She also knew that Aldo had been worried about something. He was incredibly transparent, and by now she understood that when he was thinking—really thinking—he was doing it so rapidly that his thoughts outpaced his lips. When Aldo was quiet, it was because something was pressing on the inside of his brain like a tumor, rotting him from the inside. Regan noticed that it was easy to keep her art show a secret because if she didn’t present Aldo with all the information, he didn’t bully her with further questions. He merely seemed relieved when she walked in. She would press him about his work—how was his dissertation, how was teaching, was everything okay?—and he always answered factually. Yes, it’s fine, and, No, there’s nothing wrong. It took her longer than it should have to realize that she was probably asking the wrong questions.
She should never have let Marc talk to him. Marc was slippery like that, getting into people’s heads. His skillset was distinctly different from Aldo’s in that he was persuasive, self-interested in a way that seemed self-actualized; possibly even kind, at first. He never seemed to have an agenda behind his obsession with hard truths, only he very definitely did. Regan had spared Aldo the trauma of knowing the things Marc had said to her since they’d broken up, all meanness and incivility that had felt like honesty and even love while they had been together. She hadn’t thought Aldo would want to know, but she hadn’t thought to protect him from it, either.
“What did you do?” she hissed to Marc after she saw them talking, but he shrugged.
“Nothing you wouldn’t have eventually ruined on your own,” he said.
She decided it would be the last time they ever spoke to one another, and it was.
Regan also routinely forgot that while Aldo enjoyed sex, he didn’t think much about it when he wasn’t having it. Sometimes it seemed like he was going so far as to placate her with it, giving her what she wanted as easily as if she’d asked for a glass of water, or for him to pass the salt. She’d shouted at her mother and then pulled Aldo into the bathroom, guiding his fingers to tug at her seamless thong, but he’d been listless, impassive, even resistant. The rejection she’d felt from his disinterest was an old one, more hers than his, with her mother’s voice fresh in her head: You see, Charlotte? Nobody wants you, nobody has ever wanted you, you’re irresponsible with the love of others and so they lose interest in you, they always will.
It was a mistake she only registered in retrospect, seeing things more clearly once her mother’s voice had faded from her thoughts.
“Where is he?” Regan had pleaded with her sister, chasing Madeline down where she held a struggling Carissa. “I need to apologize to him,” she said, and added grudgingly, “I did something really stupid.”
“Yeah, you really do need to,” Madeline agreed, straightening from her attempt to wrangle her daughter. “Char, look, I don’t know what Mom was thinking—”
“She was thinking she doesn’t give a shit about whether I’m happy or not,” Regan muttered. “Not like she ever has before.”
“Well, I don’t know if that’s true, but—” Madeline sighed. “The point is, Aldo’s really upset.” Carissa had wriggled out of her mother’s hold, flashing Regan a toothless grin, and Madeline shook her head before adding, “I sent him to Dad’s office.”
Regan blinked. “Dad’s office? Why?”
“I don’t know, it’s quiet? He wanted to be alone, I think.”
The idea sent a little tremor of concern through Regan’s spine. “I don’t want him to be alone. I’m worried.” I’ve been worried about him for months, she didn’t say aloud, but Madeline didn’t seem to need her to.
“Go find him, then.”
Regan had raced up the stairs to find the door ajar with Aldo inside, one hand curled mournfully around his mouth, his green eyes staring at her painting.
* * *
WAS IT OVER? It wasn’t not over, and for Regan, this was typically how things met their ends. It wasn’t broken, but it had a fissure of pain, a crevice that could swallow them up if either of them weren’t careful. She wasn’t surprised that he’d left—he usually respected her wishes, and she had been the one to suggest that he should—but was that the end of it, then? Say she did not come home the next day, or on Monday, either. Say Aldo left for class and for work as he had always done; should he return home to find her side of the closet empty, leaving a vacancy for him to try to fill? Perhaps he was thinking: Maybe today I’ll come home and it will be like she never existed, and then I won’t even know where I am in time.