Chapter 23
I waited.
Eventually he whispered, “Is there anything I can do?”
“Respect what I’m asking.”
“And what are you asking?”
“For you to move out for a while.”
Pain crossed his face, but he nodded.
“How soon?”
“I don’t know.”
“Today?”
I looked around our kitchen.
I did not want another week of watching him pack.
“Yes.”
Mark closed his eyes.
“Okay.”
That one word carried more obedience than I had received from him in years.
He packed two suitcases.
I did not watch.
I sat in the living room with a book open in my lap.
I read nothing.
Once, I heard something fall upstairs.
Then silence.
An hour later, Mark came down wearing the dark coat he had worn the night he told me not to wait up.
The sight of it almost undid me.
His suitcases stood beside him.
“I’ll get the rest later.”
I nodded.
He looked around the room.
Twenty-two years do not fit inside two suitcases.
That fact was almost unbearable.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I looked at him.
I believed him.
That surprised me.
For a year, he had lied.
Now, finally, he was telling the truth.
“I know.”
He swallowed.
“Does that mean anything?”
“Yes.”
Hope flashed in his face.
I hated what I had to say next.
“It means I believe you’re sorry.”
His eyes lowered.
“It doesn’t mean I can stay married to you.”
He nodded.
We stood five feet apart.
I remembered the first apartment we rented.
The terrible brown carpet.
The secondhand sofa.
Mark burning spaghetti because he forgot to put water in the pot before turning on the stove.
I remembered him proposing in the parking lot of a restaurant because he had planned to wait for dessert but became too nervous.
I remembered twenty-two years collapsing into moments.
Then Mark crossed the space between us.
He stopped close enough that I could smell his familiar soap.
“Can I hug you?”
The question broke something in me.
Not because of the hug.
Because he asked.
For so long, both of us had moved through the marriage assuming access to each other.
Now even comfort required permission.
I nodded.
He put his arms around me.
I pressed my face against his chest.
And I cried.
So did he.
For one minute, maybe two, we held each other exactly the way we had during funerals and illnesses and frightened nights.