Results May Vary (24 page)

“I wouldn't have accused you of making it up,” I said. “And at least then I would have known. I could have talked to him about it. God, I mean, maybe I could have ended it then, and found somebody else who wouldn't have put me through this fucking nightmare I'm in right now!”

Ruby's face was tight and serious. “I'm sorry. I really am. You guys had been together for so long by then, and you seemed so totally happy and so sure about it. There was no doubt in my mind that Adam adored you. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“Fuck your ‘sorry,' ” I spat. “And fuck your ‘right thing.' ” I clambered up the steps of the pool, shivering violently as the chilly wind wrapped around my wet skin, and burrowed into my towel. “I guess you've told your precious boyfriend by now,” I added, and when I saw the guilty twitch of her face I knew I was right.

“Okay, I did, but—”

“FUCK YOU!” I yelled. “Fuck both of you! You know how much I would hate that, to be gossiped about behind my back like some kind of scandal. ‘Oh, let me tell you all my secrets about Caroline. She doesn't even know Adam's always had a thing for guys!' ”

“Care, it wasn't like that. We were saying how much it all sucks, and he asked me—”

“If you'd ever picked up on anything. Right? Oh, I know exactly how that conversation went down. And I know you're going to call him as soon as I walk out of here, and whine about how I wigged out when you told me your little secret, so can you just freaking save it, please? Save it. Please let me have a little dignity, and wait until you get home before you pick me apart.”

She opened her mouth to say something, then shut it again, shaking her head. “We wouldn't ‘pick you apart,' ” she said, wading out of the water. “It's not mean to talk about the problems going on with someone you care about. But yes, if it's that big a deal, I promise.”

Suddenly, it surged up into my throat—the thing I knew, that Ruby didn't. I felt like a teapot on a stove, boiling with angry steam pressed against my valve. The urge to release it, to watch her nervous little face twist into shock and pain, slammed through my veins so fast that I actually gasped.

“What?” she said. “What's wrong?”

Jonathan and I kissed a few months ago, and it was fucking awesome.
I wanted to say it. I wanted to lash out at her, make her hurt the way I hurt. Make
somebody
else hurt. Anybody at all.

“Care, you're freaking me out.”

I closed my eyes, dragged in a huge, slow breath, and forced myself to let the fury go.

“Care?”

“Oh, holy hell,” I whispered. “I am so very far from over this.”

I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead.

—Richard Feynman to his wife, Arline, October 17, 1946, sixteen months after her death

I could tell Neil knew what was coming as soon as I saw his face. He tucked his sleet-spattered coat on the back of the chair opposite me at Tunnel City Coffee the following Monday after work, and sat down with his forearms braced on the table. His eyes were as warm as ever, but a sad little smile curved one corner of his lips.

“Hey, Care. Something you need to talk about?”

Staring at his big, capable hands wrapped around his coffee cup, I nodded.

“Are you giving things another shot with Adam?”

That whipped my head up. “What? No. Oh god, no. The opposite. No, that is really, truly done. I'm calling a lawyer tomorrow.”

“Oh,” he said, his shoulders relaxing underneath his thick gray sweater. “Then what's going on? Is everything okay?”

I sighed, and reached for one of his hands with mine. “I think we need to stop seeing each other.”

He nodded slowly as he absorbed this, one corner of his lip pinched in his teeth. “Did I freak you out when I asked you to be exclusive?”

“No. I haven't dated anyone else this whole time. It's just…I thought I was more ready to move on than I actually am. My marriage is over, there's no question about that. But I've realized I'm a way bigger mess than I thought I was.”

“You don't seem like much of a mess to me,” he said.

“I think that's because I'm good at rebounding. Honestly, I'm scared that I'm rushing into this too fast. I like you so much. It feels so good to spend time with you—I'm scared it feels too good, you know? Like I haven't given myself enough time to get Adam totally out of my system, and be by myself, and grieve for our marriage and finish letting it go. I'm scared that when I'm with you I'm just transferring that over instead of reaching a real ending point.”

He tugged at his earlobe. “Well, yes and no. Dating somebody new after ending a marriage isn't some radical new experience. A lot of the basic functions are the same. You spend time together, you have sex, you cook meals, you talk. The fact that you're doing that with me doesn't mean you're transferring your feelings from your old relationship.”

I must have looked skeptical, because he continued. “I know it's different, because Eva has been gone a lot longer than Adam has been…exploring. But for me this feels familiar in all the right ways, and new in all the right ways. Familiar, because I'm spending time with a woman I enjoy and admire and am attracted to.”

“And what are the right ways that it's new?”

“You,” he said, wrapping his hands over my wrists where they rested on the table. “Everything about you. Being with you is kind of like diving into a tray of fresh-baked cookies when you're starving. I don't want to stop seeing you, even if you're still figuring a few things out.”

“I don't want to, either,” I said. “But I'm feeling like I probably should.”

“Caroline, I really like you,” he said softly. “But I still miss her, every day. I will never not miss her. It will never not hurt. I'm just trying to find my way back to something that feels like life. So I don't mind that you're trying, too.”

“I know. But the truth is, that's part of this, too. I'm certainly not ready for anything serious right now, but if I ever were…I don't think I'd be happy being permanently stuck behind your children
and
your wife.”

“Is that how I make you feel?”

“I'm not blaming you. I mean, how could it not be like that? I just don't think it's a situation I should stay in.”

“Fuuuck,” he sighed, rubbing both hands over his scalp. “That first time we slept together. I'm sorry about that. I told you I was. You have to know it never happened again.”

“You didn't tell me, actually. But I believe you. And I honestly don't blame you even one little bit. But I can't put myself into a situation where all I'll ever be is second fiddle to a ghost.”

His lips compressed with frustration and he slung backward in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. I could see the impulse to argue with me simmering in his face. But he didn't. Which, coming from Neil, said more than enough.

For a few moments, all there was between us was the hiss of the espresso machine and the clatter of dishes and cash registers. A few tables away, two college-aged girls were on what, judging by their nervous but excited body language, looked like a first date. I wondered whether they'd be in love or hate each other a year from now.

“When I was in Vegas,” I said, pulling my eyes away from the girls, “I finally hit the bottom of how far the problems went. It was worse than I'd ever realized, because even the whole time I was begging him to tell the truth to me, Adam would not stop lying. I'm just so…angry. I feel like it's poisoning me.”

“You think I'm not angry, too?”

“But it's different. You're angry at life, for being miserable and cruel and unfair. I am only angry at
him.
I'm so furious at him for putting someone else in front of me and lying to me and shitting all over our marriage, I'm scared I'm never going to be able to let it go. I don't want to be this bitter, angry person, and I hate that he turned me into this.”

“You won't be. Not always.”

“I don't know that. I don't know how I'm ever going to trust somebody again. I mean, how? How am I supposed to? It wasn't only the cheating, it was everything he hid from me, including the fact that he has
always
liked guys. Yeah,” I said, as Neil's eyebrows flicked northward, “that was the big revelation I got in Vegas. Adam told me he's in love with Patrick, and Ruby finally decided to inform me that my husband apparently had a passionate relationship with another guy from our high school the summer before we got together. Which means I'm not sure I understood
anything
about my marriage correctly. After something like that, how can you ever believe that the next person you want to trust isn't capable of the same kind of deceit?”

Neil sighed and slowly shook his head. “I don't know, baby. That's a doozy, all right. I can tell you I've never hidden anything from you, and I never would, but I understand those words don't mean a lot when the last person who made that promise wound up going back on it.”

And the awful thing was, he was right. The words
didn't
mean a lot. Even coming from someone I cared about and trusted as instinctively as I did Neil, there was nothing where my certainty should have been. Nothing at all. He was an honest, good-hearted, wonderful man; but then, I'd thought Adam had been, too.

I turned my face toward the window, where a mix of sleet and rain spat down from a grim white sky, and tiny pellets of ice bounced and danced on the sill outside. All of a sudden, I felt unbearably tired. I had proven everything I could possibly need to prove—I was not only fine on my own, but even recovering some independence I hadn't noticed I'd surrendered. I was desirable, not just to a kind and beautiful man like Neil but, in case I had wondered, to the general population of dudes trawling Vegas for a warm hole to ejaculate in. I had, until the nuclear fight at the pool, grown closer with Ruby than I'd felt since I could remember. I'd done all this proving and growing, and somehow the pain of Adam's betrayal still festered inside me, like a fetid old well in the woods half covered with branches. No matter how badly I wanted to relax into Neil's undemanding warmth, I couldn't contaminate him with the water from that well. It would poison anything we tried to make.

“I wish like crazy that I could change my mind here,” I said softly. “I know you're not trying to push me into anything serious, but still, I just…I don't think I'm ready. I don't trust myself with you right now. I don't want to make you regret this.”

His smile was sad but sweet, and in spite of everything, it made me feel better. It told me he understood that I was trying hard to do the right thing. “Okay. I respect that. And I appreciate it.” He half-rose from his seat, cupped my face in one hand, and gave me a lingering kiss that made me lean toward him like a flower. And then he let me go.

He stood, whirled his coat from his chair back onto his arms, and zipped it closed with the decisiveness of motion I enjoyed about him. “Guess I'll see you around,” he said, with that one-sided smile, and then he walked to the door, flipped his hood up over his head, and stepped out into the rain.

I'd known that ending things with Neil would make me feel like crap. What I didn't expect is that I would start missing him as soon as he walked away.

The next day was the first time the view of North Adams didn't lift me. In the thin, tentative light of an early winter morning, the landscape looked like a bruise: raw gray-brown mountains, smudged with white and overhung by purple, pewter-tipped clouds. As I hurried toward the entrance to the museum building, the frigid, smoke-scented wind whipped at my face until my eyes watered. Without consciously deciding to, I stopped in front of
Tree Logic
and looked up.

Ice from the previous day's storm limned the branches of the young trees, accentuating their awkward posture. They looked weighted down and tired. It had been a frigid winter—what if they were dead under there, and we didn't even know? What if maybe planting a bunch of trees upside down just to see what they would do was not so much an artistic expression as it was an exercise in how to slowly kill some perfectly healthy trees?

Inside my office, I dialed the number Jonathan had given me months ago—his cousin Harriet, an attorney who practiced in Brooklyn.

Her tone was brisk and efficient. “Caroline, nice to talk to you….I wish it were under better circumstances.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“So, I don't actually practice family law myself, but I'm happy to refer you to a colleague who does. I just wanted to check one thing with you first. Jonathan mentioned you live in Massachusetts, but you want to file in New York, is that right?”

“Yeah, we were married in New York.”

“Well, the state where you married doesn't have a bearing on where you file the divorce; it should be your state of residence. So if you live in Massachusetts, then you need to file there. And you should consult an attorney who's in the Massachusetts bar. I'm afraid I don't have any connections there at all. I'm so sorry I wasn't able to be of more help.”

Embarrassment, and a slick of oily guilt, slid over me as I put down the phone.

I was an idiot. I had done the legal equivalent of self-diagnosing via WebMD. I thought I'd been sensible, going right to the New York state court website back in September instead of to Divorces4Less, but what I'd utterly failed to recognize was that I didn't belong on the New York website in the first place. And if I'd had the common sense to call a living, breathing lawyer at any point before this moment—as both my sister and my mother had repeatedly told me to do—I would have found that out.

Well, at least I'm working with the correct state now,
I thought, as I sheepishly typed “Massachusetts divorce” into my browser. Scanning the requirements and the procedures, most of which reflected the same legalese terms that the New York pages had, I spotted something that knocked my heart down under my stomach.

Massachusetts had no waiting period to file. I could have started the process as early as I'd wanted to. Had Adam somehow been convinced not to fight me on it, the divorce could have been nearly complete by now. This could almost be over.