dying prematurely in his care. On a lunch break from school, she raced over to Bellaverde to give it to him.