Chapter 10

Chapter 10

LINA

He hesitated. It was a short hesitation, barely visible, but I had been studying him for two years and I caught it, as he seemed to realize it or maybe he didn't and I was just reading into things that was not there.

"More communication," he said. "I know I'm not—" a brief pause, "—I know I don't always make it easy to talk to me."

That was the most honest thing he had said since he walked into the room, and I could tell that it cost him something to say it, because I knew my husband, he was someone who had pride and would never admit to being wrong which made it both touching and terrible, because if this was the most honest he knew how to be then we were in more trouble than he understood.

"Okay," I said softly.

"I could try to be more—present." He offered, his voice trailing off at the ending like he realized he sounded lame by that statement. His eyes searched mine, as if looking for something, I did not say anything, only held eye contact with him, refusing to look away as the word  Present  sat between us.

"That would be good," I said.

He nodded once, like something had been agreed upon. Like we had just concluded the opening terms of a negotiation and could move into the main discussion. And I waited, genuinely waited, to see if he would go any further. If there was something underneath the careful surface of this conversation that he was working his way toward. Some specific truth he was trying to arrive at.

His phone rang.

It was in his pocket, and I didn't hear the ringtone because it was set to vibrate, but I saw the moment it happened. His jaw shifted, like he grinded his teeth. His left hand that had been resting loosely on the arm of the chair moved slightly towards his pocket and then stopped.

 His eyes stayed on mine but his focus changed.

He reached into his pocket and glanced at the screen.

I did not look at the screen. I watched his face.

Something moved through it quickly making it hard for me to decipher what it was exactly but from he little I saw, I could tell that It wasn't guilt exactly. It was closer to the expression of a man who has been interrupted at a complicated moment and is doing rapid calculations about what takes priority.

He stood up.

"I have to take this," he said.

"Okay," I said.

"I'll just be a moment."

He stepped out into the hallway and pulled the door mostly closed behind him, which was worse than closing it fully because I could hear the low murmur of his voice without being able to make out words, and for a moment, I could hear the warmth in his tone, something that was never directed at me.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

I straightened my spine.

Ten minutes. Maybe slightly more. I tracked it without meaning to, mostly bored or just a masochist way to find out how many minutes Adora would be able to keep his attention on her as usual.

When he came back, he put the phone in his pocket and stood in the doorway for a moment. He looked at me. I looked at him. The chair where he had been sitting was still there, positioned near the bed just like he left it.

He didn't sit back down in it.

He moved instead to his side of the room, toward the wardrobe, and opened it.

"Where were we," he said, but it wasn't quite a question. It was a man saying something to fill the air while he was deciding that the conversation was finished.

"I don't remember," I said.

He glanced at me. I looked back at him calmly and he nodded once, slowly, the nod of someone who has decided not to push a point.

"It's late," he said.

"It is," I agreed.

He took a pair of things from the wardrobe and disappeared into the bathroom. I heard the water run. I sat where I was and breathed very slowly and deliberately trying not to let the noise in my head get louder than it  currently was as I tried to bite back the flow of disappointment that rushed through my body making my eyes tingle with red.

He had come in here to have a conversation and he had had it, in the sense that words had been exchanged and that showed a conversation was made.

He acknowledged his faults, he apologized and promised to make it up, and that was it.

And the staggering thing, the thing that I was sitting with in the quiet while the water ran in the bathroom, was that from where he stood, I did not think he believed he had failed. I thought he believed he had done what he came to do and that was the apology wrapped in sincerity that he spared a bit from Adora and handed it over to me.

He had had the hard conversation. He had been honest and he had said what needed to be said. The phone call had been an interruption but the important things had been covered.

He did not know what he hadn't said. That was what I kept arriving at, from all different angles because I could not stop thinking about it. He did not know what he hadn't said because he did not know what was missing. He had no idea what I had heard from the bathroom two nights ago. He had no idea that I had gone to the cemetery not to follow him but to tell my dead mother and father that I was pregnant with his child and that I was going to leave.

 He had no idea that I had come home to footage of him carrying another woman and had stood in his sitting room and nearly put my fist through the television. He had no idea that I had packed a bag this afternoon and unpacked it again because I had negative forty-three dollars in my account and nowhere to go.

He did not know any of this because I had not told him any of this.