The Last Time They Met_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [36]
—Thomas.
No other words, they who mined and invented words.
—I was crazed for months. Insane. I’d wake up in the middle of the night screaming. Rich would run into the room — he was staying with me all the time then — and have to pin me to the bed.
—Thomas.
He leaned against the doorjamb, his hands in his pockets, his shirttails mysteriously come untucked. It seemed important that I tell you this story.
She met his eyes, and neither spoke. The earth might have made a revolution for all the time they were silent.
—I won’t make love to you while you’re waiting for word of your son, Thomas said finally. Though I want to.
Linda drew her knees up and bent her head to them, so that Thomas couldn’t see her face. He didn’t move to touch her, as he had said he wouldn’t.
The details make it unbearable, she thought.
She pressed her forehead hard against her legs. She knew that any movement in any direction would say everything there was to say. If she rose and walked to the window, each would know that no history could be resurrected, no future be salvaged. And then Thomas would collect his tie and jacket and might ask her when her plane was leaving and might even kiss her on the cheek, though the gesture would be meaningless, without import, without even the wonder of what might have been. For the standing up and walking to the window would obliterate all wonderment, then and forever.
—I shouldn’t have said that, he said.
—You can say anything you want.
—It’s sex and grief, he explained. There’s some connection I’ve never understood.
A need to stay alive, she thought, but didn’t offer.
—I’ll go now, he said from the doorway.
She held her breath. She wouldn’t stop him. But she didn’t want to watch him leave either.
She heard him cross the floor. She froze, thinking he would touch her. But then she heard the sluicing of his arms into the silky lining of his jacket. She waited until she heard the soft click of the outer door.
She looked up, scarcely believing that he had really gone. She waited, thinking that any minute he’d walk back in, tell her he’d changed his mind or he had more to tell her. But he didn’t come back, and the emptiness of the room presented itself to her: an emptiness that might go on forever. A fleeting sense of relief — relief that they had not touched, had not had to decide how to be with each other — gave way to a quiet and dispiriting rage. The rage, perhaps, of being left, vestigial; the rage, certainly, of words left unsaid. For a minute, she teetered between that rising anger and a feeling of bottomless sympathy.
A heavy rain had started outside. More than a heavy rain — sheets of water whipped against her windows. She felt as unstable as the weather. She willed herself to stay on the bed, willed herself to let Thomas walk away. But some great impulse — ruinous and engaging — propelled her to the door.
She found him standing at the elevator. He still held his tie in his hand. He looked drained, slightly dazed, like a man who had just had sex and was returning to his room.
—Why did you walk away from me that morning in Africa? she asked.
He was startled by the question, she could see that. In the silence, she heard, through the window at the end of the hallway, car horns and a police siren, the siren with a different tone, more European than American. A room service waiter rolled a noisy cart along the hall and pushed the elevator button, which Linda noticed only now had not been lit. Thomas hadn’t summoned the elevator.
—I had to, he said finally.
She inhaled a needed breath. Why? Why did you have to? Her voice was rising, inappropriate in this hallway. The waiter studied his cart.
—Regina, Thomas said distractedly, as if not understanding why the obvious answer wasn’t the correct one. Regina was . . .
—Was what?
—Linda . . .
—Was what? Her voice too loud now, inappropriate anywhere.
—Regina was distraught. She was saying she would kill herself. She kept saying I’d be killing two