Page 20

Nicole

I am parked in front of Elijah’s apartment building.

Or rather, Katrina is parked in front of Elijah’s apartment building.

It’s outlandish, I know, creating this other person.

It’s really no different from Grace prancing around the house calling herself Elsa and singing “Let It Go” at the top of her lungs.

There are probably deep psychological problems afoot, “Katrina” being an attempt to compartmentalize my indiscretions, separate myself from the reality of what I’m doing.

Yesterday, while lying in my childhood bed, unable to sleep, I googled my little heart out: split personality disorder , identity disorder , types of personality disorders , nervous breakdown , and am I crazy?

What I’ve concluded is that no label fits perfectly, but yes, I am probably crazy.

That word every woman hates to have applied to her may just be appropriate for me.

Someday, when people find out what an awful person I am, they will come up with a new term named after me—Nicole syndrome.

This will be a syndrome that makes mothers of small children with less-than-stellar husbands lose their wits and abandon their lives in times of crisis.

Just as I have the past two weekends, I drove up to Daly City yesterday.

I spent today with my dad and Merry. Things continue to go downhill at an alarming rate.

My dad cannot walk unassisted now. We have a hospice company involved.

They are bringing a wheelchair to the house on Monday.

Dad spends most of his time at the kitchen table, listening to music and “reading” the paper—in quotes because he mostly just stares at the pages, brows furrowed.

Merry has a small whiteboard on the table in front of him with basic information on it—the date, the day of the week, any plans for the day.

I asked him if it bothered him that he couldn’t remember these things on his own, and he said, “Nah, all that’s going to come back when I get better. ”

It’s easy to be lulled by his overconfidence, to sink into the deliciousness of denial.

Merry gives him these little cognition quizzes every now and then—“I’m going to give you a number to remember, okay?

” She hasn’t given up hope. Before I left today, she gave him the number ten—“a nice, easy number,” she told him, placing the ball on the tee for him to hit out of the park.

A moment later, she said, “Now what was that number?” and he said, “Thirty.”

My dad has always exuded warmth, but he’s especially sweet and kind now, almost childlike.

When I gave him a hug this morning, he said, “Why don’t they do hugging in the hospital?

It feels so nice.” It sounded like something Grace would say.

I told him I agreed, then went to another room so he wouldn’t see me cry.

When we ate lunch today, Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” came on, a gut punch that made me think Apple really is all-knowing, and my dad just hummed along with a dopey smile on his face.

Merry told a couple of his golf buddies what was going on, and they’ve been visiting every day since.

Randy and Al coming over —that was on the whiteboard this morning, and Dad said, “Why are they coming by?”

Merry said, “Because they know you’re sick and they care about you.”

He said, “They’re acting like I’m gonna croak.”

Sometimes I think he does know he’s going to die. On some level, at least. Maybe his memory loss is a blessing, the disease protecting him from the reality of its awfulness. Perhaps it is not a terrible fate that causes humans to suffer, but our ability to ponder it.

As much as I think it’s ridiculous that I am here, in front of Elijah’s apartment building, I also cannot wait to go in, to enter this other world, to be Katrina.

I told Merry that I was meeting up with Prisha again.

The last time, when I went home with Elijah, I’d texted Merry to say I was staying at Prisha’s place in the city, that I would stop by to see them in the morning before heading home.

“I’ll probably go to Prisha’s place again,” I told her before heading out today. Prisha has become my alibi.

I knock at his door just once, and he opens it, as if he’s been standing directly on the other side, staring through the peephole.

“It’s you,” he says.

I’ve been hoping he won’t be as attractive as he was in my mind, but he is. I half expect him to see me and decide that this is all a bad idea, but his smile doesn’t falter. There is no discernible disappointment.

He wraps his arms around me, and that’s it—I have left everything behind, and I am Katrina.

He has such strong arms, the arms of someone who goes to the gym religiously (which I have learned he does, thanks to our text conversations, which are most definitely out of control to the tune of hundreds of messages a day).

He holds me so tight that he lifts me off the ground, my black ballet flats dangling from my toes.

I’m not a small woman (five foot nine), but he is six foot three and makes me feel tiny, petite.

I have never felt petite before. Kyle is exactly my height; I’ve never been able to look up to him.

When he puts me down, he kisses me, long and hard. Any second thoughts I had about coming here vaporize. He pulls me into the apartment and kicks the door closed behind us. We stumble to the bedroom, yanking at each other’s clothes.

“You have no idea how much I’ve been thinking about this,” he says.

“I think I do.”

We are breathless.

The sex is less tentative than last time, more decisive and forceful. We’ve been storing up desire for a week. We are desperate.

It is over in a matter of minutes, but I can’t say this disappoints me. Nothing is sexier than a man who can’t restrain himself.

“Sorry,” he says, burying his face into the pillow in dramatized shame.

“Why?”

“I didn’t last long,” he says, voice muffled by the pillow.

“I still finished.” I did, easily and without question.

He lifts his head, kisses my thigh.

“I know,” he says. “I can feel it when you do.”

I asked Kyle once if he could feel when I orgasmed because it seemed impossible that he couldn’t.

It would be like sleeping through an earthquake.

He said no, though. It offended me in a way I couldn’t articulate then.

I can now, though. I was hurt that he couldn’t feel something so overpowering to me, that we were in such separate experiences.

I suppose that could summarize much of our marriage lately.

“I wanted you to come twice,” he says.

I pat him on the head, playfully. “Aw, young lad, you will have another chance.”

He does, in fact, have another chance. Not more than an hour later, we have sex again, this time slower. At one point during it, I think of Sting, the rock star, waxing poetic about tantric sex. I used to think sex as “spiritual act” was woo-woo bullshit, but now I’m reconsidering.

When we are done, he falls asleep, and I watch him, his lips barely parted, his eyelids twitching in the midst of a dream. An hour later, the sun sets, and I’m ravenous, as if I haven’t eaten in days. I rest my head on his bare chest, hoping he’ll stir. He does.

“Hey,” he says, groggy.

“Hey.”

“You’re hungry, aren’t you?”

“It’s like you can read my mind,” I say.

He stares right into my eyes and says, “Maybe I can.”

Of course, if he could, he would not be as enamored with me as he is—an adulteress with two small children.

“Or maybe you just heard my stomach growling.”

He laughs, sits up against the headboard.

“Wanna order in?” he asks. “You can try my favorite Chinese place. If you don’t like it, we’ll have to end things.”

“Wow, you have intense feelings about Chinese food.”

“It’s objectively the best in the city, so anyone who doesn’t agree it’s good cannot be trusted.”

“You shouldn’t have told me that. Now I could just lie to you and say I love it so you think I’m trustworthy.”

Which I’m not, clearly.

“I don’t think you’re that conniving.”

He has no idea. The longer the lying goes on, the more it’s getting to me. I’ve let him care for me more than he should. He’s getting attached to me—or to Katrina. My self-serving deceit could hurt this kind man if I’m not careful.

He reaches for his phone on the nightstand, and while he’s busy ordering, I get out of bed and go to my purse.

I check my own phone. No messages. I keep feeling paranoid that there will be some emergency back home and I’ll be too busy having sex with my lover to properly respond.

How could I live with myself then? I’m not even sure how I’m living with myself now.

I text Kyle:

Hi. Give the girls a goodnight kiss for me.

He responds right away, probably because he’s doing what I do and scrolling on his phone in search of dopamine hits that make parenting a little easier.

Ok.

“Done,” Elijah says, referring to the Chinese-food order.

“That was fast.”

“I know what I like,” he says.

He comes up behind me, nuzzles—nuzzles!—into the back of my neck, his breath hot. I drop my phone in my purse.

“You do know what you like,” I say.

“Let’s go sit at the kitchen table like respectable adults. I have a good bottle of wine.”

“Respectable adults? I didn’t know you were into role-playing.”

“Ha ha. Speak for yourself, woman.”

I follow him to the kitchen, wrapped in a throw blanket from his bed. His kitchen is small, but there is a round table with two chairs. I sit in one, knees pulled to my chest, while he pours our wine.

“Try this,” he says, handing me a glass.

I take a sip.

“Mmm,” I say.

“Like liquefied jam, right?”

“Exactly.”

“I’m glad you like it. We would have had to break up if you didn’t.”

“You have a lot of conditions,” I say. “And ‘break up’ implies we are in some kind of relationship.”