DAY TWENTY-FIVE

ANDREW AND I SIT across from each other in the OK Cafe. It’s a down-home family restaurant with comfortable booths and paper napkins. Informal. Yet I feel as if I have reentered the world too suddenly. I am giddy and overwhelmed. Strange people. Loud voices. Laughter. Muzak. Babies crying. Dishes clattering. Waitresses swish by, their trays loaded with food. Too much food. I don’t want to eat anything; no, I want to eat an entire chocolate cake, gorge myself until I am numb on sugar. In the next booth a man and woman sit beside each other whispering into each other’s ears. My addict assumes they’re having an affair. They’re whispering about sex, about…

Stop, I tell myself. Be normal. Calm down. Control your thoughts. Change the channel. And start noticing Andrew. Pay attention to him. He’s your husband.

I sit up straight in the booth. I take slow, even breaths. I’m nervous, my hands tremble, the menu shakes a little, but not enough for anyone to notice. I’m sure I look okay. Before I left the unit, Linda fixed my hair in a French braid. I borrowed pale pink lipstick from Nancy. I wore my T-shirt with the fewest rips. I feel washed, rinsed, waxed, polished. Trying. I want Andrew to notice this stronger woman I’m now slowly becoming. I look down at my body. Yes, heavier than when I entered treatment. Surely I’m heavy enough to be noticed.

I’m fine. I’ll be fine. Slow down.

Andrew wears a new shirt, gray with white stripes. I wonder if he wore it for tonight. For me. Or maybe he’s having an affair, maybe he bought it for…

Stop. Just focus on this moment. Don’t act crazy. Pay a compliment to your husband. But how do you flirt with a man who’s your husband? Do I say: You look handsome. You look sexy. My smile is forced. “Your shirt—it’s very nice.”

“I went shopping last weekend.” He smiles. “Belk’s was having a sale.”

“I like the color on you,” I say.

“Thank you. Glad you like it.” He nods at the menu. “What looks good?”

Don’t say: Nothing. Don’t say: I could eat an entire cake. Appear calm. “Maybe a burger. I haven’t had one since…” Since the night before I entered rehab. That thrown-together meal. “Actually, maybe I’ll have the T-bone steak.”

“I’m thinking roast beef,” he says.

The waitress comes to take our order. I speak distinctly, calmly. Adultly. I can do this. This is something everyone in the universe does. I’ve just been out of circulation awhile. “And a glass of ice water with lemon, please.”

“I’ll have iced tea,” Andrew says. “Sweetened.”

Okay, everything’s going well. So far, so good.

“Did you remember to feed Quizzle before you left the house?” I ask.

“Plenty of chips in her bowl,” he says.

“I’m looking forward to seeing her,” I say. “I mean…” What do I mean? I place my napkin on my lap and fold my hands on the table. “I mean, it’ll be good to get home.”

“Yeah, the house is quiet without…”

Without my tears, mood swings, loud silences. “You sure can’t say that about the unit.” No, that’s not true, I now realize. Really, with Jill gone, the unit is quiet, is known, is dependable—compared to this restaurant with Muzak playing. Food everywhere. That couple. Odd to think I miss my room on the unit. The routine.

“You making friends there?” Andrew asks.

“Oh, sure. The women are very nice.”

The couple in the booth nuzzle each other’s faces. I must look away. Except outside the window couples cross the parking lot holding hands. Why does everyone have to be so sexual? Why can’t everyone on the planet just be platonic? Friends.

Focus on Andrew. He’s your husband. “How’re classes going?” I ask.

“Pretty good. But, you know, too many papers to grade. And Ulysses can be tough for undergraduates.”

The waitress brings our food. I don’t want the T-bone steak, but I want Andrew to think everything’s fine, so I’m determined to eat it. If I eat quickly, I’ll be able to get rid of it sooner. No, I must eat slowly, calmly, normally. One hundred percent. I squeeze the lemon in the water and drink.

The Muzak plays “Strangers in the Night.” The couple gazes into each other’s eyes. The thin, tinny music tries so hard to sound romantic that I think I might cry. Don’t act crazy. No one cries over Muzak.

Andrew! “How’re the Braves doing?”

“Don’t ask,” he says. “They’ve lost five in a row. They’re in last place.”

“Bummer.”

“It’s a challenge to be a Braves fan. But I’ve been one since…”

Since you lived in Milwaukee, when they were the Milwaukee Braves….

I carefully chew my food before swallowing. Steak. Baked potato. Garden salad. I wonder what the women on the unit are doing. I imagine Linda eating in the cafeteria without me. She and Sheila will sit together and wonder how I’m doing, out here. They’ll want to hear all about it when I get back. I want to report “success” rather than “disaster.”

“Your hair looks nice,” he says. “It’s different.”

He noticed my hair! “Thanks. Linda, one of my friends, fixed it for me. It’s called a French—” My mouth almost forms the word kiss. “Braid,” I say.

 

After dinner, Andrew and I stand beside my car. It’s almost dark, the breeze slightly cool. His hand brushes mine. The warmth seems to well up through my body. And suddenly I don’t know how I can leave…how I can leave this man. This evening, this moment, I want to go home. With him. I want to see Quizzle. I want to be in my own house with this man who, yes, is my husband…even though I’ve never been sure what it means to have one. Enveloped in this early autumn breeze, this soft Georgia night, I don’t want to be that other woman. Her. I want to be me. And I wonder if this is love, if this means I love my husband. I honestly don’t know. Maybe I am only lonely.

“I’ll see you home in a few days,” he says.

Now is the time I must say one thing that’s real, one thing that’s honest to this man before he gets in his own car to drive away. Even if I’m not ready to tell him my truths, I have to think of at least one true sentence. “Are you nervous?” I say. “About me coming home.”

He pauses before answering. Directness is new for him, too. “A little, I guess. You?”

“A little.”

I take my car key from my purse and open the door.

He hugs me, briefly. I want it to last longer. I don’t know how to tell him this. I also want him to protect me from this world: too large, too sexual, too dangerous.

I can only protect myself.

“Maybe we can schedule some family therapy sessions with Ted,” I say. “Kind of work on things.”

“Let’s talk about it when you get home.”

I slide behind the wheel. But do you want me to come home? Do you want to work on things? Do you want this marriage?

I follow the taillights of Andrew’s car up the ramp to the interstate. Almost nine. An hour before I have to return to the unit. Earlier, before I left the unit, I was sure I would want to drive to Gabriel’s after dinner. How could I not, once I was out? That’s what I’ve done my whole life. Free time. Dead time. Fill it with a man. I’d thought I’d at least see where he lived, what his house looked like.

And now…I don’t much care where he lives. But I am lonely driving out here in the world—Andrew’s car heading north up I-75, alone toward home. I lose his taillights in the traffic. I could return to the unit. Talk to Linda. Return to the unit and call Andrew, tell him how much I enjoyed the dinner. Return to the unit and call Ted.

 

I pause outside Gabriel’s house. I don’t turn off the engine. Yet I don’t know whether I am here to see him, here to say nothing, or here to say good-bye. Ordinary brick ranch. Ordinary street. Dogs bark. Pine straw around tulip trees. Spindly loblolly pines.

If it were the melodramatic, gothic me, I would use the word gloam to describe the evening. Really, though, it’s just an ordinary night that’s lit with the reflection of television sets flickering from plate-glass windows up and down the street. A television light in Gabriel’s window.

That’s all there is here.

Maybe I don’t have to see him. Probably he, like every other man in Atlanta, sits in a La-Z-Boy recliner, a can of Bud in his hand, watching the Braves on television. The feather is probably not in his hair. From here, there is no scent of jasmine wafting out the window. Maybe he wears his turquoise earring. Maybe not.

In any event, turquoise decodes to a blue to blue-green mineral of aluminum and copper…

There’s nothing for you out here, Ted once told me.

Ted is right: I projected love and spirituality onto Gabriel because I wanted him to be a spiritual person. I wanted to steal or borrow his because I have none of my own. I wanted a quick dose of soul. But Gabriel is only a bartender offering an alcoholic free drinks.

And now, all I want is to be back on the unit: safe, dependable, structured. And after that, home.

I put my car in gear and drive away.