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The letter is in the glovebox.
“Tell her yes,” I say. “She’s good and she’s hungry.” She’ll ask him things in front of me. “Speaking of which. Strawberry-kiwi or blueberry-banana?”
“Strawberry-kiwi. Why?”
“No reason.”
“When are you coming home?”
“Soon. Love you.”
“You, too.”
I go back to my truck and have to spend ten minutes staring out the front window before I can bring myself to turn over the engine. I want to scream at him. I want to confront him. I want to shout at the top of my lungs that this was one of the things that he didn’t get to hide from me. But then I calm myself down, because acting like a crazy person is not how you save your marriage.
So I do the best I can with what I’ve got.
I drive to the Smoothie Shack before I come home.
Chapter forty-seven
Bastien
I’m still at the dining table on Tuesday afternoon when he gets home. I didn’t bother to shave, or shower. My shirt has a coffee stain on it that I forgot to sponge away because it was already ice cold when I spilled it. I tried to listen to a meditation podcast this morning. Then I settled on a murder mystery. My mind couldn’t commit to either one of them, because tomorrow I’m going in front of the Ethics Committee, and after their judgment becomes official, I am going to have a long span of these four walls to get used to.
“Hey, baby boy!” he says, kissing me on the cheek. “I bought some of that Italian sausage you liked. I thought we could cook it up together.” He looks at my breakfast, quietly congealing in front of me, and then, almost involuntarily, looks at the clock on the wall, hung next to that stupid letter from the publisher that’s been mocking me all day. “When did you get up?” he asks.
“Eleven. Twelve. I don’t know.”
He switches on the lights and takes my bowl to the sink and starts to clean it. The cereal has become a porridge. I just want to go back to bed, but there’s nothing to do there either but wait to fall asleep.
“How were your classes today?”
“Fine.” He runs the water and looks out the back window.
I make myself look past that evil publishing letter he mounted on the wall to the outside wall of the next trailer. He’s still wearing his shoes. I used to insist people take off their shoes in my home, but this place is not a home. It’s a pigsty and I live in it.
He shuts off the water. “This isn’t working,” he says.
I look at him. All the fear spikes at the same moment. “What isn’t?” I manage.
“Us. This. We need to talk.”
We need to talk. There it is, then. I’ve been holding my breath for this, and now I’m almost relieved. I look at the clock he put up there and watch the second hand snap toward the six. I bite my lip and try not to burst out into tears. “Do we?”
He turns back to me, and for the first time since I met him, he’s furious at me. “You lied to me. I know, Bastien. I know about the hearing.”
“Oh.” I study the venetian blinds. So that’s it. He knows I’ve been fired. Maybe he’s known this whole time. Of course he has. They didn’t print Independent Scholar at the Kirkfield gala by accident. An accident would have been forgetting to print anything at all. He’s been sitting on this information ever since and trying to time his exit so that it costs him the least. The only question is how he’ll phrase the cruelty so that it sounds like something he can live with.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“You were supposed to fucking tell me, Bastien! I’m not supposed to find out everything about your life by accident. How do you think that makes me feel? What else have you been hiding from me? Huh?”
I force myself to look at the ceiling so I can contain the tears. “You know everything now.”
“I just want you to tell me the fucking truth, Bastien. I’m not some trick you met on the street. I’m your husband. I deserve better than that.”
“Yes. You do.” I’m not fighting him on this. I want to tell him, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but I can’t. I look back at the clock. How many seconds have ticked by? How many will pass before it’s over?
