Good Days Bad Days: A Novel, page 26
“A dentist. OK. Happily married?” His jealousy becomes very obvious as he ferociously chews a bite of lettuce. He doesn’t even like salad. More of a meat-and-potatoes kind of a guy, but today he’s eating salad. Clearly, he’s experiencing something. For a moment I feel disloyal, like I’m a cheater. But then I remind myself that Ian and I are separated. Even if we weren’t, it’s not like I crossed any lines with Cam.
“He’s divorced,” I state flatly.
“And you?” he asks, looking at my left hand, my ring still absent. I fiddle with the utensils and then clasp my hands under the table.
“I don’t know, Ian. I don’t know what we are.”
A substantial weight sits on my chest as I gaze through the glass at the full lobby. I should’ve worn the ring in case people recognized us and posted photos on social media. I should act like my half of the happy couple, but I don’t know how to hold it all inside anymore. I feel like my mother’s house, bursting at the seams, threatening to collapse under the pressure of all the retained pains and memories. I should’ve learned by now that if a mess is ignored for too long, there will be unexpected consequences.
Caleb, our waiter, approaches during my pregnant pause. He’s figured out who we are and is trying not to let on. He brings Ian’s T-bone steak and my barramundi. He replaces my martini with a fresh one and slides a full glass of scotch across the table without asking if we’d like another round. I can’t imagine eating right now, but I pick up my fork and go through the motions as Caleb leaves.
“Are you in love with him?” Ian asks in a low mutter.
Love. I almost laugh—not because I haven’t felt anything for Cameron, but because it’s difficult to understand how Ian could imagine love developing so quickly. It took me a year and a half to say “I love you” to Ian and to let him meet Olivia. Love is a matter of substance. It takes great effort and time to build and needs a strong foundation. It requires constant tending. It’s not made of sticks or straw. I don’t want a house that can easily be blown down.
“I could ask you the same question about your friend.” I stare into his eyes, coming closer to confronting him than I have since the night I found those messages.
“Hell no,” he says, pushing his phone toward me across the table, and I shove it away. I already did a full deep dive into his phone before I left for Wisconsin, and anything I’d see now would be a curated version of the past month, not the reality. “You can look through anything you want anytime you want. The passcode is your birthday. It was one stupid conversation.”
We are having the confrontation. Here. In a room full of strangers sitting nearby. My mouth is dry, and I gulp down half of my newly refreshed drink.
“It was one conversation that could’ve ruined everything.” I lower my voice to emphasize the seriousness of the situation that could have unfolded if that woman had taken screenshots. I insisted he unsend every message and block her, not only out of jealousy but also for damage control.
“I know. It all happened so fast. I don’t even know why I responded.”
“Well—why did you?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t. I’m so happy with you, Charlie, with our life.”
“Clearly not totally happy. If there was nothing wrong—why would you talk to her that way?” Then I ask the most painful question of all. “Am I not enough for you?”
“You’re more than enough. It’s about me. I started therapy. I’m completely dedicated to fixing things—” I interrupt him with another question that’s been rolling around in my mind, brushing past the revelation of his new foray into therapy.
“But if you could flirt with a woman on the internet, let her talk to you like . . . that . . .” I lower my voice again as I reference the sexually explicit texts I read in horror while sitting on our bed as he showered in the other room. I can’t erase those words from my mind—the shock of seeing his eager responses and the pain of seeing him react to images sent by a woman whose body hasn’t changed with age or from carrying a life inside of her. “What about in person?”
“Never, Charlie. I never met her or anyone else in person, and I never want to.”
Ian leans across the table to touch me. He sounds so sincere, and until this situation, I never questioned his loyalty. I thought Ian was disgusted by women who flirted with married men. Even when he was a single dad with his DMs full of messages from horny fans, he said he felt violated by their propositions. He claimed my insistence on taking things slow was a huge turn-on. But now, I don’t know what to think.
I glance around the room and out the window and then back at Ian. “Can we not do this here?”
He swallows a bite of steak and washes it down with his drink, wipes his mouth, and drops the cloth napkin in his lap.
“Yeah, yeah, of course. Of course. I wanted tonight to be special, a new start.” His jaw clenches, hand curled tight on the table. “I’m sorry. It’s just—I’ve been going crazy since you left and stopped answering my calls. And then when Olivia and I got here and I saw you with that guy . . . I nearly lost my mind.”
Ian is not a man who easily gets jealous. Women are drawn to Ian and his burly, muscley, “I can fix anything with my hammer” quiet strength. Fame has brought unwanted attention my direction, too. But my husband has always brushed it away with a long kiss, a hand on the waist as a reminder that we belong to each other. But tonight, I’m seeing jealous Ian. I shouldn’t like seeing this side of my husband, I shouldn’t find satisfaction in knowing that I could move on, that he could lose me and it’d be his doing. Cam isn’t some pawn in our marital conflict, and I wasn’t trying to beckon the green-eyed monster, but now that it’s here, I don’t feel as alone in my struggle.
I snake my arm through the landscape of plates and glasses and place my ringless hand over his coiled fist. He clasps it tightly as though he might miss the opportunity if he doesn’t act fast.
“Can I try to fix this? Please?” he asks, the intensity of his gaze fading the rest of the room to a blurry haze. His calloused fingers are familiar and reassuring, like his smile when we first sat down and his caress on my lower back as we entered the resort. My body hasn’t forgotten how to trust him. I want to believe it’s this easy of a fix, that all I need to do is choose to forgive, trust, start over, let him do the work, and stop running away.
I don’t have the right words to say that mean “yes” and also “it’ll take time,” but he somehow knows when I bite my lip to hold back the tears that will come if I say too much.
He nods, his signature grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. He places a lingering kiss on my hand, and I let him, which is as much of an answer as I can muster right now.
Just then, Caleb appears out of nowhere, his squeaky, hyper voice asking about desserts, cutting our conversation short. But we’ve said enough to know that we’re going to take on a new rehab project: our marriage. Tomorrow, I’ll tell Cam we’re meant to be friends but nothing else. I’ll let Olivia think she’s properly “trapped” us. And then I’ll let Ian meet my mom.
Ian rejects Caleb’s dessert offer and asks for the check, explaining that he’s already planned our next stop. After he excuses himself for a bathroom break, I lean back and finish the last bit of my drink.
The calming endorphins from Ian’s touch and the buzz from the martinis mingle together and make it like nothing bad ever happened in my marriage and never could in the future. It’s comforting, this attempt at forgiveness, at moving on. I get to reclaim my life, my family, my stability. It’s what I always imagined it’d be like to have my dad show up on the doorstep of the foster home with Mom sitting in our sky-blue Subaru parked on the street, telling me the house is clean and they want me to come home.
I sit in the bliss. I must look like a fool, smiling dreamily. Then Ian’s phone vibrates on the table, face down where he’d left it earlier as an offering. The sparkly daze of perfection evaporates, and a warning siren starts a low squeal in my ears.
I could flip it over. I could look. He said I could. But do I want to? What if I see something incriminating? What if all my renewed faith falls apart as quickly as it was restored?
The phone buzzes again and then once more. Those are definitely text messages.
Shit.
The ringing in my head crescendos. The phone, in its industrial-strength black case, calls to me. He’ll be back in a second. He’ll be able to delete anything he doesn’t want me to see. He could lie to keep me locked into this relationship, to keep me, period.
I turn over the phone and tap the screen. A line of notifications shows up, and I type in the password.
The first message is from a number I don’t recognize. Several messages appear from today. They look as though they’re part of an ongoing conversation, though none of the previous texts are intact. He must have deleted them. Red flags flash in front of my eyes as I read the messages one at a time, starting at the top of the conversation box.
TBB: You’re asking her tonight? Fill me in asap.
Hell no. Who is this? I pull the phone closer. TBB? I think through all the possible names that might match the initials but come up with nothing. As I scroll up it looks like the next text is from an hour ago, checking in with no reply. And another two below that make my head spin.
TBB: Did she sign the papers?
TBB: It has to happen tonight. I can’t stress this enough.
Papers. My head spins. Divorce papers? Ian clearly wasn’t going to ask for a divorce tonight, but do these texts mean he was telling some girl he’s leaving me—just like those scummy cliché cheaters always do while trying to keep two women on the line?
I will not be one of those women.
I tap the reply box on the screen and quickly type out a message as Ian—giving the girl on the other end a dose of truth that might save her from falling for any further lies.
“Ian”: I’m on a date with my wife right now.
Ian walks across the dining room, rubbing his hands together like he always does after washing them. I hold my breath, waiting as bubbles appear, disappear, and reappear again. He’s only a few steps away when a sixtysomething woman with dyed brown hair and a sparkling top stops him and asks for a selfie. He smiles, always so gracious with fans. He urges me over to join as a line of text appears.
TBB: Good idea. Soften her up. Her dad too. Don’t get distracted, though. Crews will be there to start shooting on Wednesday. Don’t screw this up.
I read it twice quickly and then once slowly before grabbing my purse, wrap, and both phones, slapping his into the palm of his outstretched hand as I walk out of the restaurant without stopping for a picture or worrying about what anyone might think. The only thing running through my mind is the image of that last text, the one that stole any remaining hope I had for trusting my husband, any assurance that we could go back to the way things were.
I know who’s texting my husband and it’s worse than some floozie on social media.
TBB. The Big Boss. Our boss. The boss of all HFN—Alex McNamara.
Chapter 30
Greg
April 20, 1972
Caravelle Hotel
Saigon, Vietnam
The tile floors of the Caravelle Hotel, where nearly a hundred war correspondents are housed in Saigon, is wet from the afternoon humidity. It’s monsoon season and I’ve never felt damp in so many ways.
Reaching my hotel room, I peel off every centimeter of wet clothes until I get down to my socks, which strip away from my waterlogged feet with a sick slurping sound. My body is worn, and the landscape of my ribs is easy to see through my skin, which is tanned dark brown from the days in the sun. Yet, lying in my underwear inside the only air-conditioned building in Saigon, I find I can’t complain.
I’ve seen too many living and dying in worse places than this—both soldiers and the Vietnamese who are left homeless, starving, injured, and ragged. The young soldiers we interview tell us their honest perspective about the war. Some are here out of patriotic service or proud family military tradition, but many of these men didn’t choose to be here and wish nothing more than to go home. They are young men like my brother, who had an unlucky birthday drawn and no money or connections to get out of being shipped overseas.
I, like the patriotic soldiers who volunteered for this hellish war because of moral and political beliefs, chose to climb onto that plane out of Minneapolis ten months ago. Martha and I resigned from WQRX on the same day, and Don Hollinger lost his ever-loving shit as we cleaned out our desks.
“When you crash and burn out there, don’t even think about crawling back. You’re dead to me.”
Martha had a few choice words for Don, but I’d already packed away my bitterness after almost unleashing them at the MWBA banquet. It’d been Betty who’d convinced me to keep quiet, who’d reminded me of my pledge to her, but she had no idea how far away I’d need to go to keep those promises.
“What do you mean, Vietnam?” she asked from behind me as I sorted through the standing toolbox in the studio after escaping Hollinger’s tirade, collecting a few screwdrivers and wrenches I’d brought from home.
“I was offered a job with KSTP. They’re a part of a group of some Midwestern stations headed over there. They lost their other camera guy.”
“I thought you hated the war,” Betty said, the sound of her foot tapping increasing my anxiety.
“I do,” I said. “That’s why I’m going—to show people what’s going on over there, to make a difference.”
I tossed a screwdriver into my canvas bag and faced Betty. She stood with her arms crossed over the buttoned bodice of one of her Classy Homemaker dresses, the hand with her engagement ring tucked under the bicep of her right arm. I couldn’t see it, but I still knew it was there.
“It’s not safe,” she said with tears in her eyes, like she was really worried, like I was her sweetheart or her brother rather than a coworker. I was ready to leave WQRX and I was ready to leave Betty, mostly because it hurt far more to stay, but I never thought leaving would make her cry.
“Listen, I’ll be fine,” I said, wiping some grease off my fingers with a rough towel. I wanted to reach out and touch her one last time but stopped, knowing I’d ruin her show-ready look.
“You don’t know that.”
“None of us knows that,” I said, hiking the canvas bag over my arm, thinking of Pop’s heart attack when I was twelve, Ma’s lifeless body three months after finding out about Jim, her grief too great to keep on living.
“True,” she said falteringly. “So, you’ll write?”
“Sure,” I said as though I didn’t care either way, even though the idea of receiving even one letter from her brought me near euphoria. “I’ll write.”
“Good. And I’ll write you back.”
Then, as I was about to leave, she did something I’ve been replaying in my mind ever since. She dove through the space between us and collided with my torso, her arms encircling me in a crushing, lingering embrace. When my initial shock wore off, I dropped the bag and wrapped my arms around her. My God, if she’d asked me to stay while I held her that way, I’d never have been able to say no.
We stood like that for what seemed like forever, her tears soaking the front of my shirt and my lips finding the top of her head. I inhaled her sweet, powdery scent, forcing it into my memory. Intoxicated by it all, I kissed her hair once and then twice. When she leaned back to look at me with tears still wet on her cheeks, I wiped them away with the side of my thumb, running my fingers up into her hair from the back of her neck. To have her that close, to touch her with such freedom, it was nearly worth all the torture I’d endured.
“Kiss me goodbye,” she whispered.
Usually, I’m a man of inaction, of hesitation, but in that instant, I was all the things I’d always wanted to be. I dug my fingertips into the flesh at her waist and deeper into the velvety depths of her bobbed hairdo, yanking her into me, pressing my mouth against hers. There was no tentative start—from the second her mouth met mine, a fire erupted between us. She shivered under my touch, opening her mouth to take me in, our tongues reaching for each other, her hands wrapped in the fabric of my shirt so desperately my knees went weak.
And as suddenly as it started, it was over. She broke away mid-embrace, her hand covering her mouth as though she’d been sleepwalking and awoken to find she’d nearly walked off the roof of a tall building. Without a word, she ran out the studio door, leaving me vibrating with passion and dizzy with confusion.
I didn’t see her again before I flew out. I donated my mother’s piano to the local school, put all my belongings in storage, and drove to Minneapolis with one suitcase in the back seat. Martha was the only familiar face at KSTP, but I was only there for a few days before I left with the team. She stayed behind, as KSTP’s newest news operations manager, also promising to write. No lingering embraces there. I broke Martha’s rose-colored glasses the night of the banquet, which ended up being a blessing. Now that she knows how useless I’d be as a boyfriend, we can be friends.
Martha wrote to me right after I left, sending me six double-sided pages about all the new experiences at KSTP, her coworkers, the still uphill battle she faced as a newswoman, and then a whole narrative of how they decided what shades of orange to paint their new set. The letter was waiting for me in Saigon when I arrived back from my first assignment.
After twenty hours of nonstop travel, we dropped our belongings in the shared hotel rooms and then hopped on a helicopter that took us into a combat zone, where we bunked with the grunts for a week.
I’d been warned by Scott O’Neil, the correspondent I’d been paired with, that the trips into the field had two speeds: boring and deadly.
“Avoid anyone with a radio,” he said when giving me tips on staying alive. “And keep low. You’re so damn tall you’re like a walking target for the VC.”
We didn’t end up seeing much “action,” as they call it, on that first outing, but I did lug around my heavy camera and bag. I spent the days recording O’Neil interviewing men who wanted to send messages home or say their own two cents about the war and what it was like out there in the “rice paddies.” I didn’t talk much on that first trip. I had no reason to. I was a facilitator, a means to an end, a silent witness, but that didn’t mean I was unaffected.
