The Good Enough Husband (25 page)

“Michael—”

“We could come back to New York.”

“Please—”

He pulled her shirt over her head, and her panties off. She could tell Michael was trying to hold himself back. He took one nipple, then the other in his mouth. Betrayal was her middle name. She tried to hold back, but it felt good what Michael was doing. A moan escaped.

“Oh, God, you turn me on so much,” he said through clenched teeth.

Michael did something he never did. He kept his underwear on. He rolled her onto her belly, and gently massaged her shoulders, her arms, her back. The tension of living so many months with indecision eased. “Turn over.” She did. He sat astride her, his knees on either side of her hips. She closed her eyes so as not to witness her duplicity. He massaged her neck, her breasts, touching everywhere except her most sensitive center. Involuntarily, her back arched, and Michael finally touched her there.

She made no move to touch Michael’s erection pressing against her insistently. Michael did something he never did. He parted her legs and kissed her softly, lovingly. She held her breath, curled her toes, tried to hold off the ripples of pleasure radiating out. When Michael squeezed one nipple, then the other, she couldn’t hold back any longer. She bit her lip to keep in her cries, but she could feel the pulse of her orgasm nonetheless. She knew Michael could feel it too. He didn’t say a word as he shucked his own clothes. He reached back in his pocket for something. Hanna heard the distin
ctive rip of a condom wrapper. God, was this her life? Her husband didn’t want to have sex with someone who could be carrying some kind of disease. “Michael, if you need that. Maybe…”

“Shh. It’s not what you think.” Then he entered her. Hannah steeled herself for the usual two or three strokes before he grunted his satisfaction. She tried not to let the pleasure build for a second time because it would never be fulfilled.

“Michael?” she said breathlessly, questioningly. The coil was turning, tighter, tighter. It wasn’t long before the dam broke, and she came a second time. Michael finally came with his own hoarse shout of satisfaction.

“Shit. I hope Shay didn’t hear. I don’t want to have to explain this over breakfast.”

Michael silently padded to the bathroom without a word. He came back and handed her the shirt she’d discarded earlier. He put on his own pajamas and laid down next to her, pulling up the duvet.

“What? Why?”

“The condom is called ‘delayed pleasure’ or something stupid like that.”

“What does it do?”

“I think you saw what it does.”

“Oh.”

“Hannah, I’m not a complete moron. I hear you. I get it. This started out all wrong, but I think we can make it work. I think we proved it could work between us in bed. If we can fix this, we can fix the rest.”

“But what about the baby, Michael? Could it be yours?”

He let out a long, defeated breath. “No, there’s only the most minute possibility that the baby is mine.”

“So our—no, your—test wasn’t one of the botched ones?”

“No. What I told you in September still stands. I’m infertile.”

“Why couldn’t you tell me that earlier?”

“I wanted the baby to be mine, Hannah. It’s what we wanted. It’s what we were trying for. If you’d gotten pregnant six months earlier, you would have never gone north. You’d have never met
him
. You’d have loved
me
, stayed with
me
.”

It was true. Maybe her dissatisfaction wouldn’t have shown up. Maybe it would, but in a year, or five years. With a toddler or grade-schooler in the mix, it would have been long past the point of no return.

Hannah swore softly to herself. She hadn’t thought about Ben in hours. She’d had sex with her husband and she felt as guilty as sin.

1
6

Hannah popped one of the K-Cups into her father’s coffee maker. Four minutes later, she was working on her caffeine high. She could give up alcohol for nine months, but she didn’t know about coffee.

Layered in flannel, her father made his own coffee and joined her at the dining room table.

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

The sandstone and brick house had been built in the mid nineteenth century. Surely he couldn’t have heard anything. Hannah couldn’t remember the last time she blushed. Heat and mortification spread up her arms, and down her face and neck like bad hives. She did not want to talk about sex with her dad. She hadn’t wanted to do it at fifteen and she certainly didn’t want to do it now.

Play it cool, Hannah. “I’m still going to Copenhagen,” she said neutrally.

“How does Michael feel about that?” She shrugged. “How does that Ben guy feel about it?” Her left shoulder lifted and fell.

“What are you doing, Hannah? I love you, honey. Don’t get me wrong. But you’re pregnant. You have no house, no job, and no plans. I know you’re not sixteen, but it still smells like a disaster waiting to happen.”

She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t. Why did her dad have do this? She’d been reduced from thirty-seven to seventeen in less than ten seconds. “Look, you know I’ll help you out. You can stay here, or at Water Street.” He’d bought an apartment for her in her twenties. It was leased to tenants now. The stairs creaked. Michael was coming down. “I want you to seriously consider this. It’s not just you anymore.”

Hannah tried not to pull back when Michael leaned in to kiss her full on the lips. “Good morning. That coffee looks good.”

Her father pointed to the kitchen. “It’s in there.”

Michael disappeared into the galley kitchen and was back ten seconds later. “Where’s the pot?”

“It’s a K cup,” her dad said. Michael looked perplexed. “Hannah, can you?” Michael asked. He always asked. She’d always complied.

Her father tried to hide the look of disgust on his face. “I’ll do it.”

Like a good host, Shay came back with coffee, milk, and sugar on a small tray. Without her mother, he’d become quite domesticated. He didn’t sit down again. Instead he belted his robe, gathered his cup, and said, “I’ve got a rehearsal today.” He looked directly at Hannah. “You need to think about what I said. Especially if I have to serve notice.” The stairs creaked again, this time as her father shuffled up.

“Serve notice on who?”

“The Water Street apartment.”

“Your dad still owns that? I thought he was planning to sell when we moved to California.”

“He didn’t. Got a firm to manage it. He offered it back to me this morning.”

“Did you tell him we’re thinking of getting back together?” Michael leaned in to kiss her. She turned her head this time.

“I never said–”

“Were you throwing me a bone last night?”

She could not get this right to save her life. Someone was always angry at her. “I’m human, Michael, if you press my buttons, you’re going to get a response.”

“Were you turned on at all last night?”

Hannah had never been a diplomat. She didn’t work at the United Nations for a reason. A lack of tact was her distinct weakness. She dodged. She feinted. She’d already declared herself before God, their families and all their friends. Why wasn’t that enough?

“What do you want me to say?”

“What do I want? I want you to say, Michael you’re a god.” He quirked his mouth in an odd half-smile. “You could try: I love you. Let’s have the family that we’ve always planned.”

“And when the child comes out with curly dark hair, or blue gray eyes, what then?”

“Then we love him or her like a child should be loved.” He paused for a long moment, looking at her critically. “I looked in the mirror this morning. I’m not exactly the hunchback of Notre Dame. Are you even attracted to me? Have you ever been?”

She had promised Ben, she’d never lie to him. Maybe she should extend that to everyone. Maybe it would be her new year’s resolution. January was too long to wait. She’d start now.

“You’re a wonderful guy, Michael.” For someone else.

He sat back, crossing his arms across his chest, face as closed off as his posture. “Stop spinning me, Hannah. Can you answer this one question?”

“Any woman would be happy to—”

“But not you, right?” He jabbed an angry finger in her dire
ction. “What about you, Hannah? I’m not asking you about all the women in California or even the available women in the tri-state area. Bottom line it for me. The woman I love, the woman I’m married to doesn’t want me.”

She ducked her head. If she said that one little three letter word: yes, all could be okay again. They could fly off into the su
nset in New York or California. He could be a dad to their one child. She could pursue music and photography. But what would happen when the baby grew up and moved out? Would she be back in the same place, only in her mid-fifties? She did not want to live without exploring the possibility of happiness. She looked into his blue, blue eyes, decision made.

“No.”

“No what, Hannah?”

“Please don’t make me say this, Michael,” she whispered. She could feel the trickle of tears running down her cheeks. His eyes watered in response to hers. He shook his head, imploring her. “Say it, Hannah.”

“I think I want a divorce.”

“Think?”

She took a deep breath. “I want a divorce, Michael Keesling.” Her voice didn’t quaver. “I don’t want to be married to you anymore.”

“Now I feel like shit.” He turned away, hiding the hurt she knew would be in his eyes. “Are you sure? This is the last time I’m going to ask. If I walk out this door today, I’m not coming back.”

In one month, two men had turned their back on her. Hannah’s stomach clenched. She was giving up something that had been good enough for years, for the unknown. Ben may never take her back. She may raise her baby alone, and die alone like one of her spinster ‘aunties.’ Resolving not to regret what she said, she spoke. “I’m sure, Michael. I want love, not obligation, not possession. You have never been able to give that to me. Last night didn’t change that.”

Michael’s blue eyes grew as cold as the winter sky outside. Where there’d been warmth, there was now distance. He stood and walked upstairs. Maybe five, maybe fifty minutes later, he came back down dressed, overnight bag in hand.

He placed his cool lips against her cheek. The kiss felt like a slap.

“Where will you go? Do you have a flight booked? You can stay here instead of JFK or something. I’m sure it would be okay with Shay,” Hannah said, trying to fix the one problem she could.

Michael was silent. He shook his head. “This is goodbye, Hannah.”

He showed himself out the front door. It slammed, the heavy wood crashing against the brass. In one fell swoop, she’d lost her husband and everything that she’d worked toward over the last years, forever.

17

“You didn’t have to make the trek,” Hannah said to her dad.

“It’s only Newark. I’ve got some music,” Shay said, gesturing to the iPod in his pocket and oversized noise-canceling headphones hanging around his neck. “It’ll be fine.”

Hannah tried not to cry. She was not the crying type, but her emotions were on overload. Gesturing to her bags, she said, “Well, the days of seeing me to the gate are over, so we should say goo
dbye now. That security line looks seriously long.”

“Hannah Banana,” her dad said, enfolding her in his arms. With those two little words, the tears came in earnest. He hadn’t used that term of endearment in years. Twice in the same week was her undoing.

“I’m sorry to cry on your coat,” Hannah said, pulling back. The salt tinged tears left tiny dark brown spots on her father’s leather jacket.

“Stop apologizing, honey. Call me when you get there. Tell your mother I said hello.”

“Okay, Daddy.”

***

The seven-hour flight was uneventful. Unable to take the sleeping pills Hannah favored for transatlantic travel, she dozed fitfully. Her heart twisted with guilt whenever she thought of those last moments with Michael at her dad’s dining room table. Whatever his flaws, he was a fundamentally good man. And she’d been careless with his affections. Utterly careless.

Hannah realized she’d probably used the fact that he loved her to get what she thought she wanted. And when she didn’t want him anymore, she’d casted him aside. She shifted in the uncomfortably hard airline seat. It wasn’t that she hadn’t loved Michael. It was that going from friends to lovers had been the biggest mistake of her life. She’d lost her friend years ago. That hurt more than losing her marriage.

***

Every single person spoke to her in English, and she replied to every single person in Danish. It was always this way. Even with the immigration of non Scandinavians to Denmark, people never assumed she could be Danish. There were so many people who looked like her mom, and spoke the first language she remembered hearing, that she felt like she was coming home. But her skin color and curly hair always caused people to treat her like an ‘other.’ Hannah couldn’t remember how many conversations she had with
waiters, or shop owners explaining her origins after she spoke to them in their shared native tongue.

After she cleared customs, Mor and Axel were waiting for her. Freja was still intimidatingly tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed and slender. Her shape was the mirror image of Hannah’s. It was like looking in the mirror at a paler, blonder, older version of herself. Up close, Hannah could see gray hairs mixing in with the blond. There weren’t many people at the airport that early in the morning, and most of the kiosks and shops were closed. The wood floors and baffled ceilings muted whatever noise remained from the tired travelers. Mercifully, the train ride to her mother’s flat was short.

Orange. Sometimes it felt like everything in Copenhagen was orange. The walls of her mother’s living room, the slim Scandinavian chairs, the colors in the framed prints on the walls. The apartment was small by American standards, but her mother and Axel had made it cozy after almost a decade.

Axel put her bags in the small second bedroom, which was mercifully not orange, although the candy floss pink wasn’t much better. Her mom pulled out her trusty kettle to make them tea.

Although Hannah’s mother spoke to her in Danish, upon Axel’s entrance in the kitchen, she reverted to English. Like most Danes, he was fairly fluent, but she hoped the nuance went over his head. He was okay. He loved her mother, but they’d never gotten close in the last ten years. As selfish as it seemed at thirty-seven, she wanted her mom all to herself. She was relieved when he announced that he was going to work.

“So you’ve closed the door on Michael,” her mom said after Hannah told her about her time in New York.

“It was the right thing to do. He may be upset now, but hopefully he can find the right woman for him.”

Her mother’s disdain for the decision was written all over her face. “This was a big mistake you will regret, Hannah.”

“I think I’ll regret not trying to work things out with Ben more.”

“And what do you know about Ben? You knew him for hat, a month or two. And you’re giving up all the years you knew M
ichael. He loved you, married you, and even said he’d stay with you if the baby wasn’t his. Where is Ben? Shut away somewhere in the wilderness of California? You’re here, pregnant and alone, and he has not been man enough, loved you enough to be with you?”

She felt like a whiny teenager, but said it anyway. “But I love him, Mor.”

Her mother shrugged derisively. “I loved your father. All that love and passion and good sex is not enough.” Hannah shook her head, and drank more tea. She did not want to think of her mother and father having sex. “Oh Hannah, grow up. You are old enough to deal with this.”

Hannah was getting angry. “Neither you or Daddy were ever fans of Michael. I never saw two more morose people than the two of you at my wedding. But now you’re both acting like I killed a puppy in cold blood now that I’ve left him.”

“Your dad and I probably weren’t fair. We’re both artists and it seemed odd for you to be marrying this banker, with all his designer clothes, and little luxuries. He seemed so vain, and to always be distracted by work. It was rude, I thought, for him to be tapping away on that phone every time the three or four of us had a meal. But from what you’ve said over the years, my position softened. Maybe your father has as well. No matter how flaky or flighty you’ve been about your careers, he’s always supported you. You’ve always had a nice place to live, a nice car. And now I know he was willing to take you back after you cheated on him and got pregnant with someone else’s baby.”

“If you want frankness, then I’ll give you frankness. Michael was terrible in bed. And I’m tired of shitty sex. It’s only ever been good with two people—”

“Lucas and Ben,” her mother finished.

“How did you—”

“I have known you your whole life, Hannah. So the sex was good with them? Yes?”

Even with her mother in the room, Hannah felt a shiver from her belly to her sex.

“Yes, very good.”

“I am saying. It’s not all there is. The sex was very good, pa
ssionate, with your father. But he was never around.” Hannah resisted the temptation to put her index fingers in her ears and sing ‘la, la, la.’ She loved her mom and dad equally and didn’t want to have to think of them struggling through the same things she did. And even though she knew the facts of life, she never wanted to think of them having sex. “He also had passionate sex with every backup singer in the world. Maybe the sex with Axel is not as passionate, but he’s caring, giving…” Freja had been puttering around the kitchen, but stopped in her tracks to jab her finger pointedly on the butcher block table top, “…and most of all he is here, every day and every night. I do not have to wonder.”

Hannah lost her breath first. Then her nose started tickling. Tears were around the corner. She tried to keep them in, but she couldn’t catch her breath, keep her shoulders from shaking.

“Oh, honey. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to come down on you.” Hannah’s soft cries turned into big, noisy, messy, sobs. Freja put down the dishrag, ran to her daughter and knelt by the kitchen chair. She drew Hannah into her arms as she cried. Freja shook her shoulders gently. “What could be so bad?”

“It’s not as simple as you make it out to be, Mor. He makes me feel so bad about myself.”

“Did he hurt you, honey? Tell me.”

Hannah took the deepest breath she could and coughed. “He needs other women to have sex with me.” The look of shock on her mother’s face was enough to start the tears leaking again.

“What are you saying?”

Despite the mortification washing over her in wave after cres
ting wave, she told her mother about her husband’s need to look at other women while she pleasured him. The way he treated her like an object to be possessed, not a woman to be loved. Freja’s swift intake of breath was full of condemnation.

“I never knew. I thought we shared everything.”

“I didn’t want you to hate him any more than you already did. I’d chosen him. I had to live with it.”

“You didn’t have to live with it. You never did. Daddy and I have always been here. Why did you stay so long? How could you have thought of having a baby if things were like this?”

“Where would I go?”

“But you’re a smart, talented, and beautiful woman.”

“You’re biased.”

“Honey, there are plenty of men who will love you the way you are.”

Hannah threw up her hands in surrender. “Who? Where are they? They all leave me, Mom. Lucas left. Ben left. Every single one in between walked out on me. Michael may have had his flaws. But I knew he would never leave me.”

Her mother held her hand for a long time, finally squeezing it and standing up. She picked up the dishrag, wrung it out, and laid it over the chipped porcelain sink.

“So tell me why is Ben so wonderful? Why are you willing to give up everything for a chance with him?”

“He’s ethical. He loves his family. He loves animals.”

“What do you mean by ethical?”

“He has a strict moral code that he lives by.”

“Such as?”

“He doesn’t believe in casual sex. Despite the societal pressure to date as many women as a guy can, he doesn’t do it.”

“Go on.”

“He doesn’t tell lies. He has always been truthful, in his fee
lings about his ex-wife, in his feelings about his father’s infidelity, in his feelings about me.”

Hannah felt the prick of tears in the corners of her eyes, again. It had to be the hormones. She hadn’t cried as much in her life as she had in the last three months. “When he found out I was pre
gnant, he didn’t waver, didn’t hesitate. He asked me to marry him in front of all his family and friends. Once he does something, he throws his full heart into it.”

“That seems the opposite of you, right now.”

That hurt. She wasn’t this dishonest, deceitful person. She had handled the whole breakup with Michael badly. It would probably always be her greatest regret. “But he makes me want to be better. Being with him made me want to commit to my art once and for all. I wanted to commit to him. I don’t ever see myself wanting to leave him.”

“If you knew all this about him, why could you not wait? You should have put Michael behind you and then pursued a relatio
nship with him. He might have respected you for that honesty.”

“I know it was impulsive. But he was what I needed.”

Her mother was silent for a long time, seeming to consider all that Hannah had said. “Maybe you have that something extra that Shay and I didn’t have. Maybe I am wrong and it is something worth saving. But it seems that you have really botched it up. How are you going to fix it?”

The tears leaked from her tired eyes and ran down her cheeks again. She was so tired, from jet lag, from early pregnancy, from going through the emotional wringer.

“I don’t know, Mor. But I’m going to try.”