Those We Love Most (26 page)

They chewed in silence for a moment and the forkful of salad made Maura feel nauseated. She took a drink of iced tea and forced herself to swallow.

“I went into a tunnel after that.” Maura paused for a moment. “He lived for almost a week in a coma and then his body just gave out. Massive internal injuries.” Maura pinched her fingers over her lids for just a minute and seconds later she had the presence of mind to wonder if she had just smeared her makeup into raccoon eyes. “I suppose you see that all the time in your practice … things dying.” He nodded solemnly, his eyes locked on her face.

“I understand your guilt, and your anger,” said Art. “I understand you even blaming me to a degree. You are entitled to all of that. Completely. And that day … the day before, was perhaps more me than you, I’ll take responsibility for that. But then you pulled the rug out. I was pretty tortured for a while there. You started something, and then you threw cold water on it. Your cell was disconnected, I drove by your house a hundred times … had to physically talk to myself not to get out and ring the bell. You know I actually called the house and left a message with your sister. Once I even spoke to your husband.” Maura’s head shot up. “I left a message as your vet. That’s all,” he said defensively. “Hey, I was worried sick about you. I finally came up with the coffee cup idea. I figured you’d know instantly what those cardboard cups meant, but no one else in your household would.”

She nodded. She would not mention the e-mail he had sent, the risk he had taken with that and how frightened it had made her, how uncertain she was of what he might do at such a fragile time in her marriage.

“I was … I was doing the best that I could.” Maura could see it all clearly from his perspective, a perch she had tried not to inhabit up until this point.

Art nodded and seemed to collect himself for a moment. “I guess that I thought we had something far more promising than we did. When I tried to break things off that one time … you basically begged me to come back. I … I suppose after that I allowed myself to think that we had some kind of a future.” Art lowered his eyes to his plate, where he picked up a French fry and plunged it in a pool of ketchup before swallowing it in two bites.

Maura felt a sudden lurching of internal organs at the realization of how casually she had behaved. Her capriciousness had led him to make assumptions and plans. She leaned onto one hand to shift her position in the banquette. She saw now, with complete clarity, how careless she had been. Maura had led Art to believe she might leave her marriage. It was a sin of omission, in a sense, but it had resulted in so much collateral damage.

“Art. I don’t know what to say.”

“I didn’t deserve to be treated as if … as if I were driving that car.” His voice was softer now, as if he’d exhausted the energy to be angry.

They ate for a few moments in silence, Maura moving the food around on her plate as her mind grappled with where this was going. She had lost her enthusiasm for the charade of pleasantries involved in wrapping up this conversation and leaving. The leaving part, she knew, would feel like a vacuum seal, final and hard. She’d be left reviewing the one hundred things she should have said instead or done differently.

“So why are we here, Maura?” Art said more softly. “Why now?”

Maura looked down at her hands in her lap, the nails neatly manicured. How foolish that she had agonized over the right shade of ballet pink, as if that would carry a message, as if any of that mattered. How appalling that she had spent money on the new sweater to accent the color in her eyes. “I guess I wanted to tell you how sorry I was, although I’m not sure I could have done it any other way at the time. And … and I wanted to see you, to see if you were all right and that you had moved on or at least that you weren’t stuck, like me. I’ve thought about you so much …”

“I liked you too much, Maura, and you weren’t mine to like. As much as I wished you were.” He stopped and took a sip of his iced tea. “I know what it feels like to be the person who gets left for someone else. I don’t want to be that other person in anyone’s marriage. I didn’t even want to get near that line. And I did. I think that what happened to us in the end, the way it happened so abruptly, was the best thing for us.” Art looked right at her, his expression softer but without its former intimacy.

She nodded, too close to tears to speak.

“It wasn’t real,” he said solemnly.

“What?” she asked automatically, before she could catch herself.

“Us.”

“We’re here right now,” Maura said with a false bravado, as if to lighten the severity of the moment. “That’s real.” Her smile faded when she saw his grim expression, and she felt a little gnawing kick up in her gut.

He smiled halfheartedly and arranged his silverware in a parallel position on one side of the plate and then folded his cloth napkin on the table.

Maura paused for a moment before speaking. “I guess … although we never talked much about it, that you must know things weren’t … aren’t so great at home. That had nothing to do with you.” Maura picked at the nail polish on her left hand, chipping it down by the cuticle. “My husband and I … well, I wonder sometimes if we were really meant to survive past college. Sometimes we feel like two different people connected by three kids.” This was the most Maura had ever said out loud about her marriage to him.

He was studying her closely. Was he surprised by her candor? Their conversations had only ever grazed over the topic of Pete. It would have been so easy, she could see now with the perfect clarity of hindsight, to have let Art steer them toward a gentle end, as he had tried to do in the diner that day. It would have been excruciating in the short run, like ripping a scab. But when Maura pulled back the curtain on all that would happen after that day, she would have given anything to have made that one simple choice, to not have teased him on to satisfy her vanity and her own needs. The level of pain involved in ending it that day seemed inconsequential in the face of everything that would come later.

Maura reached out impulsively for Art’s hand, resting on top of the table, a final act of apology and compassion, and he stiffened slightly.

“Maura,” Art said, and the previous edge in his voice had crept back in. “We’re not at that place anymore.” She nodded instantly, stung, and retracted her hand. He’d misinterpreted her actions, but she would not correct him. Art sat back against the banquette and raised one arm, flagging the waitress and motioning for the check.

“I’ve got to get back to the practice,” he said unapologetically. “There’ve been two emergencies today already. A black lab came in that ate a sock, and I have to do an extra abdominal surgery this afternoon.”

They were both silent for a moment, and Maura felt the need to fill the air, to resurrect herself somehow.

“Pete and I …,” Maura began. “We’re working on it …” Her voice trailed off. Sitting across from him now, trying to interpret his signals, was disorienting.

“I’ve met someone,” Art said abruptly.

Maura worked to keep her face even, not to register dismay. She raised her eyebrows in a gesture of interest, and yet the effort involved in remaining outwardly calm was far greater than she might have imagined.

“Well, of course you have,” she said slowly, measuring each word. “I would expect you would, would
want
that for you.” He looked up with a bemused smile, a shadow of the good-humored man she had fallen for. But they were both playing roles now, and his total neutrality made her wonder if there were any fraction of him that was still attracted to her. It was difficult to imagine them as two people who’d once been deeply connected in an emotional vortex, who had shared such intimate moments.

“We both needed to move on, I guess,” Art said as he signed the check and then rose, signaling his departure. Outside the restaurant, his hand on her shoulder felt fatherly, yet there was an undercurrent of leashed restraint. “You’ve been through a really huge thing. I’m not trying to minimize it. But you can’t let it rule you, and you shouldn’t let it destroy your family either. I don’t know exactly what you want for your marriage, but I hope, for your sake, that you get to a better place. You deserve that. And I hope, most of all, that you’ll be good to yourself.” As he prepared to walk away, he leaned over toward her and pecked her on the cheek, a blessing and a dismissal.

Back in the parking garage, Maura flipped down the visor mirror and swiped at the ring of mascara under her eyes. She let out a deep breath before fastening her seat belt and starting the car. Whatever she had hoped to achieve, seeing him had only raked up odd, angular sentiments that were too sharp to hold or smooth back into place. She was exhausted. And yet she needed a moment to organize her ricocheting thoughts.

It was hard to recall how she had once fixated constantly on being in his presence, how the vast stretches when she was apart from Art could feel constricting and monotonous, when held against the startling thrill of being with him. And when they had been together, Maura could still remember the heightened sense of an electric current flowing through her, as if she were a fuller, more alive version of herself. All the incremental steps that had taken her and Art to a place of intimacy, so innocent when each encounter was individually examined, now felt selfish and wrong in the wake of their lunch. And yet at the time, each of these single acts of being with him had somehow saved her. It was both comforting and disconcerting to realize Art now felt just like any other person from her past who had once meant something more. He was flawed and self-absorbed in intervals, not vastly different from the man she’d married. Maybe her theory that all of life was a series of random couplings was correct, that there was not just one soul mate but in fact any number of possible prospects with whom you could end up. The key was that all of it took work. Oddly, she thought of her mother and her garden, each season a labor of love, requiring patience, sweat equity, and the need to constantly shore up the perimeter against intruders. Maura realized with certainty that all of the emotion she had invested in Art, all the good and desirable parts of herself she’d illuminated for him, had been pieces she’d denied Pete.

With a sigh, she plucked the parking garage ticket from the car’s cup holder and backed out of the spot to head home. Up in her bedroom, she pulled the turtleneck sweater over her head in one swift motion and tossed it into a ball on the floor before climbing under the sheets and closing her eyes. The anticipation, the knots of emotion, and then the inexorable emptiness had spent her.

The bolt slid in the lock as Roger’s eyes flew open, and momentarily disoriented, he sat up on the couch. He must have dozed off. He’d arrived an hour early and used the hidden key to surprise Julia as she returned from work.

Surveying his surroundings, Roger blinked rapidly, his shoes propped on the glass coffee table, and he struggled to his feet, staggering as one knee gave out for a second and then caught.

The door swung open and a triangle of late afternoon sunlight knifed across the floor. Julia entered the room, a clump of grocery bags in each hand. For a moment Roger contemplated how to let her know he was there without startling her. He took a step forward, slightly, saying her name, and the movement registered in the corner of her eye.

“Aaiiiiiyah.” She flinched, recoiled actually, and dropped her purse. When she recognized him, seconds later, she crumpled with relief and let out her breath.

“Roger!” Her voice was admonishing, but he could see behind the receding surprise and fear that she was pleased. More than pleased.

“Julia,” he said simply, and he stepped forward toward her.

She was in his arms in seconds, practically launching herself toward him, and he fought the sensation to weep for some odd reason, a jumble of sentiments hitting him, from anticipation and joy to extreme sadness and apprehension. He was here to end it, and he felt like an assassin.

They embraced and kissed, her body rising up to meet his, readily.

“Why? What are you doing here so early …? Never mind,” she said slyly. “I don’t want to know. I only care that you’re
here …
” She flashed a brilliant smile and began to lead him toward the couch, tugging playfully on his arm. Something in his expression stopped her, and she slowed, her smile erasing as she detected reticence, a hesitation in his eyes.

“What?” she said more gently.

“I just want to … to look at you …,” he said. “For a moment.” And her smile brightened again. There was a good ten years difference in their ages. It hadn’t meant anything when they’d first met, but he could see the gap now. Her face was tanned from her time outdoors, and despite the Florida climate, her mocha skin, while not youthful, looked healthy. She was a woman who cared for herself, not in an overly meticulous fashion, but who kept herself up.

“You can look, but it’s so much more fun to touch,” she said impishly. Julia steered him toward the bedroom, now meeting little resistance.

A short time later, spent, they lay side by side, in the final yellowed varnish of the sunset through the sheer curtains. Julia rolled toward him and spooned his back, tracing his breastbone blindly with her fingers.

“So why are you here again? That old deal?”

“Business. You. The deal here is done. Almost. It doesn’t really require much more corporate oversight.”

“So, did you come for me?”

“And for me …” He laughed, rolling toward her, breaking out of the armlock she had created.