Bird in Hand - Christina Baker Kline [71]
They were early. Airport security in Atlanta was more relaxed than in New York; they’d allotted more time than necessary. So they found a corner booth in an Au Bon Pain and bought a coffee to share. Sitting in a public place, in the bright light of midmorning, they were suddenly self-conscious with each other. What had been thrilling the night before, now, under threat of exposure, felt a little furtive. If someone they knew stumbled on them and asked what they were doing, it would be easy enough to lie—Charlie on a business trip, Claire on a book tour, a chance meeting in line for the security machines at the airport—but it would be bad. They weren’t ready to be stumbled on.
Thoughts hung in the air between them, unspoken. What are we doing? Where is this going? How can it possibly work?
“I want to wake up beside you every morning,” Charlie whispered after a while, abandoning protocol. He leaned forward, folding his arms on the marble tabletop. “I want to go to movies with you. I want to build a life together.”
She took a sip of coffee.
“I need to know if you want that, too.”
“How could it ever work?” Claire said. “Your children, your house—Alison. You’re so deeply”—she cast around for the right word— “embedded.”
“Yes.” Charlie nodded. “But that’s my problem, isn’t it? What I’m asking is if you’re ready to do what it would take to make this work for you.”
She swished lukewarm coffee around in the paper cup. “I’m afraid.”
“Of what?”
“This is going to sound ridiculous, but it’s scary to have such strong feelings. To feel so … out of control.”
“I feel that way, too.”
“I know. I mean, that’s part of it. Your emotions are so—boundless. It’s hard to trust that they’re real.”
“Look,” he said, “I’ve spent my whole life doing the right thing, and it hasn’t gotten me very far. I figured if I got a steady job and married a good girl and lived in a nice house, I could keep it all together. And look at me now—I’m bored with my job. I’m not in love with my wife. Is that any way to live? Is that the answer? I want to take a chance, before it’s too late. I am in love with you, Claire.” He laid his hand on her thigh under the table.
“Charlie,” she said.
“I want to be with you.”
“It would be terrible for everyone.”
“Except us.”
She nodded slowly.
“When do we stop worrying about what everyone else wants? When do we start thinking about ourselves?” Charlie said.
“I think we’ve already started,” Claire said. “I mean, here we are. Lying to everyone.” She pushed the cup away. “Though I hate it. I hate that part of it.”
“I hate it, too,” he said, but she wondered at the quickness of his reply. On one level she felt as if she knew Charlie intimately, better than she’d ever known anyone. And yet in another way Charlie was opaque to her. There was a paradoxical openness and secrecy about him—was it midwestern? Maybe she was reading between the lines, filling in the gaps with her own assumptions and opinions—and, in doing so, creating an idealized version of what this relationship was, who Charlie was.
Why had she not simply broken up with Ben in England and gone out with Charlie, if they were so perfect for each other?
She knew what it was: Charlie had seemed like a much bigger risk. Back then an emotional risk was the last thing she was looking for. Ben was a sure thing—he loved her without question, without ambiguity; Charlie, she thought, was merely infatuated. She liked the heat and the drama, but she’d never been sure how much of it had to do with her and how much was about him—his boyish insecurity and competitiveness with Ben, his sadness about his dead mother, his craving for a female who might be strong enough to contain him, to hold the sadness, who might comprehend the unarticulated depth of his own loss.
Claire had been in love with Ben; she had wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. But she felt differently now. A life with Charlie probably wouldn’t be as calm, and it wouldn’t be easy, but it would be exciting.