Chapter 59

59

I wondered if the pain of spending my days imagining you fucking another woman would mean I’d start to miss Sam less. Surely there is a limit to how much sadness one person can hold. And so I thought if I just focused more attention on what you did to me, maybe the pain of Sam would start to feel less suffocating, less consuming.

But that never happened. I couldn’t find enough heartbreak in your betrayal. What happened with Sam had blunted me, knocked me so hard that I still couldn’t feel anything more deeply than his loss. You wanted another woman? Fine. You didn’t love me anymore? I understood.

The doctor at the hospital who spoke with us after Sam died said this before you left: “Be strong together. Many relationships don’t survive the death of a child. You have to be aware of this and work hard on your marriage.”

“What kind of thing is that to say to us?” you’d said to me later about her comment. “We have enough to worry about.”

I didn’t confront you for eight days about what I suspected. We went about life quietly so that Violet wouldn’t sense any tension. You were extra kind. Extra thoughtful. I didn’t want any of it. I never asked where you were going during the days because I didn’t much care. To see her, to find a new job? I didn’t know. I told you to cancel your parents’ visit for Christmas, although it seemed like a punishment for us both.

“Why don’t you call my mother?” you said. “You seem to enjoy keeping her up to date about me.”

She’d told you I’d called.

I don’t know what excuse you gave her when you canceled. I didn’t answer her calls after that, although it hurt each time I ignored her.

On the eighth night, I found you in the den cleaning up your desk. All of your projects were put away, handed off to the people taking over your clients. The long arm of your lamp was tucked against itself now, as though it would be put in bubble wrap and packed for a move. Maybe it would be. I looked for the tin of blades and didn’t see it anywhere.

“Where did you put all your things? Your modeling tools?” I held my breath and felt the shame of needing to know where the blades were. The anxiousness tickled in my chest, threatening me. You pointed to the closet while you sorted through a box of loose papers. I slid open the door and scanned the messy shelves. Old board games and stacked empty picture frames and dictionaries I’d saved from college. The tin was there, on the second shelf, between your architecture books and a bin of rulers and pens. I closed the door and turned to you. Your shoulders were starting to build the same hunch your father had. I wondered if she liked to run her hand against the bristles of hair on the nape of your neck, if she would one day shave them for you like I did every so often.

“What is she like?”

You lifted your head. The room felt so different without the shadows from your lamp that had always danced over the wall as you worked. You were so still. I held my breath again and wondered what you would say next. But you didn’t speak. I asked you again: “What is she like, Fox?”

And then I left. I went to bed. I wondered if you’d be gone in the morning, but a few hours later, or maybe it was just one, I felt your side of the mattress move.

“I’m not seeing her anymore.”

You’d been crying. I could hear the thickness in your nasal. There was nothing inside me. No relief. No anger. I was just tired.

In the morning I brought coffee to you in bed before Violet woke up. I sat next to you while you drank it.

“We lost enough when Sam died,” I said. You rubbed your forehead. “You never dealt with your grief properly. You’ve never faced it.”

I waited for you to speak.

“Sam isn’t why our marriage is falling apart. He doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

The door to our bedroom opened and Violet walked in and stared at us. You looked at me slowly, your sleepy eyes now as wide open as hers. And then you looked back at our daughter.

“Morning, honey,” you said.

“Breakfast?” she asked. You left the room behind her.