Love in Mid Air (21 page)

“It was too much,” I tell him.

“Why didn’t you say ‘apple’? Earlier, I mean.”

“I didn’t think of it.”

“I wasn’t sure what to do.”

“You did right,” I say. “It was my fault. I didn’t think of it.”

“You seemed to come hard.”

Well… yeah.

He slips the ties off my wrists. He lies down beside me on the narrow chaise lounge, pulls my head to his chest. I catch the
scent of his bay rum soap. His breathing begins to regulate and mine does too, rising and falling with his pattern as if we
were mated, as if we have known each other for years. I am unaccustomed to this, to being held in a man’s arms after sex.
For the first minute I feel confined, and then it starts to feel good, and then I almost tell him that I love him, and then
his arm feels too heavy against my ribs and I feel confined again. This is a mysterious land. A mysterious shore I’ve crashed
into, and I am like the explorers who, centuries ago, started for India and hit the Caribbean instead.

He says something. I think he calls me sweetheart, and there are birds, he says, something about birds in the distance. I
don’t see any birds. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” he asks, and I say yes, because they probably are.

“The game’s on any minute,” he says.

“I know. We need to bet something on it.”

Neither of us move.

When I read about the explorers as a child I had been infuriated by their white man arrogance. How dare they call people Indians
when they weren’t in India? I wrote a paper titled “The Big Mistake” and my teacher pinned it to the bulletin board with a
bright red A. Maybe that’s where I first got the idea that being angry was the same as being smart. But I am older now and
I feel some compassion for the explorers, crammed all those weeks into their airless little ships, half crazed with scurvy
and thirst, so disoriented by their long journey that of course they would think they were in India. Of course they would
call things whatever they wanted them to be. Gerry and I set sail intending to find Friendship with Sex, so I guess that is
what we’ll name this new continent, no matter what it really is.

There are trees all around us, hiding our balcony from the others, making this a safe and somewhat private place to lie naked
on a warm winter afternoon. I suppose that’s what he’s paying for—this luxury, this spaciousness, this illusion that we are
in a high room with green walls, walls that have leaves and, apparently, birds. I could sit up and reach for my glasses but
I’m not sure that would help. My vision is changing and the last time I went to my eye doctor she said I should consider bifocals.
When I told her absolutely not, not yet, she just laughed and said okay then, I had a decision to make: Would I rather be
able to see what’s close to me or what’s far away?

W
hen I get back from Miami there’s a call waiting on my machine from the gallery owner in Charleston. A couple of weeks ago,
I’d sent her a picture of a pot with a new type of glazing I’d been working on and she says she liked it. The gallery owner
is old, with a voice so thin that she is hard to understand on the phone. She always sounds as if she is breaking apart. But
she has been my lucky angel on more occasions than one. She is the person who told Gerry how to find me.

I call her back and she says they’ll be resuming their gallery crawls in the new year and she wants several pots. Maybe thirty,
she says, in her quivery voice, and for a moment I think I haven’t heard her correctly. It is an astounding order for someone
who works out of her garage and an astounding amount of work. We decide I’ll have the first ten to her by January 18. Ten
more in February and the final ones in March. Once-a-month delivery seems like a good rhythm, she says, and I agree.

And then, just as we are about to hang up, she warbles to me, “Haven’t you forgotten something, my dear?”

“Oh,” I say, ashamed of myself. “Thank you. Thank you so much, Mrs. Chapman.”

“No, dear,” she says. “The price.”

“I can do them for a hundred per.” I don’t know why I say it. It just blurts out. I’ve never sold a pot for a hundred dollars
in my life. She hesitates for probably no more than a few seconds and I think I’ve been greedy, that I’m getting ready to
be scolded and reminded of what a favor she’s doing me. Then she says, “I believe that will be just fine.”

I spend the afternoon in a frenzy. I place the pot that I photographed on my kneading table and look at it from every angle.
The shape and color are good but the one thing I’m not sure about is the texture. It’s a little too rough, not rough enough
to show up in a picture, but perhaps unpleasant to the touch, and we can’t have that when Mrs. Chapman is paying a hundred
per. She’ll probably mark them in the gallery for twice that. Maybe I should cut down on the grout. I call Kelly and ask her
to pick up Tory after school. I get on the phone and order more clay and then I haul what I do have—maybe twenty pounds—out
of the bin and over to the table.

There is something mindless about the kneading and the cutting process and usually this is where I lose myself. Usually there
is something in the swollen malleable mass that rises between my fingers that cuts off my mind and sends me back into a sort
of God. But today is different. I work the clay but it does not work me. My mind is spinning with logistics. To get ten good
ones I’ll have to make fifteen, and it takes at least ten hours of work on each pot, and it’s December, the busiest month
of the year. Not to mention that I told Lynn I’d help her paint the Sunday school rooms. Maybe I should try and get out of
that.

At some point the door from the kitchen opens and Phil says, mildly, “You’re working late.”

“You’re not going to believe this. I got a commission. Mrs. Chapman in Charleston wants thirty pots.” And then, God knows
why, but I can’t seem to stop myself from saying this next part. “She’s paying me a hundred dollars apiece.”

“Wow,” says Phil. “That’s thirty thousand dollars.”

“No. No, it’s three thousand dollars.”

“Well, that’s still good. I’m guessing we’re picking up supper.”

“That’s a funny mistake.”

“You know I’ve never been good with zeroes. You want Thai?”

“Thai’s okay.” I stand up. My back is hurting and I realize I have been in this same position, hunched over, for hours. “Can
you swing by and get Tory while you’re out? She’s at Kelly’s.”

He nods and heads toward his parked car. “One green curry and one yellow?”

“Fine.” I cut through the clay, looking for airholes. They’re small but treacherous. This mound seems well kneaded, but you
can never be sure. I cut through it from another angle, and then another. “Phil?”

He turns back. “Yeah?”

“I need you to say you’re proud of me.”

He hesitates, just long enough that I know he’s getting ready to ask me if I’m proud of him whenever he finishes a root canal.
He could point out that I don’t burst into applause every time he drags home $3,000, or $30,000 for that matter. It would
be a fair point to make.

But instead he just opens the car door.

“Of course I’m proud of you,” he says.

I
’m proud of myself. I’ve let something go and Phil and I have reached a state of equilibrium.”

Lynn is throwing toys into a black Hefty bag. “What did you let go of?”

“I don’t know. But whatever I lost, evidently it wasn’t necessary. We do better when there’s less of me there.”

“Do you think it would work to run everything through the dishwasher?”

“Yeah. Most of them are plastic. I wonder how long it’s been since anyone sterilized this stuff.”

“My guess would be… never.” Lynn pulls the drawstring on one bag and gets out another. “And you’re okay with all this?”

“Jeff says that you can’t expect one man to give you everything you need.”

“Jeff said that?”

“Well, I mean everybody says that. It’s standard marriage counseling advice. You accept a man for what he is and then you
find ways to fill in the gaps. Like you used to run.”

“And you saw how well that worked out.” Lynn pauses, takes the headband out of her hair and shakes it. I have brought her
a Christmas gift and it lies unopened on the small table that’s here in the toddler room. There’s a pair of stretchy gloves
inside—navy and gray herringbone, a pattern that struck me as sophisticated and subtle, right for Lynn. “You know,” she says,
“when I was first voted onto the church council, Phil and I got there early one night… it was just us and he started talking
about you. I can’t remember what story he was telling, but at the end he said, ‘Elyse is a pistol.’ And he sounded proud.”

I can’t picture Phil saying that, but okay. Lynn has cleaned off the shelves and is beginning to wipe them down with disinfectant.
She’s frowning, or maybe it’s just the fumes.

“Do you know what Andy told me the day he left? He said part of me was missing.”

“Did he have any theory as to what part?”

“He said… this is so weird. He used the exact same words you just used, he said I’d let something go. And this… this is strange
too. He said it bugged him that I didn’t fight with him anymore. He said it seemed like I wasn’t all there.”

I think of Gerry, how feisty I can be with him, how we bet last week on the Panthers-Patriots game, the way I wrap my legs
around his waist and try to flip him in bed.

Lynn mistakes my silence for skepticism and rushes on. “I do have a point, I promise. When I stopped fighting and started
running and doing all those things to distract myself, it was just like you said. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Everybody was worn out from all those years of arguing and we needed the break. There was peace in the valley.”

“Equilibrium.”

“And I thought just like you, that whatever I’d given up on was something he didn’t want anyway. But then he wakes up one
day and out of a clear blue sky he tells me I’m not all there. And what I can say? All I could say was, ‘Yeah, you’re right,
I’m not all here.’ ”

“I would’ve liked to have heard that conversation.”

“You just did. That was the whole thing. He said I wasn’t all there and I said yes, you’re right, I’m not all here, and then
he walked out the door. I mean, literally walked out and went to the end of the driveway and turned and started down the road.
He didn’t take the car. I still don’t know exactly where he went.”

I pull the sheet off the bottom of the playpen and groan out loud. We got the industrial-strength cleaning supplies from Home
Depot this morning but I’m not sure they’re up to these stains. Plus I’m a little worried about the amount of toxins we’re
spraying all over the room. There has to be a choice somewhere between chemically poisoning children or exposing them to the
plague. “Maybe somebody was waiting for him. You know, like in a car at the end of the block.”

Lynn shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter. Ultimately he ended up with the girlfriend. I guess she still had whatever it was
that I’d lost along the way. But you know, all I had to tell people was that he had a girlfriend and they were ready to stone
Andy in the village square. My lawyer loved it. Good Lord, do you think we should just throw the whole thing out?”

“Let me try the bleach first. How old was that girl? Twenty-four?”

Lynn sighs. “Oh yeah, textbook case. Everybody’s telling me I can take him to the cleaners. We’re walking into mediation and
my lawyer said we’ll get him to sell his boat and give me half the money. Andy loved that boat. I didn’t want half his boat.
Something went click in my head and I said to my lawyer, ‘You know, part of this is my fault so it’s okay with me if he keeps
his boat.’ And do you know what my lawyer did?’ ”

“I have a pretty good idea.”

“He clamps his hand over my mouth right there in the hall”—and here she uses her own hand to illustrate—“and he says, ‘Don’t
you ever say that again. You just remember that there’s a victim in every story, and in this story, it’s you.’ ”

“Jesus.”

“And do you know what else I wonder? Sometimes I wonder what would happen if a woman was completely herself within a marriage
and said everything she wanted to say and did everything she wanted to do and just let the chips fall where they may. What
kind of marriage do you think she would have? Maybe it would be bumpy in the short run but in the long run the man would say,
‘She makes me mad but at least she’s all here,’ and he’d eventually come to respect that, what do you think?”

Bending over isn’t giving me enough strength to scrub so I decide to crawl into the playpen. Lynn helps me swing my leg over
the side and then hands me the sponges and spray bottles. “How’s it working out with Andy and the twenty-four-year-old?”

“Fine, as far as I can tell.”

“Why do you think that men sometimes leave their wives for their girlfriends and sometimes they don’t?”

“I have no idea.”

“The thing is, when a single girl is sleeping with a married man people always tell her not to be a fool, that the married
man will never leave his wife. But if a woman isn’t working on her marriage 24/7 the same people say, ‘You better watch out,
he’s going to leave you for a girlfriend.’ It’s like the woman is screwed either way. But which do you think is more likely
to happen—does the man stay with the wife he’s used to or go with the girlfriend who excites him?”