The Stuff That Never Happened (25 page)

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WE DECIDED to leave the following Saturday. According to the plan, that afternoon he would tell Carly he was leaving her, while at the same time I would tell Grant, and then we would meet at Grand Central at six. We would catch the 6:37 train to New Haven, where we would spend the night with his college roommate, who had a car he wasn’t using for the summer.

“It will be a hell of a bad day, but then we’ll have each other,” he said to me. “I’ll meet you by the clock at six. No later than ten after, you hear? No matter what happens, no later than ten after. My heart won’t be beating right until I see you.”

I actually had to make an appointment with Grant so I could tell him. He had been planning to spend the whole day at the library, as usual. But he agreed to come home at three o’clock, which would be perfect. I spent the morning packing my things and putting the suitcases under the bed so they wouldn’t be the first things he saw. Then I paced the tiny apartment while I waited for him to come home. I pictured Jeremiah at his house, doing the same thing: packing and waiting until it was time to tell Carly and the children good-bye.

My stomach hurt with shooting pains every time I thought about him. How was he going to be able to say good-bye to his babies? Even I had barely been able to tell them good-bye when Grant and I moved out, and I had only known them for a few months. But he was sure it would be fine.

“I tell them good-bye all the time,” he said. “They won’t know when I leave this time that it’s any different. How could they know?”

What I thought was,
But
you
know. You know that you’re not going to be there to put them to bed anymore and you’re not going to smell how delicious they smell when they wake up in the morning, and how it feels when they laugh, and even what will happen to them when you go
.

“You worry too much,” he said. He bent me back into a passionate kiss. “That’s part of what I love about you: the way you feel everyone’s troubles, almost more than your own.”

So that’s what I was thinking of as I packed everything into our wedding present luggage. The apartment felt echo-y when I had finished. I didn’t even pack all that much, just my clothes and toiletries, and some things from the kitchen. Jeremiah had requested that I bring my garlic press and my Moosewood cookbook. I took a painting down off the wall, something that my art teacher had made for me—a watercolor of an oak tree near a lake.

At three fifteen, I heard Grant’s key in the lock, and I sat down on the couch and wiped my palms on my jeans. My mouth was dry, and I wished I’d thought to have a glass of water near me, but I didn’t feel able to get up and get one now. My knees were weak.

He came in and put down his backpack and then just stood there, looking at me in surprise. He looked like a rooster, with his hair sticking up in a million cowlicks. “Well, hi,” he said and smiled. “Why are you sitting there … like that?”

“Like what?”

“On the edge of the couch. Like you’re waiting for a train or something,” he said. “You look weird. Did you just get off the phone?”

“Grant,” I said. “I have something to tell you.”

“Can I get a snack first? You want anything?”

“No,” I said.

“Really? Have you eaten lunch? I had some peanuts from a vending machine at the library, but obviously peanuts can only take a person so far.” He opened the refrigerator and stared inside. “Oh, there’s this leftover takeout. Can I have this?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Moo goo gai pan,” he said. He said it a second time, in a singsong. “Moo
goo
gai
pan.”
He came walking back into the couch area—you couldn’t call it a living room—with the cardboard container and a fork. He would never even try to use the chopsticks they always put in the bag. “Hey, you know what? This is actually better than it was the other night. Of course, I was eating it at one in the morning, and I had heartburn all night, so maybe that’s coloring my memory. But it’s good. Sure you don’t want a bite?” He held out a forkful in my direction.

“Grant,” I said and swallowed. “I have the most difficult, horrible thing to tell you, and I don’t know quite how to do it, so you have to sit down and let me say it.”

He put down the container and stared at me with wide eyes. I could see his Adam’s apple working up and down. “Something’s wrong?” he said. “Is it your brother? Oh, no. Did he—?”

“No,” I said. “It’s not him; it’s me.”

He sank down beside me on the couch and took my hand. “Are you all right? Did something happen? Are you—wait! Are you pregnant?”

My eyes filled up with sudden tears, which made him reach over and take me in his arms. And this was so much worse than anything I’d pictured happening—worse, in fact, than the rampaging I had prepared for. It hit me that I hadn’t really thought about the actual words to use.

“No,” I said through tears. “No, I’m not pregnant.”

“Then what? Oh, you poor baby,” he said, and I had to pull away from him, stand up, and march across the room. I had to harden myself to this, to stop crying, but I couldn’t stop. My eyes just kept making more and more tears, and Grant felt sorrier and sorrier for me. Finally I yelled at him, “Stop it!”

He sat back, blinking in surprise. “Well, then, tell me. What’s going on?”

I started sobbing for real. “I-I’m leaving you,” I said.

He didn’t say anything, but the light went out of his eyes in stages. After a moment, he folded his arms like he was pulling them in for protection. Somehow this gave me courage. I had to go forward now. There wasn’t any way of going back. Jeremiah had said, “When you’re telling him, picture my face. Visualize what it will be like Saturday evening when we’re together on the train. How happy we’ll be.”

“I’m not happy, and I want to leave,” I said and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, but that’s the truth.”

He looked down, rubbed his thumb on the toe of his shoe. “Okaaaay,” he said. “I see. And when did you decide this?”

“I guess I’ve been deciding it for a while,” I said.

“You’ve just been
deciding
it.”

I nodded. “For a while. I’ve thought about it long and hard.”

“Have you now?”

“You and I don’t seem to have anything together anymore.”

He took that in, filed it away, nodded. “Is this … is it your family?”

“No. Yes. Well, maybe a little.”

“So you’re going back to California, are you?”

“I don’t think so. Not right away.”

“But—what will you
do?
Why are you doing this now? I mean, it’s crazy for us just to live apart. We can’t afford it, and besides that, if you—if you don’t like me and you need time away from me, you’ve pretty much got that.” He stopped talking, and then he said, “Oh. Ohhh. How idiotic of me. There’s someone else.”

I licked my lips and looked up at the ceiling.
Jeremiah’s face, Jeremiah’s face
. “Yes,” I said, and swallowed hard. “I’m in love with Jeremiah.”

Some sentences just come out in capital letters and hang in the air, and this was one of them. I could feel the reverberations of it. I waited for him to stand up and come over and hit me. I thought he might throw the coffee table over. Actually, I couldn’t imagine what he would do—anything but what he did do. He just sat there looking at me quietly, rubbing the toe of his shoe back and forth, and then he looked down at the floor and said in a flat voice, “Really. Imagine that.”

“I know. It’s the worst thing that could have happened. I’m sorry.”

“Wow,” he said. “Wow.” He shook his head, like somebody shaking water out of his ears.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really didn’t mean for this to, you know, happen. I’m so, so sorry.”

Suddenly he whipped his head down between his knees, moving so swiftly that I jumped. He was clasping his hands in front of him. I looked at his wedding ring and wished this would be over and that I would quit saying I was sorry.

“You’re leaving me to be with him, then?” he said finally, from between his knees.

“Yes. When we finish talking.”

He kept his head down, didn’t look at me. “Does Carly know?”

I hesitated. “He’s telling her.”

“Now?” He sat back up.

“I think so.”

He actually laughed at that. “Wow. What an orchestration this is, huh? Two people each getting told the unthinkable. Did you two rehearse what you’d say? Do—what do they call that
?—role play?”

I stayed silent.

“Do you mind if I ask you how long this has been going on?” he said. Then he held up one hand. “Wait. Never mind. I don’t need to know that. There’s no reason on earth for me to know that, is there?”

I came over to the couch and sat down on the footstool in front of him. “I’ll tell you whatever you need to know, whatever helps. We didn’t want to hurt you.”

He barked out a bitter little laugh. “Ha! Here’s something you could do for me. A little thing. Just during this conversation if you wouldn’t use the word
we
for you and … him. I mean, until just a second ago, if you said
we
, I would think you meant you and me.”

“Of course,” I said. “I don’t want to be insensitive.”

“Oh, no! It would be
bad
to be
insensitive
at a time like this, wouldn’t it? It’s one thing to just leave a guy without any frigging advance notice, but you wouldn’t want to be
insensitive
in the bargain.”

In the hall we heard a door opening and a woman’s voice calling to a guy named Cal. It always sounded like she was saying, “Cow! Cow!” and Jeremiah and I had once laughed about that. He’d yelled, “Sheep! Sheep!” At the time I’d wondered if Grant would have ever made a joke like that, and then it had hit me that he wasn’t ever home long enough to have heard her yelling for Cal. I’d added that silly thing to my justifications for leaving him. Now that he was here I felt so horrible I practically had chills.

He was silent for such a long time, leaning forward as though he was trying to keep himself from passing out, and then I saw that he was crying. Oh God, he was weeping. For
me
. He kept his head down, but his fists were covering his eyes. I didn’t know what to do, so I sat there. The clock on the stove said 3:55. I still had plenty of time. I didn’t know what to say or do. Should I try to comfort him? I was about to start crying again myself.

“Oh, Grant,” I said, and touched his back. He didn’t pull away.

When he spoke again, he said, “I can’t believe this.”

“I know. We—I mean
I
—I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

He looked up at me. “You know what the bad part is? The awful thing is that I have admired and loved the two of you
so
much. That’s the thing. I don’t think I’ll be able to just stop so quickly.”

“Oh my God, don’t say that,” I told him. This was so typical of Grant that it took all the air out of me. Couldn’t he even do the expected thing, play the part of the wronged husband and get fucking furious? As bad as that would be, it was preferable to this. “You should hate us. I’m sorry. Not ‘us.’ You should hate me! Go ahead. Get mad at me if you want to. You can yell and scream. Get it all out. I don’t want you to have to hold it in.”

“I wish I could,” he said. “I know it’ll come to that. I’ll get mad. I have the rest of my life to be mad, I guess. I’m going to have to go through all of it. But right now … right now I’m just so ridiculously … well, blindsided.”

“You
were
blindsided,” I said. I rubbed his back a little, like I could be his friend through this maybe.

“How long …?”

“Do you want to know? Do you want to know the whole thing? Because I’ll tell you, if you want. I will.”

“Yes. Tell me that. Just that much, no more.”

“It started the winter we got here.”

He drew in a breath. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

There was a long silence. “How did you do it?”

I was startled. “How did we … what?” I said, and then after a moment, we both laughed.

“No. Not
that
. I mean, how did you get away with it? How did I not know?”

“Well,” I said. I licked my lips, which were suddenly very dry. “You really weren’t there very much, and—”

“Don’t say anymore, okay? Be quiet now.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” He kept breathing, in, out, in, out, as though he had to concentrate to remember to do it right. “That’s all I want to know. That’s a long time. Longer than I would have thought.”

We were silent. The sun made a parallelogram on the wooden floor. I watched its edges wobble and dull as clouds went by, and then I watched as it brightened and sharpened again. My whole self ached. I was one big toothache of a human being. I had hurt this person who was bent over with pain, pain that I had caused, and nothing I could do would make it even one iota better. I decided that I would watch as three more clouds went by, and then I would get up and leave. I couldn’t imagine what that was going to be like—actually going in and getting my suitcases from under the bed and walking out the front door—but I had come this far, and I had to do it. There wasn’t a way to turn back.

Then he was the one who got up. He rose in one sudden motion and went into the bathroom and closed the door, and I stood up, too, and got the suitcases from the bedroom and dragged them to the front door. When he came out of the bathroom, I was standing in the kitchen area. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, so I folded my arms.

“There’s something I want to leave you with,” he said. “This is just between you and me now. Nothing to do with Jeremiah.”

“Okay,” I said. I licked my lips again. I felt as though I had no more moisture in my body. I wasn’t precisely sure that he wasn’t going to land a blow that would level me. I braced for it, but instead he took my hands and looked into my eyes, unflinching.

“You have a core of sadness in you,” he said. “I’ve felt it. And I have some ideas about where it comes from—you know, the family stuff and all that. I thought you and I might, you know, be together enough so that we’d get rid of that. But we couldn’t, and part of that is my fault, and timing, and my teaching and all that. Maybe you needed somebody who could be there for you full-time. You deserve that, I know. And if he makes you happy, if he can give you that, then I just want to say that this is what’s probably supposed to happen. Maybe—I think this is possible—maybe you’ve found the love of your life.”