Heart the Lover (44)

‘We had a rough patch this evening. But he’s asleep now.’

‘Real asleep or fake?’

‘I think it’s real.’

‘He’s gotten good at faking it.’

‘I know.’ He’s exhausted. I can hear it. He’s had to absorb all the emotion because I’m not there to do it. We switch back and forth physically coping with Jack’s discomfort, but when we go to bed, I’m the one who holds the worry. Early on, I got angry about this, how he didn’t want to talk about it once Jack was asleep, wouldn’t listen or try to soothe my anxiety. Finally he told me that he couldn’t handle my fears at night, that they scared the shit out of him and he just needed to let it go and sleep. I can tell he’s trying hard not to off-load it all on to me tonight.

‘How’s Yash?’

I planned to tell him everything, from my dread in the lobby to the doctor mistaking me for the wife to singing him to sleep. Was that because I wanted to share the experience with him or to distance myself from the day by making it into a story? I’m too tired to figure it out or say much of anything. ‘He got agitated in the evening. It’s called breath panic.’

‘That sounds awful.’

‘It was. That’s why I switched my flight, to get a few hours with him tomorrow morning.’

He lets out a long breath. I feel my slight remove from the despair of one of Jack’s bad nights.

‘It’s going to be okay, my love. Tell me about Harry’s day.’

‘He went to bed early. He has that bio test tomorrow. I think something might have happened with Briar but you’ll have to get that out of him.’

‘Something good?’

‘I think so.’



‘Why do you think so?’

‘He was texting with that little smile he gets.’

I know just what he means. This makes me happy. He’s had a crush on Briar for a long time.

‘And he and Murphy did a little fishing off the bridge. To try out that rod they found. Wow, so many sirens there.’

‘I’m on the straightaway to the hospital.’

‘Are you going to be able to sleep?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘It’s good you’re there.’

‘Bad timing.’

‘It was never going to be good timing.’

‘I guess not.’

‘I miss you.’ I can hear him patting my side of the bed.

‘I miss you, too,’ I say. ‘There was this moment today when he asked me if I thought he would find out everything once he was dead and I had this cold wave come over me and I felt like I should tell him.’

‘You should,’ he says in his clipped, definitive teacher’s voice that annoys me.

‘Silas.’

‘You always said you were going to.’

‘You always said I was going to,’ I say. ‘I don’t know why it matters to you so much. I told you about it.’

He is silent. It hurt him, how long I’d waited. It was a rocky moment in our marriage. I told him because I was pregnant with Harry, and though I’d lied on the forms, the obstetrician took one look at me and knew. And that felt weird, her knowing and Silas not.

‘It matters to me because it matters to you,’ he says finally. ‘I know it does. It comes up.’

‘It comes up and then goes back down.’

‘Don’t you want to let it go?’

‘It’s too late. I missed my moment. He’ll just be angry and hurt and not have time to process it.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘I think it might actually kill him.’

‘It’s not going to kill him.’

‘And then everyone will be like, that nasty girl from Maine came and killed our Yashie, and they’ll put me in an Atlanta jail for the rest of my life.’ I’m speaking with a Southern accent now. I have a very good Southern accent, truth be told.

He laughs but he’s not amused. ‘You’ve been given this opportunity. You’re not going to get another. Do it for yourself. You’ve protected him long enough.’

‘So weird that you said that. I was thinking that today. I protected him. Why?’

‘Because you loved him.’

‘It didn’t feel like love. I was angry at him. So angry. I wanted to punish him, he who always knew everything.’

‘It’s going to get in the way of saying goodbye. Just tell him.’



I can hear how tired he is. I have the impulse to launch a real argument, or tirade, about men and their ignorance of women’s lived experiences and how we cope with so much they cannot understand, but they always make us feel in some sort of debt. But he might only get a few hours’ sleep if Jack has a bad night, and Silas is the exception to the rule, so I let it go.

We say our goodnights and hang up.

As soon as his voice is gone I have that feeling I often have when I’m away from my family, like they are moving farther and farther away from me, beginning to flicker faintly as distant stars and I will never ever reach them again. It feels like a premonition of the fact that someday, one by one, we will be separated from each other forever.

A siren wails past. My remaining hours in this town stretch out before me. Too long and too short.