You Were There Too Page 17
“I didn’t say that.”
“And you’re completely dismissing the fact that he dreams about me, too—that we’ve had the same dream, even. Or what, you think it’s just a weird coincidence? That he saw me in passing as well, and that his brain happened to lock onto my face to use in his dreams to teach him what . . . lessons about himself or whatever?”
He sighs and his eyes won’t meet mine. And I know.
“You still don’t believe it. You don’t think he’s telling the truth.”
He glances at me and then back down at the half-eaten slice of pizza, the grease collecting in the shallow cups of pepperoni. “It’s not that.” He hesitates. “Or maybe it is. I mean, come on—if the tables were turned, wouldn’t you be suspect?”
I study Harrison’s face. Consider this. And I know he’s right at least on that point. I would be more than suspect. But this is not something that’s happening to him. It’s happening to me.
“I’m just saying,” he continues, “the only thing connecting you to this guy is these supposed dreams. He isn’t really part of your life—or doesn’t have to be.”
“But maybe he’s supposed to be.”
Harrison’s head jerks up; a wild look flashes in his eyes. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.” I drop my gaze, realizing what it sounded like. And I don’t know what I meant, really. I didn’t even know I was going to say it—I only know that it felt like I hit on the truth, somehow. And that it’s impossible to explain it to my husband, when I can’t even explain it to myself.
I feel Harrison’s eyes on me. Finally, he takes a long pull of his beer and then a deep breath. “Listen, I understand that this has been—tough for you, confusing, I don’t know what to call it. But you haven’t been yourself since this all started. You’ve been distracted, almost to the point of obsession—”
“Yeah,” I say emphatically, all the muscles in my body tensing as if to underline the point. “I have been obsessing over it. It’s only the most bizarre, inexplicable thing that’s ever happened to me in my entire life.”
“I know, I know.” Harrison holds up a hand in deference. “I just feel like it’s holding you back or something.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, like the house. You were so excited when we moved in. You had all these plans to decorate and wouldn’t let me so much as pick out a coatrack, so I didn’t mess up your—what did you call it—design vision. And all you’ve really done is buy a new couch.”
He’s right, of course. I was excited all the way up until the moving truck pulled into the driveway, and then, I don’t know if it was my feelings of failure about my art, or just the shock of the change from our bustling city life—but I was struck with the deepest sense of ennui. And then: “We lost a baby, Harrison. Sorry if I’m not painting rooms and buying rugs.”
“I know . . . I’m not—” he says. He takes a deep breath. Starts again. “I just think that maybe if you felt a little more settled, you wouldn’t miss Philadelphia as much. We could move forward.”
“What do I have to move forward to?” It shoots out of my mouth like a bullet from a gun I didn’t even know was loaded. But then again, I’ve been storing up the ammunition ever since the night we stared at each other on the cement floor in my studio, our baby’s hand and Harrison’s words hanging between us: Maybe it’s for the best.
He looks at me, his eyes sad, tired, but he doesn’t respond.
And even though I know I should leave it alone, not push it—that he needs time—I can’t stop myself. I give voice to the sentence that’s been on loop in my head for weeks—the truth that I haven’t wanted to admit. “It’s not time you need, is it?” I say it calmly, quietly. Resigned. “You’re never going to be ready.”
He doesn’t answer for so long, I begin to wonder if I even said the words out loud. But then, he takes a deep breath, exhales and levels me with the look in his eyes. A look that tells me the answer, before he even says: “No. I don’t think I will.”
I wait for the water to fill my eyes, spill down my cheeks. Crying is as familiar a function to me as breathing at this point. But the tears don’t come. Instead, something else wells up inside me. Something hot and caustic and out of control, like a vat of acid threatening to burn me alive if I don’t let it out. So I open my mouth.
“Then what are we fucking doing?” I throw my napkin on the table and walk out of the restaurant alone.
* * *
Breakfast the next morning is markedly different from the one twenty-four hours previous. And not just because they’re out of powdered eggs and we have to settle for make-your-own waffles. Harrison and I aren’t speaking. When we got back to the hotel the night before, I got right into bed, turning my back to Harrison’s side. “Mia,” he said later, when he slipped in beside me, and I ignored him, pretending to be asleep. I know it’s childish, that I should talk to him, to beg him to tell me what’s really going on with him, but I also understand we’d just go in circles again. And I’m too hurt, too exhausted to try.
By the time we’re driving back to Hope Springs that afternoon, I can’t wait to be out of the car. Away from him. But then, I realize, we’ll just be in our house together. And as big as it is, it suddenly feels too small. I need to leave, to get out, and I know exactly where I’m going to go. I punch out a text to Raya, even though I know she’ll say yes.
“I’m gonna go to Philadelphia tomorrow,” I say, as Harrison pulls the car into the driveway.
He doesn’t respond. Just turns the key, shutting off the ignition, and then gets out of the car, popping the trunk and hefting our suitcase from it. I follow him to the front door.
He sticks the key in the door, pauses and then turns to me, his eyes meeting mine for the first time that day. They’re blazing, his jaw a tight line, and he says, “To see Raya or Oliver?”
“What?” I’m caught off guard by his anger and then put off by the audacity—he’s mad at me? Doesn’t he realize I’m also mad at him? “Raya, of course.”
He pushes the door in and steps over the threshold. He throws his keys on the cardboard box with a touch more force than necessary, and it collapses under the weight, his keys scattering to the floor.
He stalks over, bends down to pick them up and then, realizing there’s nowhere else to put them, sends them hurtling back to the ground. “We need a goddamn entry table,” he growls.
And as if it’s contagious, his irritation rips through me, and my fury from last night comes bursting back, as if it never left. “So buy a goddamn entry table,” I say. We stare at each other for a beat, eyes blazing, the thick air between us crackling.
“Maybe I will,” he says, finally, but there’s no fight in it. He slips past me into the den, into the kitchen. And I hear the door of the fridge open, the clink of glass on glass as he fishes out a beer.
I pad silently to the bedroom, where I hang my sundress in our closet, scrub my face and my teeth and then stride out to the studio, where I crank on the window air-conditioning unit and crawl under the blankets of the half-deflated air mattress and pretend to sleep.
And that’s when I remember that old console TV—and the day that no amount of banging could rattle those wires back together. And Dad finally put it out on the curb to be picked up with the trash.
Chapter 17
Raya’s apartment is across the street from an Express Oil Change shop and a kebab restaurant. She specifically chose it for its proximity to the garage, where she sweet-talked the owner into letting her store her welding equipment and do her metal sculpture work on off-hours in exchange for janitorial services twice a week.
From the front, her building is redbrick and stately, four aged and dingy cement columns holding up a useless ornate balcony. From the side, a mosaic of artistic graffiti covers every square inch of the exterior eastern wall—a mishmash of turquoise vin
es, pink florals, orange paisleys. Today, the sky above it hangs gray and heavy, fit to burst with clouds.
After Raya buzzes me in, I take the stairs two at a time up to the fifth floor and am breathing hard by the time I reach her, standing in the open door to her apartment. She’s decked in khakis and a blue polo shirt, her vibrant red hair smoothed to the side, ending in a braid over her left shoulder.
“Why are you in your work clothes? I thought you had the day off.”
“Sorry,” she says, pulling me into a hug. I inhale her peppermint scent. “Antwon didn’t show up this morning and they called me in.”
“No! I hate Antwon,” I say, though I’ve never met him in my life.
“I know. He’s a bitch.” Then she takes in my red-rimmed eyes and her face softens. I started crying as soon as I called her last night—the weight of everything that happened with Harrison the past twenty-four hours finally hitting me—and it doesn’t feel like I’ve stopped since. “How are you?”
I shrug, biting my lip. “I’ve been better.”
“I know,” she says, squeezing my hand. “I hate to leave you. Maybe you could go check out Prisha’s exhibit? It started last week.”
“Maybe,” I say.
“’K. Well, I left you a spare key on the table. And there’s a loaf of raisin bread in the freezer.” I walk past her, dropping my bag in the middle of her living room.
“Is Peter here?” I ask, glancing toward her roommate’s shut bedroom door, a vintage Velvet Underground concert poster affixed to the center of it.
“I don’t think he came home last night,” she says, and then grabs her keys and turns to the door. She glances back at me one last time. “There’s wine in the fridge. But try not to drink it all before I get back.” And then she’s gone, the door closing behind her, and I marvel at how easily we fell right back into roommate mode, even though it’s been nearly ten years since we last lived together.
As I stand at the counter finishing my last bite of raisin toast, I glance at the clock on the microwave. It’s not quite noon and the afternoon stretches out ahead of me, long and unrelenting. I know I can’t stay here, with just my thoughts for company, so I head back outside, grabbing a bus in front of the kebab restaurant. When I slide into my seat, the rain starts, pounding the roof like a thousand bullets hurtling down at once, and I stare out the window at all the pedestrians caught wholly unprepared in the storm, holding their bags over their heads or whipping out umbrellas or hurrying for cover.
It’s a long journey—a series of various bus stops where, between connections, I huddle beneath tiny Plexiglas bus stop shelters along with other riders, trying to stay dry—and when I finally get to the Philadelphia museum, the rain has let up. I meander over to the base of the Rocky statue, looking up at Sylvester Stallone as if he’s an old friend I’ve happened to run into.
And I think of Harrison.
He brought me here on our fourth date. Made a big production out of it, telling me I had to wear sneakers and pull my hair back, that he was taking me somewhere special. And we ended up here. At the Rocky statue.
“You realize I’ve lived here for six years, right?” I said. “I’ve seen this statue. Walked by it at least a hundred times.”
“Yes,” he said. “But have you ever run up the stairs?”
I looked at him, deadpan. “Of course not. I don’t run.” A fact I had relayed to him on our second date.
“Exactly,” he said, as if that explained it all. “It’s like a crime against humanity to live here and never have run the stairs.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Why?”
“Because it’s a bucket list thing.”
“Why?” I repeated. It was something I had certainly heard of, peripherally, people running the stairs. I knew it was a thing. But I never did know the reason behind it.
“What do you mean why? Because of the movie.”
“The Rocky movie?”
He looked at me, bewildered. “Yeah.”
That explained it. I confessed: “I’ve never seen it.”
And that was when he became nearly apoplectic. “You, the biggest eighties movie buff I’ve ever met, have never seen Rocky?”
I shrugged. “Never saw the appeal. All that testosterone.”
When he recovered from the shock, he grabbed my hand and we took off, his long legs easily traversing each step, my short ones going double time to keep up. By the time we got to the top, my lungs and thighs were burning so much I thought I was going to die. And then when he lifted me up effortlessly as though I were nothing but a paperclip and affixed his mouth to mine, I was sure of it.
That’s when I knew I was in love. Because I ran up seventy-two stairs at the behest of a man who then made me spend the weekend watching all six Rocky movies back-to-back and I didn’t mind.
Now I sit on those stairs, replaying that day, and the days, weeks, months, years that have passed since. How did we get here? I hate fighting with Harrison. Being at odds, squared against each other like boxers in a ring instead of spectators cheering for the same side. I think of all the stupid arguments we’ve had over the years—all the typical miscommunications and growing pains, when you grind your heels in and are willing to fight to the death over who did the laundry last, only to laugh about it a week later.
But this is different. It’s not just a stupid argument. It’s an impasse. As if a boulder fell from the sky onto our path and I can’t see a way around it or over it or through it. Harrison no longer wants the thing that I want most in the world. What am I supposed to do with that?
My cell vibrates against my hip. I pull it out of my back pocket.
It’s Oliver, and despite everything going on with Harrison, I still get the now-familiar buzz of seeing his name. And then the familiar wave of guilt at that buzz.
Guess what I found.
I chew on the inside of my cheek and hear Harrison’s words in my head. You’ve been distracted. Maybe I have been, but isn’t that preferable to wallowing in grief? Obsessing over why my husband suddenly doesn’t want to be a father any longer? And it occurs to me that maybe this crazy situation with Oliver is the only thing keeping me sane.
What?
It’s a link to an eBay listing. A book. Psychic Psychology: The Science Behind the Supernatural by Denise Krynchenko.
Nice work, detective. Did you buy it?
Of course. It’ll be here by the end of the week. Still in Jersey?
I consider my reply. I have options, of course. I could just simply answer, No, I got back yesterday, and then pocket my phone and walk up the steps and into the museum, stewing about Harrison while looking at Prisha’s wild success. Or I could . . . My fingers start typing before my brain has fully made up its mind.
Actually I’m in Philly. And I’m pretty sure I owe you a tour of the Rodin.
He doesn’t text back right away, so I wait, while Harrison’s other words fill my head. To see Raya or Oliver? But it’s not like I planned it. I didn’t come here with any intention of seeing him. Besides, maybe he’ll say no. My right knee jiggles as I look up at the sky, still heavy with gray clouds. I study the people passing by on the sidewalk—the tourists consulting their phones for the directions to the Liberty Bell or the Reading Terminal Market, the people in suits rushing past them, a homeless man pushing his worldly belongings in a busted-up wheelchair. Just when I think he’s not going to respond, that he got busy or that he might not remember our conversation or that what I’ve written is foolish, three dots pop up. And then words.
Be there in twenty.
* * *
The inside of the Rodin is cool and dry, a respite from the thick humidity of the day. I hover by the entrance, pretending to study the floor—a series of huge stone tiles each bisected by thick white lines to create four equal triangles—but I’m really wondering what the hell I’m doing here.
“Why are you wearing that?”
“What—my hat? You don’t like it?”
I do actually. Though it would look ridiculous on any other person, he, of course, somehow pulls it off. “It’s ninety degrees outside.”
He shrugs. “It’s raining.” As if that explains it all. As if the yarn his hat is made of would not get drenched instantly in a downpour.
Then he grins at me, and suddenly all my anxiety and worries feel a hundred miles away. Maybe because they are. They’re back in Hope Springs.
“Right, well.” He claps his hands together and the sound echoes in the cavernous room. “Where do we start?”
I stare at him for a beat, and realize how instantly at ease I feel, like I know him, really know him, and my lips slowly spread into a smile. “God, this is so weird.”
“The hat?!” he says. “Jesus, I can take it off if it’s making you that uncomfortable.”
A laugh bursts out of my mouth, and just like that, I’m glad I came.
* * *
I lead him through the busts first—Mask of Crying Girl, Head of Sorrow, Man with the Broken Nose—telling him all the facts I know, some I memorized from the placards, others from various art history classes and books.