Joanna Rakoff - A Fortunate Age

“Would Tuck go back to Columbia?” she asked.

Lil shook her head furiously. “No, never. He thinks it’s all bullshit now.” She smiled, a bit wanly. “And I suppose it is.” They had talked of this too long and her head was beginning to ache with all that she couldn’t say. Namely, the figures that kept appearing before her eyes, the money they owed ($1,500 for rent, for December and January; $400 for Tuck’s student loans; a frighteningly high figure in credit card bills, since they’d paid for much of their wedding with plastic, rather than cede control to Lil’s parents). And the terrifying notion, which she tried to push out of her mind, that Tuck was somehow not the person she’d thought he was, someone very different from the man who’d come home from work each night during the hot summer of their engagement, peeled off his clothes, and carried her to bed, murmuring “You’re too far away” if she so much as rolled out of his arms. Everything she did, everything she said seemed to be wrong, and had been wrong since sometime in the fall, a few weeks after the wedding. But certainly it had been worse since the day Tuck was fired.

She’d been standing at the stove, browning meat for Bolognese and panicking about a rash of late papers she needed to grade, when she heard the lock turn in the loft’s heavy front door. It couldn’t be Tuck, she thought, as it was just getting on six o’clock and he never left work before seven or, usually, eight. But it was Tuck. She knew what he had to tell her even before he’d shut the door. “Hey,” she said, taking care to keep her tone light.

“Hello,” he responded jauntily, locking the door and rushing over to her. “Hey,” he said, and kissed her neck, wrapping his arms around her from behind, so that she could smell the faint odor of his sweat and cigarettes and something else, something sweet and slightly sickening. “You look beautiful.”

“Hey,” she said again, stirring the meat and half turning to face him. Strands of graying hair fell lankly over his forehead—he was long overdue for a haircut—and the lids of his eyes were crepey, worn. “Is everything okay?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” he asked, narrowing his eyes. “Why do you always expect the worst?”

“I don’t,” she said softly, willing herself not to get angry. She had so many papers to grade. She couldn’t fight with him tonight. “I don’t, sweetheart, really.”

“Well, you’re right,” he said, swiping his hair back and letting his lips go slack. “Those fuckers,” he said, gripping her arm. “Those fuckers .”

“Who, Tuck?” she asked, though she knew who, but maybe, maybe he was talking about something else.

“Who do you think, Lil?” he shouted. His face was slick with sweat, though it was cold out, and that faint sweetness was, she realized, whiskey. Oh God , she thought, he didn’t really stop at a bar on his way home . “Those fucking corporate bastards. They’ve been out to get me from the start, just waiting for me to make a mistake, looking for an excuse to fire me.”

“What?” she asked, pouring tomatoes into the meat. “What happened? Please just tell me.”

“I was fired, Lil. What do you think?” He dropped into a kitchen chair, rested his elbows on the table, and dropped his head into his hands.

“Why don’t you take off your coat?” she said, trying to quell her anxiety. “Why don’t you let me run you a bath and fix you a cup of tea? You can just relax and I’ll finish making dinner. And then we can talk.” She turned the heat down on her sauce, wiped her hands on a dish towel, and ignited the flame under the teakettle.

“I’m not,” said Tuck, his eyes following her movements in a way that made her freeze, both literally and metaphorically, “a five-year-old, Lil, so don’t treat me like one.”

“Tuck, I wasn’t—”

“I’ve. Just. Been. Fired ,” he said. “I’ve just been completely humiliated.” He circled his hands in front of his face, as though words couldn’t capture the full measure of his fury and degradation. When he spoke again, his voice was a notch higher. “A cup of tea , Lil? Herbal tea, right? Because it’s too late to have any caffeine. I’d be up all night and that would be just frightful .” He grasped his cheeks in an expression of mock horror. “Thanks, but I don’t want any tea . I’d like a drink and if you had any compassion , you’d join me.”

Lil, by this point, had flattened herself against the counter and averted her eyes from his. “No, thanks, not right now,” she said, though she was thinking, Why did I bother to make dinner? I could have been grading my L&R papers. “I’m okay. If you’re not going to take a bath—”

“Lil, what is wrong with you?” Tuck shouted, banging his fist down on top of the kitchen counter. Lil opened her mouth but said nothing. Was there something wrong with her? Did she lack compassion? “You think this is all my fault, don’t you?” His voice was lower now, ragged from shouting. “Well, you’re wrong. They were itching to fire someone, to make someone an example, and it just happened to be me. I happened to be the asshole who got stuck slaving for that pathetic bitch. And you can’t, you can’t have a drink with me, like a normal human being? What is wrong with you? Why do you always blame me ?”

At this, Lil burst into tears, for he was right, he was right, he was always right. Deep down, she did blame him. “I’m sorry,” she said, through sobs. “I didn’t know how bad it was for you. I’m so sorry. It’s just, I have so much to do. I’m so tired. I have like fifty papers to grade and I made dinner—”

But it was too late. He was beyond consolation, possessed by some sort of wild, rigid fury. “I didn’t ask you to make dinner,” he screamed. “What is wrong with you? If you have papers to grade, grade them . Don’t make dinner.”

“But we have to eat,” she said, or shouted, for she was angry now, too. What was wrong with him ? Why did he always act as though everything was her fault? “What would we eat for dinner if I didn’t cook?” Didn’t he see that this was the point of being married? To eat dinner together, to make a life together, out of small things.

“Why do you have to be such a bitch?” he asked, grabbing a bottle of scotch, uncapping it—keeping his eyes on her, as if daring her to react—and tipping a slug of liquid into his throat, then exhaling dramatically, like a movie outlaw. “Why?” he asked. “I don’t get it.” And the sad, quiet way in which he asked this question—as though he really wanted to know the answer; and as though an answer were truly possible, as if she might say, “Well, Tuck, you see, I received this special training from an institute in Uzbekistan”—stung her more, somehow, than all his shouting and sarcasm, for she could see that he really meant it. He really thought she was being purposefully unkind, undermining, castrating, whatever. But she could not answer, and so she watched, fighting more tears as he wiped his lips with his hand, and stalked heavily into the bedroom, closing the door behind him with a resonant thud.

“So, is this why you didn’t go away for Christmas?” Sadie asked her. Emily had gone up to the counter to get them coffee and a cookie.

Lil nodded. She’d seen Sadie at New Year’s—the Peregrines’ annual party—and not said a word.

“Were your parents upset?” asked Beth. Will, to all of their shock, had taken her home for Christmas. Sam had been with his mother’s family, in California.