Five Days (33 page)

Leave it to Dan to think about the extra cost. But I decided to put his mind to rest:

Sandy asked me to stay the night – so no cost involved. Hope you'll get a good sleep tonight – and that new job turns out better than you imagine. It's a good re-start, and will hopefully lead to better things. L xxx

As I dispatched this, a thought crossed my mind: might Dan somehow try to contact Sandy during the course of the evening? Then again, he hadn't seen Sandy in years – we'd first met when we were both doing the radiographic technicians course at Southern Maine Community College – and she dropped in to see us with her then new husband (whom she subsequently divorced) once thereafter in 2002. We'd kept in touch since then by email – and I knew she was now living with a new man in Somerville. But if Dan couldn't get through to me on my cellphone – that is, if he even tried to get through – would he call Information for Somerville and try to find Sandy's number? Maybe I should give her a call and ask her to cover for me just in case. But I'd then have to explain everything to a woman I consider more an acquaintance than a friend. Maybe I am being wildly over-cautious here. Maybe this is the reason why I am so glad that Richard and I have cut straight to the chase, and are starting a life immediately together. No months of sneaking around. No cavalcade of lies, or the need to invent scenarios to cover our tracks. Just the blunt truth:
I've fallen in love. Our marriage is over. I'm moving out.

But in the meantime, there were certain essential immediate things to take care of. Such as . . .

A fast text to my colleague Gertie: could she cover my morning shift tomorrow?

Bing.
Gertie texted me right back:

Let me cover your whole day tomorrow – if you are willing to do my all-day Saturday shift this weekend. Would love to get out of it.

Great news. This meant I wouldn't have to rush back early tomorrow morning. More time with Richard. I texted straight back:

You've got a deal. Can you please inform hospital admin today that we're trading shifts. You're a star. L xxx

And then there was a very important text I needed to send to Lucy:

Can't talk right now. But something rather momentous has arrived in my life – and I was wondering if I might be able to drop by tomorrow sometime? Is that apartment of yours over the garage still available?

Well, that was being all but direct. But Lucy was my best friend. And I needed a best friend to talk to before I dropped the bombshell on Dan.

Bing
. My luck was holding when it came to instant responses.

Well now you have me more than curious! Am just working morning tomorrow at library, so drop by whenever after 1 p.m. Yes, the apartment is still empty. If you need it, it's there. And if you can talk, I'm around all day today. So want to know the story behind all this intrigue. Love – Lucy

Intrigue. How I wanted to text back:
It's not intrigue. It's the love story of the century!
Prudence stopped me from such rashness. Anyway, Lucy would know the entire saga tomorrow. So I just wrote:

All will be revealed when we meet. You're a great friend.

Bing.

Oh God, Dan again.

Seems like you're doing your best to stay away from home as long as you can . . . and who can blame you, right? I mean, who would want to come home to me? But thanks for wishing me well in the new job. Really appreciated.

Now I did feel aggrieved. This was Dan's ongoing repertoire, his schtick.
Having made reconciliatory gestures here he was again, being bad-tempered and small – and knowing so well that such behavior always disquieted me.

As I read this a coldness – one that I had always fought off in the past – took hold of me, letting me know:
This is truly finished.

‘Some bad news?' Richard asked. I looked up from my phone, trying to wipe the tension off my face, then telling myself:
Why don't you, from the outset of this new love, make a commitment towards communicating what is actually on your mind . . . rather than self-censoring and shoving all that you are thinking, feeling, under the proverbial carpet.
So:

‘My husband is making me feel bad about spending an extra day to see an old friend in Boston. And he's also letting me know he already hates the job he'll be starting tomorrow.'

‘He never really saw how wonderful you are, did he?'

I shut my eyes and felt tears.

‘You lovely, lovely man,' I said.

He came over and put his arms around me.

‘You are extraordinary,' he said.

‘As are you. And I bet that's something
she's
never told you.'

He just shrugged. And said:

‘Does that even matter anymore?'

I kissed him. Then said:

‘You're right. All that matters is—'

‘Us.'

We began to kiss again. Deeply this time, our hands slipping into each other's bathrobes.

Bing.
It was Richard's cellphone. He ignored it, especially as we were both so quickly aroused.
Bing.
The tone again. And when it went ignored again, the actual phone then started to ring.

‘Great timing,' Richard said under his breath.

‘Whoever it is clearly wants to speak to you.'

‘To hell with it.'

‘Take it,' I said, thinking maybe it was some update on Billy, and he needed to be on the other end of the line.

Richard fished into his bathrobe pocket, squinted at the screen, then answered the call.

‘Oh yeah, hi there,' he said to whoever was on the other end. ‘I didn't expect to hear from you until . . . I see . . . that was fast . . . right . . . and? . . . really?. . . . just like that? . . . yeah, that makes sense . . . well then, there we are . . . that's right . . . see you then . . . and yeah, I remember this address . . . and a very good morning to you too.'

He ended the call, his lips pursed in a near smile.

‘Good news?' I asked.

‘Very good news.'

‘Tell me.'

Now the part-smile became a full smile.

‘The apartment is ours.'

WE GOT OUT
of bed again around midday. This was such new territory for me – the constant need to be making love, to have my love deep inside me
. Yes, I remember, all those years ago with Eric, the way we were always falling into bed during those first heady months of our romance. This was coupled with the discovery of sex: the wide-eyed wonder at the pleasure of all that intimate friction, of bodies electric; the sheer animalistic abandon that accompanied the act itself. Even after this initial discovery period – heightened with that overwhelming feeling of being truly in love for the first time – there was still a desire that never abated. I cannot remember a night when we didn't make love – and there was always this infectious delight in having each other day in, day out.

With Dan . . . well, the sex was just that. Sex. Pleasant. Reasonable. Semi-engaged, but never infused with the sort of passion that was ever transporting. I knew this from the outset – and accepted it as cosmic payback for losing the man I so adored. And then, when I got pregnant . . .

But I remember holding Ben for the first time after the delivery, and crying as I saw my son, and knowing immediately that, even if this child was not made in love, my love for him would be absolute, unconditional. Just as I felt the same way when Sally arrived two years later. So the passion I have for everything to do with Ben and Sally has always counterbalanced the lack of passion in the marriage.

Richard reported to me that his own marriage was even more sexually moribund than mine; that he and his wife only ‘coupled' (her verb of choice, he told me) two or three times a year, and that he had essentially closed down that part of his life.

And then we came together. And . . .

I am not very experienced in the wider world of sex. Even Lucy was shocked to learn that Eric and Dan were the only two men I had ever slept with. She herself could count eight lovers ‘before, during and after my bad marriage . . . and the fact that I can count them all on less than two hands makes me think I really should have been having more sex with more men at that point when it wasn't so damn hard to meet the sort of men you want to be having sex with, rather than the nightmares who only seem to be on offer to middle-aged women living in small Maine towns'.

I had to laugh when she told me this. Just as it also fueled a larger encroaching despair I'd had for years about the lukewarm physical life I had with Dan. Until he lost his job we made love at least three nights a week. Even if it was, at best, thermal and adequate, at least it was there. But when he lost his job, his libido also went south.

Making love with Richard was nothing less than revelatory. In the three, four times we had fallen into bed since arriving here yesterday evening, the profundity of the act itself – the way it so expressed the overpowering love we had just discovered and now shared – seemed only to augment and grow every time we were entwined together. Feeling him move inside me didn't just trigger an eruption of sensuality so far beyond anything in my past experience; it was also so palpably intimate. What was even more extraordinary was the fact that this conjoining, this total fusion, was so immediate. From the very moment he first entered me.

‘I never want to leave this bed,' I whispered as we clung to each other afterwards.

‘Well, we can stay here all day then.'

‘There is the little problem of all our things at our respective rooms back at the God-awful hotel. Sorry to raise this dreary practicality . . . but won't they want us checked out of there by midday . . . which is kind of now? And my car is still there.'

‘Yes, that thought did cross my mind. But I use that place all the time and know all the duty managers there. So I'll give one of them a call in a few minutes, and see if I can negotiate a late checkout . . . or even offer to tip one of the maids twenty bucks if she'll pack up everything for us. Then we can run over there and pick everything up later this afternoon.'

‘A change of clothes and a hairbrush would be welcome. But this suite is a fortune. And we certainly don't have to stay here tonight. In fact, we could—'

‘We're staying here tonight,' Richard said. ‘I've spent far too much of my life being cautious about money. And what has such frugality finally given me?'

‘Well, it's given you the money to buy that apartment – and change your life.'

‘True – but I should have been really living before this weekend. I've gone nowhere, seen so very little. Haven't been to a concert or a play in years.'

‘But you have been reading.'

‘The cheap escape route. It's like what Voltaire said about marriage – it's the only adventure available for the coward.'

‘But the fact that you can quote Voltaire—'

‘Big deal.'

‘Tell me another insurance man from Bath, Maine – or anywhere else for that matter – who can do that. Anyway, now that we'll be here, in Boston, much of the time, there's a great orchestra here. There are great museums, good theatres. We can do all that. And here's another thing I was going to mention earlier – all right, I will probably use around two-thirds of my overdue vacation money from the hospital to help top up Ben and Sally's college tuitions next year. But that will still leave me maybe seven or eight thousand dollars. Why don't we go to Paris for six weeks on that?'

‘Paris,' he said, mouthing the word as if it was almost proscribed; the reverie he'd never dared articulate. ‘You serious?'

‘Just last week, before you turned my life upside down in the most amazing way, I spent an evening at home, looking at short-term rentals in Paris. Traveling vicariously, so to speak. We could find a very nice studio in an area like the Marais for around five hundred dollars a week. Airfares – if we book well in advance – are around six hundred each. You can eat well and reasonably in Paris. And the studio will have a kitchen . . . so, yes, we could do a month and a half on seven thousand. I would negotiate with whatever hospital down here took me on to ensure that I'd either have six weeks' unpaid leave sometime during the first year – or, better yet, to push back my starting date until after Paris. In fact, if the apartment renovations might not be finished until early February we could go to France right after Christmas . . .'

‘Paris,' he said again. ‘Six weeks in Paris. I never thought that possible.'

‘It's possible.'

‘Let's do it then.'

I kissed him, then said:

‘Well, that was quite a difficult negotiation.'

He laughed.

‘Nothing with you is difficult,' he said.

‘And nothing with
us
will ever be difficult. I know that sounds maybe like far too much wishful thinking. But the truth is we've both done difficult. We've both done circumscribed lives. And now . . .'

‘The art of the possible.'

‘Exactly. In fact, that must be our credo. Those five words. The art of the possible.'

‘It's a good modus vivendi.'

‘The best.'

Bing
. A text message on my phone. I hesitated reaching for it, but Richard told me to take it. He needed to call the airport hotel and get our late checkout organized. As he disappeared into the other room with his phone, I picked up my cell and saw that Ben had written to me (spread out over four texts):

Hi Mom – still in Boston? Working flat out on new painting, and have run out of a certain azure blue I really need. Can't be found in Maine, so I get it from an art supply place in Boston. Would cost me mucho to get it here by Tuesday. If you could pick up today and drop at Portland Museum of Art on your way home, Trevor will be there tomorrow at noon and can collect it. Sorry to be a pain. Would be doing me huge favor. You're the best. Love – Ben