Page 81 of The Husband I Left

“I convinced her to marry me, Joe,” I finally continue. “I convinced her to marry me and let her think I wanted to build a future with her, and the whole time I was just using her. I married her for the worst reason a man can marry anyone. And I keep asking myself how any of this balances the scales. The dinners, the good mornings, all of it. How is it ever going to be enough? How do I ever make up for what I did to her?”

I expect him to think about it. To stroke his chin and produce some careful piece of wisdom. Instead, Joe chuckles. I stare at him while he shakes his head, reaches out, and advances a pawn, like we’re still just two men playing chess.

“That’s the thing, kid,” he says. “It won’t be. It’s never going to be enough.”

I slump back into my chair. “That’s not exactly the pep talk I was hoping for.”

“I know it isn’t. That’s how I know you needed to hear it.” He taps the edge of the board with one weathered finger. “You want to know what I think? I think part of you is still shopping for the big thing. The grand gesture. The one move so impressive it proves you’ve changed and wins her back all in one shot.” He raises an eyebrow at me. “Am I wrong?”

I open my mouth to deny it. Nothing comes out because he isn’t wrong. I quit my job. Gave my father the middle finger and gave up a fortune. I rearranged my whole life, and some part of me is still trying to keep score. Waiting for the sum to get big enough. Waiting for the moment Genny looks at everything I’ve sacrificed and declares the debt paid.

“That’s not how life works,” Joe says, watching my face do whatever it’s doing. “It’s not a transaction where you pile up enough good deeds on one side to cancel out the bad ones on the other. You can’t buy your way out of who you were. Not with money, not with gestures.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

“You want the honest answer?”

“Well, yeah.”

He nods and pauses to think for a moment before he continues. “You lost that girl because, at the heart of things, you didn’t treat her like she was a person. You treated her like she was a piece you could move around your board whenever it suited you.” He picks up his own queen, holds her up between two fingers and looks at me over the top of her. “Marry this one, it hurts my father. Park her at this party; it looks good. Set her aside here; there’s a shinier piece available. Pick her back up when it suits you.” He puts the queen back down on her square. “That was the sickness, kid. Everything else was just symptoms.”

I look at the board. At all those pieces I’ve been shuffling around for the last hour without a thought for anything except what I wanted from them.

“The only way you get her back,” Joe continues, “is to become a different kind of man altogether. And here’s the part you’re not going to like. You have to become the kind of man who would never treat her that way, not because you love her but because you’d never treat any person that way. Not her, not a stranger on a bus. It has to go all the way down, or it doesn’t count.”

“And how long does that take?”

Joe laughs again, and this time there’s real delight in it. “There it is. Still looking for the finish line.” He leans back in his chair, and it creaks under him. “That kind of work never ends, Oliver. There’s no diploma. Nobody hands you a certificate that says congratulations, you’re a good man now, please collect your wife at the front desk.”

“So what does it look like, then? If it never ends?”

He gives me a look as if the answer is so obvious that he’s surprised I bothered asking. “It looks like this. You get up every day. You do an honest day’s work. You treat the people who cross your path with respect, whether they can do anything for you or not. You lend a hand when you can. You love your family. Then you go to bed. Then you get up the next day and you do all of it again.” He spreads his hands. “That’s it. That’s the whole secret. That’s how you lead a good life.”

“That’s it,” I repeat.

“That’s it. Fifty years I did that with Janice. Wasn’t one grand gesture in the bunch. Just a whole bunch of days where I did my best not to be a jackass.” His eyes go soft the way they always do when Janice enters the conversation, drifting for a half second to the photograph on a side table of her laughing at some long-ago picnic. “The ordinary days are the whole thing, kid. Everybody thinks love lives in the big moments. It doesn’t. It lives in Tuesday.”

I’m quiet for a moment, thinking about this. In the living room, the game show rolls into a commercial, some jingle about car insurance filling the silence.

“Do you think I’m there yet?” I ask, my voice quieter than I intended. “The kind of man you’re talking about?”

Joe reaches over the table and smacks me lightly on the head. “Were you listening to anything I just said? There is no there.” But then his expression softens, and he reaches out and moves his bishop again, taking another of my pawns, because apparently wisdom and mercy are two different departments. “You’ve made a good start. Three months ago you couldn’t fry an egg, and you thought the world owed you a happy ending. Now look at you.”

“Thank you. I think.”

“Don’t thank me yet, because here’s the other thing you have to swallow, and it’s a big one.” He points a finger at me. “Genny’s part in this is out of your control. You can become the finest man in Boston. You can become a man who treats every soul you meet like royalty, and she is still allowed to decide she doesn’t want to know this new fellow. That’s her right. All you can do is do the work. Whether she ever wants to get acquainted with the man the work produces?” He shrugs. “That’s up to her. It was always going to be up to her.”

The words should frighten me. Three months ago, they would have; the old Oliver never entered a negotiation he couldn’t control, never made a bet he couldn’t hedge. But now I’m relieved by them. I can’t win her. I can’t earn her. I can only become someone and hope.

“Your move,” Joe says.

I look at the board. My position is hopeless, has been hopeless for six moves, and I move my king one square anyway because the game isn’t over until it’s over. We play in silence for a few minutes. He takes my other rook. I capture one of his pawns purely by accident and try to look like I planned it.

“Joe.”

“Mm.”

“You think you’re ready to let me make her paczki yet?”