We held on to each other for a long time. When I pulled away, I said, “There’s something else.”
She looked at me, and I swear she knew what I was going to say before I said it.
“I kissed Teo.”
“I wondered about that,” she said softly.
“It was just once,” I said, then corrected myself. “Twice.”
“Recently?”
I wiped my eyes. “Last spring.”
“Did you tell Paul?”
“God, no,” I said. “But he knows something’s wrong.”
“Oh, Eileen,” said my mother as she linked arms with me and led me toward an empty table.
“What do I do?”
“I can’t tell you that. But what I can tell you is that marriages have recovered from worse.”
“You think I can fix this?”
“I do,” she said. “But you’ve got to want to.”
126.
AFTER THE HOLIDAYS WERE OVERand my mother had gone home, the wind picked up and the streets emptied, everyone preferring to remain at home in front of their stufette.
I had resolved to make the most of the time I had left on the island, and not to think too deeply about what would happen when Paul got his next assignment, which he anticipated would come through in the next couple of months. Given where things stood between us, it was hard to imagine beginning again somewhere new, but it was equally hard to imagine doing anything else.
I continued to drive Paul back and forth to the pier, and most nights I made dinner, which we ate in the kitchen, or sometimes on the back patio when the weather was nice. Afterward, Paul helped with the washing up and retired to the living room, where he listened to music, and I holed up in the bedroom, where I read. Often I went to sleep before he came to bed, but on the rare evenings I was awake when he shut down the house, we kept to our separate sides of the mattress. What we definitely did not do was touch each other. Paul seemed to understand that he had forfeited that right, so he didn’t ask and I didn’t offer, and all the while, I continued to take the birth control pills Doc Callaway had prescribed, just in case.
Sometimes on a Friday or Saturday night, we went out with friends—Bobby and Laura, mostly, but occasionally, we saw the Stearnses, or another couple, Rafi and Cynthia Badr, who had recently moved to the island. When Paul and I were in front of other people, it was like we were actors performing something called a marriage. We finished each other’s sentences, laughed at each other’s jokes, and urged the other to retell old stories, but the whole thing was so exhausting that when we finally said our goodbyes and got in the car to go home, I always felt like I wanted to sleep for a week.
What energized me was the Introduction to Philosophy class I wastaking through the University of Maryland Extension Program. It was taught by a woman named Deirdre Wheeler, a fourth-grade teacher at the newly opened American elementary school, Vista Mare; she had apparently failed out of a philosophy PhD program before going back to school to get a master of arts in education. She wasn’t a great teacher, pretty quiet and unsure of herself, but I loved the reading list. We read Aristotle and Augustine, Descartes and Nietzsche. I was put off by the idea that I might not have free will, that everything that had happened to me or would ever happen to me was in some way preordained, but what made utter and complete sense to me were the Stoics—guys like Seneca and Epictetus, who had written about living a life detached from outcomes. All I could focus on were my own thoughts and actions, and this reminded me of the advice Mary Lou had given me that day in Laura’s apartment.You’ve got to focus on the stuff you can control.
I thought about this a lot, particularly in relation to what had become of Paul and me. There was the obvious stuff I could have avoided, like kissing Teo in a dark alley, but then there were the more subtle ways I’d sabotaged my marriage. By not putting my best foot forward with Mary Lou and the other navy wives, by sneaking around with Bruno and Luca, and by helping Francesca plot publicity stunts that would bring more attention to the families who had lost their babies. At almost every turn, through my own words and actions, I had worked against Paul. So it was no wonder that, as the winter months wore on, it began to feel like we were on a sinking ship.
127.
IN EARLY FEBRUARY,Laura announced she was pregnant. She did it at our monthly CAWS meeting, which we had begun to hold in the movie theater on the compound because the group was getting too big to accommodate at anyone’s house except Mary Lou’s.
I had just given the treasurer’s report and we’d gotten through old business when Mary Lou asked if anyone had any new business. Betsy announced that Vista Mare was putting together a Girl Scout troop and needed at least two mothers to sign up to be troop leaders. A gal named Darla said the soap opera discussion group was looking for more members. And Beverly announced that she’d heard from Rita, who had given birth to a healthy baby girl named Jessica, a few days after Christmas.
Just when it looked like we might be wrapping up, Laura raised her hand and waited for Mary Lou to call on her. “I have some new business,” she said with a nervous grin, and I knew right away what she was going to say. “I’m pregnant.”
The room erupted in hoots and hollers, and even Mary Lou seemed pleased to tossRobert’s Rules of Orderout the window and celebrate this good news. “It’s about time you got some good news,” she said, and came out from behind the lectern to give Laura a hug.
During the social hour after the meeting, I gave Laura a big squeeze and told her that I had suspected she was hiding something from me.
“We wanted to wait until the end of the first trimester,” she said, a little breathlessly. “I hope you’re not mad.”
“Why would I be mad?”
“That I didn’t tell you.”
