Stiltsville: A Novel - By Susanna Daniel Page 0,41
“Life, work, marriage.”
“What about them?”
He picked up a sand dollar and studied its markings. “How long has it been for you two?”
“Almost six years.”
“Happy years?”
I crossed my arms over my chest, but with the waves lapping my thighs and the breeze blowing my hair across my face, the posture felt ridiculous. “Yes,” I said. I wondered if he was thinking of proposing to Marse. It had never occurred to me—not even once—that this might happen.
“Marse and me—” He took a breath. “Can I ask you a question? What do you think is the most important ingredient in a successful relationship?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I felt bullied and thrilled at the same time: was romance something Paul and I could examine together, as if from a distance? “I thought I knew when I got married,” I said, “but now I don’t.”
I started toward the house, but he didn’t follow, so I turned to face him. The sun was directly overhead and he shaded his eyes with one hand. “What did you think in the beginning?” he said.
The sandy ocean floor was warm and gluey under my feet. “I thought it was honesty, loyalty,” I said, thinking: fidelity. It was a betrayal, talking this way.
“You don’t think a little secrecy is good for the soul, the way a good scare is good for the heart?” He searched my face, but I made my expression blank. “I thought it was honesty, too,” he said. “I also thought it was timing, like if the right woman had come along when I was twenty-three, I couldn’t have held on until I was ready.”
I knew he wanted me to ask, but I stayed quiet.
“You know what I think the secret is now?” he said.
“Money?” I said. “Riches?”
“No, but you’re close.” He picked up a stone and threw it—not the way one would throw a stone to make it skip, but as if he were throwing it away. He seemed serious in the way that children sometimes are, and I thought he was one of the most intense men I’d ever known. “The man has to love his job. Show me a man who loves his job, and I’ll show you a happy home life.”
I was relieved. “You love your job.”
“Goddamn right I do. I spend my day with plants and people who take care of plants.” He paused. “Dennis doesn’t love his.”
“Not always.” I thought of Dennis’s one-window office, his apathy toward litigation and resentment of office politics. He’d spoken many times of leaving law for teaching or consulting. Before Paul said what he said—about a happy career begetting a happy marriage—I’d thought only of the pay cut.
I started to walk toward the house, and Paul followed for a few minutes, then moved beside me and matched my strides. When the water was ankle-deep again and the sea life thick, we slowed down. The house was a solid, three-dimensional place now, with a line coiled on the eastern square of the dock and a book spread open on a chair on the porch. We waded into waist-deep water and I dove beneath the surface and swam toward the house in a burst. I pulled myself up the ladder, feeling the water slide off my skin into the sunlight. At the top, I turned to check on Paul, and found that he was right behind me, his face inches from my thigh. I twisted away, but his hand landed on my ankle. “Wait,” he said.
I maneuvered out of his grip until I was seated awkwardly on the dock, a puddle staining the wood around my body. Paul sat beside me and touched the hem of my T-shirt. “What is this?” he said. There was a bruise the size and color of a sea urchin on my hip; part of it peeked out of the edge of my swimsuit. I’d chosen my longest T-shirt to cover it. That morning, when I’d noticed the bruise, it occurred to me it might be a harbinger of something horrible, like leukemia, but then I realized where the bruise was from: the night before, with Dennis, against the porch railing. It hadn’t felt so forceful at the time.
I pulled down my T-shirt. “I’m a klutz,” I said. “It happened yesterday, at the marina.”
Paul stared at me. “I heard you last night, you and Dennis.”
I had no response, but he didn’t seem to want one. There was a commotion in my peripheral vision.