IT WAS A glorious day in London. After a run around Hyde Park I’d had a quick shower back in my enormous room at the Hyde Park Hotel. In thirty-two years I’d never stayed anywhere half as beautiful as that creamy pink and white suite. I still got a start every time I opened the door—as if I’d walked into someone else’s room and someone else’s life.
My husband and I had barely spoken since I’d arrived but I tried not to think about it. In calls to my parents I instead focused on all the fun I was having, including a behind-the-scenes tour of “Buck House,” as I’d learned Buckingham Palace was called by locals. My sisters were more inquisitive about the impact of career and geography on an already strained marriage and Elizabeth suggested I was “in denial” and “blocking” when I glibly responded to certain questions, but tunnel vision felt right to me. There would be time to figure out home when I returned there. Still anxious to do hard news, I raised my hand to go to Sarajevo. But it had been less than a year since ABC producer David Kaplan, on assignment there with Sam Donaldson, had been killed by a sniper. In the end NBC sent a more seasoned correspondent, to my disappointment.
Still, I couldn’t complain. I’d been at the network for less than a year and already had had opportunities to do bureau duty in Atlanta, Chicago, and Los Angeles as well as substitute on the Today show. After one appearance, my photographer pal Ken Ludlow had sent a computer note to say they’d watched in London. Working there was a chance to catch up with him as well as so many others I’d met in Somalia. And it hadn’t taken long for London to start to feel like a home away from home.
That day when I arrived at the NBC bureau on Tottenham Court Road, things were quiet. I’d read the papers and was having a cup of tea and a chat with my producer pal Justin when someone called out, “Hey, Sara! Phone’s for you. You can pick up in Keith’s office.”
I was surprised. Could it be my husband? My parents or sisters, perhaps? It was so unusual to get a call that I was worried enough to close the office door.
Instead the voice was that of a mutual friend of Ginger’s and mine, who was just back in the States from Namibia. I was delighted to hear from him and hoped he’d have news of Ginger and Nad. “Yes, we caught up.” He sounded hesitant, then continued. “Actually, Gin asked me how you were. She said she had no idea how to reach you but wanted to make sure you were okay.”
The knot in my stomach tightened. I sat down. “What do you mean? Of course I’m fine.”
There was another brief pause. “Well, she said she’d received a letter from your husband, a letter saying you two are splitting.”
I stood up again, clutched the desk, knuckles white. “Saying what?!”
The next pause was longer. “I gathered that you two were getting divorced. Gin is worried about you, and I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry.”
I don’t really remember the rest of the conversation. He spoke. I asked a few pertinent questions, including getting a number for Ginger, who was briefly staying with friends who had a phone. Hardly knowing what I was doing, I got off the line and gently replaced the receiver in the cradle.
And then I sat back down. There was a mug on the desk and I tipped it over, poked idly through francs and deutsche marks, lire and rubles. Coins of the realms I’d dreamt of visiting. In those dreams, I’d returned home, pockets stuffed with boarding stubs and receipts, to kick off my shoes and tear open a bag of wrinkled clothes to pull out some treasure I’d brought home for the man I loved. And as every trinket comes wrapped in a story, to tell the tale of how and where and why I’d thought of him and it had to be his. I’d imagined listening to his stories, too, legs entwined, each bewitched by the familiar, reminded that distance can disappear in a kiss. But what I hadn’t pictured, until just that moment, was returning from life on the road to find no one waiting.
Why should he wait? a small voice inside me whispered. I closed my eyes to stop the voice but it only grew louder, more insistent. Wait for what? What’s left, after all, beyond a dream, a snapshot, a past?
I opened my eyes and leaned back, noting how the watery sunlight that streamed through the office blinds left a pattern of stripes on my left hand that disappeared as soon as I moved it. My wedding ring was still there. But soon I’d take it off, and the stripe it left would disappear just as surely. And then it would be over. Truly over.
I stared at the phone. I needed to know more but I wasn’t ready to call my husband. I didn’t know what to ask or where to begin and still didn’t want to believe it was true. And I wanted to wait until I felt more composed to call my parents. And Ginger? I realized that I suddenly felt anxious and uncertain. I decided to call Linda first.
“Oh, Sara.” LP, the unofficial life coach who always knew exactly what to say, was out of words.
“Linda, why would he do it? Why write her? Could it have anything to do with the fact that she’s beautiful? Oh my God, listen to me! I’m sure I’m reading way too much into this. I know they’d talked about working on a project together someday. I’m sure he just wants to stay friends. But I don’t know if I could stand that. She’s my best friend.”
Using the gentle sort of voice you might use with someone who has unexpectedly picked up a grenade and is threatening to pull the pin, she said, “I realize this is a shock. I’m sure he never anticipated the letter would get to her before you two had a chance to talk. This monthlong assignment of yours was kind of a surprise. But, Sara, be honest, you really have known your marriage was ending, letter or no letter. Neither one of you has been happy for a very long time. You need to go forward. And you need to do it on your own.”
“But why did he write Ginger?”
“Why don’t you call her?”
Instead I sat staring at the phone, chewing my lip until I tasted blood, twisting my rings around and around and around. My stomach felt like I’d swallowed broken glass. I felt a surge of jealousy like I’d never experienced before. Jealous that he would write her. Jealous that she was the kind of person he would want to write. And angry that he’d made me jealous of my best friend.
The shadows pooled in the corner. I’d been through all of the coins. What was it worth, all the money in the world, if you didn’t have what you wanted, the things that were most important? Finally curiosity and a certain futile hope that there had been some mistake prompted me to dial.
“Gin?”
“Oh, Sara, thank goodness you called! I’ve been so worried about you and I’ve had no idea how to reach you! Where are you? I couldn’t understand why you hadn’t written to tell me.”
And then, finally, I wept. I wept because it was sad and because it was real, for that was obvious before she said another word. And because if I’d been brave and honest with my husband and myself, willing to face a hard truth rather than run away from it, things might not have ended like this. I cried because her voice made me feel better, even though she was thousands of miles away, because I knew she loved me and because we’d known each other so long and because she understood what this felt like better than anyone I knew. At the end she asked, “Oh, Sara, is there anything I can do?”
“You have already. Just by being there.”
As I hung up the phone, exhausted and depleted, the person I was angriest at was myself. Clearly my husband had been trying to tell me for months, if not years, that he wasn’t happy. I’d always known you can’t make someone love you. And yet in a way, that’s exactly what I’d tried to do. And because I’d been unwilling to accept that our marriage was in dire straits, unwilling to listen to any talk of divorce, unwilling to face facts, my best friend had found out before I had.
What had I done? What would I do now? How would I make it on my own? And as I wiped my eyes I wondered something else. Was this, then, the terrible price the Fates exact for granting desire—that you could have the odyssey, the opportunities, but the price might be returning to an empty home? Or were we simply two people who had married young after the briefest of courtships only to discover we weren’t compatible after all? I had waited too long to ask the questions and in the end the answers would change nothing.
“Sara, I’ll come over as soon as I can,” Ginger promised. “But I want you to remember something. You have a job you love. Hang on to that.”
For the first time in my life I didn’t know whether work was a lifeline or a noose. And when I flew home, it seemed that the glittery spangle of Gotham had faded to sepia, and for the first time I wished that New York were merely a transfer, and my true destination somewhere, anywhere, else.