To be a fiction writer was to be a liar. But in small doses, in her imagination, in words on a page. Those lies didn’t really exist when no one else read them but her.
But to be in love with someone other than her husband, it was like living in a tunnel made of lies. The walls were narrow, the tunnel long and dark. She was trapped in there, and yet, she didn’t quite want to find a way out. The darkness hugged her. It was soothing and blinding, and she couldn’t see beyond it. She didn’t want to.
After she flew home from Seattle in a tangle of half lies (telling George only that she had overslept and missed her flight), Max started calling her on most weekdays during his lunch. She’d wrangle Will into his high chair and let him throw his Cheerios around the kitchen with glee, while Max’s voice came through the line, making her heart swell.
She wasn’t doing anything wrong, talking to him. Not really. He was a friend, and she swallowed back guilt when she thought about all the long-distance charges racking up, that he couldn’t afford. But she was a new person this fall, waiting for the phone to ring right around two each afternoon. Talking to Max. Hearing his voice, bright and hopeful, even across all the miles between them.
“I’m flying out there in a few weeks,” Max said one afternoon in late November. “Figure out how to get away for a few days and come meet me.”
She giggled on her end of the line while eating the crusts from Will’s peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Max was in his last year of law school, and he didn’t have the money or time to fly to her. For a few days.
“I’m serious,” Max said. “I called the travel agent and booked a flight after finals end. It’s nonrefundable.”
“You can’t possibly afford that,” she said matter-of-factly.
“I don’t care. I miss you,” he said in response. “I want to see you.”
And it was in that moment that she truly understood, it hadn’t been one night. Or just talking on the phone. Max was going to move mountains to be with her; he wasn’t going to let her go. And this made her feel something new, a lightness that bubbled up inside her chest and threatened to burst out as a scream of joy. Was this feeling...happiness?
But then she thought about Bess, and that knocked the wind out of her. Bess had still failed to mention that she and Max had broken up. She was back in Seattle for the school year, and her letters came weekly, as did her Sunday phone calls, but she hadn’t mentioned Max one way or another. Mare hadn’t had it in her to ask. Maybe, deep down she didn’t want the truth.
Max was a man, and in her life experience, men were notoriously untrustworthy. And yet, if Bess weren’t to confirm that explicitly, maybe Max was the exception. Maybe Max really was different. Good. Kind.
“I don’t even know if I can get away,” she finally said.
But that too was a lie, closing her in her little tunnel. She could tell George she was going to visit her sister, bring Will to Margery’s for a few nights, and go off and do whatever she pleased. George would never know the difference. Margery would never say a word—she didn’t even regularly speak to George. Mare and Margery weren’t that close, but Margery had been calling lately and asking when she could see Will. Her own kids were already teenagers and she claimed she missed this stage. (God knows why.) It was called “terrible twos” for a reason.
“Come on,” Max said. “The tickets are nonrefundable. You won’t make me spend the nights alone, will you?”
She would not make him spend the nights alone.
Three weeks later, Max’s finals were done, and he got on the flight he’d booked to Chicago. Tuesday afternoon, while George was still at work, Mare buttoned Will into his puffy snowsuit, and then drove the hour to Margery’s house. George and Margery both believed she was going to a writers’ conference in the city, and when George had grunted about the possible expense she told him she’d been accepted on scholarship, and that Margery would take care of Will for free. And once he didn’t think it was going to cost him anything, in time, energy or money, he didn’t say another word about it.
It was snowing lightly, and Margery had a fire going when they arrived. After Will toddled into the house, chasing after Margery’s golden retriever, Margery tried to get Mare to come inside too and have a cup of coffee.
Mare felt a flicker of something in her chest. Remorse? Shame? She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was, but then she thought of Max, probably already at the hotel he’d booked, only twenty minutes from here, and excitement fluttered in her chest. Whatever she was feeling was about her relationship with her sister, not about him.
“I just can’t today, Marge,” she said. “The writers’ conference starts in a half hour and I’m already running late. I owe you. I’ll be back for Will Friday afternoon, okay?”
“Not even a quick cup?” Margery’s voice turned with what sounded like disappointment. Mare shook her head. “Well, maybe when you pick him up then?” Margery added softly.
“Sure,” Mare said, and then she hesitated for a second before doing something she normally wouldn’t do. She leaned in and gave her sister a quick hug. “Thank you,” she said. “You’re saving me this week.”
“Saving you? Oh, you really are dramatic, aren’t you?” Margery laughed. “Go write your book, baby sister. William and I are going to have a great time without you.”
She knew what she was doing. She knew exactly what she was doing.
But still, when Max was waiting for her in the hotel lobby, when she saw him sitting there on a couch, reading the Tribune, reclined, relaxed, his legs casually crossed, she couldn’t quite remember how to breathe. He’d come all the way here. For her. This wasn’t a slip. An accident. A brief indiscretion that could be swept away and forgotten about. This here, it was a choice. Like Bess had told her once in the darkness, You always have a choice. Maybe it was wrong, but she was choosing to do it anyway. She wanted to do it anyway.
She watched him for a moment as he flipped through the newspaper, and she tried to imagine what it would be like to wake up in the mornings and find him sitting just like this in her kitchen. She felt a new lightness inside of her at that thought.
Then he noticed her, smiled, and folded and dropped the paper on the table in front of him. He stood and walked to her so quickly, his arms were around her, holding on to her, in what felt like warp speed. He kissed the top of her head and then held up their room key.
Neither of them said a word as he took her hand and led her down the hall, to the elevator. They held on to each other’s hand in silence still as it rose to the fifth floor, as they got off and walked to room 508. Then he opened the door with his key, closed and locked it, and she leaned back against the door and smiled at him.
“Hello,” she finally spoke, suddenly feeling shy.
He responded by leaning in toward her, his elbows on both sides of her shoulders against the doorframe, and then his mouth was on hers, kissing her. His kiss was hungry, needy, warm. And she felt the heat from it spread quickly from her lips across her neck, rippling down through her body.
After a few minutes he pulled back, and they were already both breathless.
“We have three whole days,” he whispered, finding his voice after a few seconds. “We don’t have to rush.”
“But we don’t have to stop either,” she said.
And then his lips were back on hers again, slower, sweeter. Softer. Which somehow made her want him even more.
Time stopped for the next few days, but it also strangely sped up. They didn’t leave the room; they barely got out of the bed. Their clothes were in a pile on the floor, and they didn’t need those either, mostly, except for when Max called for room service and he would get dressed to answer the door and she would go take a shower. The world was still, but the minutes galloped by.
Three days later, she clung to him in the plush king-size bed, pulling his naked body tight against her own. She loved the feel of his skin against hers. He was always warm, and she never felt cold when he was this close to her. “I don’t want us to ever leave here,” she whispered.
“I don’t want to leave,” he said.
His blue eyes were close enough to her own that it felt like she could swim in them, dive, get lost. Never come back up for air.
He stroked her cheek gently. “I should tell you something about the reason I came out here,” he said.
The words sank heavy in her chest. She had been waiting for the other shoe to drop this whole time, and whatever it was he had to tell her now, she felt certain, here it was.
But then he said, “I had an interview. A firm in Chicago. I’d start in June after I graduate and pass the bar, if they’ll have me.”
In six months from now, Max might be moving back here? “A job? Here in Chicago?” she repeated, almost in disbelief.
He nodded. “It’s a good job. A really good job. I could take care of you. And Will.”
She bristled a little, resenting the implication that she needed to be taken care of. Though, it was somewhat the truth. She had no income to speak of, and what current skills did she have, other than managing to keep a toddler alive? But the thought of Will brought her back to reality again. Right. She had a child. With George. “I don’t know,” she said softly.
“I mean,” Max clarified. “I’ll make enough money to support you both. Will will go to school soon, and then you can write, like you’ve always wanted to. And,” he added, “I don’t want to be apart from you anymore.”
She didn’t want him to get out of this bed and get dressed, much less fly back to Seattle. And yet the thought of putting things in motion, to leave George? It felt like a mountain that even Max wouldn’t be able to move that easily.
She was still thinking about what Max said, about not wanting to be apart from her, and the way his lips had felt on hers as he’d kissed her goodbye in the hotel lobby, as she drove through the snow to Margery’s house an hour later. His kiss had lingered, and then his hands on her arms had lingered, and then when he finally did step back, he came right back to her, kissed her again. It was a goodbye and a promise and a see you again soon, though, where or when she didn’t exactly know. “I’ll call you on Monday,” he said as he finally let her go.
By herself, back in the car, driving slowly to avoid swerving on the slick roads, everything all around her seemed too bright white, strangely surreal. It was a new world, a different world than the one she’d driven in three days earlier. A world in which she tried to envision herself with Max, for the long term. Was it really possible?
She remembered the cup of coffee she had promised her sister on her return, and she thought now about telling her everything. She had trusted Margery with Will. Maybe she could trust her with the truth about her heart too?
But before she could get out of the car, Margery ran out the front door. She wore winter boots over leggings and a Cubs sweatshirt. She hadn’t even put on her coat. And where was Will? Panic rose in Mare’s throat as she quickly got out of the car.
“What’s going on?” Mare asked.
“Will got sick last night, and I couldn’t get ahold of you.”
Mare hadn’t told her sister the truth about where she’d been staying. Why hadn’t she told her that? What kind of a terrible mother was she? Guilt rose up her chest, to her throat, and came out in a small scream she muffled with her gloved hand. “Sick? What happened?”
“He had a really high fever,” Margery said. “I gave him some Tylenol but it wouldn’t come down. I tried calling a few hotels in the city, but I didn’t know which one you were at and I couldn’t find you.” Margery’s voice broke, and she looked like she was about to cry. “I didn’t know what to do so I finally called George.”
George’s name sank heavily like a stone between them, and Mare wondered what her sister suspected about what she had been doing this weekend.
“Where’s Will now?” Mare asked.
“George came and picked him up in the middle of the night. He’s with George.”
It felt like Margery had punched her. George barely paid any attention to Will. He would have no idea what to do with him, with a fever no less.
“I thought maybe George knew how to get ahold of you.” Margery sounded apologetic now, her tone pleading, like she understood this had all gone very badly, even if she didn’t quite understand the why or how of it. “I told George he didn’t have to come all the way out here in the middle of the night. But he hung up on me and before I knew it, he was here, taking Will with him. I tried to call him a few times today but no one answered at your house.”
“Shit,” Mare cursed softly, unable to stop herself. There was a train rolling through her tunnel of lies, and in an instant, it would crush her. “I have to go,” she said, getting back into the car.
Then she backed out of Margery’s driveway way too fast, her wheels spinning out on the slick roads.