Cancel the Wedding (33 page)

He stopped pacing and shoved his hands in his pockets. “When were you planning to tell me how you've been feeling?”

“Are you kidding me?” My voice came out sounding shrill and maybe a little desperate. “I've been trying, Leo! I've been calling you since I got here. I wanted to ask you what you were thinking, if you were having the same thoughts, but you wouldn't even talk to me. You kept putting me off because you had a meeting or a flight or a dinner.”

He was trying not to raise his voice, but I could tell it was taking a lot of effort. “This isn't the kind of conversation you have on the telephone.”

“No, I know. But it would've been a start.” It would have shown me that I was a priority to Leo if nothing else. Although all it would have accomplished was a quicker breakup because that's where we had been heading for months. He was here now and it was time to start the conversation. “I've had a lot of time to think about things while I've been down here. See things from a different perspective. And it's made me realize that you and I have gotten into a routine, but I'm not sure either one of us really stopped to think about it.”

He looked more impatient than mad or upset. “Why do you always make that sound like a bad thing, Olivia?”

“It's not. It's not a bad thing. If it's making us happy, but I don't think it is. We both work crazy hours, and I know you love your job but I don't love mine. It's making me miserable. Our careers are the overriding focus of our entire existence. I don't want that.”

“Then get a different job.” He slapped the back of the chair without much conviction and I could tell he wished he'd hit it harder.

“That's not the real problem, or the solution.” I couldn't stay seated with the nervous energy running through me and I stood up too. “What I'm trying to say is that because our jobs were keeping us so busy and consumed so much of our energy we didn't have time to really stop and think about much of anything. We've just been blindly following some path, without asking ourselves if it's what we want.”

“Jesus, Olivia.” There was a coffee table and an armchair between us. I wondered if he would've been shaking me by the shoulders as he said that if the furniture placement hadn't been set up to block it. “You don't think we've been asking ourselves what we want? We've analyzed the shit out of this relationship on that goddamn couch for a year.”

I took a deep breath. I needed to stop scooting around the perimeter of it and just say it. “I haven't been happy. I don't want to hurt you, but I don't think that's a good reason for us to keep this up.”

“Keep this up?” Leo stopped and looked at me, really looked at me, for the first time since he had shown up here. He was struggling to keep his emotions in check. “Look, I can't make you happy, Olivia.” He was quoting our therapist. “Only you can make yourself happy.”

“I'm not putting this on you. I'm not blaming you because I feel this way. I know this is all me, all my fault. But I'm trying to explain it to you.” I looked out at the thick, green blur of trees surrounding the dark, still water in the lake and the beaten-up mismatched chairs on the screen porch. I could hear the sounds of motorboats on the lake and crickets outside. “I think I've found a way to make myself happy. Here.”

“So what is it that you're saying, exactly?” He wanted me to make the first offer, to spell out the terms of our dissolution.

I took a deep breath. “I'm saying that I think this is over. You and me. I don't think we've been working for a while. And I'm saying that I think we should be honest about it and admit it before we end up really hurting each other.”

He was nodding slowly, as if trying to digest that before saying anything. Finally he asked, “Do you really mean that?”

“I do mean it.” A tear traced down my face and I wiped it away. “Leo we aren't even married yet and we've been going to counseling for a year.”

Now he just looked tired. He finally sat down. “That's the same thing Georgia said.”

I didn't like the sound of that. Was Georgia talking to Leo behind my back? I moved over and sat next to him on the couch. “What did she say?” I tried to keep the anger out of my voice. Leo looked at me in a way that told me I had not succeeded.

“Look, I've known Georgia and William almost as long as I've known you. Of course we've been talking. We started out talking, and worrying, about the way you were handling Janie's death, but then we sort of moved on to other topics.”

I wondered if she had said anything to Leo about Elliott. I hoped not. That was my awful horrible story to have to contend with, eventually. “Other topics?” I asked.

Leo took my left hand and squeezed my finger where my engagement ring should have been. I would need to return it to him. I said, “It's at Georgia's house.”

“I know.” He looked defeated, which was a look I had never before seen on him. “When I saw it there . . .”

I rushed to try to explain it all better. “I didn't plan to stay down here this long. I really didn't think I would be embarking on some life-altering trip.” The tears were coming and there was no point in trying to stop them. “I honestly just wanted a break for a minute so I could find out about my mom's life. I wanted to understand where she came from. Then everything got so complicated. But the more time I spent here I felt like I got . . . I'm not sure what, maybe some clarity?” I was trying not to sob. “I love you, Leo. I honestly do, and I never wanted to hurt you. I just know that this, us, isn't working. Not anymore.” I was going to have to tell him about Elliott, but I didn't know how to broach the subject without Leo blaming this whole breakup on him when it was solely my fault.

“How could you be feeling all of this and not bother talking to me about it? You're not even giving me a chance to fight for us.”

Those were the words he used, but there wasn't any conviction in his voice.

Leo had flown down here knowing that there wasn't anything left to fight for. He already knew that he was always putting me off for work. He had seen the catatonic and detached way I had been wandering through life these last two years. He understood that my reaction to the idea of a concrete date for our wedding had panicked me to the point of fleeing, and that it was a bad sign. He was here for the face-to-face, the logistics meeting to iron out the details. That's really what this surprise visit was: a postmortem.

The two of us argued back and forth for hours saying all of the things that had been bottled up, but we tried to keep it civil. The sun moved slowly across the room as we dissected the relationship, pulling it apart bit by bit.

“I'm so sorry, Leo. I was trying to finish this stupid thing”—I waved my hand at the wall full of clues and hints at my mother's life—“before I began dealing with my own life.”

“I know you were.” There was a tone of kindness to his voice, finally. “I don't think you would've been able to do much of anything until you had gotten this behind you.”

We were startled by a knock at the front door. It was Jimmy's delivery boy dropping off a casserole from the coffee shop. I thanked him quickly, sent him away, and locked the deadbolt.

As I put the food in the kitchen I noticed that Leo was struggling over whether or not to examine for himself the injury that had necessitated this extra care. He decided to resist the urge.

He fell into the armchair in the corner. “I didn't ask you to marry me because it would benefit my career.”

I nodded. “I know.” I had lobbed that one about two hours ago. “I wasn't using you as a crutch to get through the funerals.”

“I know.” I think he actually felt bad about that one. The urn containing my mother's remains was on the table next to him and he motioned to it without actually touching it. “I really did want to come here to help you put Janie to rest.”

He was wringing his hands. We sat in silence for a long time. Longer than I have ever been quiet with Leo; normally I am filling every void with something. But now I just waited, waited for him to process his thoughts. Finally he said, “I know what I want for us, for me. I just—”

There was another knock at the door.

Leo threw his hands up, irritated, and yelled, “Come back later!”

There was a pause and then another knock, this one louder, demanding. Whoever it was wasn't going away. I did not have time for this. I threw the door open and found Elliott standing there. I gasped. I stared at Elliott for a second then looked back at Leo. He was walking from the back of the living room toward me. Toward Elliott and me.

I was startled into complete brain malfunction. I said, “Elliott.”

“Liv.” His eyes were darting back and forth between Leo and me. He couldn't make sense of it; there was obviously a lot of tension in the air. He held up the papers he was holding as if to explain what he was doing there and said, “I've figured it out. Everything. I've figured it out.”

All I could think was,
You're not supposed to be here until dinnertime. Is it dinnertime?

Leo said rather rudely, “Can we help you?”

Elliott heard the word “we” and he looked utterly confused. He looked at me with the most pained expression. Then he looked at Leo, who just seemed annoyed by the interruption.

Elliott pointed at Leo and asked, “Who is this?”

Leo answered for me. “I'm her fiancé. Who the hell are you?”

Elliott looked at me with complete shock. “You're . . . engaged?” His expression morphed quickly into a mixture of disappointment and disgust. He threw down the stack of papers he was holding and walked away.

I wanted to call out to him. To explain. To follow him. I couldn't do that of course. All I could do at that moment was watch him go. I picked up everything he had dropped and quietly closed the door.

Leo was waiting for me to explain that. “Who the hell was that?”

So much for Leo and I having a civil, amenable, quiet little breakup. I could feel his anger spooling up as he stood there.

Some primitive territorial beast roared up in Leo. He yelled again. “Who the hell was that, Olivia!” He was consumed with rage at the ugly reality that maybe I wasn't alone down here.

“That was Elliott. He owns the local newspaper. He's been helping me find out about Mom's past.” My voice was very low, barely above a whisper.

Mottled red blotches were erupting on Leo's cheeks. Those only made an appearance when the Redskins were losing or apparently when he was faced with the proposition that I was cheating on him. “Helping you!” he said very sarcastically. “Are you kidding me? Have you been cheating on me down here?”

“It's not like that.” Well, maybe it was a little. “I needed help with—”

“Answer me!”

“Don't yell at me!”

“Are you sleeping with him!”

I actually felt sad when I answered that question. “No. I never slept with him.” I think Leo could hear the regret in my voice.

Leo punched the wall next to the door then started pacing wildly. He looked like one of those sharks in the throes of a feeding frenzy circling frantically with the smell of blood in the water. He seemed directionless. It wasn't like Leo.

I opened my mouth to start to explain, to start at the beginning and tell him everything about Elliott, but before I could speak Leo started laughing. It was the meanest sound I had ever heard come out of him. It was a deep gurgle of a laugh and it was full of nothing but spite and anger. “You are unbelievable.”

I approached him slowly while glancing at the front door half expecting Elliott to come bursting through it. “Leo, you have to let me explain—”

“You don't get to explain anything! I can see it in your face.”

I vaguely wondered what in the world my face was giving away. I had to make him talk to me again. “Stop it. Listen to me.”

He was looking me up and down; it was an unkind assessment. “You lying bitch.” Leo never took to name-calling and in some detached way I realized how angry he must be to have called me a bitch. When the strange angry laughing had stopped it was replaced by an even stranger smile. There was no trace of the smile in his voice, however. “After all I've done for you, all I've been through. Taking care of you when you lost your parents and became this pathetic depressed weepy thing.” He was on a rather undignified roll now and going to some places I never thought he would. “I stayed with you all that time because what kind of asshole leaves his girlfriend when she just lost her parents? I did all that and then you pull this shit? You have the nerve to cheat on
me
?”

Years ago, before we were engaged, before we owned property together, before either of my parents had died, Leo had what I referred to as an “emotional affair” with a woman at work. He never conceded that it was cheating because in Leo's mind if there was no sex then there was no cheat. You can't have a murder without the body. Or something like that. I held firm that an emotional relationship was more serious than a sexual one, and therefore constituted cheating. Neither one of us wavered in our definition of what it meant to cheat. For Leo it was sex; for me it was intimacy. It had been a long time since I'd thrown that in his face. “You were the one who said it wasn't cheating if there was no sex!”

“Bullshit! You can't switch sides now! That's even worse! I can't believe you did this to me!”

“Well, it sounds like you wanted out anyway! You basically just said you wanted to leave a long time ago but you couldn't abandon the poor orphan!”

“You're not a goddamn orphan, Olivia! You're thirty-two years old! And I can't believe I've wasted this much time on you!”

“Wasted?” I had to ratchet this back down to civil, or at least less vindictive. “It wasn't wasted, Leo. Just because it's ending doesn't—” He shut me up with one look.