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But still, for a moment she'd had that sensation of not knowing up from down, right from left, of looking at her own husband and finding his face strange and unknowable the way you do when you say the same word over and over until it loses all meaning. And it had thrown her.
"Jack?" she'd said then, looking up from the book that was open in her lap. He'd been sitting in an armchair on the other side of the room, turned to her in profile as he looked at the computer screen in front of him.
"What's up?" he'd asked absentmindedly, turning his head to look at her but not really tearing his attention from whatever he was doing.
Ruby had wanted him to get up and come to her, to sit beside her on the loveseat, to hold her until she didn't feel disoriented anymore, but of course he hadn't, because she said nothing. Instead, she just smiled wanly, his features swimming back into their correct places, his face making sense again. "Oh, nothing," she'd said, waving away her own silliness.
But in that split-second, Jack had been a strange man in a buttoned-up shirt and dress pants, his shoes still on as he sat there, reading an article or answering an email or whatever he'd been doing. This was during the early years of his push for the White House, and during that time he'd become intensely distant from her, overextended in so many ways that he was essentially a void when he was at home. He'd smile winningly at Harlow and Athena whenever they wanted to sit with him, read him something they'd written for school, or talk about their classroom pet rabbits, but as Ruby had observed him, she'd known he was merely smiling and nodding for his daughters, but already thinking ahead to whatever he needed to do next.
"I think we should go somewhere together," Ruby had said then. "For our anniversary next month."
Jack lifted his head a few inches and scratched at the underside of his chin, looking as though he might be considering it. "There's a lot going on at the moment, Rubes," he'd said, dropping his hand and turning to look her in the eye. "Do you think we can push it to January?"
"But our anniversary is in October," she'd said, frowning. How hard could it be for one man to take a long weekend with his wife? Would the wheels of the political establishment stop turning if a senator from California took an actual weekend?
"I'm sorry, sweetheart," Jack had said, giving her a half-smile that didn't feel particularly apologetic. "I'll see what I can do, but it might be a later trip."
In the end, they'd managed to get away together for a weekend in November, and Ruby had taken that gratefully. Without telling her anything, Jack had booked a trip to Shipwreck Key, and they'd flown down to lay on the beach, drink salty margaritas, and enjoy the feeling of being stranded on a quiet island. At the time Jack's face and name weren't known in every household in the country, so it had been a quiet weekend of strolling down Seadog Lane together, buying groceries at Fed Men Tell No Tales, and eating picnics on the sand. In all the years since, the memory of the peace and quiet and the charm of the island had kept Ruby going. Of course she hadn't pictured herself here as a fifty-year-old widow, but she'd thought perhaps she and Jack might keep a winter condo down here on the island, or that they'd visit once a year or something.
But that had been before their time in the White House, before things had gotten so busy that Ruby forgot what it was like to eat dinner with her husband and daughters most nights, and before Helen had walked into the private residence to tell her that Jack was dead, and that she had just minutes to compose herself before the press found out and the news blew up worldwide. That had changed so much of her life, but, weirdly, now that Ruby was two years into widowhood, she could also admit that it hadn't changed some things at all.
She'd felt alone long before Jack flew his plane into the Bay of Biscay, and she'd felt alone all over again when she found out about Etienne and Julien. She'd felt alone when she found that a letter from Jack had been languishing in Etienne's hands for a full year after her husband died, and even more alone when the letter revealed that he'd been suffering from a neurological disease that he'd failed to tell her about. In a sense, Jack dying had simply closed the door on what had become a partnership--not necessarily a passionate romance--and while she still mourned everything that had come before (being young and inlove; having adorable little girls running around; dreaming of the future together), in some ways that she didn't even want to admit to herself, Jack dying hadn't made her feel anymorealone than she already had.
That was a hard realization to come to.
Ruby is sitting in her bathtub. It's late, and Dexter is tapping away at the keyboard of his computer in the guest room, trying to rework something he's written. In order to give him space, Ruby has taken a glass of wine to the tub, poured a steaming bath, and she has a diary of Jack's sitting on the stool she keeps next to the tub to hold her wine, her glasses, and whatever book she's planning on reading while she soaks.
Tonight she's chosen a diary from 2018. It had been a year of big changes, and one that marked a turning point in their marriage. Unlike that time when she'd looked at Jack and seen a stranger, by 2018 she'd felt it in her heart that they actuallywerestrangers. She truly believed then that had she picked up the girls and gone to California to stay with her mother the same way she had when Athena was a baby, Jack would hardly have noticed. It would have taken one of his staff members alerting him to their absence, and then an army of advisors would have needed to analyze the optics and the practicality of the situation before someone would have ordered her back to the White House. No cross-country flight to retrieve her. No cabbage roses. No promises.
Ruby takes a long drink of her chardonnay and sets it back on the stool before picking up the diary. She opens to the spot she'd marked earlier that day.
April 2, 2018
Some years feel like they just pass by when you're a civilian--you wake up on New Year's Day and you make afew resolutions: "I'll be more patient with my wife this year; I'll work out every day for an hour; I'll eat more vegetables and be kinder to strangers." Then you hit a few holidays, buy some chocolates for the women in your life, wear green on St. Patrick's Day, eat a ham for Easter, buy some hot dogs in July. Before you know it, the leaves have changed and there's the feeling that it's all gotten away from you again. Have you eaten the veggies everyday? Maybe...if french fries count. Were you always patient with your wife? Okay, sometimes, but she has the tendency to nag about X, Y, or Z. Perhaps you'll do better next year.
Next thing you know, you're giving thanks for what you have and buying gifts for the people you love, and you're getting ready to wrap it all up and do it again like the year that's just passed never happened. But I do think that at some point in your life (sometime in your 40s, for most people) you find yourself at a crossroads. You realize that it's all gone incredibly fast so far, so much faster than you realized in the moment, and that the rest of it will go even faster. You realize that, like everyone, you will die. You will. There is no escape hatch for that.
There's an understanding that happens when your own parents leave this plane of being that, well, you're next. There is no longer a buffer between you and the great beyond. Some days that knowledge serves to motivate and inspire, but more often than not during this midlife phase, it only serves to terrify you. I think this is what they call a "midlife crisis." I'm not sure, but it feels like knowing that your own time on Earth is sliding down a slippery slope into the abyss could be the catalyst for any number of heart-seizing, mind-bending existential catastrophes.
Having said that, I don't want to turn myself into a cliche and offer up here that my feelings for Etienne stemfrom nothing more than a midlife crisis. That would be disingenuous. Our son is now ten years old, and we've been in love for more than a decade. In fact, I love her more now than I did that morning in her apartment when we woke up wondering what we'd done and where it would end. I regret the decision to stand by her even less than I could have imagined I would; being an involved and supportive father to Julien has brought me nothing but joy and fulfillment, though of course I regret a million things on behalf of both Etienne and our son. Had she fallen for someone with different life circumstances, her own life could have been very different. Has she asked for that or expressed any desire to unwind the hands of time and make different choices? No, she has not. But there will always be a tiny part of me that wishes I could have been a different man for her; a better man.
And while I'm on the subject of regret, of course there's Ruby. There will always be a sense that I've wronged her, whether she ever finds out about Etienne and Julien or not. Just because something stays a secret doesn't mean its power to wound another is diminished. It would still hit her life like a torpedo directly to the center of her heart, and I hope and pray that never happens. Is it possible that I could spend the rest of my life living as a man torn between two worlds? Can I get from where I am now to my death bed (as a wizened, gray old man, of course) holding all of the most potentially damaging secrets close to my heart? I'd like to try.
However, I do find, as time goes on, that it's harder to be present in both lives. It's more challenging for me to be here with Ruby and to look at her with the unvarnished eyes of love as we share a breakfast table the way we have so many hundreds or thousands of times. It's more difficult for me to be in France and to eat a fresh baguette with butter in Etienne's tiny kitchen, listening to Julien ramble on in French about hisschool friends and his favorite sports. Everywhere I am, I exist in a zone that is not exclusive to the people who occupy it; I am always and forever in that overlapping area of a Venn diagram, with things floating in the distance on either side of me that cannot be joined together at the same time.
As an example of how my mind is always trying to separate my worlds but also hold them both simultaneously, I give you inauguration day last year: me, standing on stage before the world, with Ruby at my side looking flawless and so proud of all that we've achieved, but as I put my hand in the air to be sworn in, I pull Etienne into my mind as well. I wonder if she's watching (I know that she is) and whether she's keeping Julien away from the television (I know she must be, because, somewhat improbably, we've been able to keep him out of the spotlight and unaware of the job his papa truly does that pulls him away so much and for so long). I think of the way she cried tears of joy when I last saw her, both happy and sad that I'd won the presidency. She's always known my aspirations and been impressed--or at least supportive--of them, but now she is also somewhat fearful of what the spotlight will do to our lives, and rightfully so.
I think now of myself standing there, swearing before God and man that I'll be the best president I can, but inside I'm wondering how any man who lives two lives can be the best of anything. At any given moment, someone else is getting a better version of you than you can ever give yourself because, frankly, there's nothing left to give. And I say this without complaint--I know I don't deserve a better version of myself, I am forever in a bed of my own making, and whatever internal struggles I have are ones I deserve. Entirely.
Ruby shifts in the hot water, crossing one leg over the other at the knee. She's fully reclined and the ends of her pinned-up hair that hang onto the back of her neck are damp from the bathwater. A light layer of steam covers the window next to the tub.
She closes the journal and sets it down so that she can take another sip of wine and contemplate Jack's words. Of course he'd been conflicted--as he should have been. Only a sociopath would be capable of living two lives and never contemplating the ramifications of so much subterfuge. She knew Jack well, and while he was clearly a different man than the one she thought she'd married, he wasn't a heartless, cruel human being. At some point, he'd simply seen a fork in the road, and rather than choosing one path, he'd taken both.
With a fluffy white robe wrapped around her, Ruby walks through her bedroom and into her closet, where she selects a pair of satin sleep shorts and a well-loved UCLA t-shirt. She dresses and walks through the hallway to the guest room, where Dexter is still typing on his laptop at the desk, his back to the door.
"Hey," she says, leaning against the wall and knocking lightly on the door. "You busy?"
Dexter stops typing and turns to look at her. A smile spreads across his face as he looks her up and down. "Nice pajamas."
