Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [93]
“It is,” I offer, though the words are neither forceful nor direct. I consider how much I’ve bent on the wedding planning, on his aimless ambition, on molding myself into a perfectly crafted version of who I thought he needed me to be. It wasn’t altogether different, I realized just as I had in Vivian’s bathroom when the image of my future self startled me into tears, from what I’d done in my marriage to Henry. And, the thought pummels me, if the problem didn’t lie with them, then it lies with me, rendering this whole trip, this whole fucking experience inconsequential because my history wasn’t what I needed to change. I was.
“Oh, I almost forgot! Dessert!” Henry says, puncturing our pregnant silence and bounding off the couch, flushing away the morbid realization that was creeping into my consciousness.
I hear wrappers crinkling and a minute later, he returns with a platter of powdered doughnuts, Twinkies, fluorescent pink Snowballs, a Twix bar, and a mound of Skittles.
“Nice,” I giggle. “Very upscale.”
“Only the finest is served here at Casa Henry,” he says, grabbing a butter knife and delicately slicing off the end of the Twix, then popping it in his mouth.
He rests the plate on the coffee table, sits next to me, and reaches for the remote. I tear into a Snowball, unnaturally colored as it might be, and press the sacchariney coconut into the roof of my mouth until it dissolves, sending trickles of artificial flavoring and sugar down the back of my throat. Henry turns up the volume on Times Square.
“I know it’s strange, but man, I love this.” He gestures toward the TV, reaching for a Twinkie. “The whole thing. The crazy tourists, the confetti, Dick Clark.” He sighs and takes a bite. “I think I’ve seen it every year since I was a kid.”
I watch him watching the revelry. His straight nose and his creamy skin and his pillow lips, so much like our daughter’s, the little girl who isn’t even yet a blip, a seed in his mind. How could she be, after all? I think. He can’t know what the future brings. But then I consider that now, lost in the maze between what has happened in the past and what has already transpired in the future, neither can I know what the future brings. I glance at him, inconspicuously now, trying not to appear too obvious, and ache—literally physically ache—for my daughter’s straight nose and her creamy skin and her pillow lips, and I stop myself from reaching over and sliding my fingers down the bridge of his nose and onto his lips, as if that might somehow connect me to Katie. As if that might bring her back or ignite a series of events that would still allow her to be, to thrive, to live.
Henry notices me staring, despite my efforts, and cocks his head.
“You okay?” he asks.
“I’m fine.” I wave my hand and swoop down for some Skittles, but my dampened eyes betray me.
“No,” he says firmly. “You’re not.”
I look at him for a beat too long. I can remember it clearly now, that Henry and I weren’t always broken, that there was a time when we were our true selves for each other, when our nuances weren’t lost, when we weren’t putting forth so much effort to be what we thought the other wanted that we taxed ourselves empty. It wasn’t that we didn’t have what we needed to begin with, it was that we, the both of us, let it seep away.
But tonight, I can’t explain any of this to Henry. I know that he wants to hear it, to listen to why I’m so weighed down, but the explanation is just so outlandish, so ridiculous, that even I, with my new understanding of my future husband, can’t bear to unload it.
Knowing that he wants to know is enough.
So instead of answering, I excuse myself to the bathroom, and when I return, it is nearly midnight.
The glittery silver ball is descending and the crowd is furiously chanting down the numbers and the biting winter air, clear now of snow but still frigid and uninviting, swirls the confetti through the air. Henry looks over at me and smiles, giddy with boyhood excitement, and I, too, am caught up in the moment, my eyes wide and my grin bigger.
With