AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It’s not…logical. Or healthy. I’m working on it in therapy.” She looked over at where he was curled like a fern perched on the stool.
Would this be the thing that finally cut their ties? Him thinking she was broken because her anxiety disorder had manifested in convincing her the farm would burn down if she was gone for more than four hours? Would he finally realize they could never have a real life together?
“So, the farmer’s market,” he said. “Do they have eggs? Because I think we need a new local egg supplier, and my dad said no to chickens.”
Her eyes welled up a little. Why wasn’t he running away? And why was she so relieved?
“Yes. There is an egg supplier. Yes, your dad is correct that we cannot have chickens.”
“All right! Let’s go on a date to the farmer’s market!”
Watching Levi talk to the egg guy, get rapturous about the depth of color on some radishes, and hug the first harvest of arugula to his chest felt like being let into sunlight after years of living underground. She didn’t need him to thrive, but when he cried from happiness over fiddleheads, her body turned toward him and soaked up his smiles.
As he was getting more comfortable back home, his defenses were coming down and he was becoming more and more alive. Part of her wanted him to keep those walls, because a fully illuminated Levi was an irresistible force. She needed him to keep all his defenses, to remind her he could never be truly happy in her life.
“The best festivals,” she explained as they sat with quiche at the rickety little plastic tables watching all the people go by, “are in fall. The grape festival, where you can get grape pie, the pickle festival, the cream cheese and garlic and sauerkraut festivals…August through November is a great time to eat in Upstate New York.”
“There is both a cream cheese and a bagel festival, I recently learned,” Levi said around a mouthful of quiche, “and I feel like that’s a real missed opportunity for a collaboration. Hey, this quiche is great. The perfect amount of nutmeg.”
“Rosenstein’s, of course, has a presence at the bagel festival,” Hannah said, stealing a bite of his quiche. It was better than hers.
“But not the cream cheese festival?” he asked.
“We don’t make cream cheese.” She shrugged. He tried to block her fork with his when she went for another bite. “Until you give me a divorce, buddy, half this quiche is mine.”
“Tell me more about cool shit in Upstate New York. What do you love about here? As an adult?”
This was…a tricky question. She did love it, very deeply, but she couldn’t leave, so she’d made the best of it. She couldn’t tell him she’d actually rather be at the farmer’s market in Vietnam, because she didn’t want to admit to him that he might have been right, and there might be more world to see. But she felt disingenuous trying to sell him on a place that was too small for her some days, and would be for him, too, eventually. Their lives were fundamentally incompatible—he could not thrive in the only place she’d ever been able to blossom.
Except he was, sort of, thriving here. And was she really still blossoming?
They were sitting on the ground with puppies in their laps when the words she’d been trying to keep stuffed inside burst out of her. “Why don’t you think I’m broken?”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, trying to disentangle a puppy from one of his scarves. “Why would I think that?”
She huffed. “Because I can’t leave.”
“I think lots of people have really fulfilling lives in one place. If being a hermit is what calls to your heart, I want to support that. Because I want to support your heart. Even if it doesn’t call to your heart, there’s nothing broken about having an anxiety disorder and dealing with it. Which it sounds like you are.”
It was so much kinder than anything she’d ever said to herselfabout the situation, and she hid her face in her puppy so he wouldn’t see her cry.
Later, as they walked toward the car, he asked, one arm slung over her shoulder and the other loaded down with produce, “We had fun today, didn’t we?”
“We always have fun, Levi. Especially when we’re not fighting or fucking, which we’ve decided we don’t do anymore. That’s who we are, fun, fighting, and fucking. The three Fs of our marriage.” She wasn’t even exasperated that he didn’t see the problem with this, just sad.
“Fun is good,” he pointed out. “I get the feeling you didn’t have a ton of it the past few years. Hell, we weren’t having a ton of it at the end.”
She sighed. “No, I didn’t. You had all of mine.”
“Oof. Fair.”
She shook her head, stopping his long strides so they could look at each other. “It’s not even…That’s not the problem. I mean, I guess I could be mad about it, because I’m great at being mad at you, but I wouldn’t go back and make a different choice. The problem is that fun isn’t enough. It’s not enough to build a life and a marriage on.”
“We have enough to build a life on, Hannah. We have shared history; we love each other. Fun doesn’t hurt, though!” he sang, pirouetting away, bags flying out around him.
“What about the fact that we still want opposite things?” she called after him.
“We’ll figure it out as we go!” he said, and she sighed.
