her desire to be close to him was sometimes unbearable—she wanted to touch his hair, the curls that had grown back from the previous summer’s severe pruning, and it was also difficult for her to stop looking at his mouth, the full lips that had kissed hers and so many inches of her body more times than she would have been able to count. Seven months of clandestine meetings, and he was now talking about moving in with her after she finished her internship year; he would leave his wife and sons for her, but he was certain that his sons would like her once they got to know her and would have little trouble adjusting to his less frequent presence in their lives because they weren’t home that much now anyway, one with his driver’s license and the other with friends who had driver’s licenses. His boys, Trevor and Nathan, would come and stay with them from time to time anyway, though Trevor was going to college in the fall, so it would only really be Nathan who stayed with them, but maybe Anna would ask her downstairs tenant to move out so that she could take over the whole house, if he did leave his wife?
If he left his wife. Despite being such a small word, if had a lot of power.
He was much calmer than she when they worked side by side, doing their daily rounds. It seemed that way to her, at least. He had sworn to her that she was the first and only intern he had ever been romantically involved with, but she continued to wonder if this was true. How was it that he did not feel more nervous when they were at work, especially because if she wanted to, she could have gone to the hospital administrators and made things uncomfortable for him? He must have been confident, however, that she would never do such a thing. And she wouldn’t. She loved him and couldn’t imagine doing him harm even if one day he told her that he didn’t want to see her anymore. People changed their minds; it happened all the time. And if he did dump her, she would not be so lame as to pine for someone who didn’t want to be with her.
From the beginning, however, he had made an effort to see her at least once a week, sometimes twice. He told her that he would have come to her every day if it had been possible, and sometimes when they were in her bed, he said that he had dreams about her at night and was afraid that he talked in his sleep, because on some mornings his wife would hardly speak to him and there was no other logical reason for her remoteness that he could think of.
“Other than the fact you’ve been married for nineteen years?” Anna teased.
“How could she possibly be tired of me?” He laughed, this Dr. Heart-of-Glass, as her friend Jill called him, this faithless wretch, this man she was witlessly crazy about. Her mother, having been left years ago for the other woman, did not know that he was married. Her mother wanted to meet him, having gotten wind of the fact, from Anna’s brother, Billy, that there was a new man in her life, Billy having blurted something about Tom over the phone from his possibly beautiful new life in Paris.
“But if you were talking about me in your sleep, wouldn’t she say something? How could she not?” she asked.
Tom gave her an almost pitying look. “You have no idea what isn’t said in a marriage, especially ones that have dragged on for years.”
This seemed to her a bleak view of couplehood, and so much in step with the many marital clichès that comedians had made their reputations on for years. But a small, mean part of her liked it when he talked so unflatteringly about his marriage. What was keeping them together? Laziness over the upheaval and tedium a divorce would doubtless entail? Worry over how their children would respond? Surely their marriage would give out soon if things were as dull and pointless as he said.
But that’s what every woman who falls for a married man thinks! Her common sense was usually awake and ready to spout off if she let herself hear it. Surely you’re not so stupid/naive/deluded to believe . . .
She did know better, but it didn’t matter. A person would believe anything if