Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [84]
My brother has trudged straight back into bed after guzzling his latte, and Linda has retreated to the bedroom. I flip through some football on TV, then glance over the newspaper headlines, and finally, with the house silent other than the clanging of pots and my father’s mutterings to himself in the kitchen, I slip out the front door and into the frozen world outside, which feels like another planet entirely. The snow crunches underneath my weighted steps as I wind down the street.
I replay my conversation with my father and blend it into my old life with Henry. How maybe we both failed each other in our own ways.
When Henry got promoted to partner, he called me from the office to break the news. I was seven months pregnant, bored and swollen in our new home, and was elevating my feet on the couch, with Days of Our Lives in the background, and a tower of parenting magazines on the floor.
“This will mean a lot more work,” he warned. “And before I accept it, I want to be sure that you’re okay with it.”
“Of course!” I practically squealed. “It’s incredible, and I’m so proud of you.” And I was.
“You sure?” He hedged again. “Because really, I mean it when I say that I’ll be traveling a lot. A lot.”
“I’m sure,” I reiterated, not hearing, not really listening to the veracity of his words.
“Good,” he said, and I could hear him break into a smile. “Because I already accepted it!”
Later, months later, when his nonstop schedule had torn him away from the family and when my resentment had festered and was rising into a slow boil, and when I clamped down even further on that resentment, as if putting a lid on a tea kettle can keep it from warming, I considered our exchange. And how, in those few short words, we’d equally betrayed each other: me, by pretending that I had everything that I needed, and him, by assuming to know what I needed in the first place, with no real understanding of that need at all.
Why didn’t I just say something, I think today, panting as I ascend my neighbor’s hill, the same one Andy and I used to fly down, feet off our bike pedals, with gleeful abandon. Why didn’t I just say, “Be here. Be present. Give me what I need.” Why was I so incapable of saying something so simple? Despite the frigid temperatures, I feel sweat pool on the waistband of my jeans, as I consider how big a difference this tiny shift might have made in the scope of everything. Maybe he would have heard me; maybe I could have started hearing him, too.
Finally, when my thighs are pleading for a reprieve, I loop back to the house, which smells like pumpkin pie and nutmeg, and gallop up the stairs to my room. Then I reach into my purse, extract my wallet, and tug out Henry’s business card.
He has scrawled his cell phone on the back, and so, before my nerves get the better of me, I poke his numbers into my pink phone that matches the wallpaper and bedding in my girlhood room.
I’m flipped into voice mail, and his message is familiar as always. It is, I surmise, from my perch on my strawberry-hued bed, the same message that he still has today. Or in the future. It’s all muddling together now.
“Er, Henry, it’s . . . Jill. Jillian Westfield.” How weird is this? I flip onto my stomach. “Um, for some reason I was just thinking of you. So, er, I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas.” No, you didn’t! You wanted to say so much more. “ ’Kay. Bye.”
I throw my arm around my ragged stuffed bunny that I’d slept with since I was four and lie still. Then, in one frantic movement, I reach for the phone again, redial, and press the receiver so closely to my ear, I can hear the crackling across the line as I’m connected.
“Henry! Hey, it’s me! Um, Jillian. Um, actually, you’re going to think I’m crazy, but um, I was thinking about it and wondered if you wanted to meet for coffee.” I pause and inhale. “Erm, not today, obviously, because it’s Christmas.” I emit a semipsychotic laugh, which, if he knew me better as he once did, would signal that I was nearly vomiting