The Burning Side(63)
“I get it,” she says. “But it’s nice to be able to talk like this.” She squeezes my hand. “I have to get some things done before the kids get here, but thank you.”
I nod. We are, both of us, losing our husbands.
Left alone with time and quiet, I put the sleeve of crackers back in the box and tuck myself away with the Greenwood Hills paperwork. I should start thinking about what would need to happen to get our house market ready. Which reminds me that Billy and I met a Realtor a few years back whose card we accepted out of politeness. I think Billy kept it, though I’m sure he wouldn’t remember where. So I decide to go rummaging.
Fifteen minutes later, I have not found the Realtor’s card, but I have found something else: a small stack of handwritten letters. The first one is dated 1987 and addressed to Billy. Actually, it’s addressed to Bill. Signed Patsy. His college girlfriend. I’ve never seen these.
Maybe I shouldn’t, but I take the full stack into the bathroom and I lock the door.
Sitting on the side of the tub, I read them start to finish. There are eight or nine. Of course, I don’t have Billy’s side of the correspondence, but I can easily fill in the story.
They were very much in love. For years. She broke up with him not long before he met me. He was—it seems—quite heartbroken. But she sought him out again in ’88. Told him she had made a huge mistake and that he was the love of her life.
By that time, I was soon to have April.
I read Patsy’s last two letters twice over. He had told her about the baby. About me. And she had still asked him to choose her.
It’s clear that part of him wanted to.
In her final letter, she wrote, I’ll always love and remember you too. I pause at that “too.” We had something so beautiful. But you’re starting a family now, so this will be my last letter. I hope you have all the happiness in the world.
The others are signed, Love. This one: Always.
I lower the letters, stunned.
And why should I be? We all have pasts. Billy told me about Patsy.
But he never told me it was serious, and he did not tell me they were in contact after we got pregnant. That he was still in love with her when he chose to marry me.
I think about what he got in return: years of distance, work, arguing, and not knowing whether that would ever change, until the night in the kitchen when I finally said I loved him and he looked as though he had been waiting ten lifetimes to hear it.
All that time and he never went back to her.
I sneak out of the bathroom to go check his phone contacts. No Patsy. I search her name on the computer and find a Facebook account. She is gorgeous. Never married, it would appear. From Texas, but now living in the Pacific Northwest with two golden retrievers. There’s a photo of Mount Rainier on her page, and I imagine Billy there.
Billy, who is napping here in my house. My Billy; Patsy’s Bill.
I put the stack away exactly as I found it, careful with the old letters as though I’m handling the very hearts of the young lovers.
A life together is forged in ten thousand choices.
Resolute, I go back to the bathroom. I open the cabinet and get out the bottle of pills. Billy’s leopard shirt hangs on the closet doorknob. He said he wants this to be my choice, and I want to make it now.
My hand does not shake.
I dump the pills and flush.
To some, this is a ruined life. To me, this is love.
LEO
August 11–13, 2022
IN THE OVERGROWTH IN FRONT of our house, we check our ankles for chiggers. Weeds run rampant. Crabgrass and nutsedge and dandelions. A crow caws, and the house is so damaged that it seems to beg for death. The words total loss swim through us like minnows through the creek down the hill.
What this means on the surface: money.
What this means beneath the surface: it’s over.
I didn’t tell April I gunned for this. It was a long shot. When the contractors said girder beam, I appealed for more money, because total loss would give us options. We can cash in to finish the rebuild, then sell the house. Or we can cash out to demolish, then sell the property. A nest egg with no nest. Demolition is surprisingly expensive. But now, with no loans and just a few signatures, this could all be done and dusted. Leonardo Torres on one line and April Torres on another, a notary public watching us with her bored eyes.
I stare at the plywood windows. We’ve been trying to save a dead thing.
We enter the house in search of a firm decision about whether to rebuild or demolish. The kitchen has been gutted and scooped clean of the past, the fire, the old pipes. Workers have constructed a makeshift table that’s covered with headlamps, battery-powered fans, and Tabasco bottles. I’ve been speaking Spanish with them, which is one of the reasons I was hesitant to hire workers in the first place. I don’t like the obvious divide, the reminder that I don’t belong. I don’t like exposing my white-collar life or my rusty Spanish.
April sneezes from the dust. Rebuilding would be a big commitment for two people who are trying to sever our relationship. As we walk into the shell of our living room, I look at her and my throat tightens, because I can predict the exact conversation we’re about to have. I’ll tell her it’s most practical to demolish and sell. She’ll argue and try to make this about us, make it more difficult than it already is.
But then she says, “We should demolish,” and her voice is steady.