Learning to Stay (20 page)

The words are Brad’s, I know this. But what is he sorry for? I think of the dinner last night, the card he gave me. I don’t understand.

And then I do.

I shut off the water and throw Brad’s bathrobe around me. It smells like him—musky and spicy and newly showered. I go from room to room, calling for him. The spare room. Our office. Our bedroom. I flip on every light as I go, steeling myself for the illumination of something I don’t want to find. I run downstairs into the basement, the steps cold and damp under my feet. I look behind the wall that hides the furnace and along the row of shelves at the far side of the house, but there is no sign of Brad, and for once, I am relieved not to find him.

I am biting my lip, trying to stop the panic that’s rolling inside me, like a windstorm gathering and organizing itself into a funnel cloud. Where
is
he?

With a start, I run back up to our bedroom. I pull a shoe box down from the very top of my closet and four more come tumbling down, sandals and peep-toe heels raining down around me. Inside the box in my hands is Brad’s gun. I curse myself for not yet getting it to a pawnshop, but I start to breathe easier. Maybe he’s out somewhere. Maybe he grew tired of waiting for me to come home for dinner and went to get a sandwich or slice of pizza. Maybe he was bored. Maybe an old friend called and invited him for a beer.

I take a deep breath and shed Brad’s bathrobe, pulling on underwear, jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, and a turtleneck sweater. But those words, outlined by the steam on the bathroom mirror, are still nibbling at the back of my mind. And there’s one place I haven’t yet looked.

I pull on boots over my bare feet and as I approach the back door, I see that it isn’t fully closed. Feelings of dread stir in me again. I pull the door closed behind me. And in the thirty or so steps that I take between our house and the old garage behind it that the previous owners converted into a workshop, I hear nothing except the rhythmic pumping of blood in my ears. Woosh. Step. Woosh. Step. Woosh.

The side door to the garage has been layered with so many coats of paint that it’s almost grown too big for the frame and it sticks when I try to open it. I have to lean my shoulder in and push. The door gives way with a screech and a groan.

The interior of the garage is dark, and even when my eyes adjust, I can’t see a thing. I grope for the switch, and a single bare bulb lights the room.

And there in the middle of it, sitting on an overturned plastic milk crate, is Brad.

He is dressed in his desert fatigues. His hair is shorn within millimeters of his scalp. He raises his eyes, and it’s as if he were looking up at me from the bottom of a pool. Above him, from the exposed rafter, hangs an old garden hose that he’s formed into a crude noose.

I can’t speak. I can’t move. We stare at each other. I study him. My mind flips through image after image of Brad—walking me home on that New Year’s Eve so many years ago, flipping pancakes in worn jeans the morning after, twirling me around the Monona Terrace’s rooftop for our “first dance” on our wedding afternoon—and none of these match the man in front of me. He looks a lot like my husband. But it’s not him.

As quietly as I can, I say his name—and then once more. I can hardly hear myself over the pounding of blood in my ears, loud and hollow, like a hammer on tin. He doesn’t turn to me. He doesn’t answer. But then I see his shoulders sag. I see his body follow suit.

A single tear makes its way down the cheek of this man in front of me and I register a change in his eyes. They cloud with pain, with pleading. My chest constricts. I want to throw myself at him, wrap my arms around him and bury my face in his neck. But I’m afraid. I’m afraid of what he’ll do. And of what I’ll do. I’m afraid I’ll start to beat his chest with my fists for being so stupid, so selfish. I’m afraid that I wouldn’t stop.

I step gingerly to him. “I’m going to sit down next to you, okay?” I say. I grab another empty crate nearby, turn it over, and ease myself down onto it. The only movement from Brad is the fluttering of his eyelids and the almost indiscernible rise and fall of his chest as he breathes.

Words swirl in my head, but none take shape. What does one say at a time like this? What can I say? In a flash, though, I think of the card he left for me last night. Of his words,
I’m sorry for being such a burden,
tucked inconspicuously between
Happy Valentine’s Day
and
Don’t ever forget that you’re my whole world.
And I realize that last night wasn’t a celebration. It was good-bye.

“You weren’t really going to leave me?” I ask him. “Were you? Like this?”

He doesn’t look at me.

“Brad, talk to me. Please. Tell me what’s going on. Tell me what to do.” My voice is hushed. I am sitting as close as I can to him, my knee and hip and arm touching his. I want to be closer.

He starts to cry, silently. Big tears make their way down his face. He shakes his head a couple of times, as though he wants to say something and then thinks better of it.

Finally, he says, “They wouldn’t take me back.”

I am about to ask “Who?” when I realize what he’s telling me: He tried to re-up.

“When?” I whisper.

“Yesterday,” he says.

And suddenly, I’m angry—angrier at him than I’ve ever, ever been. Has coming home to live with me been so awful that his best choice is to head straight back to a desert war halfway around the world? It’s as though he’s been sucked into the vortex of this goddamn war and forgotten everything else. He’s like an amnesiac who doesn’t remember who he is, or who I am. Who doesn’t remember that he even has a wife, or the great life he had—we had—before all this happened.

“You could have talked to me,” I say.

“I don’t know how to be here anymore, E. I don’t know how to be me here.” He closes his eyes, as though trying to block out something that’s burrowed into his head, unwelcome—a memory, an image. “I’m tired of being a monster,” he says, his voice pleading.

“Oh, Brad. Baby, you’re not.”

“Over there I’m not,” he says. “There, I’m normal. But here, I am.”

I watch Brad purposely not looking at me. “Oh, Brad,” I say. I go to reach for him and see him flinch. I back away.

“I need you to do something,” he says, his tone flat and forceful.

“Anything,” I tell him. “I’ll do anything.”

“Don’t tell,” he says. He waves a hand feebly in front of him. “About any of this. Please don’t tell anyone.”

I nod my agreement.

Brad gets up and places the crate he was sitting on near the workbench, then continues on out the door. I stand and walk to the window, which might as well be oiled paper for all the visibility the dust and grime covering it afford. I watch Brad cross the yard to the house.
I see his shadow dance from window to window inside—first the kitchen, then the bathroom, then our bedroom.

The night is growling outside the garage windows like a wild animal and the light from that single bulb is keeping it at bay. In here, in this room, for now, Brad is safe. We are safe. Right here, in this moment, it is all okay.

The next morning, I open my eyes and see Brad next to me in bed. His face is cherubic, like a stubble-faced baby’s, and I smile, nearly reaching a hand out to stroke it before I remember: My husband is easily startled. Brad’s arm is slung over me, and a part of me wants to revel in this moment, in the simple pleasure of his skin against mine. But I spot the fatigues he’s wearing and I remember something else in a flash: My husband took steps to kill himself yesterday.

Slowly, I disentangle myself from Brad. I slide an inch, wait, and listen for his breathing to become regular. Then I do it again, and again, until I am standing next to the bed and he is still sleeping peacefully. I want to kiss his cheek, to snuggle into him, but I can’t risk waking him. So I pull on a sweatshirt and sweatpants, and pocket my phone. I tiptoe out of the bedroom and pull the door closed behind me. In the small mudroom at the back of the house, I pull on boots and, as noiselessly as I can, slip outside.

As I dial the number for the firm, the one thought in my head is that I can’t leave Brad alone. Jeannie, our receptionist, answers, and I tell her that I won’t be able to come in today. She says that Zach has been looking for me, and she will transfer me to his extension.

When he answers, I tell Zach the same thing I told Jeannie. “I’m not going to make it in today,” I say.

There’s silence on the other end of the line.

“Zach?”

“You stood me up this morning, Sabatto,” Zach says.

Shit!
I think. Breakfast.
I was supposed to meet Zach this morning.

“And don’t you have a zoning appeal this afternoon? You
really
can’t make it in?”

Until now I had forgotten about the zoning case. And one by one, I remember all of the other work obligations waiting for me.

I drop my head into my hand. I haven’t thought any of this through. I could stay home with Brad today, but what about tomorrow? What about the next day, and the day after that? How am I supposed to keep him safe and hold down my job? Scratch that. How am I supposed to keep him safe at all? I can hide Brad’s gun, but what’s stopping him from buying another? And a garden hose? I never could have anticipated that. Mentally, I sort through the items in our house. There are bedsheets, prescription medications, knives, and extension cords. Even if I managed to eradicate all of these potential dangers, a hardware store five blocks away and a drugstore a mile in the other direction could supply him with anything he might decide he needs.

“Sabatto? So you’re coming in this afternoon, right? Please tell me I don’t have to get someone to cover your zoning case for you.”

I think of Brad, sleeping soundly in our bed—for now. And then I think of leaving him to go a mile and a half up the road to work. The thought makes me shiver. I suck in a ragged breath.

“Hello? Sabatto? Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine,” I say. “I’ll see you later today.”

I end the call and look at the phone in my hand. I know what I need to do.

•  •  •

Brad is still sleeping so soundly that I have to watch for the rise and fall of his chest to make sure he’s breathing.

His phone is on the bedside table. I take slow, cautious steps, placing weight on only the ball of each foot to seek out any squeaky floorboards, and then pausing to make sure Brad hasn’t stirred before continuing. I lean over him and stretch my fingers to reach for the phone.
Please don’t wake up,
I think.
Please, please, please.
I slide the phone toward me until I can close my hand around it; then I turn around and step just as gingerly out of the room.

In the front hallway I grab a coat and slip it on. It’s Brad’s down coat, and it hangs around me like a roomy pillow. I let myself out the front door and close it behind me. Then I sit down on the front steps and scroll through Brad’s phone, looking for his dad’s name in the address book.

I don’t have Mert’s phone number in my own phone because I’ve never needed it. Brad has never been particularly close to his dad, or his older brother, Ricky, for that matter.

The summer after his freshman year in college, Brad took off on a solo trip to hike all of the Colorado Fourteeners. He stepped off the final peak and called home, only to learn that his mother had died two days before from stage-four lung cancer that no one except his dad knew she had. While his dad sat on the front porch, pickling himself with gin, Brad made all the funeral arrangements. He wrote his mother’s obituary. He accepted casseroles in Pyrex dishes, labeled and froze them, and later washed and returned each dish. And after it was all over, he lashed out at his dad for not telling him about his mom’s prognosis, to which Mert argued that Brad was a self-centered asshole who had gotten too big for his britches. Brad hadn’t been back home since then.

Mert answers on the third ring. It’s not quite nine o’clock in Marquette, but it sounds like I have woken him up.

“Yeah?” he says.

“Mert, it’s Elise.”

“Yeah. I know, Princess.”

This is not a term of endearment. Brad’s father has always believed that I think I’m above people; that I’m too good for him, or his son. I told Brad once that if his father thought a scrawny orphan whose prized possession, aside from her George Foreman grill, was her mother’s plain, whip-thin gold wedding band, was looking down her nose at him, then his dad had some serious self-esteem issues.

Jesus,
I think,
could you at least try to make this easier on me?
Then again, Mert’s never been one to take to the easy path, with anything, at least as long as I’ve known him. If there’s difficulty to be had, Mert will find his way straight to it.

There’s silence on the line, and I realize Mert is waiting for me to say something. The problem is, I’m not sure where to start.

“I have a favor to ask,” I say.

“Oh yeah?” Mert says. I can sense a note of intrigue in his voice. I have his attention. It’s not every day I call asking Mert for favors. In fact, this might be the first time. And the last, I remind myself.