Albie doesn’t like to come to her empty-handed. He needs her to know that he loves her, and puts a pack of two legal pads on the table. Instead of the usual yellow, this paper is pink. Also, he’s brought her six chocolate bars and another box of pens. Pens have a way of disappearing no matter where you are. The jar of Nutella, he tells her, is from Jeffrey. “Jeffrey misses you,” Albie says. “We all miss you.”
“I miss you and Jeffrey, too,” Bunny says, and without a pause, nothing to indicate so much as the start of a new sentence, never mind a new thought, she adds, “Tomorrow.”
“What about tomorrow?” he asks.
“Tomorrow,” she starts to tell Albie that tomorrow morning, before breakfast, she will undergo her first round of ECT. And then, just like that, she decides not to tell him.
To assume that she doesn’t want to worry him is a possible explanation, the generous interpretation, but it’s also possible that she fears, not that he will no longer love her, but that he will no longer love her as he once did, that he will forever see only the fault line where she cracked, now held together with Krazy Glue. Instead, she says, “I know.”
“You know?” Albie’s voice is light, almost teasing. “What do you know?”
And Bunny says, “I know about Muriel.”
Albie has never flat-out lied to her before, never bold-face lied to her, and he isn’t about to bold-face lie to her now. He needs to explain to her that, counterintuitive as it might sound, when he is fed up and tired and at his wit’s end, a respite with cool, no-nonsense Muriel releases his frustration and refuels his patience. Muriel reminds him why he loves Bunny; Bunny with all her surprises of unpredictable intensity and cuckoo rationality. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I love you. I really love you.” But before he can say any more about it, Bunny says, “It’s okay. I understand. I really do,” which serves as further proof that as fond of Muriel as he is, and Albie is fond of her, very fond, he could never love Muriel the way he loves Bunny, and Muriel could never love him the way Bunny does. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she says.
Bunny and Albie both know that confession isn’t necessarily the truth, and omission, opting not to tell, isn’t necessarily a lie. Why Albie doesn’t tell Bunny that, when visiting hours are over, he is going to see Muriel, to have a drink, maybe or maybe not take her to bed, should be obvious. Why Bunny chooses not to tell Albie that, first thing in the morning, she’ll be undergoing her first electroconvulsive therapy treatment, that could’ve done with a few words of explanation, but she says only, “I’m tired.” She closes her eyes as if her eyelids were too heavy to keep open, and Albie kisses one, and then the other. “Go to sleep,” he says. “I’ll see you tomorrow. If you want, we can talk more then.”
“Maybe,” Bunny says, “I’ll see you tomorrow. Maybe.”