I folded Angelina into my arms. Tears were streaming down her face and I was almost in tears myself—the tears of release, of finally being able to feel instead of watching, waiting, wondering. As I held her, I felt the anguish that had fueled my singing dissipate and, in its place, a rising sense of pure joy at the possibility that I might have Angelina again.
Her feelings could not have been so simple. Choosing me over Charlie would mean leaving a long-term relationship and all the memories that went with it. I had done the same a few days earlier, but at least I had a little time and distance, and no children to consider. Charlie was still upstairs.
I took Angelina’s hand and led her to my room, closed the door, and suddenly, desperately, wanted to make love to her. She sensed it, and kissed me, and then I was undressing her, with a familiarity that owed more to our time in Australia than the last few days. She wanted it too, perhaps to swamp the pain, perhaps to remind herself that there was substance to what she had chosen, or perhaps just to let go.
We started gently, but gently was not what either of us needed, and in a minute our clothes were scattered on the floor, and we were falling onto the bed. She rolled me over, too close to the edge, and I managed to knock over not only the table lamp but the entire bedside cabinet.
We both collapsed in giggles, hysterical, unstoppable giggles, which did what the sex was meant to have done. In that moment, Angelina did not feel like the equal opportunity commissioner who couldn’t drink Australian wine; she felt like my partner, my best friend, the twenty-three-year-old I had loved when I was twenty-six. I kissed her all over while she was still laughing, then swung out of bed to right the cabinet.
I put the lamp back, and as I switched it on to check that it was still working, I saw a black iPod nano on the floor. It was running, with the microphone icon on the screen.
“What are you doing?” said Angelina.
I put a finger to my lips and showed her the iPod. She took a few moments, as I had, to realize what it meant, then I caught a flash of anger before she turned her head and lay facing away from me, presumably to give herself space to think through what Charlie had done—and why.
It was a gross invasion of privacy, but what privacy were we entitled to? For a few minutes, I fantasized about putting on a show for Charlie, pretending to do all sorts of outrageous things. A day earlier that might have been fun. Now it would only be cruel.
If he wanted to get off on hearing his wife having sex with another man, well, he had already watched us the previous night, and quite likely from the garden the first time on Monday. An audio recording would not add anything new.
Charlie knew of Angelina’s penchant for exhibitionism and had delivered what was probably the definitive version of her fantasy. Angelina had said nothing in bed that would surprise him. The most damning conversation had taken place in the living room.
Maybe he wanted to bottle my accent for future use.
It was probably none of the above—just Charlie’s desire to know what was going on. We had that in common. “Do your worst,” he had said, “and see what happens.”
He had expected to win and had played hardball. It was possible that in the joy that was suffusing me there was an ounce of triumph. Charlie would surely have felt it if the outcome had been the other way. I powered off the iPod and felt Angelina shift on the bed behind me. When I turned back, she was facing me, but her eyes were closed.
I watched her as her breathing slowed. After a while I walked to the kitchen for a glass of water, then came back and watched her for a bit longer.
At 5:30 A.M. I touched her shoulder. “Do you want to see the dawn?”
“I want to, but I’m so tired. Watch it for both of us.”
I kissed her, then went outside and climbed the steps to the balcony and watched the sun rise on a new day while Charlie and Angelina slept. My mind began to settle. I thought about what I was facing: moving to Australia, taking on kids, dealing with Charlie. I could do all of this. Angelina knew who I was; I knew who she was; we loved each other. We would make it work. I went back to bed and slept properly for the first time.
I woke a little after 8:30 A.M. Angelina was still asleep. This was only the third day of my life that had started with the woman I wanted to be with forever.
I kissed her eyelids, prompting a flicker of movement, and tried to center myself in the moment, to block out everything else. It didn’t work. Was I afraid that in the light of day she would reconsider her offer?
A few minutes later, Charlie put his head in, carrying a tray with coffees, orange juices, a croissant, and Angelina’s fruit and muesli. Our clothes were still all over the floor.
“You gave Angelina a good shake last night,” he said. “I was expecting to hear Gilles thumping on the wall.”
Had we been that loud? Then I realized he was talking about my performance of “Angelina,” which he must have heard upstairs, louder than any noises from my room.
“You know the song?” I asked.
“’Course I know the fucking song,” he said. There was a touch of aggression in his voice, not unwarranted for a man who had brought breakfast in bed for his wife and her lover, and then had his knowledge of popular music questioned. I felt Angelina waking.
Charlie reached the door, then turned, looking at a scene that might play out, unseen by him, for the next forty years.
“I’m going to the Autun market,” he said. “Might get lunch in Beaune.”
“Do you want us to come?” said Angelina, still full of sleep.
“I owe Adam one. For the other night.”
I guessed he was referring to his caveman effort. He hardly owed me for that. But maybe for the lemon tree. And the iPod bug. And recruiting me as a rabbit.
“Don’t forget we’re leaving tomorrow afternoon,” he said. The message was clear enough. You’d better get this thing sorted before then. For all of our sakes.
A few minutes later we heard the front door close. I opened the bedroom door to let some fresh air through. It was warming up again.
We finished our breakfast, and Angelina lay back. “No hurry,” she said.
I took her soft naked body in my arms, she nuzzled into my shoulder, and my hand slipped down her back.
As morning light filtered through the window, we made love, slowly, exquisitely slowly, for maybe forty minutes, something I had not done for years. We were both in some suspended place, close to the edge, but not so close that we had to consciously hold back.
We could choose to finish any time we wanted, but we were just rocking softly. I say we because I was so connected with Angelina that I could anticipate every movement. It’s a cliché about two becoming one, but this was as close as I had ever got. When I wasn’t kissing her, she was making noises, soft in tone but loud enough to have bothered anyone in the house. When we both started to ramp up the intensity, it was simply the best sex I had ever had, Angelina screaming, from her gut rather than her throat. And me, uninhibited for once by the possibility of Charlie hearing, matching her in volume.
I fell asleep again for a few minutes, and when I woke, I asked the question. Did she mean what she said before we went to bed? And all that it entailed?
She kissed me. “I can’t talk without another coffee.”
I ambled into the kitchen, naked, and Charlie was sitting at the table. He saw me and I instinctively covered myself for both modesty and defense.
“Gilles took the car,” he said.
“I’ll get something for dinner,” I said, keeping the conversation focused on the practical.
“If you want. Ta.”
“I’ll head out anyway, when Gilles gets back,” he said, and his voice cracked. The big happy guy who had scored a try against the All Blacks was fighting back tears. I had to give him credit for knowing his wife better than I did: he must have read the decision in her face when he delivered breakfast.
I wanted to put an arm around him, but being naked and the source of his problem militated against it.
* * *
Angelina was sitting up when I returned to my bedroom. Instead of commenting on the absence of coffee, she waited until I reached the bed, then said, “I love you.”
It was the first time for twenty-two years. It was all she needed to say. I had what I wanted, what I had ostensibly come to reclaim, but had not dared to believe was attainable. Despite fantasizing about the idea, despite the undeniable reality of our rekindled love, in the depths of my being I had not expected Angelina would be prepared to leave Charlie for me.
I kissed her, over and over, and we might have spent the rest of the day in bed had it not been for Charlie’s presence. Angelina wrapped herself in my towel and went upstairs to shower.
As I shaved over the vanity unit, a song came into my head unbidden, the song I had sung to give me the confidence to do what I had now done. “For Once in My Life.” A song of joy, of celebration, of triumph.
My mouth had begun to form the words when I caught myself in the mirror. It was only a glimpse, just for a moment, and maybe something every man experiences at some time in his life.
I saw my father.
My face had thinned with the loss of weight and beard, and age was doing its work. I was four years younger than he had been when he died, eight years older than he was when he walked out on my mother and me. I had been fourteen—the same age as Angelina and Charlie’s son was now—when my father decided to put his own interests ahead of ours.
I looked hard for a while. At myself, not the flash of my father. There was something unpleasant in my eyes, a coldness that didn’t fit with the way I saw myself. I was looking at a man who was destroying a twenty-year marriage with three kids who were oblivious to it but who would be sat down by their parents in a couple of weeks and told the bad news. I doubted they would be making fine distinctions about the responsibility of third parties. At some point I would need to look them in the eyes, too.
I trailed the razor in a long stroke down my cheek as I felt the energy drain out of me.
The garage door made its opening noise. A few moments later, the kitchen door slammed and the car drove away.
I walked down the hallway to the living room and checked the kitchen on the way. Charlie had indeed left. Angelina must still be upstairs. I sat at the piano and let my unconscious mind choose the song and take me to that place where I could feel something other than emptiness.
When I was thirteen, my dad had collared me after school while my mother was still at work.
“Been drinking, have we?”
How the hell did he know that a few of us had sampled some bag-in-box red wine the evening before? He had not been around when I came home, a little bevvied but by no means drunk, and I had managed to avoid my mother.
He laughed. “Bit of advice for you, lad. Think about what you sing in the shower. Didn’t have you picked for a Dean Martin fan.”
I realized, with some embarrassment, that I had begun my day singing “Little Old Wine Drinker Me.”
“It’s like requests,” he said. “You give away more than you bargained for. Hope you’ve learned your lesson.”
It wasn’t clear if he was referring to the drinking or the injudicious song choice.
Now I wanted to give voice to my feelings, or at least tease them out, as I had when I listened to “Angelina” the night I left Claire. I noodled around and found myself playing a Jackson Browne song.
The lyrics came easily, about fantasy replacing the real world, about the light of the past, about the angels being older. About nets coming back empty. The specifics didn’t matter. A thousand songs would have done, songs about lost love. Lost love. It was already over. I couldn’t do it.
Angelina had come downstairs and was standing beside me, listening. She was barefoot, wearing designer jeans and a pink singlet, looking so unreasonably beautiful.
“I was serious last night,” she said. “I thought I told you twenty years ago, but you didn’t seem to hear me. Or want to hear me.” She put a hand on either side of my face, looked into my eyes, and said, “I love you, Dooglas. Adam. You are my soul mate. If you want to be with me, I want to be with you. Do you understand me?”
“I understand you,” I said.
But I had heard the fade in her voice. Because she had heard the sadness in the song? Because she had arrived at the same place as me? Or because she felt, even as she said the words, that they belonged to another time?
There was sunshine coming through the window. “Can we go for a walk?” I said. “I love you too, but we need to talk. Charlie was crying this morning.”
She pulled back and shook her head, walked to the window, and looked out for a long while. I sat silent on the piano stool.
Finally, she turned back. “I’ll get my shoes.”