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THIRTY-ONE

JUST BLURT IT OUT, I tell myself as the cold air stings me on the front porch of our house. Just say it. Then it will be over. Then whatever happens happens. No matter how horrible.

“Marcie, let’s at least stay close to home,” David says to me as we head down our front walk to the street. “With all the weird stuff happening lately.”

I reach the street and turn around. “We can stop right here if you want.”

“Uh — okay, sure. What’s — what’s going on?”

I swallow over the lump in my throat, try to even out my breathing. He’s looking at me intently but, it seems, also with apprehension.

“Today, I went to see you at the pub. For lunch. You said you were too busy. But the pub wasn’t busy, and, more important, you weren’t there.”

“You …” His eyes narrow. “When you texted me today, you were already at the pub? You were, what, testing me or something?”

“No,” I say, my voice trembling, “you are not going to turn this around on me. Yes, I was testing you. I was seeing if you’d lie to me. And guess what? You did. Why?”

“Why did you test me?”

My mouth drops open. “You’re really going to play that game? Misdirect, distract, avoid the question? Okay, David, y’know what?”

I catch myself raising my voice. Nobody else is dumb enough to be out here in the cold right now, but voices carry. No matter the rage and hurt I’m feeling, I will not make a spectacle out here. I will not do that to our children.

“Okay, fine,” I say. “I’ll play the game. I tested you because you lied to me the other night, when you were downstairs on the phone, whispering in the middle of the night. ‘It’s not that simple, okay?’ Remember those words? You said you were talking to a security company. That wasn’t true, was it?”

David lets out a sigh, looks away, shaking his head.

“Two lies,” I say. “And all these strange things happening to us. Why, David?”

David puts out his hands, like he’s trying to frame an answer, trying to pinpoint how to begin. I never thought that communicating with me, his wife, his life partner, his soulmate, would require such effort.

“Are you having an affair?” I ask, and despite myself, all my efforts, my eyes well up, my throat chokes up.

“Oh, for God’s sake, no.” He moves toward me, arms out. “Marcie, of course not.”

But I step back. I’m not that easy. No matter how desperately I want him to deny an affair, to hear those words from him — I’m not that easy. “Then what?”

“Oh, God.” His head falls back a moment. Then he says, “We’re having money problems.” He lowers his head, eyes closed.

“Money problems?”

“The pub isn’t doing well lately,” he says, a hand shielding his eyes. “The economy and everything. I’m trying to make it work. I’m talking to the bank about refinancing the loan on the building.”

“This is all … all about money ?” I say, cocking my head.

“Well, I don’t know about ‘all.’ All that weird stuff with the dog and the lunch box and the coffeepot and breaking into our house — I have no idea. But yesterday, for example, when I wasn’t at the pub, and I wasn’t honest with you? I was at the bank, working on a loan refi. I didn’t want you to know.”

Replace one piece of bad news with another. But nothing compares to the thought of your spouse giving himself to another woman. I feel relief flood through me.

“And the phone call? ‘It’s not that simple, okay?’ What was that —”

“Same thing. I was talking to one of my managers, the one who takes the early morning deliveries?”

“Yes?”

“We’ve fallen …” He shakes his head. “We’ve fallen behind on payments. Our produce delivery didn’t come. That’s a killer for us. He told me to start laying off some people, but — it’s not that simple, okay? You lay off employees, you can’t stay open, you sink even deeper into debt. Anyway, I — I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want you to know any of it, Marce.”

“Why? Why wouldn’t you want me to —”

“Because I promised I’d always provide for you and our family, that’s why,” he says. “I made that promise to you.”

“I never asked you to make me that promise, if you’ll recall. I always planned on maintaining a law practice. I don’t need to be ‘taken care of.’ We’re a team. If we’re having problems, then we deal with them together.”

“I know, I know, I know. I …” He looks up at me. “I know.”

“Don’t ever lie to me again, David,” I say.

“I …” He puts his hand to his chest. “I won’t.” He walks over, leans his forehead against mine. “Marcie Dietrich Bowers, how could you think for one second that I was cheating on you? Really? Me?”

He presses his lips to mine. Money problems, they’re money problems — we can figure something out. There is only one David. There is only one Bowers family.

“You and the kids are the only things that matter to me in this world,” he whispers. “You’re it. You’re everything.”