The thought of a picnic with her was a tourniquet around my heart, so I said I had errands to run, things to prepare. I left her place in the early evening, drove my car down the newly throbbing streets. Pulling into Charles’s and my driveway, I felt like I was driving over all the years underneath this one, every day I’d driven home, every conversation he and I had ever had, every other me I’d ever been.
Never having cheated before, I hadn’t realized what an instant accelerant sex is for disorientation and guilt.
Out of the car, I walked by plants I’d once cared about, up the stone walkway to our imposing, pretentious front door—what assholes lived here? —and turned my key in the lock. A metal taste spread to the back of my mouth, as if I’d licked a bloody knife. I set my purse on the in/out table, kicked my shoes off, and walked into my own kitchen. The young me watched the old me and thought—seriously, it’s come to this? Who are you?
“Sam?”
Charles was home. My name in his voice sounded familiar and just, brought back the delicious horror of hearing it in Leah’s voice.
“Yeah, it’s me,” I said, my fake words clanging around, the taste of Leah and impending lies on my lips.
He walked out into the foyer to find me, looking like a sleepy hunter, someone who has stayed awake all night in a blind, watching for deer. Except I was the deer, and he wanted to save me instead of killing me.
As he came close and hugged me, I said, “I feel very strange and tired.”
“Do you want to lie down?” he asked, but even though we’d known each other for what now felt like our entire epic lives, I couldn’t decode this. Was it a proposition, and if so, of what sort? Was he offering to lie down with me? Was it a romantic offer? An exhausted one?
“I want to watch a nature show,” I said.
He nodded, and I saw myself as if I were a character in a story in which Charles was the protagonist. He said, “How does The Blue Planet sound?”
“Good.”
“I have a call, so I can’t watch with you, but I’ll set it up. Do you want something to drink, Sam? Tea? Coffee? Water?”
I deserved to perish from my own thirst. If I was going to quench whatever the desire for Leah was, then maybe I should desiccate my body by ignoring its other more mundane drives. “No thanks,” I said. “Thank you, though. I’m fine.” Too many words, lined up unnaturally.
As we headed to the couch, Charles asked, uncharacteristically, “Were you at school?”
“Um”—I was now formally a person who said um—“yes.”
The lie bounced around the room between us, like one of those horrible Orbeez Alexi used to grow in bowls of water. They were hard beads until they absorbed the stagnant water and then they became juicy, bouncing little gelatinous balls that fell all over the house and rolled everywhere but also smashed into clumps of a kind of disturbing Jello when stepped on.
I sat on the couch and Charles used one of our seventeen remotes to turn on an endless menu. He scrolled and typed through to The Blue Planet and waves came on the TV. I felt nauseated, seasick.
“Can I have The Great British Baking Show instead, please?” I asked, and he scrolled again, and as soon as the hosts were bawdily joking about bread boxes, I felt instantly better. Cured, bright, happy.
“Thanks, honey.”
He sat for a minute more. “Sam?”
“Yeah?”
“Can we talk about what’s happening? Are you—”
Poor Charles. He wanted, I knew, to ask if I was insane, having a nervous breakdown, going to be okay. He wanted to send me somewhere to get whatever help I needed, but he knew better than to ask if I was crazy, in case I either was or wasn’t, and flipped into a mad rage at having been confronted.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just anxious. I just need a little space.”
I knew immediately that this had come out wrong. He seemed to reel.
“Space—space from what, Sam?”
“You know, from this—from our—from, I don’t know. I need to think this surgery through before it happens.”
“Of course. Let’s think it through together. Are you saying you want space from our—” Here he paused, because he was incredulous. “—marriage?”
My face was on fire. Were we actually having this conversation? I tried to backpedal, but needed to go forward with it, too. Otherwise, how would I justify what was already underway?
“Not just that,” I said. “From everything. I need to float up above my life for a second to get through this.”
“Which means watching British Baking during the day? Which means not teaching? Which means what, Sam?”
Fucking my student.
It means fucking my student, and never being polite or apologizing again. It means shedding every rule like itchy lizard skin, suffocating all the people I love most, you included, and freeing myself. Then putting back on only the ideas and habits I believe deserve to be worn.
“It just means I need a minute to think through who I am, in case this is the end.”
He took my right foot in his hand and set it on his lap like a pet. “Oh, Sam. I’m sorry you’re suffering, honey. And I get how scary this is. It’s a nightmare. But there’s no reason to make it worse than it is. This is not ‘the end,’ no one dies on the table. It’s not a catastrophic diagnosis. The surgery and treatment are common and well-tolerated. Look at your mom—she’s doing fine, all these years later. You’ll be fine too. Please try not to exaggerate the danger. You’re torturing yourself.”
I took my foot back. I didn’t want to be told I’d be fine.
“I think I need to go for a walk, actually,” I said, and I turned off The Great British Baking Show, even as the meringues were being whipped in the glass bowls, even as the bakers were talking about the necessity of adding the sugar spoonful by spoonful.
Even as the blood sausage was being wrapped in fatty pastry.
“A walk is a good idea. Do you want company?”
“No thanks,” I said. “I’m just going to clear my mind.”
“Of course. Go easy on yourself, honey,” Charles said, and he let me go. I walked through the park until the sky darkened, knowing I would walk through it again in the light with Leah. Tomorrow.
THAT NIGHT I slept alone. When I went to bed, Charles was in his study, and then he never came to bed. I woke up alone, showered, dressed, and headed out our backdoor toward the park, dialing Leah’s number. She picked up, and her “hello” was low, maybe because she was asleep, or maybe because she didn’t know who was calling.
“It’s me,” I said in a very sexy voice, because I couldn’t sign up for either Sam or Professor Baxter. “I’m done at home. You still free for a picnic?”
“Oh, wow, okay,” she whispered. Her voice stayed low, so maybe that was just what she sounded like on the phone. “I’ll get ready now. We can meet at the bench next to the sundial.”
Something about the way she said that—without asking where I’d like to meet, without checking—made me feel like she was standing over me. With a whip.
The hills were scattered with a complicated mess of leaves. It was unusually warm,