Fly Away Home (27 page)

DIANA

Diana woke up at just after seven o’clock. For a moment, she was happy, caught in the afterglow of a pleasant dream of swimming in the ocean, paddling lazily through the clear salt water as waves nudged her toward the shore. Then she lay sick and motionless as the memories of the day and night before flooded her body. She’d lost Doug. She’d left her job. Now she had to do the worst part: tell Gary.

She forced herself out of the empty bed. Gary had actually gotten up before her and was in the bathroom, where he’d be shedding wet towels and whiskers and leaving a crust of toothpaste and shaving cream in the sink. She pulled on leggings and a T-shirt, her bathrobe and her clogs, and hustled Milo out of bed and into his clothes. She fed him breakfast, handed him his backpack, pulled on a long, belted cardigan, and walked him down to the corner, where the other mothers, who’d never seen her without her hair combed and her makeup on, looked at her strangely.

“Sick,” she rasped, and pointed to her throat. One of the other women, who lived in fear of illness, cringed away, using her body to shield her child, but she thought she saw Lisa Kelleher lift an eyebrow at one of the kindergarteners’ mothers … which meant, she thought, that the word might be out.

She practically shoved Milo up the bus steps and racewalked home. Reflexively, she checked her cell phone, which she’d left charging in the clean, empty kitchen. Nothing from Doug. Her heart knotted. She’d known, from the first time they’d kissed, that there was no future, yet somehow she’d let herself hope for one: the two of them, plus Milo, and maybe a baby of their own. Waking up every morning in bed with someone she loved. Could it really be over? Hadn’t Doug loved her at all?

Gary was in the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his scrawny midsection, shaving. “Hey,” she said. He stared at her impatiently, all traces of the previous night’s goodwill gone.

“You feeling better?” he said.

“Better,” she croaked. The truth was, she felt awful. “We need to talk.”

“What’s up?” he asked. “I’ve got to get moving.”

“It can’t wait. We need to talk. Right now.”

“Okay,” he said. Shaving cream dotted his cheeks and chin, and his chest hair clung wetly to the slack flesh of his chest. “So talk.”

She shuddered. How could she tell him? And how on earth had she married him in the first place?

“I,” she began, and could go no further.

“You,” Gary prompted. He frowned. “Don’t you need to go to work?”

“I’ve been thinking …” Her voice trailed off. Gary picked up his razor.

“Look, I’ve got a meeting at nine o’clock sharp, and I—”

“I don’t love you anymore,” she blurted, then clapped one hand over her mouth, as if the words were a flock of birds that had exploded out of a tree.

Gary put his razor down next to the uncapped can of shaving cream and stared at her, openmouthed. “What?”

She drew a deep breath of the steamy air. “Gary, I’ve been feeling for a long time …”

“Are you kidding me?” he shouted. “You don’t love me? And you’re telling me this now?”

She dropped her eyes. He had a point. The timing was less than ideal. But maybe if she told Gary that their marriage was over … if she went to Doug and told him she was free … if he met Milo, spent time with him, got to know what an interesting little boy he was …

Gary was still staring at her, the towel drooping around his midsection, his eyes, and even, she thought, his nipples, all staring at her accusingly. “You don’t love me?”

She lifted her face and said the only words that could possibly apply. “It’s not your fault. Really, it’s not. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not you, it’s me.”

“You’re goddamn right it’s you!” He grabbed his razor and raked it over his face. Three tiny spots of blood bloomed on his cheeks. He grabbed a tissue, tore off three pieces, and slapped them to the wounds. “Look,” he said, sounding marginally calmer. “If you want to go into counseling, or whatever …” He dropped his razor next to his toothbrush, which lay on its side, dribbling white foam onto the countertop. “Is this about your father? What’s going on? Are you on your period?”

“I’ve been unhappy,” she whispered.

“And you couldn’t maybe have mentioned this to me? How was I supposed to know? I’m not psychic! Jesus, Di, what’d I do?”

She dropped her head. She’d told him the truth. He hadn’t really done anything. Gary had simply been himself, and that would have been enough, more than enough, even, for a different kind of woman, but it was no longer enough for her.

Gary, meanwhile, had started to cry. Tears ran down his face, threatening to dislodge the toilet paper. They cut through the shaving cream drying on half of his face and dripped off his jutting chin. God, thought Diana, feeling disgusted. He can’t even cry neatly. “I can’t believe this,” he said. “I can’t believe this is happening.” He moved toward her. She stood, frozen, as he wrapped his arms around her, snuffling into her neck, soaking her shirt. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Whatever I’m doing wrong, I can change. But I don’t want to lose you.”

Tell him
, she thought. Take the medicine, swallow the pill. Get it over with, and you won’t have to do it again. She pushed him away, holding his shoulders, and as he stared at her, open-mouthed and half-naked in his towel, Diana looked up into his eyes and said, “I’m in love with someone else.”

Gary jerked back. “You’re kidding,” he said. Diana shook her head. “You … this other guy …” He took one step away from her, then another. “You had sex with him?” he yelled.

Her heart broke as she nodded. Gary didn’t deserve this, she thought, as his eyes narrowed and his mouth twisted. Then his arm shot out and shoved her, not gently, in the chest, sending her staggering into the bathroom wall.

“Get out of here,” he said.

“Oh, Gary,” she said.

“Get out! I mean it! Go be with your boyfriend, if that’s what you want!” His voice cracked on the word
boyfriend
, and he turned away, crying again, holding a hand towel over his eyes.

Diana stood there, her back throbbing from where she’d hit the towel bar. This wasn’t how she’d imagined things happening. When she’d tried to picture it, Gary was the one to leave, manfully packing a bag, giving her a look that was equal parts love and regret before driving off into the sunset, or maybe just to the Sheraton. But at the moment it didn’t seem as though Gary was planning on going anywhere. “Get out! Get out! Get out!” he was shouting, still with the towel pressed to his face like a blindfold. “Go be with your boyfriend!”

Struggling with her temper, she said, “Gary. I’m not leaving.”

“Well, one of us is,” he said, a truculent note creeping into his voice. “And I’m not the one who’s been cheating.”

“Gary.” Am I insane? she wondered. Didn’t the mother and the children, or child, always stay in the house? Wasn’t it always the father who left? “I was thinking that I’d stay here with Milo, and that you’d find another place.”

“Forget it.” He crossed his arms over his bare chest, dropped the hand towel, and glared at her with reddened, puffy eyes. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not going anywhere.” He glared at her a moment longer, then dropped his face and muttered, “Except I actually have to go to work.” With Diana staring at him in shock, he put his hands on her shoulders, pushed her out of the bathroom, then closed the door and locked it.

She walked down to the kitchen, rage starting to build inside her. She pictured the meals she’d cooked, the snacks she’d prepared, the games of Sorry and Monopoly she’d played with Milo at the kitchen table while Gary hunkered down in the den, too busy watching the game to tend to his son. Fury simmered in her veins as she considered how she’d found this house, convinced Gary to come see it, how the bulk of the down payment had been the money Grandma Selma had given her. Now it was going to be his? Where would she and Milo go?

Never mind. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail, shoved her feet into her clogs, and her arms into the sleeves of her cardigan, grabbed her purse and her phone, and hurried to the parking lot where she kept her car. It was almost eight. If she hurried she could probably catch Doug at his apartment. She reached for her phone—there were three missed calls, all from her mother. Diana ignored them and tapped out a text message:
Nd 2 C U
. Then she deleted it. Better to surprise him, to let him see her in person, to make him reject her, if that’s what he was going to do, right to her face.

• • •

One of Doug’s roommates, yawning in shorts and a T-shirt that read
COLLGE
, opened the door. “Is Doug here?” she asked, trying to sound sunny and upbeat and normal. The roommate squinted at her, rubbing one hand over his stubbly cheek.

“Yeah, he’s upstairs.”

Diana walked past him into the living room, which smelled like hot wings, and headed up the stairs. Doug’s doorway was at the end of the hall. She lifted her hand to knock, decided against it, and pushed the door open.

He was sitting at his desk, looking pale and wan and miserable. He hadn’t shaved, or combed his hair, and was barefoot in sweatpants and a plaid shirt. Seeing him tore her heart open. It was all she could do not to rush to him, to tell him how right they were together and beg for another chance.

He looked up. It took her brain a minute to make the cross-connection, to process what she was seeing and tie it in to a memory, years ago, of Hal’s face. It was a look that said that things were over, that he’d given her his final answer and that wasn’t going to change.

She slumped against the doorway, feeling dowdy and ridiculous in her leggings and her ponytail, like an old crone trying to look like a teenager. Her whole body cramped as she looked at him.
Oh, no
, she thought, in words that sounded as if they were coming from the bottom of a very deep, very cold well.

“Diana,” Doug said. He crossed the room and reached for her hand.

“I left him,” she blurted. “I left Gary. I told him about us.”

Doug sighed. “I wish you hadn’t.”

She looked at him through her tear-blurred eyes. “We’re not going to …” Her voice trailed off. Doug, too, looked as if he was struggling not to cry.

“It’s not that I don’t want kids. I do. It’s just …” In the silence, she imagined she heard what he couldn’t bring himself to say.
I want my own kids, not someone else’s
.

She didn’t answer. What could she have said? No words, no amount of pleading, nothing could make him take her back. He’d told her the truth, not with words but with his sigh. There was no future in which they’d be together. She could possibly manage to leave with a few shreds of dignity, but she would not be leaving with Doug.

“Are you going to be all right?” he asked.

She looked at him coolly, considering handsome Doug Vance, his dark hair and ruddy cheeks, his smooth skin and perfectly formed body, with the curiosity she might extend to a patient in her exam room who’d presented with a symptom she’d never seen before—an interesting rash, perhaps, or persistent bad dreams. Was she going to be all right? That was a good question. She felt awful. She had, after all, lost everything. Except she hadn’t. Not quite. She might have lost her job, her husband, her boyfriend, even possibly her house, but she hadn’t lost Milo. And so …

“Of course I’m going to be all right,” she said, in a tone suggesting that she was well practiced in this kind of affair—its beginning, its care and management, its inevitable end.

“Well.” Doug reached for her hand again. Diana pulled her arm away. “Well, listen. I guess I’ll see you around.”

She shrugged—of course he wouldn’t see her at the hospital, but she wouldn’t be the one to tell him that—and let herself out of his room, head held high, moving down the stairs like a teenage girl showing off her prom dress. Outside, she blinked in the sunshine. There was a park a few blocks away—she’d been there once with Milo. She managed to find it, and sat on a bench, unable to move, barely able to breathe. Time passed. Mothers came with children, dog walkers with dogs. Diana couldn’t think of what to do, of where to go.

Finally, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and called the place where they had to take you in, the place you went when all other options were closed.

“Mom?”

“Diana!” Her mother’s voice was high and happy, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you for weeks!”

“Sorry.” She started plodding down the street, back toward her car. “I’ve been busy.”

“Well.” Now her mother sounded shy and oddly formal. “I’ve been calling to invite you and Gary and Milo up to Connecticut. It’s beautiful here. We can drive around and look at the leaves … or there’s a big antiques market in Litchfield … and the beach, of course … and Lizzie’s going to come.”

“Gary’s busy.” The lie slid off her tongue as if it had been greased. Ignoring her troublesome sister’s presence for the moment, she continued, “But I bet Milo would love to see you. And I could use a little break.”

Sylvie paused, and when she spoke she sounded as if she could hardly believe it. “You’re not working?”

“Nope.” The heartbreak was still there, manifesting itself as a miserable twitchiness, as if she could leap right out of her skin. Thinking of the future without Doug was like imagining life without sunshine, without oxygen, but there was also a strange recklessness that went along, Diana supposed, with having absolutely nothing left to lose. “I’m taking a little time off, actually, I’m rethinking my priorities.”

“Well, that’s … that’s wonderful,” her mother said, although Diana didn’t know how Sylvie could think it was wonderful at all. “When can you come?”

“How about tomorrow?”

“Wonderful,” Sylvie said again. “I’ll get your rooms ready. I’ll be waiting.”

Diana drove home and double-parked in front of her house, which already looked strange to her, as if strangers had bought it and furnished it, had eaten breakfasts at the kitchen table and sat on the couch watching TV at night. Moving fast, she threw her clothes into a suitcase, then spent fifteen minutes packing for Milo: pajamas and jeans and underpants, a week’s worth of school clothes, his favorite books, his chess set, his insect collection bottles, the photograph album her sister had sent, and Mister Buttons, the threadbare teddy he’d had since he was a baby. She grabbed her coat and scarf, her sunglasses, her cell phone and charger, her wallet and her car keys, and wrote Gary a note:
Milo and I are going to Connecticut to see my mom. I’ll call you when I’m there
. Then she threw her bags into the trunk and drove to Milo’s school.