A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [76]
You once said that you thought I had slipped on purpose. You used to tease me about it, remember? But I don’t believe I slipped on purpose. In fact, I’m positive I didn’t. My legs were weak and certainly reluctant, and that may have caused the accident. I still have a hard knot in my butt—scar tissue, I imagine—from the fall.
I don’t remember how you got me to your car. I do remember the waiting room of the emergency ward. You held my hand, and I think you meant it to be a kind of paternal and comforting gesture. I was hurting, but the pain seemed somewhere very far away. All of my body was instead concentrated on our clasped hands. I dared not move my fingers even a millimeter lest you let go of me.
I was put into a cubicle and then sent down to X-ray. I was sure then that you had left the building, that you had gone home to your wife and daughter. It was, after all, the afternoon before Thanksgiving, an inconvenient time for any accident. I touched my hand where you had held it, hardly aware of the doctor who came in. He said that nothing was broken, that I’d have a nasty bruise that might take months to heal, that I was lucky. He told me to be careful on the ice. And then, behind him, I saw you with your jacket open, your tie loose. You smiled encouragingly. You stood with your hands on your hips, looking at me. You watched the doctor lift up my skirt, lower the elastic of my underwear, and examine the spot that had taken the worst of the fall. I knew that you could see me. You didn’t turn away. You helped me into my coat and held me all the way to your car. The weather was filthy by then, icy and cold. The snow stung my face. You put me into your car and then got in yourself. I was shivering—more from shock, I think, than from the cold. You held me to stop the shivering. “I’d better take you back,” you said.
That kiss. Papery and long and admitting everything.
I remember all of it, Jim. Every plane flight, every drive, every hotel room. I used to be able to remember specific dates as well, but I’ve forgotten them now. I wish I’d kept a diary (all those precious details lost). Our love affair was an entity with a life of its own. It should have been chronicled. And I, Agnes O’Connor, who makes her living off the chronicles of others, did not write about the one thing that has mattered most to me in my life.
Yes, I know there have been difficult times. Your own particular agony, which I’ve never been able to share with you. But I have had agonies of my own. The long months when you’ve not called or written. The time you said over drinks in Boston that we couldn’t continue the affair. The day you told me Carol was pregnant again. But the very worst for me was the day I drove to Kidd to surprise you with the news of my new job. I would be teaching at my old school, I told you. We would soon be colleagues. I remember your face went hollow, all my lovely news dissipating in an instant. I understand now why you were concerned. Of course I do. I understand your desire to keep our affair separate from your “real” life (as you once called it). But I didn’t then. I thought you would be as happy as I was, and when you weren’t, I was hurt and angry.
Mostly, I choose not to remember that day, however. Instead, I remember the cottage we rented in Bar Harbor and the meals you grilled on that tiny barbecue on the deck. You even made a pizza, as I recall. I remember that ratty hotel in Portland and making love on a plaid sofa. Later, I wept for the pure joy of it. I remember our walk through the city on a Sunday night, all the shops closed, the buildings shuttered. It felt as if we were the only two people in the world. I have loved you now for twenty-seven years.