Page 62 of Saltwater

Sarah reached for the pack of cigarettes Marcus had left on the table. She didn’t smoke anymore, hadn’t in years, but she always smoked when they traveled in Europe. It was the smallest of evils that week.

They sat there, smoking. Sometimes Sarah would tap the ash from her cigarette into the tray on the table, other times onto the ground. They didn’t speak again until the sun had begun to cut under the awning, moving inch by inch across the marble tabletops as it dropped closer and closer to the rim of the Mediterranean.

She would miss this. Not the family, but the island.

She would misshim.

—

It wasn’t an affair.

At least, Sarah didn’t think of it in that way.

It was a decision made easier by the fact that she and Marcus neverplannedto have sex. There were no hotel rooms or invented work trips. There were no phone calls or furtive love notes. There were only dinner parties at which they were the last two awake, casual afternoons when their spouses weren’t home, and occasionally, very occasionally, the back seat of a car parked on a side street off Mulholland.

I can stop anytime.

That’s what Sarah liked to tell herself.

What she should have told herself was that it was time to leave. That she and Richard had tried, but ultimately weren’t a fit. Marriages fell apart, even the best ones. Which maybe hers never had been. But on the day she ginned up the courage to pack a bag, on thevery day she had a flight back to New York, she found out she was pregnant. A wave of nausea foretold the outcome of the test.

A child should have a family,she told herself.

Without discussion, the affair stopped. Helen, as far as Richard knew, was simplyborn early.

Sarah had always imagined, when she was younger, that she would be the kind of woman who walked out if things got bad. But the reality was more complicated. Marriages gathered a momentum of their own, they tumbled forward over obstacles and past off-ramps with an alarming speed, until suddenly, years later, all the exits were behind you. Your entire life—the things you loved, the work that defined you—in the rearview.

Even worse, somehow she got used to it. Watching every opportunity slip by, everyalmost,everynext time.It wasn’t apathy. She thought about it—the way things seemed within her control and yet never were—it wasallshe thought about. The truth was, the strength required to tear apart the fabric of her life was in short supply. Shorter still with a toddler, without resources, withoutherfamily.

It was embarrassing to be so weak. Her strength didn’t come back for years. But now that it had returned, now that Helen was three and she was working, now that she knew they could be their own family, that they could find a way—she realized she was strong enough, finally, to leave.

That was the other thing about marriages: at a certain point you cared less about burning them down. The rubble preferable to a pretty façade.

—

When Sarah and Richardoriginally left New York for Los Angeles, they agreed it would only be for two weeks, maybe a month. They had tickets. Return dates. The dates came and went without any discussion.

“The doctor doesn’t know how much time he has,” Marcus told them when they arrived. The stroke had been small, but bigger thanthe first, which had happened six months ago. No one had told Richard.

“It’s just like my brother,” Richard said, “to keep it to himself. That way he can play the hero.”

Sarah had never met this Richard. The jealous Richard. Theyoungerbrother, his ailing father repeatedly pointed out.

After a month, they moved into a house in Bel Air.

“We can’t stay in a hotel forever,” Richard had said.

There were no conversations about the decision. Richard never came to Sarah and said:It’ll only be through the springorLet’s set a limit on this.At the time, the decision was easy—she was doing what she needed to support him. And what he needed was a chance to show his father that he cared. That, like his brother, he could be counted on.

The townhouse in New York sat empty and unused. Sarah never expected it to stay like that for years. But time slipped through her fingers, and the harder she tried to hold on to it, the faster it seemed to move.

“It’ll give you a chance to get to know us better,” Naomi said.

At first, Sarah liked that idea. Then Richard’s father held on and another three months passed.

“I’ve set up a meeting for you with the theater department chair,” Marcus explained over dinner one night. The rolling, open dinner parties of New York such a distant memory that Sarah couldn’t even be sure they had ever happened. “He’s familiar with your work. I thought it might be fun for you to”—Marcus sipped from his glass of wine—“dip intosomethingwhile you’re here.”

“That’s kind of you,” Sarah said. And she meant it.

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