The Measures Between Us (9 page)

Still Henry wouldn't concede, and he sensed that Lucy didn't want him to give in, that she admired the fight in him. Not that she didn't believe what she was saying, but she was also bullying him so she could witness him standing up for himself. He felt there was more at stake in their argument than whether thousands of eighteen-year-olds should be registering for English comp.

Only once did their familiar argument careen into a nasty fight. On the drive home from a cocktail party, Lucy launched into her usual rant. Her frustration was sharper than usual, since she had been suffering a severe bout of morning sickness all week. Henry had just learned, at the reception, that a prize he was a finalist for had gone to another student. The news made him want to head for the door, and though he could have easily blamed his exit on Lucy's pregnancy nausea, he knew it would have been bad form to leave prematurely, so he stayed, trying to smother his disappointment with bourbon. He planted himself in a corner of the room and gazed at everyone milling about, laughing their cocktail-party laughs and nodding and smiling and having a much better time than he was. The prizewinner was there, accepting the congratulatory handshakes and toasts of faculty and adoring undergraduates. The dean of the graduate school greeted him warmly, and Henry overheard the dean say, “It's wonderful news. Very impressive work. We didn't expect any less.”

Henry was angry not only because he hadn't won the prize but because one of his professors had chosen that night to tell him. He touched Henry's arm when he said it, as if he knew the news would sting. Maybe Lucy was right—the faculty members were erudite as hell, some of them even brilliant, but morons when it came to basic emotions.

Lucy spotted him standing alone and excused herself from a small group and wandered over. She asked if anything was wrong. He shook his head. He didn't want her to know yet, didn't want her sympathy because it would only make him feel worse, as if he needed her help to shoulder the disappointment. He stared hard at the glass of seltzer and bobbing lime quarter she clutched in her right hand, afraid that if he looked her in the eye he would confess.

Instead he tried to pretend it was just another party, and after he convinced Lucy nothing was bothering him he mingled from group to group, refilling his drink whenever it got low. Not many in the department were drinkers, and those who did indulge usually stuck to wine, maybe a vodka tonic if they were feeling daring. Henry's fondness for bourbon was an exception, and it was something everyone knew about him, common enough knowledge that the hosts of dinner parties, after asking whether he'd like a drink, often retrieved a dusty bottle. They made a big show of uncapping it and pouring two fingers over ice. Occasionally they said, “I think I'll join you—haven't tasted the stuff in years.” They rarely finished even a single drink, and Henry got a perverse sort of pleasure from watching them feign liking something they clearly did not.

As he and Lucy walked to the car after the reception, she asked if he wanted her to drive home. “Why?” he challenged.

“No reason,” she said. “It just looked like you'd had a few drinks in there.”

“I did and I'm fine. I've driven on more.”

“Not sure that's all that reassuring.”

In the car she began her customary post-party critique.

“Lucy,” Henry said, interrupting her, “I really don't want to hear this shit tonight.” He reached for the radio and switched it on. “Let's just listen to some music,” he said, turning it up louder than she usually liked.

She didn't talk for the next few minutes. The headlights revealed a fine mist, and on any other night, a night without bitter letdown, the fog would have seemed romantic, and Henry might have suggested stopping by the reservoir along Route 9, walking a loop around the water, the two of them falling into a kiss by
the bramble. The gauzy moonlight would inspire them, the glassy water, the star-pricked sky. He'd find a tree to brace her against, and they wouldn't bother stripping off all their clothes, just move aside what was necessary.

“Why are you going so fast?” Lucy asked.

“I'm not speeding,” Henry lied. He eased off the gas pedal slightly.

“Yes, you are. What's wrong with you? Something happened at the party to put you in a horrible mood. Why won't you just tell me?”

Lucy extended her left arm and tried to rub the back of his neck, but he coiled away. “I thought I was the one who was supposed to hate these bullshit pseudo-intellectual parties,” she said, pulling her arm back to her side. “I don't know why you would have had such a bad time. I mean, they're
your
friends. It's your thing.”

Henry didn't say anything.

“What's the department head's name again?” Lucy asked.

“Littleton,” Henry answered.

“Right. Tonight he was telling a bunch of us about one of his students from ages ago who wrote a term paper in which he explained that the cold war was a war that was fought in a freezing place. ‘Imagine that,' ” Lucy said, mocking Dr. Littleton's grating voice. “ ‘A war fought in Iceland! The famously hostile citizens of Reykjavik!' ”

“I said I don't want to hear about it tonight.”

Lucy sighed. “God, you're in such a terrible mood.”

“I don't want to talk about it,” Henry said. “I don't want to talk about my mood, and I don't want to talk about the party. For once can't we just not discuss it? Do we have to do this every fucking time?”

“You know, I go to these things with you. I dress up and look nice and I try not to complain too much—in fact I never complain too much … I'd think you could be a little more appreciative.” Lucy was staring at him but he kept his eyes on the road. “Do you think this is how I like to spend my night, with self-satisfied blowhards?”

“Lucy, please, I don't want to have this argument with you now. Not tonight. Can't we give it a rest? It's over now.”

They were still a few miles from home, on a stretch of Comm Ave. that was less clogged with homes. The topography was hillier, the yards bigger, the houses set back farther from the street. It was the closest to country that suburbia got.

Few other cars were out on the road. Henry wanted his wife to shut up so he could enjoy the near solitude. The soft mist, the radio in the background, the streetlamps turned into blurry, imperfect moons by the fog—he felt that if Lucy would only be quiet, this leaden night would end. It was impossible to imagine that hours earlier, when they were getting ready for the party, he was happy.

These letdowns were nothing new; graduate school was peppered with disappointments, even when you were thriving. But they never hurt less, and each time Henry suffered such a defeat it threw him into a funk, often for as long as a week. Years before he would have sought solace by telling Lucy. He used to share with her the bad news along with the good, and they celebrated the achievements with long dinners and endless wine. When he missed a research award or had a paper turned down by a journal, Lucy tried her best to comfort him, assuring him it was all political anyway. She said all the right things, and often he trusted her. Yet recently there was something about her sympathy that he
didn't quite believe, partly because she was so disapproving of higher education in general. He came to feel that he was asking for help, and the very asking made him feel even worse, weaker. He wanted to be a person who never required comforting.

He also didn't want his wife thinking he was a loser. Missing an award made him feel like a failure, and he thought that if such a notion occurred to him then surely Lucy might think the same. This undeniably beautiful woman, who could render him speechless with something as small as blinking her eyes when she woke up from a nap. By keeping the bad news to himself, he could corral his inadequacy, not have the unspoken disrespect kiting between them in the house.

Lucy spoke again: “Are you going to tell me what's wrong or just sit there and sulk?”

Her attempts to dig it out of him only made him angrier. He accelerated through a yellow light turning red.

“Jesus,” Lucy said, gripping her door. “I'll take that as a no. Fine. Maybe I won't go to these things anymore, if this is how I get treated for doing you a favor. I wish you'd be a little more gracious, especially seeing as how I spent the morning with my head over the toilet.”

“I'm sorry you weren't feeling well,” he managed.

“Are you?”

They were on the corner of their block now, half a minute from the safety and breathing room of home. The shelter of another drink was only a minute away. Lucy could wash up and go to sleep; she was better at putting things behind her. He could come in later, slip under the covers without rousing her. Maybe it was the proximity that made Henry open his mouth, the final chance to fuck things up even more.

Without taking his eyes off the road, he said, “Did you ever stop to think that perhaps the reason you're so bitter about academia is because you weren't any good at it?”

Immediately he regretted what he had said.

“Stop the fucking car,” Lucinda said.

“We're almost home,” Henry said.

“I don't care. Stop the fucking car, now. Now! I want to get out.”

“Just wait. I'm sorry, I didn't mean it.”

“Pull over, Henry,” she said, her hand poised over the parking brake. “I don't want to be with you right now. I don't deserve this.” Her voice rose with the last words, and Henry knew that if he didn't do as she said she'd start screaming at him, maybe even try to jump out of the car while it was still moving. She was rarely histrionic, but he had just said something inarguably mean. She wasn't who he wanted to lash out at, she was only the closest and easiest and he was a coward.

He could say sorry a hundred times and still she would demand to be let out. He could reach for her hand, but she wouldn't give it to him, wouldn't touch him. Because to leave is, finally, the only reasonable response to true cruelty. He eased the car to the curb, and she opened her door and stepped onto the pavement, ignoring him when he asked where she was going and when she might be home. “Lucy …” he said, and there was no right tone for her name anymore.

Twenty feet down the block the mist enveloped her body, and Henry no longer knew where she was. She was right. She didn't deserve what he had done and what he had said, yet this, this he deserved.

The next morning Lucinda told Henry she didn't feel like watching the marathon. She assured him it had nothing to do with their argument the night before, but he didn't believe her and he wanted her to accompany him so they could inch back toward affection. Already he'd apologized for questioning her intelligence, and she had said sorry for bolting from the car. Henry made a vague reference to too many drinks; she claimed to have been overtired, on edge because of all the recent morning sickness. These were necessary concessions, yet neither of them had moved on completely from the fight, and ever since waking up they'd danced gingerly around each other, their mutual resentment still simmering.

“Also,” Henry said, “I didn't get the Evans grant. I found out last night.”

“You could have told me before now,” she said.

“I know.”

“I can't go because of the nausea, honestly,” Lucy said, gesturing to her stomach. Usually, Henry thought, when people say “honestly” they mean the opposite. “It's bad this morning again. I keep feeling on the verge of throwing up.”

“I could stay with you if you want,” he said. “I don't have to watch the marathon either, it's not like there's some law.”

“You want to stay home so you can listen to me vomit?” she asked. “I appreciate the chivalry, but no. Some things are best done by yourself—most things in the bathroom, come to think of it.” She shook her head, shut her eyes. “Go,” she said. “Have fun. Maybe the weather will clear.”

The sky had been a deep pewter gray all morning. If you peeled off the top layer, there would be another underneath, and after that a thousand more dense scrims. The rain had held off, but it was the kind of day that could dissolve into showers at any moment, and the meteorologists were predicting at least a drizzle. Bring an umbrella if you're headed to the marathon, they warned, though the heavy rains of the last few months would hold off. The weathermen still had no explanation, and they warned that the next months could bring a fresh wave of storms.

“Seven thousand this year,” Lucinda said.

“What's that?” Henry said, turning from the window over the coffeemaker. He stared at Lucy, sitting at the kitchen table. The newspaper sports section was spread open in front of her. She read it probably three days a year, and this was one of them. Earlier he had offered to make her eggs, but she declined. She was wearing her glasses, the ones she had repaired with Scotch tape and a safety pin, and she seemed less his wife at that moment than a houseguest. Come back, he thought, let's stop replaying this.

“The paper says a record number of runners,” Lucy explained. “A lot of Kenyans.” She sipped a glass of water. Her hair was banded into a sloppy ponytail, and she had one leg tucked under the other.

About a decade earlier, African runners had begun entering
and dominating the marathon, and their numbers increased each year. The sports talk shows always pointed out that it shouldn't be surprising that the Kenyans were such good distance runners. They have to walk miles and miles to the nearest stores and basic services, the commentators argued; they've been training their whole lives, without even knowing it. “Getting milk,” one of the hosts cracked, “there's a conditioning run.”

“I don't think we've ever not watched, since we've been married,” Henry said, rinsing his hands.

“Yeah, well, I've never been pregnant before,” said Lucy. She flipped a page of the newspaper.