Chapter 5: The Thing He Had Been Carrying
I sat down on the edge of the hallway bench.
The one we'd bought at a market in our first year together, the one we always meant to repaint and never did.
"Say it," I told him.
He sat down across from me on the bottom stair.
His hands were loose between his knees.
He looked like a man who had been waiting a long time to put something down.
"About eight months ago," he said, "my mother told me she had set something up."
"Set what up?"
"A meeting.
Between me and Diane.
She told me she had arranged for us to be at the same dinner party at my cousin Robert's house.
She didn't ask me.
She just told me, after the fact, that it was happening."
I kept my voice level.
"And did you go to Robert's dinner?"
"I went.
I didn't know Diane would be there until I walked in and saw her."
"What did you do?"
"I stayed for forty minutes.
I was polite.
I didn't sit near her.
I left early and told Robert I had an early morning."
"Did you speak to her?"
"Briefly.
She said hello.
I said hello.
That was it."
"Did you tell me you'd seen her?"
He looked at his hands.
"No."
"Did you tell me you'd been to Robert's dinner?"
A beat.
"I told you I had a work thing."
The bench was solid under me.
I focused on that.
"So you lied."
"I didn't want to have this conversation."
"You've been not wanting to have this conversation for seven years." I looked at him.
"Do you understand what you've done?
It's not Diane.
It's not even your mother.
It's that you have been managing me.
Deciding what I could handle.
Deciding what I needed to know about my own marriage."
"That's not—"
"That is exactly what it is." My voice didn't rise.
It didn't need to.
"You wrote that letter because you knew I deserved the truth.
And then you hid it in a box for seven years and kept right on deciding what I should and shouldn't know."
He didn't argue.
"Is there anything else?" I asked.
He was quiet for a long moment.
"My mother called me last week," he said.
"She told me she thinks Diane is still in love with me.
She told me she thinks I owe it to myself to — explore that."
The word landed in the room like something dropped from a height.
"Explore."
"That was her word."
"And what did you say?"
"I told her to stop.
I told her I was done having this conversation with her.
I told her that if she called me again about Diane, I would stop answering her calls entirely."
"Did she believe you?"
"I don't know."
"Has she called since?"
He gestured toward the phone on the floor.
"That was her.
Just now."
I looked at the phone.
Then I looked at him.
"Pick it up," I said.
He blinked.
"What?"
"Call her back.
Right now.
And I want to be in the room."
He didn't move immediately.
"You said you were done," I said.
"Prove it."
He reached down and picked up the phone.
His thumb hovered over the screen.
"She's going to be cruel to you," he said quietly.
"She always is when she's cornered."
"I know," I said.
"Call her anyway."
He pressed the button.
It rang twice before she picked up.
"Daniel." Her voice came through the speaker, warm and controlled.
The voice she used when she thought she was winning.
"I was wondering when you'd call back."
"I'm here," he said.
"And so is my wife."
A pause.
Short, but full.
May you like
"Oh," his mother said.
"I see."
