Who Do You Love(124)
Author: Jennifer Weiner

“Here’s your coat,” I said.

“Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry,” said Jay. “Is this what they call the bum’s rush?” He draped his coat over his arm and stood facing me at the base of the stairs. “It felt good to be here,” he said.

“Passover’s always nice.” My matter-of-fact, blandly polite tone had to be hurting him more than screaming and shouting.

“Your grandmother’s looking well.”

“Being single has always agreed with her,” I said. “She told me once that she never got to travel when she was married. She never got to have the life she wanted until she was alone.”

“Zing,” said Jay, and followed me into the dining room, where I started zipping the good china into its padded containers, where the bowls and plates would stay until the next occasion. Jay picked up a container and started zipping like nothing had happened, like everything was fine.

“How have you been feeling?” he’d asked. “You had your appointment with Dr. Adelman last month, right?”

Oh, that was a mean trick, remembering my annual check-in with the cardiologist, acting like he cared. When I’d been pregnant with each of the girls, he had accompanied me to every single doctor’s visit, even the early ones when all they did was weigh me and check my blood pressure. He’d framed both girls’ ultrasounds, and, when they’d each been delivered, the cord cut and the goop wiped off, he had cradled them in his arms and sung “You Are My Sunshine.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked, finally letting an edge creep into my voice. “What do you want?”

Jay treated me to a Jay-ish sigh—an audible inhale, a meaningful pause, then the noisy rush of air that telegraphed the extent of his frustration or his pain. “I guess the girls told you about Amy.”

“The girls didn’t tell me anything.” I saw his eyes widen. “I don’t ask. What you do is your business.”

“They don’t say anything?” He sounded incredulous.

“They tell me when you take them to the amusement park or the zoo. Or out to dinner—Delaney tells me about that. But as far as your personal life . . .” I shrugged, and then glanced at the door, already imagining what would happen when he’d left, how I would take off my dress and my shoes, pull on my most worn and comfortable white cotton pajamas, and climb into the bed that we’d once shared and I had since claimed as my own.

Jay assumed a somber aspect. “Amy went back to Leonard.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, while not feeling particularly sorry. Not feeling much of anything, really. Was it possible that I’d finally stopped caring?

Jay reached for my hands, which I immediately filled with more plates. Undeterred, he performed another one of those three-part sighs, and then said in a low voice, “I made a mistake.”

For so long I had prayed for this moment. I had dragged out the divorce proceedings longer than I needed to, hoping he would change his mind. I had thought that time would make him miss us, make him appreciate what he’d thrown away. With a strange woman sleeping beside him (and snoring, I hoped), he would recall Delaney’s high, sweet voice and how she’d slip into our bed on Sunday mornings, while forgetting her tantrums, or how the bed invasions had curtailed our sex life. He’d remember Adele’s good grades, and he wouldn’t think about how every year our parent-teacher conferences had included a long talk about Adele’s inability to make friends, or the cost of the therapist she was now seeing. He would picture me like this, with my hair styled, in lipstick that matched my dress, with the house clean and a home-cooked meal on the table, and forget whatever it was about me that he’d found so wearying or unlovely, whatever it was that had sent him to my former best friend. He would miss us, and he’d want us back, and I, obviously, would want the same thing.

But now? I looked at him—pursed lips, bent chin, hands in his pockets as he gazed at the floor, the very picture of contrition. I should have been moved. I wasn’t. It was as if I’d been frozen, as if I was now a woman made of ice, and he’d come at me not with a torch or even a candle, but with a toothpick, and was plink plink plinking against the smooth impenetrability of my body. I couldn’t feel a thing.

Courtly as ever, Jay didn’t make me say it. “See you soon,” he said quietly, and turned toward the door.

“Wait.” He turned around. The hope was so bright on his face that it wrenched at me to blot it out.

“I heard someone say that people who were married are never really unmarried,” I said. “When you have kids together, you don’t get to really untie the knot. We’re family.”