Learning to Stay (9 page)

Brad nods absently and walks to the kitchen. I stand where I am, waiting for him to come back out into the living room. I hear him take a pint glass from the cupboard and drop a handful of ice cubes from the freezer into it. Then I hear the glug-glug-glug of Jack Daniel’s filling his glass, and as he tosses the jug into the recycling bin, the clatter of it falling to the floor. Even though I can’t see it, I know it’s because the bin is still jammed full.

“You didn’t get the recycling out yesterday?” I call to him.

My tone is a little accusatory. Recycling day happens only once every two weeks, and even when I’m here alone, the too-small bin fills
to capacity. With two of us under this roof, it’s imperative that we don’t miss a week. I’m disappointed, and maybe a little miffed. Brad is Mr. Dependable. When he says he’s going to do something, it gets done. And this was the one, single thing he had to do.

Brad comes out to the dining room with the recycling bin. I expect him to keep going with it, to put it outside. Instead, he tosses it away from him, in my general direction. Cans and newspapers and bottles tumble out onto the floor. They land with a crash, and I jump.

“Happy?” he yells, and I jump again.

He starts to grab anything breakable—wine and beer and sparkling water bottles, empty jars of olives and maple syrup—and smashes them again, one by one against the hardwood like snap’n pop fireworks. When he’s done, he goes back into the kitchen. I hear cabinets opening and closing. He returns with a box of cereal.

Brad opens the box and upends it, dumping the contents on the floor.

What is he doing? Has he lost his mind?

“March!” he barks at me. I startle.

“March!” he repeats, pointing to the pile of cereal.

My only thought is that I’m thankful I still have my boots on. I do as this man says—this man who has taken over my husband’s body—because I do not know him, and I do not know what he’ll do if I don’t listen. I lift my knees, first one and then the other, crunching the cereal underfoot. A faint smile plays at the edge of Brad’s lips at the sound.

I don’t know how much time passes until I slow, and finally stop. He stands there, staring at me—glowering at me. And then he walks past me and out the front door, out into the night, leaving a trail of frigid winter air in his wake.

Not until the door slams shut do I feel the tears running down my cheeks. Our dining room floor is strewn with glass confetti. I fetch a
plastic bag and begin disposing of the larger pieces; then I dig the vacuum out of the front hall closet and take care of the smaller shards and cereal crumbs.

I sit on the end of our bed and unzip my boots, bits of cereal falling from in between the treads. I swap my jeans and sweater for pajama pants and an old T-shirt, then climb into bed. And right before I turn out the light, I look up to see a woman staring back at me from the mirror above the dresser. Her hair is stringy and unkempt, her eyes red-rimmed.
Who are you?
I almost say the words out loud, though I know the answer: She is someone who is more than willing to pick up what has been broken.

In the hazy span between night and dawn, when the air is gray and the world outside is fully silent, I feel Brad crawl into bed next to me. I jump at his touch and then stiffen. Even before he speaks, I can smell his breath, sharp with the vapor of alcohol.

“I’m so glad you’re home,” he whispers into my neck. “I missed you.”

I turn so I can see him. His eyes droop with lack of sleep and too much Jack. His face is puffy and unshaven.

“You missed me?”

He nuzzles into me. “Hmmm, yeah. Good trip?”

Does he not remember? Any of it?

“Brad,” I say, choosing my words carefully, “I got home last night, remember?”

My heart is thudding in my chest, like an animal trying to escape its cage. Boom. Boom. Boom. I search his face for some flicker of recognition. Nothing registers.

“Sorry I was gone,” he says. “I’ll make it up to you tonight. Dinner out somewhere.” And then his eyes close and almost instantly, he’s snoring.

•  •  •

I dig my running clothes out from the bottom of the drawer, dress, and then carry my shoes to the living room to lace up. I can’t remember the last time I ran. It was pre–Early, Janssen, and Bradenton, for sure. But it’s too early to call Darcy, and I need to clear my head, or at least try.

I churn my legs, feeling the sweet burn in my thighs and my lungs that forces me to think of little else than this: one-two, one-two. Breathe in; breathe out. I run through campus, up State Street, and around the Capitol. I make a brief stop at work to get a drink of water and, because being warm feels good and I am willing to do anything that feels good right now, to avoid thinking about last night, I let myself into my office. I press the power button on my computer and while it’s booting up, I stretch. I sift through my e-mail, triaging which messages I can answer quickly now and marking those that can wait for a more thorough response on Monday.

By the time I finish, it’s close to noon and I’m famished. I choose a quicker, more direct route home. And with every step, a sense of dread grows in me like mold. How could Brad not remember last night? Was he that drunk? Will he even remember his promise to take me out tonight?

But when I return, there’s a note on the snack bar:

I shower and then pull out my laptop to finish writing up a few memos and do a little research. At three o’clock, I finish all the work I can do without going back to the office for some files I need. My need—or desire—to talk to Darcy about what happened last night has disappeared. Brad had too much to drink, I’ve decided. I’ll talk to him about it. Tonight.

But what do I do with myself now? I could clean the house, or just my closet. I could go shopping, though I hate shopping. None of those options sounds appealing.

I can’t remember the last time I had my hair cut, though. I decide on this. And on the way home, I will buy new nail polish, eye shadow, and lip gloss in shades brighter than I might normally choose.

Why am I making such a big deal over this dinner? We’ll likely end up at the brewpub near the square or the Indian restaurant just down from it, and neither requires fancy attire.

There hasn’t often been a time in our shared history when money hasn’t been tight—a trend that’s continued. We bought our house, knowing that it needed some work, and anticipating that Brad would have gainful employment long before now, but our house seems bent on ambushing us. First the hot water heater went and then the washing machine, and lately there’s been a spreading water stain on our bedroom ceiling, the result of an ice dam that I was too busy and too frightened to climb up on our roof and fix this winter. Add to that my college and law school loans having both come due in the past year, and our monthly budget looks like it’s sprung a slow leak.

I half expect Brad to beg off dinner for this fact alone. He’s the resident miser: clipping coupons, checking online for the cheapest gas in town before filling up, and preferring—always—to cook and eat in as opposed to going out to restaurants. I was always thankful that he couldn’t see our bank account statements—a litany of take-out and fast-food places—while he was overseas.

Brad comes in just as I have put the finishing touches on my makeup and am admiring my newly trimmed hair, and he doesn’t bother to remove his jacket. He walks over to me, wraps me in his arms, and rocks me back and forth. I can smell liquor on his breath, but in this moment, it’s sexy in a “real men drink whiskey” sort of way. He otherwise seems fine, and I let myself fall into him. His
embrace is so sure, so steady, so
him
that I wonder whether I might have imagined the events of last night.

Snow is falling steadily as Brad tells me to jump on the Beltline instead of heading up West Washington, toward the Capitol, where I expected we would end up tonight.

“Exit on Old Sauk Road,” he says. “There’s a new place I just heard about that I want to take you.” Then he leans his head back and, I assume, falls asleep. He was discharged with a cabinet full of medications billed as antianxiety drugs or relaxants that knock him out in an instant. I’m charged with bittersweet emotions—sadness that he has to take pills before going out for dinner with me, happiness and relief that he’s cognizant that he might need them and that he wants things to go well tonight enough to take them.

I am wholly unprepared when I walk into the restaurant Brad has chosen. It is awash in mahogany and leather, and I know without looking at a menu that this place is more expensive than any other we’ve ever dined at. It’s the kind of place I’m used to going to with clients on the law firm’s dime, but not with my husband on our own.

The waiter explains the restaurant’s concept to us—small plates meant to share—and though I know we are at a pricey eatery, I’m still shocked when I look down to find that the small plates run anywhere from fifteen to thirty dollars apiece. I ask the waiter how many a table of two would normally order, and when he tells me five, I search Brad’s face for some sort of reaction. There is none.

What there is, though, is a look of total and complete unease. He keeps glancing back over his shoulder. He is jumpy and his eyes are shifty. Beads of sweat have collected on his forehead. And as the waiter hits his stride in reciting that night’s specials—something about “terrorized baby carrots”—(
Who makes this stuff up?
I make a note to ask Darcy if that’s even a real thing, or just a way to make
a hoity-toity place even hoitier)—Brad blurts, “Can we please move?” His tone leaves no real room for anything but an affirmative answer.

The waiter looks around the dining room and back at Brad. He’s confused, and so am I. We’re one of two couples in here, and the other is nowhere near us.

I furrow my brow as if to say, “What is going on?” but the waiter replies, “Absolutely, sir,” and busies himself with collecting our menus. Brad, meanwhile, bolts for a table closest to the door.

“Babe, it’s going to be cold here,” I say. “How about over there?” I point to a table on the opposite side of the room and behind a half wall that would do wonders at stopping the draft coming from the restaurant’s front entrance. But Brad either doesn’t hear me or pretends not to. He sits down at the table he’s chosen. I follow.

When the waiter comes back, I make awkward conversation with him, conscious of Brad’s weird behavior. I’m sure he’ll go home and gossip with his friends or roommate about us, but like any good server, he’s pleasant and gracious now. I order drinks, then scan the menu for the cheapest items: bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin (fifteen dollars), crab cakes (sixteen dollars), sausage and mushroom flatbread (seventeen dollars), bone-in braised short ribs (eighteen dollars), and seared day boat scallops (twenty-six dollars). Brad’s gaze darts frantically around the restaurant.

“Brad,” I say, when the waiter has collected our menus and trotted off to put in our order, “this is going to be really expensive.”

He waves me off. “It’s fine,” he says. “It’s worth it. You’re worth it.”

Brad takes my hand and I notice, then, the tattoo I had forgotten about peeking out from under the cuff of his shirt.

“Can I see?” I ask, nodding down at it.

Brad looks at me. Studies me. Then he shrugs and rolls back his cuff and part of his shirt. Running down his left forearm, from the
inside of his elbow to his wrist, is one word inked in ornate letters:
AWARIYAH
.

“What does it mean?” I ask.

He shrugs and pulls his shirt down over the letters—heavy, black, and still raw—on his arm. “Nothing. Just something we used to say over there,” he says.

I nod, remembering the night of Darcy’s party when I pushed too hard in trying to get Brad to talk. I decide to leave it be. Instead, I tell him what my past couple of days have been like—Sondra’s unwillingness to go into the rehab center, how she fled with almost no forewarning, my visit with Antony, and my inability to tell him that his wife had up and left us both.

The waiter brings out our drinks, flatbread, and the scallops. I scoop up a scallop and toast point to place on Brad’s plate, and I notice that his eyes have filled with tears. He shakes his head. “It’s so unfair,” he says, and before I ask him what he means, he places both hands on the table, palms down, smiles at me, and asks if we could maybe talk about something else.

“Tell me what you’re up to at work,” he says with a level of interest undeserving of a junior associate’s duties.

“Oh God,” I say. “We’re racing to the basement on dreary subjects, huh? I could regale you with tales of municipal prosecutions, but you’d probably fall asleep at the table. Last week, though, I did get to argue a raze order on a ramshackle barn that was about to blow over with the next stiff wind. And this,” I say, raising my glass of wine and tipping it toward Brad, “is why they pay me the big bucks.”

Brad smiles and nods. “Ooh!” I say, remembering one interesting case I helped with, at least peripherally. “One of the partners is getting ready to argue a case before the state Supreme Court on behalf of these parents whose little girl died because they didn’t get her the medical attention she needed, and he pulled me in to do the research.”