at the pavement some more, thinking about how Gerald was really on to something with the no eye contact thing.
Finally, the man cleared his throat. “Let me express my sympathy,” he said. “For the loss of your childhood.”
Will blinked up at him. No one had ever put it like that before. “Thank you.”
Oh no. Was he going to cry?
Gerald kindly pretended not to notice. “I gather you are afraid of turning out this way yourself. With whomever you become involved with.”
“Not whomever,” he said. “With her. I’ve only ever felt this way about her.”
For a long time, Gerald didn’t say anything, and Will supposed that was fair enough. There was really no solving this one, when it came down to it.
But then he said, “You know, my own father and I are very similar. He was also a doctor. Sally used to say that I only ever learned to love someone the way my father loved me. Discipline, improvement, opportunity. That’s the way he showed me he cared.”
Will swallowed, nodding. He could see, of course, how growing up like that would produce a man like Gerald. But he also thought it sounded pretty nice. All the discipline and improvement and opportunity that Will had in his life, he’d given to himself. It had been hard and lonely and entirely thankless.
“This was a problem in my marriage. To use a relevant example: it isn’t necessary to tell someone you love about a mostly harmless flouting of proper table manners. You can simply let them put their elbows on the table and be quiet about it. You don’t have to love people the way you learned to love at first.”
Will stared. WHAT, the static signal seemed to say.
“I would say the same is true for the woman you’re involved with. It seems to me that the first person who showed her a love that she understood was a person who offered her a lot of stability. A lot of loyalty.”
“Gerald,” Will said. “What the hell?”
He felt like he’d had his whole brain rearranged.
You don’t have to love people the way you learned to love at first.
“I’m not sure why you’re so surprised. Of late I’m very successful in matters of the heart.”
Will stood from the bench, heedless of Gerald’s general discomfort with his height. He paced back and forth in front of it, running his hands through his hair.
“I’ve been trying to . . .” He trailed off, shook his head. “I’ve been trying to keep it so safe with her. To just . . . fix things for her. To put limits on how I am with her. So I wouldn’t—”
“You won’t,” Gerald interrupted. “You are a different person than your parents were people. I feel quite assured of this.”
Will stopped pacing, put his hands on his hips. “I am,” he said, and for the first time, he actually believed it. He thought of Nora in her bathroom, her lit-up eyes every time they put in a new bathroom fixture. The pleasure she took in new things, when she let herself. “And she is, too. I mean, different from how she—”
“Obviously, I’m keeping up,” Gerald deadpanned.
In spite of his shitty night of sleep, Will suddenly felt alive with energy, his head swimming with this revelation, this perspective. He loved Nora, and it wasn’t rash, or reckless, or selfish to feel it. To say it. To live it for the rest of his life, if she’d let him. He was not his parents. He didn’t have to love the way he’d seen love at first.
“Gerald, I absolutely have to go. I’ve got to make a list of my failings, or something.”
“Don’t do that. It is very clear that your problems aren’t mine.”
“Right,” Will said, momentarily deflated. “Right.”
Gerald looked down at his watch. “A bit longer than the ten minutes you requested,” he said.
Will couldn’t help but laugh. “Of course. I’ve kept you too long. I appreciate you—”
Gerald waved a hand in dismissal. “No need,” he said, looking flustered. “I’ll certainly expect to see you back at work to-morrow.”
Will nodded, somehow comforted by this return to Gerald’s particular brand of professional rectitude. “Certainly,” he echoed.
“Very good,” Gerald said, and turned on his heel to head back inside.
But watching him go, Will had an impulse—sudden and sharp, the kind of feeling he’d trained himself to ignore for years and years, the kind of feeling he’d long told himself he ought to avoid. He wondered how many opportunities he’d missed in life like this, all