Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [116]
He sat down, but he left a big space between them and barricaded himself with his briefcase, and he didn’t look at her.
“How are you?”
“I’m rubbish.” He didn’t ask how she was.
He didn’t look good. His eyes were baggy.
“Andy…I…”
He turned to look at her directly and she almost wished he hadn’t. It was quite a shock when someone you were used to seeing look at you with love and fun and fondness in their eyes fixed you with a stare of hostility and rage. However much you believed you deserved it, and however much you expected it, it was still a shock, like jumping into water you knew was going to be really, really cold.
“I’m sorry.”
A small snort of derision. A narrowing of the eyes. Everything about his reaction demanded to know—is that it? Is that the best you can come up with?
“Look, Andy. I know it’s a stupid small word. I know it can’t fix things. I know it doesn’t make things go away. But don’t you see? It’s the only thing I can say. I can’t make it not have happened. I would. I would if I could. I can’t. I’m not sorry I told you. I had to do that. I’m sorry I ever did it. I’m sorry I was so stupid and so thoughtless and so selfish and so…so wrong. I’m sorry. I love you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What?”
“I don’t understand how the two things can exist alongside each other.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t understand how a person who loves me could have done it.” He didn’t look angry anymore, and he wasn’t looking at her anymore. He looked confused, and he was looking at the floor between his feet.
“I mean, I’m sure it makes me sound naïve, and probably like an idiot. But you don’t do that to people you love. Maybe you do that if you don’t love someone, or you’ve fallen out of love with them, or you never loved them in the first place, or you say you love them, but you don’t really know what it means, or really mean it. I mean, I’m a grown man. I’m a divorced grown man. I get some of that. But if you really do really actually love someone. Like you’re still in it, still in love, want to be with them, want to stay with them. If you love someone like that, I don’t understand why you would do a thing like that. It makes no sense to me.”
“It makes no sense to me, either.”
“But it must have. You did it, Lisa. You had sex with him, with this man, and then you got out of his bed, or his car, or wherever the hell you two were, and you came home to me, and you let me tell you I loved you, and you let me make love to you, and you said you’d marry me.”
“And I wish more than anything I’ve ever wished that I hadn’t done that.”
He smiled. “I don’t doubt that. But don’t you see? It isn’t that. It isn’t what you did. It’s what that means about how you feel about me. That’s what I can’t get past. That’s what I can’t get out of my head when I lie down at night. It isn’t an image of the two of you together. It isn’t all dark, possessive sexual jealousy like it is in films. That’s what you think it is. It’s probably what I’d have expected. But that isn’t what it is. It’s an image of the two of us together. You saying it, and not meaning it. Not you lying. You not really, really meaning it.”
She didn’t speak for a minute. Then she shrugged. Tears were welling in both their eyes now.
“I don’t know how to fix it.”
“I don’t think you can.”
“Oh.”
He sniffed and pushed his thumbs into the corners of his eyes.
“This can’t be it.” She felt a sense of panic.
“I think this has to be it.” He stood up.
“I don’t want it to be.”
“Nor do I, Lisa.”
“Then don’t let it be.” She had to fight the urge to grab his legs, to physically stop him from walking away from her. For a second she thought she might scream.
He didn’t say another word.
She watched him walk away, until the crowd of commuters absorbed him and she couldn’t see him anymore. She didn’t care where she was, or who might see her. She sat for a long, long time and cried.
Mark
Mark had been meeting his brother for lunch every few weeks