Page 44 of The Castaways
They had made love on top of the bed and it was… well, think about it! Addison had made love to his wife only a handful of times in the previous eight years, and even then the lovemaking fell somewhere between fair and marginal. To have a whole, happy, warm, responsive, physically delectable woman, a woman he liked, for the first magical and romantic time was… yeah.
Later, when they lay there, gazing out the window at the stark beauty of the daylight fading between the bare, slender trees, Tess admitted that she had not gotten lost at all. His directions had been perfect. She was late because she’d sat in her car at the end of the road, collecting her nerves, and checking in with Greg, who had the kids at the dentist.
It was a day he would never forget, January 7. On Tess’s calendar what it said was:Chloe + Finn, dentist, 3:30P.M.
Dentist! Addison thought. There should be a hand-drawn heart that saidAddison! The Day I Fell in Love!
Addison flipped forward. February. Valentine’s Day, another brutal holiday. Addison had bought Tess a book of love stories. He had driven to the elementary school and surreptitiously left the book on the driver’s seat of Tess’s Kia. Addison asked Tess if she would read the stories. She said she would, but to his knowledge, she hadn’t read a single one.
The square for February 14 said:LoLa 41. 7P.M.
Which was where she and Greg had gone to dinner.
On March 3, Addison had told Tess he loved her for the first time. They were in the cottage, listening to Billie Holiday. It was pouring rain outside. Addison lit a fire and made two mugs of coffee with Baileys. It was as perfect a scene as he could imagine. When he lay dying, this would be the moment he reflected on.
He set his mug down. He ran a fingertip along Tess’s jawline.
He said, “I love you, Tess.”
That day should have a hand-drawn heart!
Tess had said, “I love you, too.” Her eyes were clear and dry.
But the square for March 3 was empty.
Addison’s birthday, April 23, said:Addison b-day (49). Greg had been at a singing competition in Lenox with the High Priorities and Tess had, as a surprise, called in sick to school so she could spend the day with Addison at the cottage.
Was it necessary to mention that this was the best present he had ever been given?
She had bagels and cream cheese waiting, and a steaming carafe of coffee, and his newspapers: theNew York Times,theWall Street Journal,andUSATodayfor the sports. She had ordered, online, the entire catalogue of the Rolling Stones and said they were going to listen to each of the albums all the way through, in order. They made love. They played chess in bed, then took a tiny nap. They had lunch: somehow she had gotten hold of two bottles of the impossible-to-procure Mersault, which they drank with croque-monsieurs that she whipped up at the stove. And real dill pickles, his favorite! They watchedCasino Royaleand she cried in his arms. They ate two brownie sundaes, one of which had a candle, and Tess sang “Happy Birthday” to him, and at the end she added on the kindergarten chant,Are you one? Are you two? Are you three?All the way to forty-nine.
Then she gave him his present: it was a heart cut out of red felt.
She said, “This is my heart.”
Now, he touched the pieces of the heart in his pocket. He had never been without it. He wished he had given her something like this instead of a hardback tome of fusty love stories she would never read. He should have given her a token of his love that she could hold on to, touch so much it fell apart. Why had he not done that?
May 10 was the day he first broached the topic of leaving their respective spouses.I can’t do this anymore, he’d said.I need to be with you. I can make anything happen. Just give me the okay.
She had bit her bottom lip. She was conflicted!
I know what you mean. I know. But…
But: the twins, their friends, their lives. She couldn’t pull the pin.
But: she agreed. She loved him. She would think about it.
On Tess’s calendar, it said:Meeting w/principal, 4P.M.
Addison flipped back to the twentieth of June and the insidious heart. A slip of paper fell to the floor. He picked it up. It was a poem, ripped, not cut, from a magazine. FromThe New Yorker.He recognized the type.
The poem was by Michael Ryan, the title was “Sixtieth Birthday Dinner.” What interested Addison, of course, were the lines that Tess had underlined. Here it was—finally!—a message.
My life with you has been beyond beyond
And there’s nothing beyond it I’m seeking
...
