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“I was there with Judy. She’s insisting on daily going-away lunches. Who was she?”
“Well, at lunchtime my date was the lovely Emma Levieva. Shewas in that summer dance program that Lorraine is running, but you missed the deluge.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was the welcome-back party for the arts faculty. And kind of a going-away party for some of the summer staff. It was a scene.”
“Who was there?”
“The usual suspects. Alex made a hideous speech.”
“To whom?”
“To everyone. I mean, not everyone listened, but he made it anyway.”
“What else happened?”
As Thom dug back into his recent memory to tell her about his afternoon, Wendy tried to remember if he’d told her in advance about the event. She thought he probably had, and maybe she’d been uninterested enough to forget about it. But the more he talked, the more she realized just how drunk he really was, repeating himself, slurring certain words. She was glad that Jason was out at the movies with Julia and her parents.
Later that night, together on the couch, watching Thom’s new Criterion edition DVD ofThe Night of the Hunter, Wendy found herself studying Thom in the flickering glow of the television. He was sipping whiskey, staring at the movie, occasionally turning to make some comment on what was happening. She felt conflicted, a feeling she’d had for a while now. On the one hand, she wanted her husband to be stronger, to drink less, to have some control over his life. This current state he seemed to be in pissed her off. But she also felt some pity for him, and when she felt pity she could visualize him as the boy she’d first met all those years ago. Thom had only been a few years older than Jason was now. She wondered what would have happened if he’d never sat down beside her on that school bus. A part of her thought that her life would have been worse, and his life might have been better. But she wasn’t sure.
Thom turned to her and held out two fists, showing his knuckles, and said, “Look, hate and hate.” He was referencing the film they were watching. Robert Mitchum had tattoos on his knuckles, one that said love and one that said hate.
“That’s not how you see yourself, is it?”
“Sometimes,” Thom said, laughing. “I mean, I am a bad guy.”
A few weeks earlier, another night when Thom had drunk himself into a dark hole, he’d come to bed and woken Wendy up to ask her if they were going to hell when they died. He’d seemed deranged, laughing at himself, but with what looked like genuine tears in his eyes. The next day she asked him how he was feeling, and it was clear from his answer that he had no recollection of that night. She wondered if right now he wasn’t properly forming memories.
“There’s lots of love in you, Thom,” she said.
“No, I know. But other people wouldn’t see it that way. Not if they knew what I’d done.”
She decided not to answer, hoping the topic would go away, but after a moment he said, “Maybe I’ll tattoo ‘love’ on just one knuckle and ‘hate’ on the others.” He was talking too loudly.
“Shhh,” she said. “Jason will be home soon.”
He pressed a hand to one of his eyes, and she thought for a moment he was going to burst into tears. She slid over to him and put a hand on either side of his face. “You’re a good man, Thom Graves. No one is defined by one single thing.”
“I know, I know,” he said, his jaw tight, trying not to cry.
“Listen to me. You need to keep it together. Not just for me, but for Jason now. The past is the past.”
“You’ve moved on?” he asked her, his voice cracking.
She could see the reflection of the television in his eyes, and she turned to the screen, the children floating down a river at night. She took the remote and paused the film.
“I haven’t forgotten,” she said. “But yes, I’ve moved on. We can’tgo back and change things. And if I could go back and change things, I’m not sure I would. We have a good life now, don’t we?”
“We do, we do.” He was fully crying now, his teeth clenched, shoulders shaking.
She hugged him closer, feeling his tears on her own cheek, and even though she was dreading hearing the return of Jason, due any minute, she felt a deep surge of love for her husband. “Shhh,” she said, and pulled him closer.
“We do have a good life,” he said through the tears. “They don’t, but we do.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” she said, but he was crying harder now, and he never answered.
Ten minutes later, when he’d finally stopped crying, Thom got up and went to the bathroom. He came back with a new drink, his face wet from splashing it with water. “I’m a mess,” he said. “When’s Jason getting back?”