"But I couldn't ever make sense of why either of you would have done something like that. A thousand things went through my mind. And made sense for a couple of seconds. But one of them was that you believed I was guilty and tried to get me out of it because you blamed yourself for me killing Barbara, thinking I did it so I could get you back."
I am sweeping the last of the berries into a bowl, and I avoid turning to him for a second. The very worst moment I had in the last two years was when those read receipts turned up on my computer, and next worst was the day Nat called me from the courthouse to say, 'She knew. My mom knew.' The banker had just testified, and Nat had taken one of his familiar breaks to cry. I love the fact that he cries. I have realized in the last year that I have waited all my life for a man who never claims to be immune to the pain of life, unlike that great fake I have for a mother.
'Knew?' I asked. 'What did she know?' Because of everything that emerged in court I realize that Barbara was putting on an act for Nat's sake the night before she died, but in the moment she had been convincing, and there were times in the last year when I harbored a faint hope that the read receipts were triggered by something else, like the scrubbing program run on Rusty's PC, and that Barbara had died unknowing. Now I crashed into my own despair. I have been stabbed at so often by guilt and apprehension that it was hard to believe they could cut sharper or deeper, yet I felt then as if I were being dissected. Generally speaking, I have been good throughout my life at faking my way along, especially when I am suffering. But my difficulty in understanding myself sometimes paralyzes me. Why did I ever want Rusty? And what seems like the greatest mystery of all-why didn't I ever give a fig about Barbara? In the past two months, there has been a parade of moments when I have nearly been knocked cold by the recognition of the monumental pain I caused her in the last week of her life. Why didn't I see the stakes for her when I was throwing myself at her husband? Who was I? It's like trying to understand why I once jumped off a rock forty feet above the Kindle while I was in high school and nearly killed myself when I lost consciousness for a second with the impact. Why did I think that was fun?
In my own defense, I really didn't know how edgy Barbara was. Before we became intimate, Rusty always presented her as difficult rather than crazy, speaking of Barbara much the way the Indians do the Pakistanis, or the Greeks talk about the Turks, traditional enemies at peace along an uneasy border. At the time, I took that only as an opening, an opportunity. I never considered the harm to her. Because, as is always true of people who do the wrong thing, I was certain we would never be caught.
I place the berries on the table in front of him and hand over a fork.
"You having any?" he asks.
"No appetite." I smile weakly. "Did you?"
"What?"
"Still want me back when Barbara died?"
"No. Not really. Not by then."
I have a dozen excuses for what went on with Rusty. The law seemed such a grand point of arrival for me, a destiny I was so long headed toward. I wanted to absorb everything, do everything. It was like standing before a temple. And I knew how much longing rested unexpressed inside him. You could almost hear it from him, like a brake grinding on a drum. I believed, stupidly, I would be good for him. And I knew that whatever the open sesame was with men, I hadn't found it yet, and this was another key to try. But in the end, I was using him, and I realized that. I desperately wanted somebody like him, somebody important, to want me, as if I would somehow possess everything the world had poured on him, if he was willing to forsake it all for me. It made sense. That's all I can say. In the irrational internal way the heart and mind can mesh. It made sense then and makes no sense now. At moments, I feel like begging, Take me back, put me back there so I can figure out who that girl was two years ago. It would not matter, anyway. I will always have to live with the regret.
"I didn't think so," I say. "That night Nat and I were here, the night before she died? You seemed to have let go of it. It's one more reason I never thought you killed her. I just didn't know why you'd gotten to that point so quickly."
"Because it turned out I wanted my son more than I wanted you. Is that too blunt?"
"No."
"It helped me put things in perspective. Not that it wasn't an awful situation. It still is, I suppose."
I don't think he means to accuse me, but of course, I am guilty enough to feel accused anyway.
"You are in love with him, right?" Rusty asks.
"Madly. Insanely. Do you mind my saying that?"
"It's what I want to hear."
Just uttering this little about Nat, I feel my heart swell, and tears forcing themselves to my eyes.
"He is the sweetest man in the world. Brilliant and funny. But so sweet. So kind." Why did it take me so long to see that was what I needed, someone who wants my care and can return it?
"A lot more than I am," Rusty says.
We both know that's true. "He had nicer parents," I answer.
Rusty looks away. "And he still has no clue?"
I shrug. How do we ever know what's in someone else's heart or mind? If we are always a mystery to ourselves, then what is the chance of fully understanding anybody else? None, really.
"I don't think so. I've started to tell him a thousand times, but I always stop myself."
"I think that's right," Rusty says. "Nothing to gain."
"Nothing," I say.
I have returned to see my therapist several times, but Dennis has no answers to the insane opera in which I found myself enmeshed after Barbara died, in part because he told me not to see Nat in the first place. But there's one thing Dennis and I always agree on, and that's that telling Nat the truth now would be impossibly destructive-not only of us, but of him. Most of what he assumed about his life on earth has shifted already in the last year. I can't ask him to pay another price just to relieve my overwhelming guilt. For me, this was always going to be a relationship built across the crater of a volcano. I have to walk those dangerous heights alone.
But people get used to things. Rusty got used to prison, amputees learn to live without limbs. If I can stay with Nat, the present will overwhelm the past. I can see us in a house, with kids, frantic with two jobs and figuring out who is going to be able to get home in time to pick up from the soccer games, can envision us anchored in a world entirely of our own making and still thrilled to the core by who we are to each other. I can see that. But I am not sure how to get from here to there. I kept thinking that if we could hold it together until the trial ended, we would be able to go on, a day at a time, and I still believe that now.
"I'm going to leave you two in peace," he says. "I can't really live here. Not now," he says. "Maybe I can come back eventually." He's quiet a second. "Can I ask something really personal?"
I am instantly afraid, until he says, "Do I have any hope of grandchildren?"
I just turn to him and smile.
"Wild horses," he tells me.
Outside, the garage door creaks and clatters. Nat is back. We both look in that direction. I stand up and Rusty gets up, too. I hug him quickly, but in earnest this time, with the sincerity and appreciation people always owe somebody they loved.
Then I head to the garage door to greet my sweet, sweet man. But before I get there, I turn back.
"You know, there's another reason I love him," I say.
"Which is?"
"There are ways he's a lot like you."
The Camry starts. With the long drive north, the battery will recharge. Nat gives Rusty the cables just in case, then we stand on the driveway, waving. The car backs down the drive, then Rusty stops and gets out, and he and Nat hug each other yet again. I think one of the hardest things in a relationship is dealing with the way your partner sees his parents. I learned that in my marriage to Paul, the fact he didn't understand how his mom tended to boss him, and I've witnessed similar things a number of times since. It's like watching someone struggle with Chinese handcuffs. You keep thinking, No, in, push in, don't pull back, they just get tighter, and the poor sap, this guy you love or hope to love, struggles anyway. I am glad for Rusty and for Nat, glad for this night, but I know they still have oceans left to swim across.