“I wondered if I could feel again what I felt then,” I said. “I know that there aren’t many things in the world that could sound more ridiculous. I guess I’ve gotten dumber in the last twenty-five years.”
“No,” he said quietly. “No.”
And what of Raymond, my husband of two decades, my companion, my brother, my man? Dear Raymond, if you ever were to read this, your heart might break, but if I could explain it right, you would see that what I did was never meant to be at your expense. Is this my grandest lie of all? Maybe. I will admit this: My love for Raymond was never like my love for David. To me, Raymond was a refuge from the loss of Little Warm and David, a way to put aside what I’d felt at the Seabreeze. David was a world; Raymond was a living room. But I needed that room so badly. And if I never felt for him what I knew I was capable of feeling, that never once meant I could not treat him with respect and kindness, help build him as a man, be proud of him, focus my torn, divided affections on him. It does not mean I ever once wavered in my duty to him as a woman and a friend. It does not mean that I ever stroked his dark hair with anything but tenderness, that I ever diminished him in order to control him. I invested in Raymond all the faith I had to give, the ultimate faith, maybe. I believed he would love me forever, even when the days came and he would want a child that I could not give him. And there was one other difference, too, between the two men, a difference that became more and more important to me as the years went by. David may have called up something I couldn’t find again, but Raymond needed me. I may have craved being in the orbit of something larger than myself, but I was honored that Raymond would let me be that for him. No two people can love each other equally. I loved Raymond less than he loved me, but never — at least never until now — did I exploit that. Years ago, Raymond’s look began to harden and his movements took on the first jittery attitudes of anger. His distance grew wider and deeper and his silences seemed to stretch for week upon week. The basic struggle of life finally began to dull him and transform me — in his heart — from someone he wanted to please into someone whom pleasing was an exhausting, impossible obligation. But never, never did I ask him to love me more, or better, or again, or even at all. Not once did I make a demand or utter a disappointment. Half a year ago, when he stopped making love to me, stopped touching me at all, in fact, I let him without complaint move into whatever thing was calling him. It seemed the very least a barren woman could do for the man she’d married, fully aware of her limited future. But right now, incredible as it seems, I can truly say that the more I think about David — and what happened that night — the more I believe that my marriage is not in question. I believe that my marriage is strong enough to take this. If there is a wrong calculation here, there will be much suffering ahead, for all of us.
So we drove to the Seabreeze. I registered. Same room, same smell off the ocean, same traffic spinning by just a few feet away, same damp mildewed air and wrapped water glasses and little bars of pink soap. It was all the same, only smaller. When we took each other in our arms, it felt like we were coming together from a thousand miles apart. I was absolutely terrified. The room was spinning and I was spinning with it, around David, the fixed center. I almost laughed at how preposterous this was, but he kissed me. Then, slowly, his familiarities began to come back: the stiff muscles in his neck, how long his lashes were when he closed his eyes, the patient hunger, the comforting smell of his breath through the brandy — the same after twenty-five years! So I didn’t feel like laughing anymore and I just fell into the spin and let him take me to the bed.
Did I get it back, that feeling I’d had all those years ago?
Partly. What I felt when we were done this time was not that my whole life lay in front of me, but how profoundly it all had changed. I did feel again that lostness inside this man, the irresistible pull of him. But as I lay there beside him and looked out to the cold, clear night, I knew that what was ahead for us was not a love that promised togetherness and marriage and a family, but a love that promised heartbreak, confusion, and treachery. And yet, for a few moments, I was someone different; I was not Ann Cruz of the two jobs and the distant husband and the dumb routines of the same neighborhood I’d lived in for all my life. I was Ann Weir, a woman desiring and to be desired.
And let me say this to you, Dear One — even though you’ll never read this — I knew when we finished that night — the blessed night of March 23 — that you were inside me, beginning to grow. No scientist on earth can tell me that a woman can’t know.
I knew. It was like stepping into a dream you’ve always had. I lay back in that little motel bed and closed my eyes and said a prayer of thanks for you. And I asked God to show me what to do, this unvirgin Mary with child whose husband hadn’t touched her in so many months.
Joseph Goins marked his place in the journal and went to the big sliding glass door. Through the vertical blinds, he could see below him the soft illuminated blue of the lap pool, the palms and bird of paradise lit from beneath, the grounds receding into darkness and fog. The ocean surged and crashed somewhere far below.
It had been the most remarkable ride of Joseph’s life — not the ride itself but what was going through his mind as it happened. Down the hills from the cemetery, sitting beside Mr. Cantrell. Down Coast Highway, off on some side streets, through a gate that parted with a remote control, up a long pine-lined driveway, and into the wood and glass compound built around a huge central fountain. Mr. Cantrell had said it was a house he maintained but rarely used. He said that for now, it was his. A man named Dale would be there, too, to get Joseph anything he needed. Dale was large and pale-eyed, with sandy hair and a battered face. Long before he noticed the subtle rise of a gun in the small of Dale’s back, Joseph recognized him as a man capable of extremes. It had to do with the arrogant way he moved his body through space, the unwitting craving of resistance. He was a man who had prepared himself to be deployed. But there was a certain truth in Dale’s handshake, even though Joseph’s fingers were split and burning. Dale said that he’d be around until morning. Mr. Cantrell told him he’d be around as long as he told him to be.