Heart of the Matter (31 page)

I sit on the edge of the couch now, listening to him snore for a moment before gently shaking him awake. “They wear you out, don’t they?” I ask as his eyes flutter open.

He yawns and says, “Yeah. Frankie got up before six this morning. And your daughter—

” He shakes his head fondly.

“My
daughter?”

“Yes,
your
daughter,” he says. “She’s too much.”

We both smile as he continues, “She is one particular little girl.”

“That’s a delicate way to put it,” I say.

He runs his hands through his hair and says, “She just about had a meltdown at the museum when her apple slices grazed her ketchup. And my God . . . to get that girl to wear socks. You’d think I was suggesting a straitjacket.”

“Tell me about it.”

“What does she have against socks, anyway?” he asks. “I don’t get it.”

“She says socks are for boys,” I say.

“So bizarre,” he mumbles. Then, through an exaggerated yawn, he says, “Would you be upset if we stayed in tonight?”

“You don’t want to go out?” I say, doing my best not to take his position as an affront, a difficult thing to do given that he went out last night, and had planned to go to a movie tonight, solo or otherwise.

“I
want
to ... I’m just so damn tired,” he says.

Although I am also exhausted, and still have a residual headache, I believe that Nick will take the conversation more seriously if we are in a nice setting—or, at the very least, stay awake, which is only a fifty-fifty proposition if we stay in. But I resist making this inflammatory point, instead blaming Carolyn, telling him I don’t feel comfortable canceling on her last-minute.

“So give her fifty bucks for the opportunity cost,” Nick says, folding his hands on his chest. “I’d pay fifty bucks not to go out right now.”

I look at him, wondering how much he would pay to avoid our discussion altogether. He stares back up at me, unyielding.

“Okay. We’ll stay in,” I relent. “But can we eat in the dining room? Open a good bottle of wine? Maybe get dressed a bit?” I say, eyeing his scrubs again, once a turn-on, now a grim reminder of one of the possible suspects in our rough patch. If I’m lucky, that is.

He gives me a look that conveys both annoyance and amusement, and I can’t decide which offends me more. “Sure thing,” he says. “Would you like me to wear a suit and tie? Perhaps a sweater vest?”

“You don’t own a sweater vest,” I say.

“Okay. So I guess that’s out,” he says, slowly standing and stretching. I study the lines of his back, feeling the sudden urge to throw my arms around him, bury my face in his neck, and confess my every worry. But something keeps me at a distance. Wondering if it is fear, pride, or resentment, I remain in my most efficient mode, informing him that I’ll handle calling Carolyn and ordering dinner—and that he should go upstairs and change. “Relax a bit,” I add with a strategic, indulgent smile. “Get your second wind.”

He gives me a circumspect look, then turns toward the stairs.

“Sushi okay with you?” I call after him.

“That’s fine,” he says with a shrug. “Whatever you want.”

***

A short time later, our sushi has arrived and we have reconvened in the dining room. Nick, wearing gray flannel slacks and a black rollneck sweater, appears to be in a good mood yet shows signs of nervousness, cracking his knuckles twice before opening a bottle of wine and pouring two glasses.

“So,” he says as he sits and gazes down in his miso soup. “Tell me about last night. Did you have fun?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Until I started to worry . . .”

With a trace of scorn, he says, “What are you worried about
now?”

I take a deep breath and a sip of wine before saying, “Our relationship.”

“What about it?” he says.

I can feel my breathing grow shallow as I struggle to keep things nonaccusatory, strip any melodrama from my reply. “Look, Nick. I know life is hard. Life with little kids just beats you down and makes you weary. I know that the stage of life we’re in ... can put strains on relationships . . . even the best marriages . . . but . . . I just don’t feel as close as we once were. And it makes me sad . . .”

As there is nothing in my statement that he can refute, he nods a small, careful nod and says, “I’m sorry you’re sad . . .”

“How do you feel?” I ask.

He gives me a puzzled look.

“Are you happy?”

“What do you mean?”

I know he knows
exactly
what I mean, but I still spell it out for him. “Are you happy with your life? With
our
life?”

“I’m happy enough,” he says, his spoon frozen in midair, his smile rigid, reminding me of a game show contestant who knows the answer but is still second-guessing himself before the final buzzer.

“Happy
enough?”
I say, stung by his qualifier.

“Tessa,” he says, his spoon returning to his bowl, his mood noticeably darkening. “What’s this about?”

I swallow and say, “Something is wrong. You seem distant. . . like something’s bothering you. And I just don’t know if it’s work or life in general or the kids. Or me . . .”

He clears his throat and says, “I don’t really know how to answer that. . .”

I feel a rise of frustration and the first stirrings of anger as I say, “This isn’t a trap, Nick. I just want to talk. Will you talk to me? Please?”

I wait for his reply, staring at the space below his bottom lip and above his chin, wanting to kiss and slap him at once.

“I don’t know what you want here . . .” he starts. “I don’t know what you’re looking for.” He holds my gaze for several seconds, before looking down to prepare his Sashimi. He carefully pours soy sauce into his saucer and adds a dab of wasabi before mixing the two with his chopsticks.

“I want you to tell me how you feel,” I say, now pleading.

He looks me directly in the eye and says, “I don’t know how I feel.”

Something inside me snaps as I unleash the first dose of sarcasm, nearly always lethal in a conversation between husband and wife. “Well then,” I say. “Let’s try an easier angle. How about telling me where you were yesterday afternoon?”

He gives me a blank stare. “I was at the hospital. I came home around five, had dinner with the kids, then went out for a few hours.”

“You were at the hospital all day?” I press, saying a last-ditch prayer that Romy misidentified the man in the parking lot, that she is in dire need of glasses.

“Pretty much,” he says.

“So you didn’t go over to Longmere yesterday?” I blurt.

He shrugs, avoiding my gaze, and says, “Oh. Yeah. Why?”

“Why?”
I
say incredulously.
“Why?”

“Yes. Why?” he snaps. “As in—
why
are you asking? As in—
why
did you fly home a day early to ask me that question?”

I shake my head, refusing to be fooled by his transparent tactic. “Why were you there? Did you go to take a tour of the school? Drop off an application? Did it have
anything
to do with Ruby?”

I already know the answer as he sighs and says, “It’s a long story.”

“We have time,” I say.

“I don’t really want to get into it right now,” he says.

“Well, you don’t have that choice,” I tell him. “Not when you’re married.”

“See. There you go again,” he says, as if he’s having an epiphany, a lightning bolt of insight into my mysterious, difficult persona.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.

“It means . . . that there don’t seem to be many choices left in this marriage. Unless you’re the one making them.”

“What?” I shout, becoming the first to raise my voice, something I vowed not to do.

“You have everything all mapped out. Where we live. What club we need to join. Where the kids should go to school. Who our friends will be. What we do with every hour, minute,
second
of our free time.”

“What are you talking about?” I demand.

He ignores me, continuing his rant. “Whether it’s going on a forced march through Target or a neighborhood Halloween party or a school tour. Hell, you even govern what I’m supposed to wear in my own house over takeout sushi. For
God’s
sake, Tessa.”

I swallow, feeling defensive yet outraged. “So tell me,” I say, grinding my teeth between words. “How long have you been feeling this way?”

“For a while.”

“So this has nothing to do with Valerie Anderson?” I say, going out on a dangerous limb.

He does not flinch. He does not even blink. “Why don’t you tell me, Tessa? Since you seem to have all the answers.”

“I don’t have
that
answer, Nick. In fact, your little friendship was news to me. A great, big newsflash. While I’m trying to have a good time in New York with my brother and best friend, I’m getting a text that you’re with another woman, sharing a cozy moment in the parking lot.”

“That’s great,” he says with hushed sarcasm. “That’s fucking great. Now I’m being watched—
followed
—like some kind of a bad guy.”

“Are you?” I shout. “Are you a bad guy?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask your posse of friends? Why don’t you take a poll of all the Wellesley housewives?”

I swallow, then raise my chin with a self-righteous flourish. “For the record, I told April that you’d never cheat on me,” I say.

I study his face, bearing an expression I can only describe as guilty.

“Why are you discussing me with April?” Nick asks. “Why is our marriage
any
of her concern?”

“She’s not part of this discussion, Nick,” I say, determined not to be sidetracked. “Other than the fact that she’s the one who told me you were at Longmere with Valerie Anderson. When it
was you
who should have filled me in.”

“I didn’t know you wanted a report of everything I did,” Nick says, standing abruptly and heading for the kitchen. A long moment later, he returns with a bottle of Perrier, refilling his glass as I pick up where we left off.

I shake my head and say, “I didn’t ask for a report. I didn’t want a report.”

“Then why do you surround yourself with people who would give you that report?”

It is a fair question, but one that I feel is completely ancillary to the bigger picture, the one he is blatantly avoiding. “I don’t know, Nick,” I say. “You might be right about April. But this isn’t about April and you know it.”

He remains infuriatingly silent as I sigh and say, “Okay. Let’s try this again, another way. Would you mind, now that we’re on the topic, telling me what you were doing at Longmere?”

“Okay. Yes. I’ll tell you,” he says calmly. “Charlie Anderson, my patient, called me.”

“He called you?” I say.

He nods.

“Was it a medical emergency?”

“No,” he says. “It was not.”

“Then why did he call you?”

“He was upset. There was an incident at school. A little girl teased him and he got upset.”

“Why didn’t he call his mother?”

“He did. He couldn’t reach her. She was in court. She had her phone turned off.”

“And his father?” I ask, even though I know the answer—that there
is
no father, perhaps the most unsettling fact in all of this.

Sure enough, Nick looks more impassioned than he has in the entire conversation as he says, “He doesn’t have a father. He’s a scared little kid who has been through hell and called his doctor.”

“He has no other family?” I say, unwilling to feel sympathy for anyone other than myself—and potentially my children. “Grandparents? Aunts or uncles?”

“Tessa. Look. I don’t know why he called me. I didn’t ask him. I just went. I thought it was the right thing to do.”

You are so fucking noble,
I think, but instead press on. “Are you friends with her?”

He hesitates, then nods. “Yes. I guess you could say we’re friends. Yes.”

“Close
friends?” I ask.

“Tessa. C’mon, Stop.”

I shake my head and repeat the question. “How close are you?”

“What are you getting at here?”

“What I am getting at,” I say, pushing my plate away, wondering how I possibly thought I could be in the mood for raw fish, “is what is going on with us. Why we don’t feel close anymore. Why you didn’t tell me that Charlie Anderson called you. That you’re friends with his mother . . .”

He nods, as if granting me a small point—which has a way of softening my next words. “And maybe, just
maybe,
this nagging worry I have about our relationship . . . maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe I need to take some antidepressants or go back to work or something.” I pick up my chopsticks, holding them skillfully in my hands, remembering how my father taught me to use them when I was a little girl, about Ruby’s age.

He nods again and says, “Yes. Maybe
you’re
the one who isn’t happy. In fact . . . I can’t remember the last time you seemed happy. First it was that you worked too much and were overwhelmed and resented the professors without kids who didn’t understand your situation. So I tell you to quit, that we will be fine without two incomes. So you do. And now. Now you seem bored and frustrated and annoyed by mothers who care too much about tennis or post inane Facebook updates or expect you to make homemade snacks for school parties. Yet you still fret about all of those things. You still play their game.”

I try to interrupt, try to defend myself, but he continues with more conviction. “You wanted another baby. Desperately. Enough that sex turns into a project. A nose-to-the-grindstone project. Then you have Frankie and you seem on the edge. Postpartum. Miserable.”

“I wasn’t postpartum,” I say, still focusing on the sting of his description of our sex, awash with remorse and inadequacy and fear. “I just had the baby blues.”

“Fine. Fine. And I understand that. I understand how hard it was. Which is why I took the early morning feeding. Why we hired Carolyn.”

“I know,” I say. “Nobody’s ever accused you of being a bad father.”

“Okay. But look. The point is—I don’t feel like I’ve changed. I feel like I’ve stayed the same. I’m a surgeon. That’s who I am.”