“No. Down that road lies madness.” Eli’s hair was starting to thin, but whenever he asked about it, Sarah assured him that everything was fine. His bald spot, she’d decided, would be her secret. Men are vain about their hair, her mom had told her. Even though it’s not as big a deal for them, they don’t like getting older any more than we do.
Eli reclaimed his phone and gave his wife a look that was equal parts fond and exasperated. “I think Gabe sounds like a nice guy.” He plugged his phone into the charger on his bedside table, then retrieved the throw pillow, setting it on the love seat. “Not everyone has it all figured out before they graduate.”
“But Ruby does,” Sarah countered, swinging her legs off the bed, heading to the bathroom to brush her teeth and floss （life with a periodontist meant you never got to slack on your flossing）。 “Ruby is going full speed ahead.”
“It’s called balance,” Eli said, a touch smugly. “He complements her. You can’t have two type-As getting married. You need one person who’s all drive and determination…” With a flourish, he’d pointed at himself, in his white undershirt and his plaid pajama bottoms. “… and someone who’s laid back and happy to let their partner lead the way.” He’d pointed at her. “That,” he’d concluded, “is the key to a happy marriage.”
Sarah had shaken her head, smiling, and Eli had come to bed, wrapping his arms and legs around her like a vine around a tree. “Wife,” he’d murmured into her ear, and she’d fallen asleep, warm and content, knowing that she was loved.
How glad she would be now for Eli to tease her like that again, to whisper “wife” in her ear! How grateful she would be for a moment of connection, however brief, during a disagreement. How she wished that she and Eli could keep talking when dinner was over, so that then, gently, she could turn the conversation toward him, and what was going on, and why he’d shut down on her just as the pandemic had started and her job and the kids’ schools had gone virtual and Ruby had come home and Gabe had moved in—the moment, in other words, when she’d needed him more than ever. But before she could start, she knew Eli would make some excuse about work, a Zoom call, a deadline, something he needed to double-check that sounded both vague and urgent, and he’d go padding down the hall, the flip-flops he swore were helping with his plantar fasciitis slapping noisily against the floor.
It was ironic. She and her husband had spent the pandemic year working less than fifty feet apart. Eli handled emergencies when they came up, but usually he was home doing telehealth visits and virtually teaching a class at Columbia’s dental school. He had an office. Sarah did her Zooms from the vanity in their walk-in closet, where a fancier lady might have sat to do her makeup. She helped the school’s two dozen teachers, including the Luddites who’d never so much as sent a text on an iPhone, figure out how to teach lessons online. She brainstormed with the development office about ways to raise money without the draw of in-person performances that doubled as fundraisers; she coordinated an online holiday choir concert. When she wasn’t on camera, she worked in bed, with her back against the headboard and her laptop on a pile of pillows in front of her. The boys’ school had been on a split schedule—two days a week in person, masked and distanced, the rest of the time at home, in virtual school. When they were home, each boy was in his own bedroom on the third floor, unless they were taking gym down in the living room, grunting or giggling their way through sit-ups and jumping jacks while a teacher called encouragement through the screen. Ruby and Gabe had been on the fourth floor for their classes. All that proximity, the way they lived and worked right on top of each other, meant that Sarah had never felt closer to her sons and her stepdaughter. But she’d felt increasingly distant from Eli, and every day it seemed like he was moving a little farther away.
You think you know someone, Sarah thought. She looked at her husband now, at the head of the table, cramming dinner into his mouth, clearly not tasting the food she’d spent hours cooking, not looking at her or at his daughter. You think you know someone, then you’re locked in a house together for over a year, and it turns out, you never knew him at all.
“Well, if no one else is going to do it, I’m going to address the elephant in the room,” Ari announced with a smug smile. It was so unfair, Sarah thought, that Ari was the taller, more classically good-looking brother. He didn’t use reading glasses, he’d never had back trouble, and his hair wasn’t thinning at all.