Page 77 of Maybe in Another Life

I nod. “Yeah, you did.”

“And you did this to somebody.”

I want to claim that the situation is different. I want to say that what I did with Michael isn’t as bad as what this other woman has done with Mark. I want to, once again, hide behind the fact that I didn’tknow. But I did know. And what I did was no different from this.

I slept with someone’s husband. I shouldn’t have done that.

And now I’m having a baby by that man. And I’m going to raise that baby.

Pretending this child isn’t the result of a mistake I made doesn’t make it any less true.

And I know now that I have to face things. I have to admit things in order to move forward.

“Yes,” I say. “I did a terrible thing. Just like Mark and that woman did a terrible thing to you.”

Gabby looks at me. I pull her over to the sofa, and I sit us both down.

“I made a mistake. And when I did, you saw that I was still a good person, and you reserved your judgment, because you had faith in me. That was a wonderful gift. Your belief in me. It’s made me believe in myself. It’s made me start to change the things I’ve needed to change. But you don’t have to do that for them. You can just hate them.”

I swear, she almost smiles.

“We can both just hate them for as long as we need to, and then, one day, when we feel stronger, we’ll probably forgive them for being imperfect, for doing a terrible thing. One day, sooner than you think, I bet we’ll go so far as to wish them the best and not give them another thought, because we’ll have moved on with our lives. But you don’t have to believe that right now. You can just hate him. And I can hate him for what he did to you. And maybe one day, he’ll change. He’ll be a person who did something in the past that he would never, ever, ever do again.”

She looks at me.

“Or he’ll just be shitty forever, and you’re better off being as far away from him as possible,” I tell her. “There’s that theory, too.”

She smiles a smile so small and so quick that I start to question if I really saw it. “I’m sorry,” she says finally. “I didn’t mean to bring you into this. I’m just... I’m sorry.”

“Don’t give it another thought,” I say.

Gabby cries into her hands and then collapses into my arms. “He’s not even allergic to dogs,” she says. “I’ve wanted a dog for years, and I couldn’t because of him, but I swear, it’s all in his head. I bet you he’s not even allergic to them.”

“Well, now you’ve got one,” I say. “So there’s a silver lining. Why don’t we just sit here and think of silver linings for right now? What’s another one? Did he always forget to take out the trash? Did he leave his wet towel on the bed?”

She looks up at me. “His penis is small,” she says. “Seriously, like a golf pencil.” And then she starts laughing. “Oh, it feels good to admit that. I don’t have to keep pretending his penis isn’t small.”

I start laughing with her. “That wasn’t exactly where I thought you were going to go with this, but OK! That’s a good one.”

Gabby laughs. It’s a deep belly laugh. “Oh, God, Hannah,” she says. “The first time I saw it, I thought,Where’s the rest of it?”

I laugh so hard when she says this that I have to struggle to breathe. “You are making this up,” I say.

“Nope,” she says, her hands up in the air as if she’s swearing to God. “He just has a terrible penis.”

Both of us are laughing so hard that tears are coming out of our eyes. And then, abruptly, it is time to stop. I can see the mood change much the same way you can feel summer turn to fall. One day, everything’s sunny, and then, suddenly, it’s not.

“Oh, Hannah,” she says, burying herself into my chest. Charlemagne sits at our feet.

“Shhh,” I say, rubbing her back. “It’s OK. It’s going to be OK.”

“I’m not sure that’s true,” she says into my chest.

“It is,” I say. “It is true.”

She looks up at me, her eyes now bloodshot and glassy. Her face is splotchy. She looks desperate and sick. I’ve never seen her like this. She’s seen me like this. But I’ve never seen her like this.

“I know it’s going to be OK, because you are Gabrielle Jannette Hudson. You are unstoppable. You are the strongest woman I’ve ever known.”

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