Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [45]
Henry was more prepared for the change than I was. Or maybe it’s just that for Henry, so little changed—the only difference in his life now was the square footage of our living space and a longer commute—but for me, nearly everything changed. Or was changing. Looking back on it now, maybe our move was when everything really did start to move, to shift, like sand ebbing beneath our toes. The ground was still there, surely, we were still standing, but it was being pulled out from beneath us while we stood atop it, barely noticing. Only later, we’d look down and see that the shore had completely eroded.
Our new house felt big, too big, for little—though not that little anymore—old me. I’d wander from room to room, plodding and bored, checking my watch far too often and wondering how soon Henry would be home to help absorb some of the air, to help fill some of the space. In hindsight, I see now that I should have told him how hollow I felt, how demolished by loneliness I was. But back then, I figured, what’s the point? We’d made the move and we certainly weren’t moving back. Not now. So I flitted about our looming house, and I called Ainsley for power walks, and I decorated vigorously to turn the barren walls and floors and rooms into what I hoped would be a home. Besides, I’d remind myself, soon enough, Katie would be here, and she’d be all the company I’d need. At least that’s what I told myself on my better days.
As the evenings grew cool and the crimson leaves fell around us and when Henry was home early enough, we’d stroll through the quiet streets of our neighborhood, hand in hand, and spill forth our picture of the future—the peach-toned nursery, the looping scent of baby powder, the sounds of tottering, padded footsteps as our little bean learned to navigate her way in the world. Other times, we’d rest on the love seat on the back porch, feet tangled into each other, with Henry’s hand palming my stomach, wordlessly absorbing the new life that kicked inside of me.
Somehow, I learned to put my isolation aside. I’d read all about it in a magazine—which one, now, I can’t remember. But I’d imagine myself heaving my loneliness upward and setting it down, leaving it on the side of the road by the grocery store or at the mall by Pottery Barn. After mentally unfurling it, I’d drive away, skidding out of the parking lot, exhaling with relief, but too afraid to look in the rearview mirror in case I discovered that I hadn’t left it there at all, that, in fact, it had weaseled its way back into the car, back into me, and dumping it on the side of the road, dumping it anywhere, was nothing short of impossible.
Chapter Thirteen
When Jack returns from his mother’s sickbed, he also returns with new gusto for his novel, the one that has floundered like a graying, flopping fish since we met. At graduate school, prodded by Vivian and her aspirations, Jack wrote and rewrote and re-rewrote drafts upon drafts, many of which his professors admired well enough, but none of which earned him publication or garnered awards like some of his peers.
Occasionally, after a glass of red wine, and ample assurances that I wouldn’t judge him, we’d sit on his futon, reading together—he’d jot down notes or mutter something to himself, then hand me a page, and so it would go, passing the pages back and forth as if we were a fluid entity. Upon graduation, he was offered his much-sought-after position at Esquire, and he tuned back into his “novel,” if it could be called that because, to the best of my knowledge, it was really only sputtering starts