Love and Other Natural Disasters (10 page)

"Meanwhile, the woman has no
idea; she only finds out when something dramatic happens, like she's suddenly
dumped or you've got a Laney on your hands. And because the guy never expressed
anything, the woman never got a chance to do anything differently. It's like,
he gives her the rope to hang herself. Remember how Chris only told me at the
end that when I thought our sex life was so tender and cuddly, he thought it
was boring? So that whole time, I'm sitting there thinking we've evolved to
this higher plane and he's wanting a blow job. But he doesn't
say
he
wants a blow job. He doesn't say anything until he's dumping me. That, my
friend, is a stuffer."

"You've had a theory about Jon
all this time and you never told me?"

"No. I had a theory, but it
never occurred to me that Jon fit the profile. He flew right under my
radar."

I felt faint. "Do you really
think he has ten years' worth of resentment stored up against me?"

"Maybe not ten years,"
Tamara backtracked. "I mean, it's just a theory. It might not fit Jon at
all. It might not even be a good theory."

"No, I think it's a good
theory," I said. "I've always thought he was mellow, that things
didn't bother him, but maybe he just wasn't telling me. Like you said, maybe he
didn't know himself. Maybe he just gradually stopped loving me, and then he
found Laney..." I started to cry.

"Oh, Eve. I'm sorry. I didn't
mean to make things worse. I don't know what I was thinking. You know how I
get. I like to puzzle things out. You do, too. I thought maybe if you had a
theory to explain how this happened, it'd help somehow. But I'm probably
completely wrong about Jon. I'm sure I am."

"What if you're not? What if
Jon's a stuffer?"

"The difference is, he didn't
dump you. He wants to

be with you. Maybe stuffers can be
reformed. I've never seen one try."

"Wouldn't that take, like,
years?" I sniffed.

"I don't know. He's starting
therapy, right?"

"Yes."

"He still loves you, I know he
does."

"Just not as much as he used
to."

"We don't know that."

"Yes, we do!" I said.
"If he loved me like he used to, he wouldn't have been with Laney."

"He wasn't with Laney."

"If this was the old days, he
wouldn't have been talking to Laney. Or maybe he would. Maybe he never loved me
like I assumed he did. Maybe he never loved I me like I loved him. Like I still
love him." I was sobbing uncontrollably.

There was nothing anyone could say
to that.

"Hi, Eve. It's me." Jon's
voice was nervous as it broadcast through the tinny answering-machine speaker.
"Testing, one, two, three. I don't know how long I get before the machine
cuts me off. I guess I'm about to find out. Or maybe you'll pick up, who knows?
I just realized the flaw in my plan is that I'm going to spend every second
hoping you'll pick up, and you might not even be listening.

"Even though it didn't turn
out the way I wanted, I was happy just to have that time with you last night.
I'm going to keep trying. I'm not going anywhere, Eve.

I mean, other than my
mother's." He lowered his voice. "Not that you should feel sorry for
me or anything, but, man, this is not the place you want to be exiled to. I'm
finding out all sorts of disturbing things. I had no idea how much cottage
cheese that woman eats, for one thing.

"I'm trying to be funny. It's
going badly, I know. I'm not funny right now. Earlier I was trying to compile a
list of things to tell you, sort of a highlight reel, but the truth is, it was
a shit day. And I did that thing where you get a song caught in your head and
you can't shake it loose. It was that old Replacements song, the one about
saying good night to an answering machine. And I realize that's all I want to
say to you. Just regular stuff. I'm sitting here auditioning, performing,
whatever, and I'm flopping." He stopped talking for a few seconds. "I
don't think you're picking up. I think I can talk till this tape runs out, but
this just isn't going to be my night. So... sweet dreams, Eve. I love
you."

I was listening, of course. After
talking to Tamara, I'd sat in meeting after meeting dazed and mute, then picked
up Jacob and some takeout, and watched DVDs with him until his bedtime. As soon
as he was down for the count, I retreated to my bedroom to release the torrent
that I'd been holding back for hours. That's where Jon's voice had found me.

The whole time he'd been talking,
the baby had been moving energetically. I rubbed my belly, apologizing that she
was getting to hear her daddy's voice only on the machine. I wished our voices
were a duet for her. For Jacob, too. I didn't want this to be the end of our
family. I thought of the days and weeks before Jacob's birth, when it seemed
like Jonathon and I were nearly vibrating with love: for each other, for the
life inside me, for the life we would all have together. But maybe those
vibrations were just nerves. Maybe what I'd assumed was love was something else.
Laney's existence had called everything into question. There wasn't one memory
that was beyond reproach.

I could picture Jon's face when
we'd made love, or when we were laughing together, and I'd assumed I was seeing
the depth of his feelings for me. But if that first night he spent with Laney was
one of the best he'd ever spent with a woman, his not touching her may have |
meant more than our whole last year together.

"I'm sorry," I said to my
little girl. "I wish he could I come home, too."

CHAPTER TEN

Nothing seemed easy anymore. It
wasn't easy to sleep, or to wake up, or to eat, or to take care of Jacob. It
wasn't easy to talk, or to remember, or to forget. Every choice—no matter how
piddly it would seem to the untrained eye—became daunting. I didn't want to
make any more wrong moves, so I did the minimum. I made my life small. I went
to work and I came home; I did my best to shield Jacob and keep him happy; I
talked to my belly; I sent apologetic e-mails to friends, revealing nothing,
blaming my elusiveness on the last month of pregnancy. I figured if everything
worked out like it was supposed to, and Jon came home, I could tell them the
story later. It would become an anecdote. If he never came back, then they'd
all have to know. But I didn't want to be an object of pity until I absolutely
had to be.

Since I was a big believer in
setting limits, I only allowed myself to hack Jon's e-mail every other day. It
wasn't like the e-mails actually made me feel better (nothing did), but since
all I could do was wait for Jon's therapy to offer some sort of explanation,
reading them seemed like the only action I could take. I was so emotionally and
physically exhausted that sometimes I could barely muster guilt.

I'd finished reading all of Jon's
back e-mails to Laney, so it was time to move on to her correspondence to him.
I wanted to answer the question that had been dogging me, lying just beneath my
consciousness, for days:
what does Laney have that I don't?

The Laney folder didn't offer any
plot twists: I already knew she was going to fall in love with him, and about
their failed rendezvous in the third act. I knew she'd go on to grab my
husband's crotch in a parked car and that he'd refuse her, but she'd soon get
at least some of what she wanted: the admission that he "had love"
for her. The boldness of her crotch grab aside, Laney's letters made her seem
edgeless, like an ordinary, not unintelligent woman who relied way too much on
my husband (and on emoticons) to get her through the day. If I never saw
another colon parenthesis combination or an "LOL," it would be too
soon. I learned
Kahlua
is the secret ingredient in
her famous French toast; she'd live in Seattle if it weren't for the rain; she
liked
The Love Boat
but not
Fantasy Island
(she used to have
nightmares about Tattoo); she had a perfectly normal, middle-class family; her
last boyfriend was sweet but "not the one"; she worried that she'd
never get to have kids; she hated panty hose. It was clear that she adored Jon
and seemed to think everything he said or did was brilliant, hilarious, and/or
charming. Was that all it took? I kept waiting for her to be fascinating,
insightful, funny. But she wasn't, at least not in e-mail form. So what did
that make me, that I could be upstaged by her?

Years ago, Tamara saw pictures of
her then-boyfriend's stunning ex-girlfriend. After exhaustive analysis, we came
up with the following axiom: You never want the exes to be too good-looking
(you feel inferior) or too homely (then you worry you're actually in that
league). You want them to be in the ballpark of your own attractiveness—only
you're obviously better. Tamara and I agreed that we always wanted to be
Version 2.0. Since I couldn't find a picture of Laney attached to any of the
e-mails, my biggest fear was that she was beautiful, and that beautiful
ultimately took all.

My low point was calling the
Chicago office and pretending to be a client who needed Laney's last name. The
receptionist gave it to me so easily that I felt even smarmier. Laney Castle. I
shit you not. I went to Google, set it to search for images, and typed in her
name. Nothing. I thought briefly about ways to get a hold of Jon's wallet, just
in case he carried a picture of her. The truly disturbing part was that in this
particular scenario, I was hoping that my husband was carrying a picture of the
other woman on his person.

Jon's e-mail did finally give me
confirmation that he really had broken it off with her right after
Thanksgiving. She'd sent two e-mails since then: the first asking if he was sure
there was absolutely no room in his life for her, and the second wishing him
well and telling him that if he ever reconsidered, she'd love to hear from him.
According to his Sent folder, he never wrote back.

Still, I was haunted by that open
door. Even if Jon and I got back together, I'd always know that if he was
feeling neglected or angry or misunderstood or horny—or any one of a million
other emotions that had made Laney so appealing the first time around—the
possibility existed that he'd go back for seconds. After all, it wasn't his conscience
that had stopped him; it was getting caught. Sure, he'd halted contact with her
now, but who knew how long that would last? It was a thought that kept me
Snooping despite the diminishing returns. Man, I hated the word
"snooping." It was just so preteen.
Dear Diary, Today I got my
period for the first time and snooped on my husband!

One time, Jon called for his
nightly screening earlier than expected and I could hear his voice faintly in
the Other room as I was logged into his e-mail. I couldn't make out his words,
only the tenor of his voice. The Innocent warmth I heard there was punishing.
After thirty seconds, I turned off the computer and followed him to the
bedroom.

"... it's kind of surreal, all
the ways I have to listen to myself these days. On these messages to you, in
therapy. I haven't spent this much time just with myself in I don't know how
long. I don't like it. I mean, part of that's the fact that I'm pretty bad
company these days. But the other part is that I like myself better when I'm
with you and Jacob. So I don't just miss you—though I miss you something crazy,
don't get me wrong—I miss me with you. To state the obvious, I miss us.

'And you know I haven't been
pestering you to let me come home. You've wanted space and I've respected that.
But I think it's time for us to at least get in a room and talk, because I've
realized a lot of things. I've had three sessions of therapy and not to toot my
own horn here, but I'm making progress. Maybe you could meet with me and see
for yourself? If you're there, could you pick up so we could talk about
it?"

As he paused, I reached for the
phone, but then I stopped myself. I didn't want to talk to him just then, when
I felt so unclean. My heart was pounding triple time with the painful hope that
I could forgive him. Every night, I'd listened to his messages and felt the
terrifying swell of love.

"Maybe you're not there, or
you just need time to think it over. If you decide you're not ready to meet up
yet, could you at least send me an e-mail so I won't wait for a call that's not
coming?" At the mention of e-mail, shame struck anew. "Well, good
night, Eve. You're in my heart."

The next morning, I told Jacob
there would be a change in his schedule. That night was normally his night with
Daddy, but instead, it would be mine. Jacob clearly wasn't happy about the
disruption.

"It's 'Jacob and Daddy Movie
Night,'" he said, pointing to the calendar. He had just finished getting
dressed for school in his jeans and favorite blue long-sleeved T-shirt, the one
that he insisted on wearing despite the paint stains on one arm.

"But now 'Jacob and Daddy
Movie Night' will be tomorrow. See?" I gestured toward the blank square
next door. "We can just draw an arrow..." I began, reaching for a
marker.

"No! Tonight!"

I sat down on his bed and patted
the space next to me. He was having none of it.

"Tonight!" he said again,
glaring.

"I know you're disappointed. I
know you really wanted to see your daddy tonight. But you're going to see Aunt
Tamara and Uncle Clayton instead. You always have fun there."