Chương 8
“He deserves humiliation.”
“I’m already humiliated.”
“No. He should be.”
Vanessa looked at the strawberries.
“Those are not mutually exclusive.”
Claire softened.
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
“Are you going back?”
Vanessa’s face tightened.
“No.”
“That was fast.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“You filed in six days.”
“I left the marriage years before I filed.”
Claire stared at her.
Vanessa wiped strawberry juice from the cutting board.
“That does not excuse him.”
“I didn’t say it did.”
“Were you having an affair too?”
“No.”
“Then what do you mean?”
Vanessa leaned against the counter.
“I mean we had become very good at being married in public.”
She thought about charity dinners, company holiday parties, photographs from Napa, birthdays celebrated two days late because Ethan was working, sex that became less frequent without ever becoming absent enough to force a conversation.
They had been functional.
Respectful.
Busy.
And then resentful about how functional and respectful and busy they were.
Vanessa’s mother had died during the second month of Ethan’s affair.
For years Vanessa had believed Ethan’s emotional distance afterward came from not knowing how to handle grief.
Now she knew part of that distance had been another woman.
That detail was the one she could not place anywhere.
She could imagine forgiving sex in some abstract future she did not trust.
She could not imagine forgiving the timing.
Three months after Caleb’s birth, Vanessa asked Ethan to meet her.
They chose a coffee shop in El Segundo because neither wanted the intimacy of a house.
Ethan arrived early.
Vanessa arrived exactly on time.
He stood when she approached.
She sat without hugging him.
“You look tired.”
“So do you.”
“Don’t say that to women.”
“You’ve always said that.”
“I’ve always been right.”
For several seconds, they were almost themselves.
Then Vanessa opened a folder.
“I want to discuss the house.”
Ethan looked at it.
“I don’t care about the house.”
“I do.”
“Take it.”
Her expression hardened.
“Do not turn property division into penance.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I mean I don’t need the house.”
“Then say that.”
He breathed out.
“I don’t need the house.”
“Better.”
They discussed numbers.
The mortgage.
Equity.
Furniture.
Accounts.
Vanessa had always managed details better than Ethan. He built companies from enormous moving parts and then forgot dentist appointments.
Halfway through, she closed the folder.
“How is the baby?”
Ethan looked surprised.
“He’s good.”
“That is the least informative answer available.”
“He’s thirteen pounds. He hates being put down after seven at night. He likes this horrible white-noise sound that makes the room sound like an airplane bathroom.”
Vanessa smiled before she could stop herself.
Ethan saw it.
She immediately looked at the table.
“What’s his name?”
“Caleb.”
“Middle name?”
“James.”
“Bennett?”
“Yes.”
“Not Cole.”
“No.”
Ethan rubbed his thumb along the cardboard sleeve of his coffee cup.
“Maya wants him to keep Bennett.”
“And you?”
“I wanted Cole.”
“Of course.”
“I’m getting used to Bennett.”
Vanessa studied him.
“You sound happy.”
The accusation in her voice surprised them both.
Ethan answered carefully.
“Sometimes.”
She looked toward the window.
Outside, a woman was trying to fold a stroller with one hand while holding a phone between her shoulder and ear.
Vanessa watched for longer than necessary.
“I hate that.”
“What?”
“That you get something good out of this.”
Ethan did not defend himself.
“I know.”
“I want you miserable.”
“I have been.”
“That isn’t satisfying enough.”
“I can’t help you with that.”
She looked back at him.
“You used to try to fix everything.”
“I’m learning that’s not always useful.”
“Did Maya teach you that?”
“No.”
“Good.”
He almost smiled.
Vanessa’s eyes filled unexpectedly.
She looked away.
Ethan reached across the table, then stopped before touching her.
She noticed the hand.
“Do you love me?”
“Yes.”
She closed her eyes.
“That makes me so angry.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying you know.”
He pulled his hand back.
“All right.”
Vanessa wiped beneath one eye.
“I don’t know if I ever want to be married to you again.”
He nodded once.
“But I don’t want the answer decided because you now have a child.”
“It won’t be.”
“You say that now.”
“What do you want from me?”
She looked at him.
“For once, I want you to live with not knowing.”
He sat back.
Vanessa reopened the folder.
They spent another hour discussing the house.
That was the beginning of the end of their marriage.
Not the DNA report.
Not the hospital room.
Not even the affair.
The end arrived through spreadsheets, appraisals, therapy appointments, awkward coffees, and the gradual discovery that Vanessa could imagine missing Ethan without wanting him back.
There were moments she nearly changed her mind.
Once, five months after leaving, she drove past the house and saw him carrying boxes into the garage. She almost stopped.
Another time he called because his father had been hospitalized with chest pain. Vanessa went to the emergency department automatically.
They sat together for four hours beneath a television showing a cooking competition with the sound off.
Ethan’s father was discharged with medication and strict instructions to follow up with cardiology.
In the parking lot, Vanessa hugged Ethan.
He held her too long.
She let him.
Then she stepped back.
“This doesn’t mean anything.”
“I know.”
“Don’t say it.”
“Sorry.”
She laughed.
They stood between parked cars at one in the morning, two people who still knew exactly how the other took coffee and no longer knew what they were allowed to ask.
Eventually Vanessa said, “Go home.”
“To what?”
She looked at him.
The question had slipped out.
Ethan looked embarrassed.
Vanessa touched his arm.
“Whatever you make next.”
It was kinder than she intended.
It was also final.
The divorce was completed the following spring.
May you like
By then Caleb was walking badly and enthusiastically.
Maya had returned to work part-time for a commercial design firm that knew nothing about Ethan except that the father of her child sometimes picked Caleb up from daycare in an expensive truck and once caused three employees to stare through the lobby glass.
