“Yes.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. She could see the resistance in his shoulders tightening and his jaw working. Greg definitely didn’t believe in counseling. He thought you should deal with everything privately, which meant he believed in not dealing with anything at all. And that’s how they had arrived at this table with cold chicken and years of unspoken truth between them.
“I don’t know, Claire.”
“Greg, I’m just asking you for one thing. One thing in all these years that’s just for me. Actually, just for us.”
He looked at her. The clock ticked. The refrigerator hummed. The napkin hung on the fridge. Time stood still.
“Okay,” Greg said. “Okay, I’ll go.”
It wasn’t a resolution to all the problems. It wasn’t even really a breakthrough. It was just a man saying okay, with the enthusiasm of someone who had just agreed to get a root canal. Claire knew that “okay” didn’t mean he understood, that he would change, or that the next few months wouldn’t be the hardest of their marriage. But right now, okay was what she had.
They sat there. The chicken went cold, and neither of them ate anything. After a while, Greg finally said, “You really started drawing again?”
“Yes.”
“Can I see?”
Claire felt a lump in her throat. It was such a small question, but it was the first time in a long time he had asked to see something of hers, something personal.
“Sure,” she said. “You can see.”
She went to the guest room to retrieve her sketchbook and brought it back to the kitchen table. She opened it, and Greg started looking at the drawings the way you would look at something you’re seeing for the first time, even though it’s been right in front of you all along.
There were waves and marshes, the view of the climbing wall, the woman sitting across the table leaning forward, and the Beaufort waterfront at sunset.
He didn’t say they were good. He didn’t say they were bad. He just turned each page slowly. He closed the book at the end and lifted his head.
“I didn’t know,” he said. “I should have known, and I didn’t. I always loved your drawings, and I never asked over the years why you stopped.”
It wasn’t an apology, but it was an admission. And Claire could work with that. An admission meant he at least saw the gap, even if he didn’t know how to do anything about it.
“We have a lot of work to do,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“It’s gonna be hard.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you in?”
He looked at the sketchbook and then back at his wife, who was sitting across from him in a green blouse he hadn’t complimented, with her Rosewood lipstick he hadn’t noticed, and a wave tattoo on her ankle that he had dismissed.
“I’m in.”
Claire nodded. She didn’t reach for his hand, and he didn’t reach for hers. They just sat at the table with the cold chicken and a messy and uncomfortable marriage that was not at all resolved.
But at least it was the most honest they’d been with each other since the night they decided to get married.
She called Harper and Nina at 11 p.m. She sat on her guest room bed with the door closed, the phone on speaker, but her voice low. She told them everything. The cold chicken, the gift card, how she’d been counting to three like a preschooler for years, Greg’s face when she showed him her sketchbook. His response that sounded like he was making a dental appointment.
Harper listened without interruption, which was very unusual. Claire almost thought that the call had dropped. When she finished telling them everything, Harper finally spoke.
“He said he’d go to counseling?”
“He said okay, which is not exactly the same thing as an excited agreement.”
