86
I RETURN HOME, still a bit loosened and unsteady, and the windows show the same warp, the light catching in the glass in different ways, the sunbeams circling, like a flashlight shifting and doubting softly, looking for proof. I can feel the pinching chill sneak around the frame, and then James opens his crooked mouth and asks me if a tooth of his is broken, and there’s not enough light to see, but I lie, “You should get it checked out.” He is buzzing hot, angry at the inconvenience, but I tell him not to worry, to rest and deal with it tomorrow, to forget action for now. I am happy to give him counsel, to feel that my opinion still counts. We live in the attempt to calm down for a moment, and I try to remember how to be near something without being worried by it and feel James’s eyes on me, wondering if he can trust. I would do anything to release them. I make a nest for myself on the couch. James delivers me the stack of magazines and catalogs that arrived while I was in the hospital and lifts my feet into his lap. He flips on a baseball game and hits mute. Normal feels like a performance today, but we fake our way through, hopeful we’ll grow into our actions.
On a commercial break, James says, “When you’re feeling better, we’ll sell the house.” I agree, but we keep talking, even after the game returns on the screen. We doubt selling the house will provide answers to all of our questions, if any. I keep an eye on James, hopeful that I have defined the farthest end of this spectrum for us, but curious to discover if my mind is telling me the truth. I know now what it is to feel myself slip away, but what I don’t know is how to move on with trust or how to be sure of what is solid. Like a pinball that moves backward with momentum as the bus it rides on moves forward, trying so hard to stay in one place. It is difficult to believe in any given trajectory, physics being an interpretation of the world and not an explanation.
I insist on making dinner the first night I am home. James has filled the refrigerator with guesses at what I’ll want. All the raw materials stock themselves side by side, but I am unambitious. I make a lazy chicken curry, overspiced because of my resistance to dirtying measuring spoons. I pour in more coconut milk to counterbalance the spices and call it a soup. “Compared to hospital sandwiches, this is gourmet,” he says. Yellow broth splatters his T-shirt as he slurps up a noodle.
I take myself for a walk. James offers to come with, but I ask to be trusted, only for an hour today. The grass has a bleached-out buzz, the summer sun having baked it dry. The forest is cooler, but the path is packed down and solid now. The wet spring leaves have dried and crushed themselves into dust. I listen for the children in the trees and hear, Cheer up! Cheer up! But then I see the robin singing the words. I search for proof that the world is one way rather than another, but it doesn’t matter what is coming from inside us or around us. Our brains allow it either way. We can lose ourselves behind a trapdoor, whether in our mind or in the house.
87
JULIE’S PALE SHOULDERS are narrow, fraught with freckles. I have the urge to photograph each spot individually. It would never end. She sits on the edge of the mattress. The pillows sag naked. Her hands clutch the ball of dirty sheets in her lap. I should have remembered to wash them before she returned home. I never do. She turns her head to look at me. She still has the ability to stun me with her attention. I hear noise downstairs. I remember I turned on the radio when Connie paid us a visit earlier. I left it on so softly I could barely hear it, but in this room it fires full volume.
Julie’s face is blue and friendly. She is sad and wants me to agree with her sadness. I look at her as if I know all of her angles. At one time I thought this was true. I remember us sitting on that couch in our apartment just months ago, perfectly cottoned. The white gold of availability around her irises strands her where she is. I know the tide will never pull me toward her. I am next to her, but away. She traces her eyes up to the ceiling when the tears form. I want to allow her to handle herself. I want to scoot toward her to welcome her to ask: for help, to be left alone, to be heard.
Julie chews the inside of her cheek. I can see it pulled in. I can see her jaw flex. A new habit? I pay attention. “I love you,” I tell her.
“Even now?” That flimsy grin forms.
“Yes.” We are many people. We separate. We tangle. We relock.
88
I NOTICE JAMES is wearing a loudly striped shirt he hasn’t put on in years, one we argued about his keeping before the move. I realize he must have lost weight, and then I see it in his face, too. The scraggly strays of the top edge of his beard—the ones I wonder why he doesn’t shave off—hide the new concavity of his cheeks. I wonder which worry has caused this. Did it start with the gambling or the house or when I went into the hospital? How long have I failed to notice him changing?
On the table, James has laid out the Realtors he’s been researching. We agree we don’t want to work with the man who sold us the house. James has put together a rough budget for improvements, researched home equity loans. He’s been doing math, and from what I can see, his plan is sound: we could make money from a sale. I am touched by the effort this must have taken him, but I am still preoccupied with my own errors.
“I’m sick, but it’s not just me. You can agree with that, right?”
“Of course,” James says.
I dip my head, as if this were something I, too, am sure of, but I am uncomfortable with how all my lines of thought refuse to reconcile. If James is also sick, then no one here is well. I would prefer not to take all of the blame, but if we’re both not sick, then something is haunting us, not only this place, but the woods, and the beach, and the house next door, and our memories and logic. There is still a chance that everything might be true, that we both might be filled with scars and substances that cause our synapses to fire inefficiently, that cause us to make decisions that are unwise and fantastic, and to believe what shouldn’t be believed, but that is not to say that the world outside our minds is reasonable. That is just to say there is no sense in knowing where the line is drawn. We can mark the place that indicates This is how much we can take; we can monitor it, but that line, nevertheless, constantly moves.