Heart of the Matter - Emily Giffin [61]
She considers waiting for Nick’s next round to have the conversation, but feels a sense of urgency to settle matters before she can change her mind again. Rapidly removing her BlackBerry from her purse and Nick’s card from her wallet, she fights a wave of inexplicable nervousness and dials his number, hoping he’ll answer.
After the third ring, he answers abruptly, impatiently, as if he’s just been interrupted doing something very important—which is probably the case.
Valerie hesitates, suddenly regretting the call, feeling that she’s just made things even worse, that she has no right to call his personal cell even though he gave it to her.
“Hi, Nick,” she says. “It’s Valerie.”
“Oh! Hi, Valerie,” he says, his tone transforming into a familiar, friendly one. “Everything okay?”
“Oh, yeah. Everything’s great,” she says, hearing background noise that does not sound like the hospital. “Is this a good time?” she asks, worrying that he might be with his family.
“Yeah,” he says. “What’s up?”
“Well, I just. . . wanted to talk to you about the Halloween party tomorrow,” she stammers.
“What about it?” he asks.
“Listen. It was so nice of you to say you’d come . . . But. . .”
“But what?” he says.
“But it’s Halloween.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sure you need to be somewhere else,” she says. “With your family. Your kids . . . and I just don’t feel comfortable . . .”
“Would it make you feel better to know that I was scheduled to work anyway?” he asks. “So unless you want to call the chief of staff and tell him that you think I should have the day off. . .”
“Are you really scheduled to work?” she replies, now pacing in the hall outside Charlie’s room, feeling simultaneously relieved and foolish for making such a big deal out of the party, and wondering why it never occurred to her that he could have been scheduled to work anyway. That his decision to attend might have nothing to do with them.
“Val—“ he says, the first time he has used the abbreviated form of her name, a fact that is not lost on her, a fact that she can’t help liking. “I want to be there. Okay?”
The warm glow returns to her chest. “Okay,” she says.
“Now if you’ll excuse me,” he says. “I’m in the middle of buying a Darth Vader costume.”
“Okay,” she says. She feels a silly, uncontrollable grin spread over her face as she hangs up, doing her best not to admit to herself the real reason she just made the call.
19
Tessa
Over the next few days, the marital gods shine upon our house and things start to feel good again. Nick is a model husband—calling from work just to say hello, coming home in time to put the kids to bed, even making me dinner one night. And yet, his effort doesn’t feel valiant or forced. Instead, he simply seems engaged, as if he’s part of our family’s biorhythms, absorbing the small moments that I sometimes feel I’m navigating alone. He’s so attentive, in fact, that I start to blame myself for our fight—which is always something of a relief, if only because it puts you back in control of your own life. Rachel and Cate, both of whom I confide in, agree that I was at least partially to blame for our rough patch, pointing to hormones, boredom, and general paranoia—the hallmarks of motherhood, Rachel jokes.
Our only setback comes on Halloween, mid-afternoon, when Nick calls from the hospital to tell me he likely won’t be able to make it back for trick-or-treating—and will definitely miss the neighborhood gathering at April’s beforehand. I refrain from reminding him that to children, Halloween is the second most sacred night of the year (perhaps the most sacred to Ruby, who has an epic sweet tooth), and that although I try not to subscribe to gender-role parenting, I believe trick-or-treating falls squarely in a father’s domain. Instead, I focus on the fact that he took Ruby to school this morning,