Page 42 of The Light Year

“Are you blaming me for the fight last New Year’s Eve? For getting us into a position where I’m required to have a therapist in order to keep my job?” Bill asks incredulously. “Because, Jo, I can’t apologize again for losing my temper that night. If I’d been able to reel it in, I would have.” He looks like he’s begging her to understand. Pleading for her forgiveness. “But you know what?” Bill asks, putting all ten fingertips to his own chest. “I think I’m becoming a better man because of it. Going to therapy has shown me I have growing to do, and I’ve learned a lot. I think you and I are going to grow, too.”

“Which is why I wanted to go all along,” Jo says, turning around fully now to look down at her husband as he sits there. On the horizon, the afternoon sun is sinking into a hazy pink-orange sky. “I thought we’d learn something about our marriage,and, frankly, I saw how much you were changing just by going to talk to Dr. Sheinbaum on your own.” Jo stops and bites her lower lip. “I think I was jealous.”

“Of Dr. Sheinbaum?” Bill asks, looking like he’s ready to defend himself against a wild accusation that he’s having an affair with the therapist.

But that’s not where Jo is going at all. “Yes, of Dr. Sheinbaum,” she says, her tone and demeanor shifting again and becoming soft. Jo sits back down in the chair that faces Bill’s, and this time she intentionally sits near the edge so that her knees will touch his. “But not the way you think. I was jealous because she got to hear all the things you were thinking and feeling. I wanted to be the person you could talk to, Bill.”

“You are,” he says hoarsely, his eyes wet. “Youare, Jo.”

She holds his gaze before responding. “I was,” Jo says, reaching for her drink and taking a sip of the watered-down cocktail. “And I want to be again. I want you to feel safe with me. I want you to want me. I want to be the same woman you married.”

“But you’re not,” Bill says vehemently. “You’re not her anymore, Jo. You’re someone better.”

Jo blinks back the unexpected tears that come as he says the words she’s wanted to hear for so long. “You’re stronger, you’re a mother, you’re a writer, and you’ve been my partner for fifteen years. You’re so much more than you were when I met you, and baby, you were a lot even then.” Bill reaches for her hands and holds them in his. In response, Jo knots her fingers through Bill’s.

A steel drum version of “Unchained Melody” comes over the speakers, and Bill stands, tugging Jo to a standing position. She looks at him with curiosity.

“Can I have this dance?” Bill asks, though all he really would need to do is to pull her into his arms and sway. Jo nods andslips her hand into his as he places one hand on the small of her back.

An elderly couple walks by, hand-in-hand, and the woman smiles at them as she sees them dancing. Jo smiles back and then rests her forehead against Bill’s collarbone.

“Jo?” he says into her ear as they move out into the open water. “It’s a new year, and we’re new people. We just need to work together, and I promise you, we’ll be fine.”

Jo doesn’t look up at him; instead, she nods against his chest, not wanting him to see the questions in her eyes. Because Jo, for all of her imagination, is having a hard time picturing how everything is going to be okay in the blink of an eye. She can’t even agree with him out loud.

“I love you,” Bill says to her, pulling her even closer.

“I love you too,” Jo says, still not looking at him. At least that much is true: she does love him. And when she says it, she means it with all her heart.

When the boat docks again at the Port of Miami five days later, Bill and Jo are tanned, relaxed, and more at ease with one another than they’ve been in a long time.

Jo wakes up that morning and stretches her arms in the narrow bed; she and Bill have quickly come to enjoy the forced proximity, and rather than tossing and turning, they’ve found their way into one another’s arms each night, then rolled up like potato bugs around each other, cuddling until the sun peeks through the porthole window.

“Hi,” Jo says sleepily, sitting up with the sheet over her naked body as she watches Bill step out of the tiny bathroom with a towel around his waist. He looks happy.

“Morning, Jojo,” he says, holding the towel closed with one hand. “How’d you sleep?”

Jo reaches for the satin robe that she’d flung over the foot of the bed and puts her arms through it, belting it as she stands. “I slept like a baby being rocked in a cradle all night long. Something about being on the water has knocked me out every night.”

“Are you sure it’s not the cocktails and the things we’ve been getting up to after dark?” He turns to her and wiggles an eyebrow suggestively.

Jo laughs. “Okay, possibly those things, too.” Jo walks around him, opening up the small chest of drawers and taking out a cotton dress, a bra, and a pair of underwear. “I know we get back around eleven, but I was thinking I could shower and get dressed, and maybe we could have one last breakfast together before we dock.”

Bill is already stepping into a pair of shorts and zipping them over his white briefs. “Sounds good to me. Should I go ahead of you and get the newspaper and some mimosas going?”

Jo stands on tiptoes and kisses him. “Yes, please.”

They’ve sat by the railing each morning, sharing the paper, a carafe of coffee, and another carafe of mimosas, which has rapidly become how Jo wants to start every single day. She turns on the shower and steps out of her robe as the stateroom door clicks shut and Bill disappears.

Thirty minutes later, Jo walks through the dining room and spots Bill, sitting at a table for two like they’ve done each morning. He’s gotThe Miami Heraldopened on the table, with the Arts & Leisure section already set aside for Jo. She sips her coffee first, then her mimosa, opening the paper so she can skim the top books and movies of the week.

“Mmm,” Bill says casually, setting his coffee cup on a saucer. He folds his section of the newspaper in half. “Says here thatTheOregonianin Portland is the last paper in the country that still sells for a nickel a day, and tomorrow it’s going up to ten cents.”

Jo shakes her head. “The world,” she says, half-listening, half-interested. “It’s really changing, isn't it?”

“It’s 1967, Jojo. Before the decade is out, we will have gone to the moon, and you and I will have a son who’s graduated from high school. Can you believe that?”

Jo sets the paper down and picks up her mimosa. The water beyond the railing is clear blue and lovely. She’ll miss this little oasis in the center of her daily life—herreallife.

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