Which is why, when the girls were old enough, when we had time enough, when we had money enough—well, of course: we’d go. I even took French classes (actually, the same introductory class, many times) and enrolled the girls in a magnet school that offered French immersion (they progressed rapidly, or Daphne did). And I stayed employed, my unfinished film studies degree having somehow qualified me for a job writing speeches and PowerPoint presentations and making the occasional (stunningly scripted and shot) video for the university president.
What I mean is, I did my part.
And Robert did his. He organized carpools and dentist appointments and 3:00 A.M.. laundry when vomiting or bed-wetting required. He was an excellent cook and involved the girls in the cooking. Juicebox-size trophies he’d won for coaching tiny teams bejeweled our bookshelves.
He navigated all this uncomplainingly, if distantly, as though he was studying these various activities rather than taking part in them. And I studied him. I learned to predict when he’d feel the need to disappear—it was like a simmering, a swelling, though that’s not quite it, because there was never a sense that anything might explode. Instead, he’d just announce that he needed some “time,” and off he’d go. He worked in spurts, taking off on a Thursday, say, and coming back Saturday. Or he’d leave predawn Sunday and return at bedtime. In the meantime, he’d have found a hostel or lodge or a convent. A coffee shop or a planetarium. He’d come home dazed, bedraggled, happy-tired, like a runner post-race. Again, I never complained or questioned: a day away, an hour, a weekend, time alone to do his work. It was what we had agreed.
But what we’d also agreed was that he’d always leave a note. We never received communications during his time away, but always a note before he went away. Three words, be back soon, was the custom, unfailingly appended with an estimated time of return that was unfailingly accurate. And it worked. For years. We didn’t ask other people to understand (especially after I’d made the mistake of offhandedly mentioning Robert’s frequent absences on some soccer sideline, leaving other mothers aghast). Children of firefighters and surgeons and sailors get used to their parents’ unusual schedules; so did ours. Dad’s off writing, Daphne would say if she found the note. He loved hiding these in places the kids might find them, a fortune-cookie-size slip taped to the back of a toothbrush, a purple Post-it tumbling out with the Cheerios. “Be back soon!” Ellie might chirp.
I’d been forewarned. We’d had that deal. And I didn’t want to go back on it, even as his career took one wrong turn after another. That was how art worked. And it was important for me that he live the life of an artist, a writer. I didn’t begrudge him time away, but I somehow begrudged him his anxiety, his exhaustion. Failures aside—or included!—he was living the dream. Couldn’t he smile more? And maybe cook and freeze a dinner before he left?
What he did leave, for me, were books. Not every time, but many times, since the very beginning. Something to tide me over while he was gone was the idea, I think—but only think, because the few times I pressed him on why he’d left this or that book, he looked at me oddly. Because I wanted you to read it. So I did. Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider was the first—World War I, TB sanitariums, delirium, lost love—I swooned for it even as I worried he was trying to tell me something: did he, too, have a terminal illness? No, he said again (and again): I just wanted you to read it. So I did, and later, William Maxwell’s So Long, See You Tomorrow and Aidan Higgins’s Helsingør Station and James Welch’s Fools Crow and William Kennedy’s Albany novels and Grace Paley’s Manhattan stories and Octavia Butler and Muriel Spark and so much Alice Munro. I can’t remember them all. I don’t even have them all—some were just library books he later returned. For a while, I gave him films in return, but that was an inconvenient age when balancing a screen on your stomach would have crushed you; he never seemed to find the time to watch. I didn’t mind. I liked the books, I liked talking about them, but I also liked that it was okay not to talk about them; it wasn’t a test. It was, instead, a kind of gift, a treat, like breakfast in bed. I felt catered to, and so when the books began to peter out, when he began to leave without leaving them behind, I grew uneasy.
Where once Robert had sauntered the aisles of bookstores and libraries with a proprietary air, now he slunk through them, or avoided them altogether, eager to avoid embarrassments like the one Daphne once put him through during a playdate visit to a bookstore: taking a little friend by the hand, Daphne went over to the E’s to brag on her father’s behalf. But there, between Alexandre Dumas, Lawrence Durrell, and . . . Umberto Eco, there was no Eady. Of course not, Robert said quickly, and dragged them over to the children’s section. But here there were no E’s at all. The shelf went straight from Lois Duncan’s I Know What You Did Last Summer to Walter Farley’s Black Stallion. Both favorites of Daphne’s, but that was beside the point today. “Where are your books, Daddy?” Daphne asked, or so she told me later.
She wasn’t the only one asking. Especially because Robert’s pursuit of “what’s next” had devolved into an increasingly feeble series of experiments, like the trilogy with an unconventional conceit: the first book was pitched at his younger readers, the second for not-quite-adults, the third for readers who thought of themselves (or were thought to be) adults. The idea was to reel in a new adult audience without losing hold of his old younger one. Or, that was the publisher’s idea; Robert was less sure.
Thus began a new season. Of being less sure of everything, of stumbling, wandering, of yet more experiments that were rebuffed and abandoned. It wasn’t that he bruised easily—more that his earnestness, his artistness (I’m looking for words other than cluelessness), left him forever vulnerable.
Over time, it seemed that everything wounded. He’d taken up sailing through the college and loved it—and then they instituted a safety requirement that you had to sail with someone. The girls’ resurgent complaints about our lack of pets (Robert had allergies) wore at him as never before, as did the neighbors and their pets. For the sake of intellectual engagement (his claim), for the sake of human interaction and distraction (my claim, and correct), he’d agreed to teach a class up at the university, but campus inanities bothered him disproportionately—one had to pay for one’s own toner, for example, which he said punished the productive.
And I bothered him. I’m not sure why. The therapist didn’t know, either. And maybe that was the reason why I troubled him so: I’d convinced Robert to see a therapist. Actually, the compromise was that we would both go see someone, together. Which turned out to be fine. For me. In our sessions, Robert mostly squirmed or sighed; I brought pen and paper, took notes, asked for tools. We wound up with an entire “toolbox,” albeit one filled with simple things. Exercise. Meditation. Plus, “alone time,” which Robert liked having validated, and “advance notice,” which I liked having validated: the latter meant that you were supposed to give your partner a heads-up about things you wanted to discuss. We will fight about your time away tomorrow was how I jokingly summarized it. The therapist asked if I felt like I relied on humor too much.
For the longest time, laughter had been the one thing that had worked reliably for us. I’m not the world’s best