Love in Mid Air (9 page)

For a second it doesn’t hurt, doesn’t even bleed, but then the slash is obliterated by the blood rising and it pools in my
hand and runs down my wrist. I have cut myself, possibly badly.

I could scream. I could call for help. I could go out on the deck and extend my palm toward my husband. I could show him my
stigmata and I know that Phil would clean it up, and bind it, and tell me that nothing is ever as bad as it looks. He is good
in these circumstances. Kind, calm, methodical. A man so kind that he still gives a day every month to the free clinic, a
man who comes to Tory’s school and talks about oral hygiene, who passes out toothbrushes and dental floss and teaches the
kids some sort of rap song he made up about plaque. I feel lightheaded, shaky on my feet. My hand seems to have a pulse of
its own and little gray paramecia are swimming across the surface of my vision. I twist a washtowel around my palm and shut
my eyes. Breathe in and out slowly, press down the bubble of panic that is rising in my throat.

Seconds pass. It does not appear that I am going to faint. When I open my eyes, I go to my purse on the kitchen desk, where
I always leave it, because I am a wife and a mother and a creature of habit who always leaves her purse in exactly the same
place. Standing here, looking out the kitchen window, I can see my husband and my daughter. She has brought something to show
him—a caterpillar maybe, since they’re her favorites, or perhaps a pretty leaf or stone.

It’s the familiar sting I always have when I observe Phil with Tory. He closes the hood on the grill and turns to her fully,
crouching to her eye level. They bend their heads together, staring down into her flat palm, and it strikes me how much they
look alike. They have the same profile. She is her father’s daughter, but, perhaps even more to the point, he is my daughter’s
father. And of course I’m glad he gives himself up to the role, that she lives in the warm glow of his constant approval.
Of course I’m glad she never has to work for his attention, and yet, watching them now through the window, there it is, the
familiar sting. Because as he bends over her hand I can see that he is capable of caring. That his indifference to me is optional,
a choice. Sometimes I tell myself that he is just wounded. This is what women say about men. That they can’t show their feelings,
that they can’t speak their truth. That they’re wired differently from us, almost as if they’re a separate species, and that
we shouldn’t take their silence personally. But then I see Phil like this, lowering his knee down to the deck, taking Tory’s
hand in his, and I know that he’s not as wounded as I have told myself. He could love me. He just doesn’t.

The bleeding has almost stopped. I drop the damp washtowel to the desk and take the phone out of my purse.

I dial quickly. All ten numbers this time. “Gerry,” I say, “it’s Elyse.”

O
nce a week the Women of the Church send food to shut-ins and new mothers and people who have had deaths in the family. It’s
mostly the old ladies who do this, except for Nancy, who not only heads up the Wednesday Friendship Tray project at our church
but goes to another church to drive their Friday route as well. She’s guilt-tripped Belinda into helping her, mostly because
she’s always telling everybody about how the trays are so heavy that the old ladies can’t lift them into the van. If Belinda
isn’t there, Nancy has to carry thirty-five trays all by herself.

I have to walk past the church kitchen to get to Jeff’s office. For a minute I think about going all the way around the building
and coming in the back, but no, that would make it seem like I’m ashamed or something, and I have nothing to be ashamed of.
Besides, the back door has an alarm that’s easy to set off and that’s all I need. I walk by the kitchen fast, but Belinda
still sees me and says, “Elyse?” There’s nothing to do but go in. She’s alone, thank God, and she doesn’t ask me why I’m there
so early on a Wednesday morning. Nancy probably told her Phil and I were going to start counseling with Jeff. Nothing is private,
at least not in a church as small as this one.

“I want you to look at something,” Belinda says. “This is going to amaze you.”

She walks me back to the double-door freezers and pulls them open. There, wrapped in tinfoil and stacked as neatly as bricks,
are about a hundred casseroles.

“What are they for?”

“Emergencies,” says Belinda.

“They must be expecting a lot of emergencies,” I say, struggling to unstick a brick from the one beneath it. Each casserole
has a three-by-five index card taped to the top with instructions and I squint down at the spidery handwriting. “ ‘Chicken-noodle
mushroom casserole. Heat for an hour at 350.’ My grandmother used to make this stuff.”

“Mine too,” says Belinda. “I don’t think she ever made anything that didn’t call for a can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom
soup. Look at this, look at these down at the bottom, they’ve got names on them. There’s a whole bunch from Miss Bessie Morgan
and she’s been dead for years.”

“How’d you even know they were in here?”

“Nancy got out three of them this morning. She’s taking them by David Fontana’s house.” Belinda’s voice drops, even though
we are alone. “His wife left him.”

It takes me a minute to think who she’s talking about. “He doesn’t even come to church here, his wife and kids do, and they
only come at Christmas. Why is he getting three frigging casseroles?”

“I guess he’s having an emergency.”

“How many are they taking to his wife?”

Belinda seems confused by the question. “She left him, Elyse. She just up and walked out.”

P
hil is already in Jeff’s office when I arrive and he’s taken the time to change out of his dentist whites and into jeans.
“You look good,” I say. “Did you take the jeans to work?”

“Obviously.”

Okay. So it’s going to be that kind of day.

Jeff walks in, says hi, asks what we think of this weather. He seems prepared to make small talk, to ease us into what might
be an awkward situation, but Phil evidently has a surgical scheduled for the afternoon.

“She’s not happy,” he says.

If Jeff is startled, he recovers fast. “Is that true, Elyse?”

“I’m not happy in the marriage, that much is true. But sometimes I’m happy. I’m happy when I’m with Tory or when I’m throwing
pots or when I’m out on my own…”

Jeff waves his hand in the air as if he’s trying to erase my words. “I don’t get what you’re saying.”

I frown. “I don’t get what you’re saying.”

“You have an odd way of talking about marriage. You say ‘in the marriage’ or ‘out on my own’ like it’s some sort of door you
go in and out of.”

“Maybe it is.”

“Are you kidding? You’re always married. You’re married every day, every second, whether Phil happens to be standing beside
you or not.”

“Okay, then, I’ll be more blunt. You remember that sermon you gave a few months ago about gratitude? You said we should make
a list of all the recent times we’ve felt joy in our lives, and I actually did. I went home and listed the last ten times
I was really happy, and you were right, just seeing them on paper made me feel good. I thought, ‘Well, I bitch a lot but when
it comes down to it, I have a pretty great life.’ ”

“It’s gratifying to know there’s actually somebody out there listening.”

“Yeah, well, the trouble is there’s actually somebody out there thinking. Because when I looked at the list I noticed there
was a common denominator to all ten of my happy times. Phil wasn’t there.”

I look over at Phil as I say this. I don’t want to hurt him, and if he ever said anything like that, it would hurt me. But
he doesn’t look sad, just exasperated.

Jeff pushes back in his chair, fingers knit, peering over the tops of his heavy black glasses. They must have taught him this
pose in counseling school. “What do you think that means?”

“It means I can be happy. I’m capable of it. I have the capacity for joy…”

“Just as long as I’m not there,” Phil says.

Jeff turns to him. “Do you feel the same way, Phil, like your capacity for happiness is affected by whether or not Elyse is
present?”

Phil smiles smugly. “I feel exactly the same whether she’s there or not.”

Jesus. Even I know that’s the wrong answer.

Jeff decides to let it lie. He swivels his chair back toward me.

“Okay, so Elyse has the capacity for joy. Let’s look at that more closely. Tell me about the last time you were happy.”

I decide to tell him about the next-to-last time I was happy.

It wasn’t that long ago, really. Two days before I met Gerry, back at the Phoenix art show. Several of the exhibitors were
going out to dinner and they invited me to come, but I didn’t feel like it. I’d been talking so much to customers and potential
customers that my voice had gone hoarse. I considered room service but at the last minute I decided that no, I’d go somewhere
great. I went back to the hotel room and showered and put on a nice dress and wore the scarf I got in Florence years ago.
It drapes really beautifully and I went to a restaurant the concierge recommended.

“You went by yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s interesting. Some women don’t feel comfortable going to a restaurant alone.”

“There’s nothing wrong with a woman eating by herself,” I say. This is going just great. He’s probably going to stand up in
the pulpit Sunday and announce to everybody that I’m an erotomaniac.

“No, I think it’s a good thing,” he says. “Tell me about it.”

It had been a wonderful night. It was one of those restaurants where the walls are all lined in mirrors. I sat down at the
bar and I ordered foie gras and an arugula salad and a wine with this really beautiful name—something like Covenant of the
Moon, but maybe I’m remembering that part wrong. And I sat there all alone and watched myself eat. I had slicked back my hair
and I was wearing my pewter earrings, and the scarf of course, and when I looked at myself in the restaurant mirrors I decided
I was pretty. Okay, not pretty exactly, but significant. I decided that I looked like a significant person. I didn’t pull
out a book like I usually do when I am alone in a restaurant. I just ate very slowly, and I looked at my reflection, and then
at some point I began to look at the flowers. There were three blooms on each table—white, yellow, and orange—and the vases
undulated in such a way that the flowers all fell in different directions. The brass bar fittings had been recently polished
and I further noticed that above me someone had painted tiny gold stars across the deep purple ceiling. But mostly it was
the mirrors, so many that when I headed toward what I thought was the exit, I’d only walked smack into another image of myself.

“So what made you happy?” Phil asks. “The fact that you looked good?” Poor Phil. It has to bug him, the way I slop around
the house in cargo pants and dress up when I go out of town.

“No,” says Jeff, who surprises me sometimes. “You were happy because you just gave yourself a moment and sat there and were
open to everything.”

“Yeah, I was open. And I was seen. I want to be seen.”

“I see you,” says Phil, and I swear he’s trying to sneak a peek at his watch.

“I mean really seen. I’m happy whenever I’m noticed, even if it’s just me noticing myself.”

“You don’t have to be in a restaurant in Phoenix to have that feeling,” Jeff says. “There are ways to make you feel like that
in your day-to-day life.”

“Oh yeah, that’s a great idea,” says Phil. “We’ll go home and cover all the walls in mirrors so she can watch herself coming
and going just like Louis at Versailles or something. Will that make her happy?”

Jeff blinks, turns away as if he is embarrassed. He’s not used to this side of Phil.

“I want you to see me,” I say, even though I’m pretty sure that this is no longer true.

T
hat night, during a station break, Phil asks, “What time were you thinking about going to bed?” It’s his signal he wants to
have sex and the weird thing is I want to have sex too. Gerry hasn’t called me back. I know it’s only been two days but the
anticipation is running neck and neck with the disappointment and it’s all worn me out. The phone rang about four, and when
I picked it up there was no one on the other end. For a minute I almost said, “Gerry?” but of course that would be stupid
and maybe it’s best if he doesn’t call me back because I am too stupid to have an affair. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“Ten,” I tell him, and saying that I’m going to bed early is my signal that yeah, tonight is okay. He grins and I remember,
just for a second, how charmed I once had been by his boyishness and shagginess and his Amish-collared blue denim shirt. But
that was eight years ago. Now we usually have sex in the shape of an X, with our heads facing in different directions, our
bodies touching only where mine overlaps his at the pelvis. I believe I first saw this position in an old issue of
Cosmo
and at the time I thought it would be fun, something different, the sort of thing you try every once in a while. I brought
the magazine to bed that night and Phil glanced at it and said, “Can do.” I’m not sure exactly when it became our default
position, but now we move into it without consultation. You can’t kiss in the X. You don’t look into each other’s eyes. But
the advantage is that one person doesn’t crush the other person’s chest and neither of you has to hold your weight in that
kind of unnatural push-up. I’m not sure at what point Phil and I first realized how heavy we are.