You had to do it, I tell myself. It was a you-made-the-bed situation. And I was taking responsibility for my actions. Counseling, the endless marriage counseling. The guilt. The need to fix things. The confusion about whether or not I’m doing the right thing. The faking of my amnesia was my one rogue moment, when I stepped away from myself and did what I wanted to do without thought to consequences. I was a coward. I was raised to do what was socially acceptable.
I stood under the water until it turned cold, then I dried myself off and stepped out of the bathroom. My wife — thank God — had fallen asleep on top of the covers. I felt instant relief. I wouldn’t have to act tonight. Her red hair was spread out around her like a fiery halo. I tossed a blanket over her, grabbed my bottle of wine and retreated to the balcony to get drunk. It was still raining when I sat in one of the chairs and propped my feet up on the railing. I never had to “act” with Olivia. We just fit — our moods, our thoughts … even our hands.
Once, during her senior year, she bought a gardenia bush to put outside her apartment. She fawned over that thing like it was a dog, Googled ways to take care of it and then made notes in one of those spiral notebooks. She even named it. Patricia, I think. Every day she’d squat on her haunches outside her front door and examine Patricia to see if a flower had bloomed. I watched her face when she came back inside — she always wore this look of hopeful determination. Not yet, she’d say to me, as if all of her hope for life was tied into that gardenia plant blooming a flower. That’s what I loved about her, that grim determination to survive even though the odds seemed to always be against her. Despite all of Olivia’s plant nurturing, Patricia slowly started to fade away, her leaves curling at the tips and turning brown. Olivia would stare at that plant, a crease forming between her eyebrows and her little mouth puckered in a frown worth kissing. Florida had an especially cold winter that year. One morning when I got to her apartment, Patricia was clearly dead. I jumped into my car and sped off to Home Depot where I’d seen them selling the same bushes. Before my little love cracked her eyes open, I replaced her dead plant with a healthy one, repotting it over the grass in front of her building. I threw the old one in the dumpster and washed my hands in the pool before knocking on her door. She checked on it when she opened the door for me that morning, and her eyes lit up when she saw the healthy green leaves. I don’t know if she ever suspected what I’d done, she never said anything. I took care of it without her knowing, sticking plant food into the pot before I knocked on her door. My mother always put used tea bags in the soil around her rose bushes. I did that a couple times too. Right before we broke up, that damn plant bloomed a flower. I’d never seen her so excited. The look on her face was the same as when I’d missed the shot for her.
If she came back and stood in that same spot beneath my hotel room, I’d probably jump right off the balcony to get to her. It’s not too late, I told myself. You can find out where she’s staying. Go to her.
I loved Olivia. I loved her with every fiber of my being, but I was married to Leah. I’d made a commitment to Leah — no matter how stupid that was. I was in. For better or worse. I had a brief moment when I thought I couldn’t do it anymore, but that was in the past. Before she’d gotten pregnant with my baby and swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills.
Right?
Right.
I shook the bottle of wine. I was halfway through.
When a woman carried your baby in her body, you started seeing everything a little differently. The impossible became slightly less f**ked. The ugly picked up a pretty glow. The unforgivable woman looked a little less stained. Kind of like when you’d been drinking. I finished the bottle and set it on its side on the floor. It rolled away and hit the balcony railing with a ting. I was in a baby coma. And I needed to wake the f**k up.
I closed my eyes and I saw her face. I opened my eyes and saw her face. I stood up, tried to focus on the rain, the city lights, the f**king Spanish Steps — and I saw her face. I had to stop seeing her face so I could be a good husband to Leah. She deserved that.
Right?
Right.
We flew out four days later. We barely had time to recover from the jet lag before it was time to leave again. It’s not like I could focus on the trip with my ex floating somewhere around the city. I looked for Olivia at the airport, in restaurants, in cabs that splashed water on my ankles as they drove past. She was everywhere and nowhere. What were the chances that she’d be on our flight? If she was, I’d…
She wasn’t on our flight. But, I thought about her for the nine hours it took to fly across the Atlantic. My favorite memories — the tree, Jaxson’s, the orange grove, the cake fight. Then I thought about the bad ones — mostly things she made me feel, the constant thought that she was going to leave me, the blatant way she refused to admit that she loved me. It was all so childish and tragic. I glanced at my wife. She was reading magazines and drinking cheap airplane wine. She took a sip and grimaced when she swallowed.
“Why do you order it if you don’t like it?”
“It’s better than nothing, I suppose,” she said, looking out the window. Telling, I thought. I opened the book I brought with me and stared at the ink. For nine gracious hours, Leah left me alone. I’d never been so grateful for cheap wine. When we landed in Miami, she dashed to the bathroom to reapply her makeup while I waited in line for Starbucks. By the time we made it to baggage claim, I was in one of the worst moods of my life.
“What’s wrong with you now?” she said. “You’ve been distracted this whole trip. It’s really annoying.”
I glared at her from behind my sunglasses and grabbed one of her bags off the belt. I flung it down so hard; it wobbled on its fancy f**king rotating wheels. Who traveled with two large suitcases when they went away for five days?
“You’re supposed to be working on this with me. You’re not even mentally with me right now.”
She was right.
“Let’s go home,” I said, kissing the top of her head. “I want to sleep for twelve hours straight and eat three meals in bed.”
She stood on her tiptoes and kissed me on the mouth. It took effort to kiss her back so she wouldn’t suspect anything was wrong. When she keened into my mouth, I knew I was every bit as good at lying to her as I was at lying to myself.
Chapter Twenty-Six