The Divide (24 page)

Then suddenly she broke away and stood there with her eyes clamped shut, clasping her head in both hands, blocking her ears too late to what she now knew, her mouth contorted in a soundless cry.

“Sarah—”

He tried to put a hand on her but as soon as he touched her, she lashed out and screamed.

“No-o!”

And then she looked at him and saw the tears rolling down his face, saw him standing there, so broken and hopeless, and she sobbed and her shoulders sagged and she reached out and drew him slowly toward her, both of them crying now. Her voice frail as a frightened child’s.

“No, Benjamin, no. Please. Please, don’t say it.”

He put his arms around her and she pressed her head against his chest, tried to burrow into him, to find some place in him where still he might love her and want her. Begging him softly,
Please, please.
She felt his body shake in counterpoint to her own. This wasn’t happening, he didn’t mean it, he couldn’t mean it.

“Sarah, sweetheart. I just—”

She put a hand across his mouth.

“Sshh. I don’t want to hear this. Please.”

And then the thought of somebody else in these arms, some other woman breathing this warm familiar smell that had always been hers and hers alone, reared and stabbed her in the chest and she clenched herself and shoved him away.

“It’s Eve, isn’t it?”

He hesitated then shook his head and started to say something, but she knew she was right.

“Have you slept with her?”

Her voice was like someone else’s. Low and quivering, like a sheet of ice about to break.

“It’s not like that, it’s—”

“Have you slept with her!”

“No!”

“You liar.”

“I swear to you—”

“You liar! You filthy, goddamn liar!”

He shook his head and turned and began to walk away. And the sight was so momentous that she couldn’t bear it and she ran and grabbed him and turned him around and tried to get him to hold her again. Only now something had changed and even though he dutifully put his arms around her again, they were limp, uncommitted, as if some final switch inside him had been thrown.

 

 

 

How many hours it was, he couldn’t tell. Time seemed suspended, its passing marked only in the fluctuation of their separate sorrows. She drifted around the house like a bereft ghost and he would follow her and find her, sitting hunched on a staircase or crumpled in the corner of a room they never used, sobbing or staring like a catatonic at her hands. Sometimes she would fly at him with her fists and scream at him and abuse him and the next moment she would grab him and drag him into her arms and plead with him, asking why, why, and telling him they could make it work, surely, after all these years.
She
could make it work, she could be better. If he would only give her a chance. For the children, for themselves. Please, Benjamin,
please.
Just one last chance.

Out on the deck, clinging to each other in the chill night air while the wind whisked the leaves of the floodlit birches, her sobbing subsided and a dazed and mournful calm fell at last upon them. They came in from the cold and he poured the wine that he had opened in what now seemed another lifetime and they took their glasses to the living room and sat together on the couch and talked.

She sat tense and straight-backed and in a small voice that sometimes cracked, she asked him about Eve and he answered with care and as honestly as he could, telling her that, believe it or not, it was true that they hadn’t slept together. In a phrase he had rehearsed—and which now, as he mouthed it, sounded so—he said Eve wasn’t the cause of his leaving but the catalyst. He expected Sarah to erupt at any moment, or at least interrupt, but she didn’t. She simply sat there, sipping her wine and watching him. And he could see something forming inside her as she heard him out, some new opinion of him, some new lens or prism through which henceforth she would see him, harder, clearer, more sharply focused.

Her silent stare was beginning to unnerve him but he tried to keep his voice calm and measured. He told her that for a long time he had been unhappy and that if Sarah was to be honest, she would have to agree that things hadn’t been good between them for years. He was no longer the person she married. And anyway, for God’s sake, they’d married so damned early, hadn’t they? It was then that he noticed she was shaking her head. She didn’t take her eyes off him, just gave this little, almost indiscernible shake of her head as if she couldn’t quite believe what she had heard.

“What?” he said.

“So, that’s it, is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“You share your life with someone for nearly a quarter of a century, have children, then decide you got married too young, you’re not happy, and leave.”

He had to lean forward to hear this, for it was uttered in a kind of breathy, shuddering whisper. But there was a new tone now that unsettled him, a gathering anger that was colder, more steely and controlled. And it frightened him. And maybe that was why he felt impelled to defend or justify himself and spoke the words he would later regret.

“I’ve never felt wanted by you. Never. And I look at you, at us, at the way we are. And I think, that’s how it’s going to be for the rest of our lives . . .” He stopped and swallowed. “And, Sarah, I can’t. I just can’t do it. There has to be more.”

She stared at him for a long time, her chin tilted upward. It was a look of almost detached assessment, icy and regal. Then she swallowed and slowly nodded and at last looked away.

“So. When are you going to tell the children?”

“Tonight. Or tomorrow morning. Whatever you think best.”

She laughed.

“Oh, please. It’s your party.”

“Then I’ll tell them tonight.”

“Fine. Oh boy, Benjamin, you sure do time things well. Happy holiday.”

She raised her glass and drank the last of her wine. Then she stood up and walked to the doorway where she stopped and, after a moment, slowly turned to face him again.

“When you say I’ve never wanted you, you’re wrong. You have always been wrong about that. What you are actually saying is I haven’t loved you in the way you wanted me to love you. You are such a goddamn control freak that you even want to control the way other people love you. And I’ve lived with that for all these years. Trying to be what you want me to be. But nobody can ever measure up to what you want them to be, Benjamin. Nobody.”

She stood there awhile, looking at him, her face quivering but defiant as she tried to hold back her tears. And then she gave a little decisive nod and turned and went.

He sat there for a moment then followed her through to the kitchen. She was scooping the uneaten turkey and salad off their two plates into the garbage. He walked over and came up behind her and tried to put his hands on her shoulders but she violently shrugged him away.

“Don’t touch me.”

He tried to help her clean up but she told him not to. She could do it, she said. So he went back to the living room and sat down on the couch. A few minutes later he heard her footsteps and turned to see her standing again in the doorway, looking at him. She had something in her right hand but her arms were folded and he couldn’t see what it was.

“This is your home, Benjamin. I’m your wife. These are your children.”

She unfolded her arms and spun what she was holding across the room so that it landed on the couch beside him. It was a framed picture of Abbie and Josh, one they’d taken on a skiing vacation in Canada two years ago. Sarah turned and disappeared and he heard the familiar clack of her shoes on the wooden stairs. He wondered if he should follow her but decided not to. In the vain hope of finding something to distract him and to shift the leaden weight in his chest, he switched on the TV and settled back to wait for the children.

Martin had already told him he must be mad. He was the only person who knew what Ben had been planning. One evening last week, he had invited Martin for a drink after work. It was something they rarely did and Ben could tell that his old friend was curious, even a little wary.

They were in a bar just off Jackson Avenue, one of those trendy new places that were all style and no soul. They were the oldest people there by a good twenty years and the music was so loud that they had to shout. They spent about five minutes making small talk about their kids and plans for Thanksgiving and then Martin cut to the chase and asked what was up.

“I’m leaving Sarah.”

“You’re
what
?”

Ben told him about Eve and Martin said he had half-guessed. Why else would he have been pushing those god-awful paintings, he said. He couldn’t believe the two of them hadn’t yet been to bed.

“So why the hell don’t you just fuck her and get it over with?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Ben, hello? Are you out of your mind? You want to throw everything away and you don’t even know what for? Jesus.”

Ben didn’t really know what to say, except that things hadn’t been good between him and Sarah for a long time and he felt he needed to, well, get out. Breathe. Feel alive again.

“How often have you seen her?”

“Eve? I don’t know. Four or five times, maybe. We talk a lot on the phone.”

“Jesus.”

“She makes me feel—”

“Alive.”

“Yes. As a matter of fact.”

Martin shook his head and stared into his vodka martini. Then he downed it in one gulp and ordered another. Ben hadn’t exactly been expecting sympathy. For many months the two of them hadn’t been getting along that well. Although Martin hadn’t spelled it out, Ben knew he blamed him for not bringing in more business and, in particular, for losing a project that they had spent almost two years developing. Just like the McMansion job, Ben had lost his temper with the clients and the whole deal had come unstitched. The difference was that this time it hadn’t even been over a matter of principle. He just couldn’t stand the people.

“So where are you going to live?”

“To begin with, I’ll go to my mother’s.”

“In Abilene? Terrific.”

“Then, if things work out with Eve, I’ll get a place in Santa Fe.”

“And what about us? What about work? You gonna commute every day from Abilene?”

“That’s really what I wanted to talk with you about.”

“You want out?”

“If that’s what you want. Or maybe I just take a sabbatical—”

“A
sabbatical
? Jesus, Ben. You are one fucked-up guy.”

That was the extent of the help and understanding his best friend had to offer. The next day when he came into the office he told Ben it would be better if they made a clean break of things. He coolly asked him to think about a reasonable buyout, bearing in mind the downturn in business and all the money they owed. Maybe he should get himself a lawyer, Martin added. Ben felt the first cool breeze of his new independent life, as if it had already begun.

When the kids came home, he was slumped asleep in front of
Casablanca.
The movie was ending, the plane gone. Bogart and Claude Rains were strolling off into the fog.

Sarah had heard the car and come downstairs. Ben walked out to the hallway. Josh’s eyes were like an albino rabbit’s and he was smiling, probably at something he and Abbie had been talking about as they came in. Abbie’s smile vanished in a flash. She looked at Sarah, standing at the foot of the stairs, her face as white as her bathrobe, and then at Ben, still disoriented by sleep and trying to order his thoughts. He could see the fear creep into her eyes.

“Mom? What is it?”

“Your father’s got something to tell you.”

“Abbie,” he began. “Josh . . .”

He stalled. His heart was beating so hard he could hardly hear himself think. All he had thought of saying seemed to have erased itself.

“For God’s sake, Dad, what is it?”

“Your mother and I are going to separate—”

“No,” Sarah cut in. “Tell the truth. Your father is leaving us.”

Abbie’s face started to crumple.

“What?” she said. “You’re
leaving
?”

“Sweetheart—”

“What are you
talking
about?”

She looked desperately at Sarah, a pitiful, incredulous little smile flicking on and off her lips. As if this might turn out to be some terrible, elaborate joke.

“Mom?”

Sarah shrugged and nodded.

“It’s true.”

Josh was peering at him, his eyes puckered in a frown as he tried to make sense of what was happening.

“Are you guys, like, serious?”

“Yes, Josh.”

“Just like that?” Abbie said.

Her shoulders were shaking and she was gnawing at her fist now. God almighty, Ben thought, what am I doing? Martin’s right. I must have gone mad. He reached out to her but she backed away from him, her face distorting with shock and disgust.

“Dad,” Josh said. “You can’t do this. I mean . . .”

He ran out of words and just stood there frowning, his mouth hanging open.

“It’ll all be okay, Joshie. Honestly—”

“No! It won’t be okay!” Abbie screamed. “You idiot! You’re ruining our lives!”

He tried to reach her again, but this time she lashed out at his hand and turned and ran sobbing toward the stairs. Sarah didn’t try to stop her, just stood aside to let her pass. The three of them stood there in silence as she ran up the stairs. The slam of her bedroom door made the whole house shake. Sarah shook her head and gave him a wry smile.

“Nice work, Benjamin.”

And she turned and followed Abbie up the stairs.

D
ressing up as genetically engineered fruit was Mel’s idea and had once seemed a pretty funny one. They had spent every evening of the week before Thanksgiving making their costumes out of painted papier-mâché and Mel’s, a scarlet strawberry with the head of a bemused-looking fish sticking out the front, was by a long way the best. Everyone who saw it just cracked up.