The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [50]
“What two things?”
“Cost of Living and Moving Courtney.”
“How many things in the ‘Yes’ column?”
“About ten.”
John paces a little more. Andrea shifts on the bed. They’re both about to pop from the fullness of what they know and what they still have to determine.
“They want you the first of January,” Andrea suggests. “Less than two months. That could go in the ‘No’ column.” John has tried to negotiate for June, but the position has to be filled.
“January isn’t so bad. I can rent us a temporary place next time I fly out, and we can move at Christmas.” Idly, he unbuttons the rest of his shirt, which flaps loosely against his bony chest. “Christmas is as good a time as any for Courtney to make the break. What do you think? It will be an adventure.”
“The adventure might be telling Courtney.”
John removes the shirt, drops it into the hamper. “Sometimes I think the inmate is running the asylum around here.”
“Don’t be too hard on her. We’ll be taking the inmate to a whole new asylum. It’s scary.”
“Of course, it is.” With great deliberation, he picks up the trousers he laid earlier over a chair and folds them onto a hanger. “We’ll tell her as soon as I sign my contract.”
“Does that mean yes?” Andrea puts her pencil down. “Does that mean we’ve decided?”
They stare at each other. “I guess it does.” For a moment he stands perfectly still, then opens the big walk-in closet and hangs up the pants. His I’m-not-going-to-crack-a-smile expression is so stern, he’s probably in shock. With the most unexpected rush of affection, it occurs to Andrea that the man she has been married to all these years looks like an egret from the waist down and a medieval monk from the neck up, who ought to be wearing one of those scratchy brown robes.
“What?” he asks, aware of her eyes on him.
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“I’m just amazed that we’re actually going to do it.” All her previous ambivalence vanishes. A sense of lightness begins to rise in her chest, then drops into a lump of dread as the enormity dawns on her of the tasks still before them. “It’s not just Courtney,” she whispers. “I have to tell Paisley.”
John gathers himself then, propels his pale body across the room, and sits down next to Andrea, who is perched so stiffly on the edge of the mattress she might be in a good-posture class. He begins to massage her shoulders.
“Paisley will be happy for you. You know she will,” he says. “There’s no point thinking about it now. Not tonight.” His fingers knead muscles she didn’t even know she had. She closes her eyes and concentrates on relaxing. Don’t think about it now. Don’t think.
“And also,” he says after a time, “if things with Paisley aren’t resolved by Christmas”—resolved is such a loaded word—“if things aren’t resolved by then, you could stay here awhile.”
She focuses on her shoulders, mumbles a melodic hmmm.
“The house will be on the market, but it’s not likely to sell until spring,” John says. “There would be nothing wrong with renting a furnished place out there and leaving this house furnished until you were ready to move.”
They both know this is impossible. If Andrea stayed behind, Courtney would stay, too. And Courtney, knowing her reprieve was only temporary, would be unmanageable. The three of them have to move together, as a family.
Wrenching herself out of her half-hypnotized state, Andrea says, “The way things are with Paisley, my being here wouldn’t make any difference. She doesn’t confide in me, so how can I help her? I can’t even be a shoulder to cry on. We might be two middle-aged ladies who’ve just met at a tea party. It’s awful.”
“I know.” In this new, off-balance world they’ve stepped into, with the future at once promising and looming, Andrea thinks John does know. He glides his hands over her shoulders as gently as if she were made of porcelain. Back in her carefree, life-is-a-beach days, she would never have predicted a moment like this. She hadn’t imagined, then, that he was capable of anything as powerful as empathy. It was enough that he was centered enough to keep her grounded—a man who, if you promised