Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Jennifer Steil [160]
I take the job. After meeting Tim in December, I will fly to Yemen with him and stay with friends for two months. The Sierra Leone job starts in February. I figure that even if I do sell my book, I’ll have two months to get cracking on it before I head to Africa.
DECEMBER 7 IS THE BEST DAY of my whole life. It begins before dawn in New York, when a friend drives me to JFK. I’ve spent the week meeting editors but still don’t know the fate of my book. The flight to London is empty. I lie down across empty seats but am unable to sleep. My heartbeat is too loud. Customs detains me at Heathrow, so I am the last person to emerge. And there he is, waiting for me. His face is utterly familiar, as if I’ve been meeting him at airports all of my life. “Jenny,” he says.
He whisks me to a hotel, where I find the room filled with all of my favorite foods. He’s memorized them from my e-mails. There are peppered cashews and blueberry muffins and grilled shrimp. A bottle of champagne waits on ice. I get teary at the sight of it all. But before I get comfortable, I have to call my agent. “You have a publisher!” she says without preamble. I promptly begin to faint and have to lie down on the bed to continue the conversation. Tim is as ecstatic as I am and uncorks the champagne.
We drink champagne at every meal that week. We go to the theater, the ballet, and the movies. We ice-skate in front of Somerset House. We wander through art galleries. We walk absolutely everywhere. On our penultimate night, we are eating dinner at a dimly lighted French café when Tim says he wants to talk about us. “I have met the person I want to spend the rest of my life with,” he says. “And it’s you. And I need to know how you feel before I go about disrupting a lot of lives.”
Oddly, I don’t need time to think about it. In thirty-eight years, I’ve never felt this way about anyone. It’s funny that I will remember exactly what he said but not my own words. I am crying with wonder and relief and love. But somehow, I get my answer across.
Tim had planned to wait until after the holidays to leave his wife, but it doesn’t work out that way. By Christmas Eve, he’s told her everything, and by January, she is gone. It’s messy, complicated, and horrifically painful for his wife and daughter. It’s excruciating for me to know I am hurting people I have no desire to harm. But not once has either of us had a nanosecond of doubt that we are doing the right thing. The most inexplicable thing is that we have been so sure, right from the start.
For a few weeks, I hardly see him. I stay with friends while he sorts out his separation and is busy working. The wait is agonizing. I can’t bear to be apart from him and keep worrying that he will change his mind. Fortunately, now that I have sold my book, I have plenty of work. I keep distracted with a strict writing schedule and with frequent visits from Zuhra, who returns to Yemen from Mississippi the same time I return from New York.
I’ve been wrestling with what to do about Sierra Leone. Tim has told me he will wait for me and that he wants me to move in with him as soon as I finish the eight-month assignment. But it has become clear that I will struggle to balance writing my first book with training Sierra Leonean journalists. And every time I think about leaving Yemen, I burst into tears. While I’ve all but concluded I should turn down the job, I am afraid to tell Tim. I don’t want him to feel I am rushing things or putting any pressure on him by staying in Yemen.
Zuhra is dead set against me leaving, worried that she will be replaced in my affections.
“You’ll find a new Zuhra there!” she says. “An African Zuhra!”
I tell her about Tim, whom she thinks I would be crazy to desert for eight months. “You would