Julia Pierpont - Among the Ten Thousand Things

“Or I can stay, because, I don’t know, you want me to.”

“Of course I do.”

“No, you shut up. I’m not asking what you want. The point is I could, I could do the easy thing, or I could do the hard thing. I don’t even know which would be harder. Divorce? Do you know what a nightmare? And I want to be married. I got married because I want to be married, Jack. Why did you?”

“Because I love you.”

“You don’t get to love me right now. That you could sit there and tell me you hope I forgive you, that that—”

“I do hope.”

“God and I hate that you make me say this, these cliché things. People actually talk this way?”

There was a lot of talk after that, talk that led to nowhere, because it was not one of those problems that talking could fix, and so none of it came in any order they could remember, and all of it went on forever. At one point Deb definitely said, “Do you even know, how much I gave up for — this?” “This” meant “you,” and no, for worse or for better, no one could ever know that. And later, when she’d made herself sad: “I have a hard time believing it matters to you.” This was in response to the question: What did she want?

—

He said he would sleep at the studio, and she told him no. She didn’t want him in bed with her, but she didn’t want him out of the apartment either, leaving her to wonder where he’d gone.

“I’ll be in the living room then.”

This they hadn’t done before, slept in separate rooms, not even last winter, when she first found out. Jack took the saddest of the pillows — he would have dragged it behind him if it were long enough — and went out to the sofa to lie down.

It felt warmer than it had in the courtyard, warm enough to sleep with the windows open. Outside he could hear echoes of happy birthday to you from some rooftop garden or fire escape. Voices from faraway parties, somehow always female — because men were raised not to sing in public, not to really sing — reaching their apartment on the eleventh floor from however many buildings away.

How they met. At a party. “I almost left early,” she used to say. “And you almost stayed home.” Would it have made a difference? Would they have met some other way? He knew she’d liked thinking about it. The way we met, the way we were. He told her he was married. His wife? No, his wife wasn’t there. Didn’t like parties. She arched her back at him and asked about his work. Strappy black dress and dusky skin, sharp shoulder blades. They shared a cab home, nothing more. She stood under a canopy until the car pulled away and took the train to where she really lived. She had so wanted to be on his way.

He heard from her a week later. She wanted to meet somewhere and talk. Just talk. His marriage was not exactly well. He let her press her knees against him under the table.

She began visiting the studio downtown. To see how it was done. She took off her underwear and sat for him. “I am married,” he told her. She said to sculpt her with his hands.

They spent afternoons in her apartment. He could feel the power in her young legs when they were wrapped around him, reminding him that, if she wanted, she might never let him go. Like a horse but in a good way, good teeth and hair and strong seeming. Her breasts could barely fill a martini glass, but in his hands or in his mouth they felt like enough. He made her sit across the room from him and touch herself. It never affected his work. Impressive even to himself that he could keep them separate. The work existed on some higher plane. With his head between her legs, he thought about form, the shapes of things.

That one day he walked in and found her crying, he didn’t have cause to think it was any different from the other times she’d cried. And when she told him why, he thought, isn’t this what you wanted? Or maybe he didn’t think it; maybe he said it out loud, from the way she started shouting and the way he heard himself apologize and the way he held her after.

Seven months later Simon was born.

—

And now Simon, this person they’d made, this Simon wouldn’t talk to him. Deb had been right about that. The next morning Jack, in his T-shirt and underwear, sat up in the living room, pillow cool across his thighs, waiting, and when Simon finally did come, it was not to his father but to the door, to leave. He was dressed already, backpack on both shoulders, like an armadillo.

Deb followed behind him. “Are you sure you don’t want me to zap them?”

“I like them like this.” Simon smacked a foil packet against his palm.

“It’s so early,” she said.

“I told you, I’m meeting somebody. We’ve got a presentation thing first period.”

From the couch Jack offered something short of a wave, almost a salute, and his son’s eyes flew to him but then away; he wouldn’t look.

Deb followed the boy out, saying tiny things Jack couldn’t hear. She stood in the hall while Simon waited for the elevator. From his spot on the couch, Jack could see her arms rise over her head and tense in stretch. She clasped her hands behind her head, elbows forward, and maybe she was whispering something. With everything lifted like that, her long sleep shirt became almost inappropriate for the hall. As a dancer she’d never been shy about her body, which was narrow and less tall than it seemed. Sometimes Jack thought it would do to be a little shy about it with the kids. His children would never see him walking around like that. But it was different, too, with men.

There was the chime and warble of the elevator, then the clack and near echo of both locks snapping shut. Jack watched Deb walk back toward the kitchen and did not expect her to stop, which she did.

“I have nothing to say to you,” she told him. In a way, good news. Like saying, No, I can’t hear you, or, Yes, I’m sleeping. Jack even smiled a little.

Deb bent forward, resting her hands on her kneecaps. “Are you crying?”

Was he? Well, he was smiling a little and crying a little, too. Surprising, to find his eyes wet. He blinked hard and squeezed out a tear. It wasn’t a bad thing, to cry. If there was ever a time besides funerals, it was now, here. She looked into his face, and he held it out to her, open as he could make it, hoping to be solved by her. Whatever fix she found, it was important she think it her own.

He began to imagine that she was waiting for him to blink, so he tried not to, and his eyes watered more. She released the sight of him and walked to the kitchen. Jack pulled on his pants and went after her.

Kay was at the sink, her penguin pajamas rolled to the knees, using a spoon to strain extra water from a bowl of instant oatmeal. There were eggs on the counter in pink Styrofoam, and Deb began cracking them into a mug. Use a glass, Jack wanted to tell her. Easier to check for shells.

What he saw of the future, the next few weeks at least: His wife would fight with him, really just yell, because who can fight with a spineless thing? A misshapen, regretful thing that curls up and sleeps with white flags waving like windshield wipers. She’d get sick of yelling, of crying. When she cried, Kay cried, Simon cried. They’d speak to him only when his physical presence was an impediment, when he was blocking the refrigerator and they needed him to move. And then they’d be overpolite.

“Excuse me, please,” said Kay, and he let her by for the milk.

For a time, they’d live this way.

Back in the living room, he thumped his bare feet into shoes, pushed his head and arms through the same neck- and armholes as yesterday. When he closed the door, he did it quietly. He pushed for the elevator and watched his face in the hall mirror. He rubbed his cheeks, which felt porous and muggy. He rubbed enough that some oily bits of skin rolled up under his fingers. The elevator came, and Jack felt the bulk of his wallet in his back pocket. He would keep out of the house during the day. Officially, because Deb would want Simon and Kay to wake up and come home to what she called a neutral space. But he would have gone anyway. He didn’t know how to face them, his kids.