“Well, I’ve saved you the trip.”
Nothing had felt right since the day she took Orson to the sublet. It was stupid, expecting him to react any other way, to throw himself intoher life. Their friendship only works if both of them are unattached, if they can play at being children themselves and unresponsible. She would be as lonely there as ever.It will take some time to get used to, she thought, but maybe she’d never get used to it. Maybe nowhere would ever feel as warm as this house: full of her comfortable things, the smell of her children, her husband. Is it insane to tell herself she does not want this life?
One week—why not give them all one week that felt normal, that felt right? A parting gift? It would be the performance of a lifetime. When it was over, she would need to run without looking back.
She threw herself into the act. So deeply at times, it all became muddled. In the afternoons, she lay on the floor with the children, watching them put marker caps on their fingernails and practice counting. She sank nervous energy into the project of replacing all the fixtures, the doorknobs and cabinet handles and shower heads. Al was tentative, gentle, dropping the children at day care, applauding her handiwork and taste, bringing back sweet treats from the city. With each morning she awoke next to him, his hand or face finding her shoulder, she felt herself shedding toughness, all the Los Angeles layers required to stay safe, to stay focused. Margie’s voice grew quieter.
Now, waiting in the hallway while the children brush their teeth, she remembers the first night she and Al slept here. In the late afternoon, Al had carried her across the threshold, swept her up the stairs, pointed at the empty rooms, and filled them with imaginary furniture. Dinner tables and wine racks and record players and children. Children hanging off the banister and running through the backyard. Al looked at her in the way he always looked at her, as a woman who could transform all this empty space.
Hadn’t she? Here is the proof, scampering into bed, both of the twins kissing her on the cheek, their happiness excruciating. Now that she has set herself in motion, she just needs it to be done, as soon as it can be. When Al goes downstairs to make a cup of tea, she goes back to their bedroom, reaching as quietly as she can for the heels she keeps onthe top shelf of the wardrobe, stuffing them into a duffel bag, her heart pounding loud—
“Silky is not in the dryer.”
“No?”
Al is by the door, holding a cup of tea. He is wearing no shirt, only his glasses and his long pajama pants. “Don’t do this,” he says.
“Do what?”
For all her theatrical credentials, she cannot hide from him. He is looking at the bag in her hand, the shoe in the other, the failed naivete on her face. Whatever they are, they are not strangers to each other.
“Susan, if you go, if you take them—”
“Al, I’ve already decided—”
“I know this has not been easy. And yes, probably, my stuff has come first—”
“We’re going tomorrow, first thing. It’s—”
“But I swear, I know you. I know that you want all of it, every form of happiness, and that you just won’t feel satisfied until you get it. And you’re going to break both of us in the process, you’ll see. And I always thought—we said we never wanted this, the brokenness we came from, just—your dad, my sister, that feeling of never being complete or happy, of people quitting on us. I don’t want to quit on you. I don’t want you to quit on me. Can’t we— I mean, Christ, Susie, I love you.”
She moans—frustration and longing. No, she doesn’t want it, the brokenness, she doesn’t want them to inherit it, to blame her for not making it work. But God, what will it cost! He is moving and his arms are wrapping around her so that hers do not need to move and he kisses her perfect face, and by the time the sun rises they are lying back in the same bed that they bought together so many years ago, the floor a mess of their clothes, yielding to each other in the only way that they can: the rough entanglement of hair in fingers, the clasping of flesh, the flattening of hip against hip and will against will.
They have to know she always loved them, that she chose them above all else.
2012
When she is sure Sebastian is asleep, Viola calls Orson. When he doesn’t pick up, she calls him again.
“I’m sorry,” she says. She feels, once again, like a child—the game of adulthood, of control, is shattered.
“Viola.” His voice is unornamented now. He is not the characters in his movies, the man inflated with the dreams of a little girl. “You don’t trust me.”
“I do,” she starts. “In fact, I really think we should do this now. Talk to a publicist. I just want everything out in the open. It was Sebastian—”
“I don’t think you understand.” She listens to him breathing for a moment, her heart in her chest. “You let yourself think the worst of me. And you went on thinking it for some time.”
“I never thought—”
“Of course you did. When you asked, wasn’t a part of you afraid of what you’d hear?”
He exhales heavily through his nose.
“Let me tell you something. You turn everything into this great soap opera drama, in spite of yourself.”
“Wait—”
“But here’s the thing: most of life, and most of what passes between real people, is just mundane. It’s not great loves or hatreds or violence. Your mother and I took care of each other. It doesn’t mean we fucked. I loved her, but I can’t pretend that I understood her whole life, or even the choices she made on a day-to-day basis. There were times when she was cowardly and times where she was phenomenally brave. She wasn’t one thing, there was nothing absolute about her. And I thinkyou want to simplify her, to make her this cartoon baddie who cheated and abandoned you and lived this sinful life so that you can console yourself. Convince yourself that you’re better than her. More worthy of love or less susceptible to death or whatever it is for you. Like you’re in competition with her and terrified of losing. I think you find it easier to hate her—to write her off—than to deal with who she really was. And I feel sorry for you. What you miss is an absence. What I miss is a person. You’re never going to know her, not really. Especially if you don’t know how to ask.”
