Robin Black - Life Drawing

It was difficult to hear. You never came first . But it was true. Maybe it had been temporary insanity on my part, but he had come first for me. I would have thrown it all over for him. “I didn’t have children to think of,” I said out loud. “We had completely different situations. Owen and I weren’t even married at the time. Maybe that did make it feel easier for me.”

“I don’t know about your heart,” Alison said, “but mine has never been particularly logical.”

“No,” I said. “Nor mine.”

We were on our fifth time around the pond by then. “I have always been a little irritated that Owen paced this off,” I said. “It … It takes some of the wildness out, some of that sense of just wandering in the countryside.”

We walked a bit more, still arm in arm.

“My husband hit me,” Alison said after a time. “That year after Nora went to school. He started hitting me. I became one of those women fidgeting with heavy makeup to deal with covering bruises.”

“Jesus, Alison. I’m so sorry. And here I am complaining about a paced-off pond.”

She shook her head. “That’s not why I’m telling you. You’re supposed to find Owen irritating. You’re his wife. But I wasn’t supposed to put up with being hit. Or before that. Even then, I shouldn’t have put up with being afraid of him. It’s just … it’s just so terribly difficult to admit that someone doesn’t really love you. Not in the way you thought. Not in the way you’d hoped. There were a lot of reasons I stayed as long as I did, Nora, of course, and also fear, but in part I just wanted to think he loved me.” She stopped walking, so I did too. We faced each other, and against the backdrop of tall marsh grass, her lips lacquered coral, her eyes that silvery gray, she seemed oddly vivid, a silver-haired figure from a surrealist painting.

“I’m so sorry, Alison. I had no idea you’d been through that. I knew about the temper. Not the hitting though.”

“I rarely mention it. I don’t like remembering, I suppose.”

“Does your daughter know?”

“Oh, that’s a long story,” she said. “For another day. The real point I’m making, the only reason I raised all that, is that I know how heartbreaking it is to lose belief in another person’s love. It’s devastating. However it comes about.”

“That’s what I did to Owen. That’s what I put him through.”

“Maybe. But then Owen chose to stay. And he’s an adult, yes? He could have done otherwise.”

We started to walk again. “I couldn’t have, you know,” I said. “Done what Owen did. If it had been reversed, I would have been out the door. I couldn’t have borne it.”

“Trust me, Gus. One never knows what one will endure.”

A rabbit, neither baby nor fully grown, scampered across our path some ten feet ahead. Alison asked, “Do you want advice? Or just a shoulder? Because I can give you either. I can even give you both.”

“What’s the advice? I mean, all I can do is just try to forget Laine ever wrote. Not act like some kind of moony teen around Owen. Seal my heart back up.”

“That. Yes. But … maybe this is presumptuous of me but … Don’t try to get in touch with him. You may … you may feel tempted.”

“No.” I shook my head. “Not tempted. Not tempted at all.”

But it wasn’t true. I was already composing coded, chilly messages to send through Laine. Please do tell your father how thrilled I am that he has found real love at last. Please do give your father my love — assuming he even remembers who I am . “No,” I said. “I can see why you’d think so … but no. I have no temptation to be back in touch.”

“Well, that’s excellent, then.” Alison took my arm again. “So, do you feel as though you have to go the full seven laps? Because I confess, there’s something about knowing it’s a mile that makes me feel that. As though we’ll be shirking if we stop at five.”

“Bingo,” I said. “That’s exactly why it irritates me so.”

“But we’re going to do those two more laps, aren’t we?”

“Yes,” I said. “We are going to do the two more laps.”

At her porch, she hugged me. And I thanked her, meaning it. Two hours later, when Owen came in, he asked me what that had been all about.

“One minute I’m contemplating the indefatigable nature of a squirrel out my window, the next I’m watching my undemonstrative wife embracing our neighbor.”

“Oh, we had been walking around the pond. She had … she had told me some things about her marriage that were pretty terrible. I think she just needed a hug. Shocking, I know, but even I can be compassionate at times.”

“Shocking indeed. We’ll keep it to ourselves. I wouldn’t want your reputation ruined.”

It was an old joke between us. Or an old routine I suppose, since calling it a joke implies humor. And maybe there was humor there for Owen. For me, it was something else. I’d always doubted that Owen understood that slightly standoffish manner of mine, the motherless part, the part that didn’t know what to do with Alison’s arm in mine as we walked. The part that could accept that sort of affection only like an ill-fitting garment, a hand-me-down I suspected wasn’t truly meant for me.

“I’m thinking of putting a moratorium on work,” Owen said, reaching for his water glass. “On what passes for work, I should say. For a few days, anyway. I think I have reached the point where I’m just spinning myself into deeper mud. I need a holiday.” He looked at me and laughed. “You should see yourself, Gus. Don’t panic, I’m not suggesting we go anywhere. I know that you’re mid-project. I just think I may forbid myself access to the barn for a week. Work in the garden. Take long walks. Paint the front hall. Stop pushing so fucking hard — since clearly whatever it is can push back with greater force.”

“I think that sounds right,” I said. “God knows there’s always more work that can be done around here. And you must need a break by now. I know I would. I think that’s very wise of you.”

“There must be a saying to cover this situation. Desperation is the mother of common sense? Something along those lines.” He began to drink, and I walked across the kitchen. I kissed his cheek, the glass still to his mouth.

“It’s a good move,” I said, thinking that it was good timing too.

What followed was a more relaxed week than our home had been witness to in months. Owen was a creature of great will. When he decided to do a thing, he did it. And having decided to set his worries aside for a time, he seemed able to do exactly that. And while I didn’t stop working altogether, I slowed down, gave it less space.

More than once over the years, I’d wondered whether people as close as Owen and I were indeed telepathic. Was he responding to a distress call I didn’t know I was sending and that he didn’t know he was answering? Something grabbing his attention just in time to remind me of why this life of ours was no mere consolation prize?

We lingered over our meals. We played Scrabble after dinner. I wandered out to whatever patch of garden he was weeding, and would end up staying an hour, more, just talking to him, laughing. A couple of times we ended up in bed together, daytime sex. We never quite matched the drunken near-brawl of that night after dinner at Alison’s, but we rolled around and teased each other and we played. The only thing missing for me that week was that he still didn’t want to talk about my work. I tried once and he sank into an awful and eloquent silence. But I didn’t mind it so much. Because in many ways our house felt like home again to me. No longer like a place defined by paucity — paucity of happiness, of shared enjoyment, of conversation. It felt like a second spring had come.