Love and Other Natural Disasters (25 page)

"I'm going to kiss my
kids," I said, heading for the hallway.

"Make it a double!" he
called after me.

That night, I dreamed about the
circling fish. Only Jon and I were the fish. The circling was making me dizzy.
It wasn't romantic or pleasant or intimate, like I'd always imagined; it was
actually quite nauseating. Because we were fish, I couldn't tell him to stop
circling me, and I couldn't seem to stop myself from circling him. It was like
being trapped on an amusement ride long after I wanted to get off. I was
grateful to wake up, even if it was hours until dawn.

Charlie's always been a heavy
sleeper, but this was the first time since he'd been staying with me that I
crept into the guest room and turned on the computer. I hadn't checked Jon's
e-mail in weeks (I wasn't finding anything useful, anyway) but that night, the
compulsion was so strong it felt psychic.

The password still worked, but
there was nothing new in his in-box or his Sent folder. A chill went through
me. Maybe he knew I'd been in this e-mail, and was carrying on all sorts of
relationships from a new account. Or maybe he was so depressed that he wasn't
communicating with anyone.

Reading Jon's e-mail had given me a
false sense of control. I thought that I could at least be prepared for
whatever was coming next, and now my anxiety was running wild. It was bouncing
between the poles: At one end, Jon was already back together with Laney or in
love with someone new. At the other end, he was so depressed he could barely
make it through another day. My rational mind would have admitted other
possibilities, but I didn't have access to it just then.

Olivia was crying. I needed to pull
myself together and go to her. She needed me to soothe her, and in this
condition, I'd only make her more upset.

One way or another,
I told myself,
it'll be okay.
But as I held Olivia,
telling her the same thing, she just cried and cried.

CHAPTER
TWENTY TWO

I couldn't exist in this middle ground
any longer. The lack of a definitive was driving me crazy. Either Jon and I
were going to move forward, or I was done. So the next night, after I put Jacob
to bed, I told Charlie I'd be going out. I didn't want to say where, but he
guessed. "You know there's no shame in visiting your own husband,
right?" he asked, seeing my guilty expression.

The Tender Knob was pretty rough,
more Tenderloin than Nob Hill, for sure. My image of Jon walking his
neighborhood like life was an episode of
Cheers
was immediately
dispelled. It was obviously a neighborhood where most commerce was illicit, and
I felt sad that Jon had been relegated to this. I bet Ray had done a lot of
work here in his day.

I located Jon's building (midway
between a liquor store and a flop hotel), and when I couldn't find parking
within a few blocks, I decided to spring for the lot across the street. It took
effort to get out of the car, and not just because the darkened lot was
spooking me. It was entirely possible that this was a big mistake. Things were
at a more or less peaceful stalemate. They could certainly get worse. I didn't
want things uglier; I wanted them cleaner. In the best-case scenario, I'd know
that he finally understood just how wrong his affair with Laney was, he'd admit
to everything that I already knew, and he'd profess to loving me above all else
(excepting Jacob and Olivia, of course). I wasn't sure what the worst case was.

I forced myself to go to his
building. There it was, our last name written in Jon's scrawl next to the
buzzer.
It's funny, the things that can knock the wind out of you just by
confronting them in some new, unexpected way. Every day when I went home, I
realized Jon wasn't there. Logically, it followed that he was somewhere else.
But seeing the evidence — feeling it, all through me — that this was, in fact,
where he lived...

I pressed the buzzer and waited.
After a reasonable interval, I went ahead and pressed again. Jon's voice
crackled through the intercom.

"Hello," he said,
sounding half-asleep. "Jon, it's me."

I was about to repeat it when he
said without inflection, "You didn't call."

"I guess I wanted to surprise
you." I added weakly, "Surprise!" A second later, I asked,
"Can I come in? It's kind of... seedy out here."

A loud noise rang out. It took me a
second to realize that in lieu of an answer, he was buzzing me in. I reached
for the door, but by then, the buzzing had stopped. Feeling a little foolish, I
pushed the button next to his name, and this time, when he buzzed, I was ready
for it.

Inside was more promising than
outside. There was a long corridor with a marbled floor and a faded
Persian-style carpet runner down the center. An aged crystal chandelier hung
from the high ceiling. I walked down the hall until I found Jon's apartment and
knocked hesitantly on the door.

When he opened it, he was wearing
an
untucked
T-shirt and jeans; his feet were bare. He
had five o'clock shadow and an expression of wary embarrassment. As he stepped
aside to let me in, I saw why.

The galley kitchen had dishes piled
high and crumbs and spills on the countertops. In the main room, there was an
unfolded futon with rumpled covers, facing a TV. A crib for Olivia was pushed
against one wall. There were two large windows with heavy damask drapes in
front of them, and the whole place had that too-lived-in smell. The ceilings
were high and wainscoted, and the floor was refinished oak, and I could see
that it would be a nice apartment if it weren't
so
obviously inhabited
by a depressed person.

He turned and surveyed the kitchen.
"I've been working late a lot," he said. "I always clean up
before I bring Jacob and Liv here."

"It's not that messy in here,
really."

"I'll make up the futon.
There's no place to sit otherwise."

"Do you want help?" I
asked as he started to pull at the frame.

"No, that's okay."

I stood by until the couch was
ready, not sure where to look. He gestured toward it.

"If I'd known you were coming
over, I would have he started to say once we sat down, but he didn't finish the
sentence.

"I should have called. I'm
sorry."

"I just don't know what to
think about you being here. Why are you here?" He looked directly at me
for the first time since I'd arrived.

"I don't know," I said.
"I guess I wanted to see how you're doing."

He shook his head, a bemused smile
coming over his face. "You came here to gloat? Because you've got somebody
and I can barely do my dishes?"

"Is that really what you think
of me?" Clayton the carrier pigeon strikes again.

"I don't know," he said.

"Were you drinking?"

"I've had
a
drink.
One."

"Sorry. It's not my
business."

"Is it to hurt me, Eve?"
he asked. "Is that why you're dating so soon?"

"I didn't even want you to
know about it."

"Well, there's an irony for
you. You're keeping things from me now."

"We're separated. Are you
seriously going to tell me there's no difference between my having a date—one—
and you falling in love with another woman?"

"Why are you so convinced I'm
in love with Laney?"

"The things you wrote to
her—" I stopped, my face suddenly warm.

"How do you know what I wrote
to her?" he asked, his tone suspicious.

It occurred to me that I could get
out of this. I could say something like "I can imagine the things you
wrote"; I could get accusatory as a way to deflect and camouflage. I'd
known Jon a long time. He was a fundamentally trusting person, and he
fundamentally trusted me. But I didn't want to keep the lies going any longer.
If I told him I'd been reading his e-mail, I'd never be able to do it again,
and maybe that would free us both.

"When I first found out about
Laney, I wasn't in my right mind," I said. "And I think if I hadn't
started then, I never would have started."

"Started what?"

"Reading your e-mails behind
your back."

He was clearly stunned. "Are
you fucking kidding me?"

"No."

"Which e-mails?"

"All the e-mails you wrote to
Laney and all the ones she wrote to you."

It took him a minute to find a
reply. Emotions dawned over his face in rapid succession (confusion, disbelief,
shame, fear, anger). He rested with anger. "What did you think you were
doing?"

"I was trying to get the
truth."

"By sneaking around behind my
back," he said. "For how long?"

"I started Thanksgiving
night."

He was shaking his head in disgust.

"Hey," I said, "I
didn't know if I could believe anything you said. So I was checking."

"Checking," he repeated,
his voice like flint. "And what were you checking for, Eve?"

"I was checking for all sorts
of things. I was checking to see if you still loved me. I was checking to see
if you loved her. I was checking to see if she was better than me, if she was
funnier, prettier, smarter. I was checking because I didn't understand why you
wanted her in your life when you had me. I didn't know why I wasn't enough. I
was trying to find out who you were, Jon, because the man I married wouldn't
have had Laney in his life."

"What did you find out? What
kind of man am I?" He was practically sneering.

I shook my head. I still didn't
know.

"What kind of person are you,
that you'd spy on me for months?" he asked. "And the whole time,
you're pretending you're better than me."

"I never said I was better
than you."

"Like you haven't spent months
being self-righteous." He got up and strode around the room, trying to get
himself under control. But I could see the second when he said,
Fuck it, I'm
just going to let her have it.
"All this time, I've let you treat me
however you wanted, like I deserved it. I let you have your way. I let you have
your anger. I let you kick me out of the house. I let you invite me back in,
but not really. I let you sentence me to this. How do you like the
neighborhood, Eve? Great place to raise kids, isn't it? But wait, you're the
one who's raising the kids. You're the one who's got the house, and your brother
as a nanny, and a new boyfriend." Now he was yelling. "You're the one
who's reading my fucking e-mail, because you get to do whatever the fuck you
want!" He picked up a glass from the counter and, to my shock, hurled it
at the wall with enough force to shatter it.

"You're scaring me," I
said.

He didn't answer, just stared at me
with something akin to hatred in his eyes.

"I can't talk to you right
now." Numbly I reached down to pick up my purse. "I need to leave
now."

"What's wrong, Eve? You can
dish it out, but you can't take it?"

He was taunting me like we were in
a schoolyard. I was more frightened for him than me. "I don't know if I
should leave you like this, but I don't think I should stay."

"Don't treat me like I'm
crazy!" he shouted. "I'm pissed off! I have every right to be pissed
off! What's crazy is that I didn't do this a long time ago."

If this was a schoolyard, he
thought I was the bully and he was just turning the tables on me. "I'm
going now," I said. "Take care of yourself, Jon."

My head was spinning as I scurried
out, and then as I drove home, and it hadn't stopped by the following morning.
All through the day, I had flashbacks to his angry face, his mocking words
echoing in my head.

By way of exorcism, I called his
voice mail. "Hi, Jon, it's me. I know you're at work. I just wanted to say
that I'm sorry for the e-mails. I knew all along it was wrong, but you have no
idea what it feels like to find out you've been lied to for months. You do
things you never thought you would. I'm not trying to defend myself or say it
was okay; I'm just saying I was in a lot of pain, too. I don't know if it would
help for us to talk more right now, or if you just need time, but I want us to
talk again. You just didn't even seem like you last night and I'm—" I
broke off. "I hope you're okay. I'm sorry."

All night, I hoped Jon would call
back. Ray called, but I didn't pick up.

I opened my e-mail and started
typing.

Clayton,

I know we haven't been close for a
while now, but I want to ask a favor. It's actually more for Jon than for me. I
went to see him last night, and he was so angry. He was like a different person.
I know he started taking an antidepressant, but I don't know if he's still in
therapy, or if he's talking much to you or to anyone else about how he's
feeling. I hope so. Please do what you can to help him. And if possible, don't
mention me.

Thanks, Eve

I'd sent the e-mail and was staring
blindly at the screen when the phone rang. It was just after ten, the witching
hour for people with kids. Hoping that it was Jon, I answered without checking
the caller ID.