The Summer We Fell Apart Page 20

  When Kate’s replacement arrived, she had even more unstructured time. After training, she was supposed to let the girl take charge of the class while Kate was available only in an observatory position. So when the father of her tutorial student asked Kate to assist him with his English—just a little conversation over coffee, as he put it—Kate had obliged. She was trying to put a little space between herself and Eli. They’d recently rehashed a bitter fight and parted with angry words hanging like ghosts in the air, waiting for them to resume the argument when they returned.

  The argument had started when Eli offhandedly told her that their landlady had stopped and asked him when they were moving out. Eli had told her they’d be gone in six weeks. When Kate asked him where they were going, he had smiled and shrugged and kissed her hard on the mouth and said they’d figure something out. Of course Kate couldn’t let that go, and before long there was yelling and doors slammed. Hinges held in place by century-old hand-hewn pins shuddered and Eli was gone.

  Coffee with Dominick was just what she needed to get her mind off the turmoil with Eli. Dominick told her in English (which was far better than she expected) that he and his daughter, Pia, were planning a visit to relatives who lived in northern California. They had a winery, the family business, he explained almost shyly, and he didn’t want to be an embarrassment. He was refreshing—humble and charming yet not at all salacious in the way desire and sex oozed from most Italian men, and so Kate agreed to meet him again after Pia’s next lesson. As she walked home from the café, she realized for the first time in weeks that she felt light and nearly relaxed.

  She continued to meet Dominick and Pia, separately, twice a week. One afternoon, she was early and she sat going through the mail she had just retrieved from the post office, with a coffee and a thick dark chocolate pastry on the table in front of her. She had hoped to share the pastry with Dominick but had eaten most of it already when she came upon the acceptance letter to Columbia Law School. Foreign post being what it was, the deadline to reply was in two days. When Dominick arrived, she was in a panic. Without really thinking—without talking to Eli—she made the decision to accept Columbia’s offer. She allowed Dominick to give her a ride on the back of his motorbike to his office, where he had a fax machine. When the fax had been sent and received, she looked up at Dominick and started to sob as she realized the gravity of her decision. When Dominick put his arms around her and hugged her tight against his chest, she didn’t back away. She found herself grateful to be crying against his shoulder while he massaged the tension from her neck.

  Soon it seemed that Kate and Eli were always starting a fresh argument on top of an unfinished argument. Even the most innocuous words strung together escalated rapidly into a full-blown debate of which there was no end and no winner in sight. Kate didn’t set out to destroy what she had left with Eli, but that was precisely what she did. Any hope of quietly slipping out the back door of the life they’d made had gone by the wayside the moment she had told him what she had done. It was not that he was opposed to Columbia or law school, if that was what she really wanted; it was the subterfuge. That the applications had come from her father made it all the worse, proving the point that Eli had tried in vain to make to her before and that she adamantly refuted: her father was trying to drive them apart.

  Since the hug that afternoon in his office, Dominick slowly revealed his true nature. His advances were more overt, and oddly, Kate rationalized, by succumbing to Dominick it was she and she alone that would drive Eli away. It would have nothing to do with her father, as Eli had insisted. Certainly not the ideal father that had finally materialized in Italy, the father Kate had been waiting for her entire life. Kate would prove to be the unreliable one, not as steadfast as she had led Eli to believe. If there was blame to place, it should be with her. Years later, she would regret this one rash decision that altered the course of her life. But caught in the moment, she couldn’t find her way back to the Kate she had been before her father had visited.

  When Dominick kissed her and removed her clothes, she cried. He mistook it for a bubbling-over of emotion at their passion for each other and responded with vigorous sex that left her sore and bruised as she made her way back to Eli and their apartment. She supposed that Eli might have forgiven her a single indiscretion, so she made sure that he wouldn’t, by returning to Dominick several more times.

  By that last night with Dominick, she was diminished. Shame didn’t even begin to cover what she felt as she dressed and left his flat. As she walked quickly down the narrow side streets, she bowed her head and refused to meet the eyes of anyone, and yet her Italian was good enough to understand what the old ladies hanging out their laundry in the early morning hours whispered behind her back.

  The extent of what she had destroyed was only just becoming evident. Peeling back a minuscule corner on the life they’d shared was absolute torture. Still, she ran the reel over and over in her head, back to the beginning, when every day with Eli had been amazing and she had felt impossibly full, engorged by the unexpected bounties in her life. On the plane leaving Florence and Eli behind, she felt small and hollow in her bottomless grief. Even the silver band—once so tight against her plump finger that a ridge of flesh puffed above and below the thick edge—slid effortlessly from her hand somewhere between their apartment and the airport, leaving behind pinched, hard, calloused skin as a reminder. She was so empty, in fact, that if the seat belt hadn’t held her down in her seat, Kate was sure destiny would have sucked her out the window, hurtling her through space for an eternity. As the engines of the plane had roared beneath her during the ascent, Kate prayed to God for forgiveness, knowing full well it was unlikely that either really existed.

  For only the second time in her professional career (the first having been for the funeral of her father), Kate cleared her schedule. She drove north the next morning to a small town along the river in Pennsylvania, the purported halfway point between D.C. and Eli’s home in Beacon, New York. There was snow here and plateaus of ice that floated on top of the water. She stopped once to go to the bathroom and get a cup of coffee. While she was in the bathroom, she took her hair out of its ponytail and shook it out all over her shoulders, only to secure it again once she got back in the car.

  When she reached the coffee shop off the interstate that Eli had given her directions to, she was surprised to see that it was a restaurant and a gas station attached to one of those low-slung seventies-style motels. In the parking lot were several tractor-trailers as well as minivans and SUVs. The sun was bright and made it hard for her to see as she parked and walked toward the glass doors, unsure where to go and why she had come so far for a memory.

  No one paid attention to her when she entered the restaurant. She looked around for Eli but didn’t see him, so she took the seat closest to the door, at the counter, and waited. She accepted coffee and a menu but touched neither.

  When the door opened, bringing with it a burst of frigid air and Eli, she felt such relief that she was afraid she might break down and cry right then.

  Eli placed his hand on her shoulder and then took the stool next to her at the counter. Wordlessly, they searched each other’s faces as the waitress plunked down another menu. There had been ten years between then and now. Kate didn’t count the tussle at her father’s funeral—she couldn’t even recall if she’d actually taken in his face that day as she had reached for him. Now here he was, looking not that much different than all those years ago.

  She reached out a hand to touch him and he smiled and nodded and seemed to know that she was just checking to make sure it was real.

  He unzipped his bright blue jacket but kept it on as he said in a low voice, “How are you, Kate?”

  She grimaced and he smiled back, although there was a wrinkle of concern in his brow.

  “I thought so,” he said.

  They started safe, talking like old friends catching up on each other’s lives. She told him stories about her work, name-
dropping just to see him smile and hear him laugh. He told her about the bar/restaurant that he and his wife owned on the Hudson River. His wife was the chef, had gone to the culinary institute in Hyde Park. In the summer they did a brisk business in kayak rentals. Shyly, he mentioned he had two children—a boy, who was obsessed with anything electronic, and a baby girl almost a year old.

  Oddly enough, when he talked about the boy, Kate thought of the game her mother had sent her that was now wrapped securely in her trash can—Eli’s son probably would have liked it.

  It didn’t take long to exhaust those subjects. “What do we do now?” she asked.

  Eli reached into his back pocket for his wallet and placed a dollar on the counter to pay for Kate’s coffee, then he stood and led her out of the restaurant to his car. In the bright sunlight, in full view of the large glass windows in front of the restaurant, Eli pressed her back against his car and kissed her deeply. His jacket was still unzipped and Kate burrowed inside. Frantically, her hands yanked at his sweater and then the T-shirt underneath. She wanted to feel his skin. She was hungry and cold, and being up against Eli had, in a matter of seconds, become a fixation. She wanted Eli, and at the moment she didn’t give a damn if he belonged to someone else.

  Reading her mind, Eli fumbled in his pocket for his keys and unlocked the car. Their bodies were still connected, and Eli laughed softly and said, “One of us is going to have to go around to the other door. I have bucket seats.”

  Reluctantly, Kate sidled out from underneath him and walked around to the passenger side. Her legs felt like jelly and she was grateful for the seat. When she turned to face Eli as he got into the car, she caught sight of a car seat in the back. Eli followed her stricken gaze and shook his head in response. “Oh Kate,” he said, with his forehead against the steering wheel.

  Kate reached up and touched the sliver of skin exposed at the back of his neck. His dark hair curled up along the collar. He was so warm. If she tried hard, she could pretend his skin was warmed from the Mediterranean sun after an hour under the arbor in their little yard in Florence. He was her Eli. In a completely nonsensical way, she reasoned that her Eli predated his wife and his children, and so this was okay. She continued to knead the back of his neck and he moaned and looked up at her. How many times had she seen that exact same look from above or below her all those years ago?

  The first time they made love on the scratchy sheets and stiff blankets of the motel bed, Kate was not altogether sure she had been in her body. She had responded to Eli as if no time had passed. There was no part of their skin left untouched and Kate couldn’t be sure what cries came out of whose mouth when they came. When they were done, they lay shuddering, breathing heavily, sweaty and chilled at the same time. Kate lay between Eli’s legs, her head on his stomach. Eli’s hands were in her hair. When she recovered enough to lift her head, she traced with her finger the hair that grew in a line from Eli’s groin up to his belly button. It was then she noticed the scar on his lower right side. An appendix scar that was still new enough to be pink. She traced that as well and then gave it a kiss. She felt Eli stir again against her and she laughed before she took him in her mouth. She felt greedy. She licked and sucked until Eli cried out again and then he rolled her onto her back and they watched each other’s faces as he brought her to orgasm, understanding somehow that it was important to remember everything about this moment.

  They slept, and when Kate woke, the room was completely dark and she was naked with Eli curled around her back like an apostrophe. She reached down for the blankets and sheets and pulled them up over their bodies until they were tented. Eli stirred and nuzzled his face into the back of her head.

  “Are you okay?” he mumbled.

  “Yes…no…I don’t know,” Kate admitted, then laughed.

  “I’m glad to see counsel is so decisive,” Eli joked.

  At the mention of her real-life occupation, Kate was quiet. She hadn’t told him anything about the offer of Los Angeles. The partner snub.

  “Hey,” Eli said and tightened his arm around her. “Hey,” he said again.

  “Why did you come to the funeral?” Kate asked, flinching from the memory of the nearly empty church.

  Eli hesitated. Kate could feel it in his body.

  “Come on,” she urged and nudged him with her hip.

  When he hesitated still, Kate rolled away from him, turned on the bedside light, and got out of bed. Naked, she hunched over from the cold and hopped around the room looking for her bag. When she found what she wanted, she ran back to the bed and got under the blankets. Eli blinked at her several times and focused on what she held in front of his face.

  He shimmied up and squished a pillow beneath his head against the wall and took the piece of paper she offered. When he was done reading, he peered at her from over the top of the envelope.

  “He did call me,” Eli admitted.

  Kate was surprised. Her father hadn’t checked off his name like he had Amy’s. But she waited and said nothing. With Eli, she had never needed to spell things out.

  “He wanted to know why I didn’t fight for you, why I let you go.” Eli paused. “When I didn’t give him an answer that he wanted to hear, he told me he was sick and that it was too late for regret.” He looked down at the note again and frowned but didn’t say anything more until a minute later, when he added, “I think he meant for him, though—not me. I’m not sure, although, for me” he shrugged, “it goes without saying.”

  Kate cleared her throat. She thought carefully about what she should say next. If she admitted to Eli that her father had told her all those years ago that she would be making the biggest mistake of her life should she marry him, that he was weak and without purpose and he would never make her happy, it would serve no one. She didn’t know then that one person could never be everything; she’d been too young to understand that there would always be something about the other person that got on your nerves. Surely, she understood now, her father had been wrong. Eli seemed, on the surface anyway, to be making someone happy while Kate hadn’t felt a thing since she had left him.

  “So, you let him believe that it was your fault?” Kate asked, slightly out of breath.

  Eli nodded and avoided her eyes. Kate felt a flicker of the old anger for her father. Why had he questioned Eli, when the dissolution of their engagement had been his seed to plant? What purpose would mucking up all that old pain serve? Obviously, this was her legacy—her father’s parting shot at her. Or it could just have been the rantings of a sick man. She’d never know. She asked again, “But why come to the funeral?”

  “When I saw the obit in the Times, I wanted to see you—make sure you were okay.” He paused. “There were so many times…”

  Kate nodded and looked down at the blankets. She thought but couldn’t bring herself to say: I’m sorry. Maybe if Eli weren’t a husband and a father, she would have the courage to say it out loud and to see where it would take them. Instead, she repeated it like a mantra in her head. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

  Eli laughed a little. “I was more than a little surprised by your greeting.”

  She elbowed him and blushed, even though, under the sheets, they were currently naked in a motel bed. She remembered the hug that had turned into a kiss, all initiated by her when he’d surprised her in the chambers behind the altar. “How was it that no one saw you?”

  He shrugged. “I just didn’t make myself known, I guess.” He hesitated. “I…well…after that…you know I tried to talk to you but you never took my calls and eventually I figured it was better that way. That I had no right given that I am”—he cleared his throat and whispered the last part—“that I am married and you have a life and we really have no place with each other anymore.”

  Kate took note of the present tense and turned on her side to face him. “Is that what you really feel?” She had been right, after all, not to apologize for the past.

  Eli searched her face. He neither denied nor a
cknowledged any feelings for her. Instead, he answered her with his own question: “Isn’t that how you feel?”

  Kate didn’t know how she felt about anything lately. She didn’t know anything about Eli’s life except the absolute basics. Where had he gone when he left their apartment in Florence? How had he come to have the life he led? Had he made the choice or had it been made for him? Did she want him to tell her that he got up with his children in the middle of the night when they called out from a bad dream? That he held his wife’s hand and cried as each of their children was born? She couldn’t answer that. Instead, she sat up and began searching the sheets for her bra and underpants. Both, she recalled, had been shed in seconds and tossed aside without thought that there would be a later, a now.

  Eli started to say, “You could stay the night—the room is…” But then he stopped mid-sentence.

  She was conscious of Eli watching her as she found her clothes and dressed, but he didn’t say anything more or move from the bed. Kate couldn’t find her bra, so she pulled on her sweater and concentrated on fastening the tiny little buttons. Three of them were missing. That must have happened when Eli had tugged it apart out of frustration. Her nipples, sore from Eli’s mouth, ached as they rubbed against the cashmere. Thinking of how Eli rolled her nipples between his teeth caused a rush of wetness between her legs. She wanted to get back into bed with Eli and stay there forever; instead, she pulled on her socks, pants, and then boots, and stood at the end of the bed. She had hours to drive before she got home.

  He held her father’s note out to her. “You want this?”

  Kate shook her head. She had it memorized. She shrugged into her jacket and picked up her bag. With her hand on the doorknob, she turned and looked back at Eli one more time before she left. This was a better ending than the first time. The first time she’d left, he had been begging her to change her mind. They were both crying. The kind of tears that hurt so much that she was sick to her stomach. She remembered retching in between sobs, her stomach in spasms. The ticket back to the States had been in her pocket along with the acceptance letter from Columbia Law School.