There was a pause, and Will looked up to find Gerald rocking back slightly on his heels. Should he not have mentioned he knew about the elbows on the table thing, or . . . ?
“Actually,” Gerald finally said, “I got Sally back because last night I told her how much I loved her. I told her that the two and a half years I’ve spent without her have been the most colorless of my life. I made her a list of all the ways I’d failed her during our marriage, along with a list of all the ways I wanted to do better. I intended to read it out to her, but frankly I found myself too emotional.”
Will stared at Gerald in dumbfounded shock. He felt right on the verge of a recurrence of static brain. His expression must’ve shown it, because Gerald clarified.
“What I mean is, I cried.”
“I got that, Gerald.”
“Have you told this woman you love her?”
“No.”
“But you do?”
“It’s complicated.”No, it’s not, said his heart.
“Let’s say,” he corrected, “it is complicated for me to be in love.”
“I’ll need the history on this.”
Will shook his head, tucked his fingers under his glasses and rubbed, certain that Gerald was again rocking back on his heels in disapproval at this disgusting display. Two nights ago Will sat across from Gerald’s probably-not-really-ex-wife-anymore and passed on an opportunity to tell her the whole entire thing, and part of the reason why was that the man standing in front of him had been in the next room.
Frankly I found myself too emotional, Gerald had said, and all of a sudden, out in this hot parking lot with his heart half broken, Will thought Gerald Abraham might have the best bedside manner he’d ever seen, because the next thing he knew he was saying it all, everything about his parents that he hated to say. That they were selfish, immature, like they’d never grown out of their teenaged selves. He told him the worst of it: not just his mother trying to leave him with Donny, but also the many months after that. Will like a servant in his own house, trying to stay out of the way while they clung to each other in desperation. Holding his mother up in the funeral home while she wailed for a God he’d never known she believed in to take her, too. Nearly a whole year where she couldn’t bear to look at him, where despite his desperate protests, she took up all sorts of rash, reckless behaviors—smoking, drinking heavily, probably worse things he didn’t even know about.
“I almost felt relieved when she died,” Will said. “For her. It’s all she wanted, really. To go back to my dad. I know that makes me sound terrible.”
In the silence that followed Will felt half relieved, half sick to have said it. He stared down at the pavement some more, thinking about how Gerald was really on to something with the no eye contact thing.
Finally, the man cleared his throat. “Let me express my sympathy,” he said. “For the loss of your childhood.”
Will blinked up at him. No one had ever put it like that before. “Thank you.”
Oh no. Washegoing to cry?
Gerald kindly pretended not to notice. “I gather you are afraid of turning out this way yourself. With whomever you become involved with.”
“Not whomever,” he said. “With her. I’ve only ever felt this way about her.”
For a long time, Gerald didn’t say anything, and Will supposed that was fair enough. There was really no solving this one, when it came down to it.
But then he said, “You know, my own father and I are very similar. He was also a doctor. Sally used to say that I only ever learned to love someone the way my father loved me. Discipline, improvement, opportunity. That’s the way he showed me he cared.”
Will swallowed, nodding. He could see, of course, how growing up like that would produce a man like Gerald. But he also thought it sounded pretty nice. All the discipline and improvement and opportunity that Will had in his life, he’d given to himself. It had been hard and lonely and entirely thankless.
“This was a problem in my marriage. To use a relevant example: it isn’t necessary to tell someone you love about a mostly harmless flouting of proper table manners. You can simply let them put their elbows on the table and be quiet about it. You don’t have to love people the way you learned to love at first.”
Will stared.WHAT, the static signal seemed to say.
“I would say the same is true for the woman you’re involved with. It seems to me that the first person who showed her a love that she understood was a person who offered her a lot of stability. A lot of loyalty.”
“Gerald,” Will said. “What thehell?”
He felt like he’d had his whole brain rearranged.
You don’t have to love people the way you learned to love at first.
“I’m not sure why you’re so surprised. Of late I’m very successful in matters of the heart.”
