Once More With Feeling (33 page)

‘I feel like that’s where I need to be right now,’ I said with perfect calm. Because I really was calm. Possibly psychotically calm, but I didn’t like to judge. ‘I think there’s probably a really limited amount of time left where I can be his wife, Lianne. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking advantage of that while I can.’

‘That’s maybe the single most depressing thing I’ve ever heard you say,’ she retorted, her voice thick with feeling. ‘What are you thinking?’

But I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t want to think.

‘I spent months and months doing nothing but thinking,’ I told her, my voice shaking, the myth of
perfect calm
shattered that quickly, ‘and what good did it do, Lianne? What came of it? So I’m not thinking anything.

I’m living through this. One day after the next.’

‘Sarah.’ Her voice was something like worried, like she’d lost me. I didn’t want to hear that tone in her voice. I didn’t want to see that expression on her face. I wanted all of this to be over. I wanted the decisions to be made already, and dealt with. I wanted to fast-forward to the end, wherever that was.

‘I’m fine, Lianne,’ I said. ‘I’m perfectly happy.’

Or I was close enough for it to count, and who cared if that wasn’t all the way there? I ignored the face she made.

‘Why is the way I’m happy never good enough for other people?’ I demanded. ‘Why doesn’t the fact that I say I’m happy, or was happy, ever matter? Maybe this is the exact amount of happiness I’m capable of.’ I spread my arms out, taking in the world, this situation, my life. Everything. ‘Maybe this is exactly what I want.’

‘Then congratulations,’ Lianne said dryly. And a little bit sadly, which I chose to overlook. ‘You sure have it.’

When I got home I stood in the kitchen for a moment, feeling unbearably restless. Like there was a drumbeat underneath my skin: an impossible itch. Like I was breaking out in hives, except no matter how many times I inspected my skin, I wasn’t. I didn’t want to know what it was, I told myself. I didn’t want to know what it meant.

And yet I found myself in the attic, digging through old boxes and strange parcels I couldn’t identify, getting
dusty and dirty, and I kept right on going. Finally, I found it. I dragged the big box out into the upstairs hallway, and ripped open the cardboard without caring that my hands looked chapped and grey from the cold and the dust.

There they were. My old travel journals and guidebooks. All the notes I’d taken about the places I’d wanted to go, the things I’d wanted to see. Botswana and Budapest. Prague and Sydney. All of those dreams of mine, hidden away in a cardboard box with my backpacker’s pack at the bottom. I pulled it out, smiling slightly. It was a dark green and had all of those clips and buckles, all of which seemed strange but all of which worked beautifully when you were living with the pack on your back. When it was your moveable home and you had a hundred different needs for each and every clip, depending on where in the world you found yourself. I picked it up and carried it downstairs and laid it out on the coffee table in the centre of the living room. I had wanted to carry what I needed with me, and find what I wanted in the places I wandered. And instead I had chosen to nail myself into place. To stand still. To represent drunk drivers and fill a house with pretty things that anyone could buy in the same stores I’d visited. I wanted more. I wanted …
bigger
.

I fingered the shoulder straps of my once-beloved pack, and I understood that I had felt more like myself while I was lost somewhere in the world than I ever had when I was here, being dutiful. That I had put myself aside to be this very specific kind of adult, adhering to a very specific
set of rules. Lawyer hair and appropriate clothes. A polite smile.

Maybe Brooke had been right. Maybe
smooth
and
sensible
really was settling.

Maybe I’d been wrong about that, too.

Later, I wrapped myself up in my thickest comforter and stood out on the deck that jutted out into our barren, wintery backyard. It was dry and cold, and the wind picked up as the sun set. But still I stood there, watching the stars come out and the moon rise. Watching the night settle over the world.

It got colder and colder, and I didn’t move; I pulled the comforter tighter around me. As if I were keeping my own quiet vigil far up here on this ridge, where no one could see me. Where no one would know. And it was fifteenth January, and even as I stood there, shivering and teeth chattering, Alec was on a plane somewhere. Over the ocean maybe, or all the way to Africa already for all I knew. But gone. Always gone.

And that was that.

That was who he was. This was what he did.

He’d never promised me anything, not then and not now. That was Alec.

So I had no one to blame for that hollow, wrenching feeling inside me but myself.

When I walked into Tim’s room in the rehab centre the next day, I stopped short. He was on his bed – but so was Carolyn. They were curled around each other, kissing. It wasn’t wild and passionate. It was almost sweet, I thought. If they’d been other people. If I hadn’t been married to one of them and related to the other.

It was also déjà vu.

There was no blue blouse this time. No scales fell from my eyes as I was confronted with a terrible new reality I didn’t want to accept. There was no awful sense of a
before
and
after
that I had to come to terms with.

No, this time I simply stood there, watching my husband make out with my sister.

It could be worse
, I thought philosophically. This could actually be a surprise. Or it could hurt. But it didn’t.

And the fact that this sickening tableau aroused absolutely no response in me was the telling bit. The fact that I felt little more than empty, that I once again felt
like a zombie, that my overwhelming urge was not to
do
anything but to turn around and simply walk out …

‘What is the matter with you two?’ I asked. I didn’t yell. I didn’t freak out. Unlike the last time, I didn’t scream.

Carolyn did. She screamed and she jack-knifed up and then she scowled at me, her hands clapped over her heart.

‘Sarah! My God!’ she cried.

I ignored her. I glared at Tim instead. He looked a little bit dazed. Uncomfortable and kind of guilty, if I was reading that pinched expression right. Neither of which, I felt, was the appropriate response.

‘You knew I was coming,’ I said quietly. ‘Did you stage this?’

‘Of course not.’ But he wouldn’t meet my gaze, and I wondered.

‘Listen,’ Carolyn said, pulling her drapey sweater tighter around her and sitting up straight, her tone suddenly businesslike. It was jarring, to put it mildly. ‘We need to talk to you, anyway. Tim will be getting out of here soon and going home. And I’m not living apart from him. I’m pregnant, and I need to be with the father of my baby.’ Her frown wore deep grooves into her forehead. ‘And it’s half his house, anyway.’

‘I would say I couldn’t possibly have heard you right,’ I said slowly, not really wanting to look at her but not able to look away. I sighed. ‘But I know I did.’

‘Maybe it’s time you thought about reality,’ Carolyn suggested, her eyes narrowing. It was a deliberate call back
to the conversation we’d had, and we both knew it. She was challenging me.

‘And the reality you’d like me to think about now is you moving into my house?’ I asked. I actually laughed then. How could I not? ‘I think that’s taking the concept of
sister wives
to a whole new and horrifying level, to be honest.’

‘You’re getting divorced, Sarah,’ she said, and I had to admit that she wasn’t saying it in a particularly nasty way. It was the words themselves that were nasty. It was the fact that she was sitting on a bed with the man who was still married to me while she was saying them.

‘And you’re leaving this room,’ I told her. Not unkindly, to my credit. ‘Right now.’

‘Uh, no, I’m not—’

‘You are.’ I let my bag drop to the ground and crossed my arms. ‘I’m not having this conversation with you, Carolyn. If Tim wants to tell you all about it later, I can’t control that. But you already broke up my marriage. You don’t get to sit in on the conversations he and I have about that.’ She looked mutinous. ‘This is non-negotiable,’ I snapped.

‘Carolyn.’ I realized I’d never heard that particular tone of voice from him. My stomach rolled a little bit. It was like that tender moment I’d witnessed in the ICU. I didn’t want to know their private language. Nor should I have to know it, I felt.

Carolyn looked at him, but she dropped her head slightly
in silent acquiescence. And then she pushed herself off the bed and onto her feet.

‘I’ll be down in the lobby,’ she said. To Tim. I expected her to jump on him and kiss him again, to prove a point, but I supposed even she knew she didn’t need to do that.

She glanced at me as she walked by, and her mouth moved as if she might say something. We looked at each other for a long moment, and then she bowed her head again, and left. I told myself I was relieved.

And so I just stood there by the wall, arms still crossed, and looked at Tim. He lay there on his industrial bed, probably a bit weaker than he appeared. He’d cut his hair – had Carolyn trimmed it for him? I bet she had, and hated the images that inspired – and he’d shaved. He looked exactly like my husband. Like the man I’d lost.

I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t still grieving that. Him.

I noticed that he did not leap into the silence that stretched between us to apologize for what I’d walked in on today. Or to attempt to excuse himself in any way.

‘Did you get your memories back?’ I asked.

‘No.’ He studied me. ‘But the fact that’s your first question makes me think Carolyn is right. That I really did want to leave you – this marriage – that badly.’

I shook my head. And recognized that finally,
finally
, I was angry. At him, as he deserved.

‘I understand that this must be a difficult time for you, Tim,’ I bit out. ‘I can’t imagine what it must be like. But you’re still married to me. And I’ve cared for you
throughout this whole ordeal, when a lot of people might have walked away and left you to it.’ I didn’t try to hide what I felt. I didn’t try to control the way I glared at him. ‘If you can’t muster up any kind of respect for the five years we’ve been married – if you think I somehow deserve less consideration than you would give to one of the nurses here who you don’t even know – at least have some respect for that!’

It only occurred to me then that the door to the hallway was open, that anyone could hear and that this was Rivermark, where people were certain to be listening, but I couldn’t let myself focus on that. Tim sucked in a long breath.

‘You’re right,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’m sorry.’

I sighed then. I slumped back against the wall behind me, stared at him, and had no idea what to do. The apology was nice, but anticlimactic.

I could remember, so vividly, standing in Brooke’s apartment before Christmas and vowing that it was time to unclench my fist from around this marriage, from this man. I’d thought the same thing in Vermont when I’d finally taken off my wedding rings. I’d been ready to move on, whether Tim woke or not. And yet the slightest indication that I could get back in, that I could dive back into this little life of ours no matter what I had to swallow and hide to do it, and I’d leapt right in.

What was that about? What was I so afraid of?

But I knew.

Given the choice, I wanted simple. Easy. Smooth. I wanted the things that didn’t require work. The easy way out. It was hard to be honest with yourself, much less with a partner. It was hard to choose to do the right thing when the right thing hurt and the other option wasn’t
wrong
so much as it was
not really as good
. Black-and-white choices were always so much easier to make, weren’t they?

My God
, I thought, in dawning realization and no little horror,
I am such a coward
.

‘I want more,’ Tim said then, with heartbreaking simplicity, and it didn’t matter, then, what I was afraid of facing because it was right there in front of me whether I liked it or not. ‘I want to be with someone who loves me so much it would kill her to lose me. I want to be with someone who would risk everything for me.’

My throat was dry. ‘That’s very romantic.’ I couldn’t help the bitter little laugh that came out then. ‘Maybe a little less romantic than it would be if you weren’t saying that to the woman you’re still married to. The one who, presumably, is not the one—’

‘I loved you so much,’ he said then, struggling to sit up straighter and reaching out to pull himself up on the side rail of his bed, like it was a fight against gravity and he wasn’t sure he’d win. ‘That’s what I remember, Sarah, and it has nothing to do with Carolyn. I didn’t care that you didn’t feel the same way about me. I thought I’d win you over. That’s what I do. I’m the guy who can sell anyone on anything. I figured it was only a matter of time.’

‘I loved you too!’ I threw at him. ‘I trusted you. I trusted you more than I’d ever trusted anyone, Tim. I
believed
you.’

‘I know,’ he said in that same way, that
determined
way, ‘but we’re not talking about the same thing, are we? Do you think I didn’t know you were hung up on that guy when I met you? I didn’t think it would matter. He was gone. I was there. I thought you would figure out that I was much better for you than he ever could be.’

‘And you succeeded,’ I said, very distinctly. Because he had. How could he not know that? Brooke knew it. Hell, even I knew it. ‘Did you miss the part where we moved out here? Where we bought a pretty house and opened a practice and built a whole life together? What part of that was me pining away? What part was me not loving and trusting you?’

‘Sarah,’ he said, like my name was a sigh, deep and sad. ‘Please don’t do this.’

‘I’m sorry that I didn’t love you the way you think I should have,’ I said stiffly. ‘I guess I should have asked my sister for pointers.’