Separation Anxiety - Laura Zigman Page 0,66

bedroom with sea foam–green walls, Gary’s eyes fixate on the bed itself: a mattress on the floor, a short stack of stained pancake-thin pillows waiting for pillowcases; the buzzing of bees and more flies outside in the dead summer heat.

Clara adjusts the window fan leaning up against a broken screen like a scrappy nurse improving the angle of a bed or a splinted limb. “If you just angle it like this,” she says, almost pushing it out the window, “you can get a nice cross breeze. And it keeps the mosquitoes from coming in. Who needs air-conditioning?”

“Not me!” Gary says theatrically, hitting his head on the swaying chain hanging from a bare lightbulb on the ceiling. He grits his teeth then digs his nails deep into the soft flesh of my palm. “We’re leaving,” he mouths.

“I know,” I mouth back.

It only gets worse when Clara leaves us alone. “Oh look, Judy!” Gary shrieks. “A litter box! In our bedroom!” He covers his eyes with both hands. “We’re not staying. I can’t sleep here. I won’t sleep here. It’s hot. There are mosquitoes. And—”

“I get it, Gary. Don’t panic. I’ll think of something.”

We hug, then laugh hysterically into each other’s necks, trying to snuff out Gary’s rising anxiety, which lasts until after dinner, when we go back to our room and pretend to go to sleep for the night. Instead, in the moonlight, with the bleating of crickets in the background, Gary and I, much like we did tonight, tai chi our way out of the guest room, down the stairs, and out the kitchen door to the car. If Gary hadn’t knocked over a trash can while I left a note on the kitchen table, thanking Clara for her hospitality and apologizing for our hasty departure, we would have made a clean getaway. Instead, we peel out of the driveway while all the lights in the house go on. Seconds later, driving on a road that traces the ocean like a finger, we stop at the first beach parking lot we pass.

“What did you say in the note?” Gary asks, breathless, tearing at my clothes.

“That you forgot your little Claus von Bülow bag of insulin,” I say, tearing at his.

“Diabetes! Brilliant!”

* * *

Tonight, in the dark of this autumn evening, we drive under another giant moon, but we will not pull off the road after this escape the way we did then; we will not tear each other’s clothes off. I watch Gary drive, study his face lit by the yellowy lights of the dashboard and briefly by the occasional oncoming car for clues for what to say.

“What’s wrong with us?” I whisper. I’m not sure if Gary doesn’t answer because he hasn’t heard me or because he doesn’t know how to answer. “We’re not like other people. We’re always escaping. We’re always fleeing in the middle of the night.”

“No we’re not like other people. And maybe you’d be better off if you finally accepted that.”

“Maybe I don’t want to. Maybe I don’t want to be different.”

“But you are different, Judy. You have a different kind of marriage than most people have. And so do I. Maybe we both wish we didn’t—maybe we both wish we had a ‘normal’ marriage, whatever that is—but we don’t, and that’s how it is. That’s our reality. The longer you fight it, the worse it will be. For you. For me. And for Teddy.” He shakes his head. “I get it. I get that Sorry and her stupid husband have it easier than we do, or seem to anyway. I get that it sucks about Glenn—there is no justice when it comes to who lives and who dies—but you still could have used this weekend to jump-start your work. But maybe me being there ruined it for you, so you just shut down and didn’t even try.”

“You didn’t ruin it for me.”

“Sometimes I wish I’d married someone else, too. And the weird thing is, I’m not even that unhappy, Judy. Even though we don’t fuck anymore, and even though we sleep in separate rooms and have this weird arrangement that’s kind of a fake marriage and kind of a very real marriage, I still love you. And I probably always will, no matter how things eventually end up.”

I turn my head and rest my forehead on the cold glass of my window.

“You’ve got Teddy, and the dog, and me. You may wish you had more than that, but that’s not bad.”

I don’t want more