"What's this?" Owen demanded, holding the record album by a corner, as if it were something rotten, something he didn't want to touch.
"It belongs to Dougal." At his blank look, she said, "Sarah's boyfriend. He loves that album. He wanted Wyatt's autograph." Ada hadn't tried to be secret again, as with the pills. She was through with that, and the uneasiness it made her feel. She didn't believe in secrecy, she thought it corrupt, and she hadn't thought to hide the album. In this case, secrecy would have certainly made matters easier. There was going to be an ugly scene. These talks went on forever, or until Owen got his way.
The autograph read: To Dougal. Best Regards. Wyatt Packard. "Tell me you didn't go see him."
"No. I drove down to Lawrence to get it autographed." She couldn't resist saying, "You know that's where he lives -- "
He cut her off, saying, "You saw him? You hid it?"
She was startled. She hadn't been open, and the secrecy had been self-serving. Owen was right, but she wasn't willing to admit it, not to him. He'd only said it to score a point off her. "I don't need your permission. He's my friend."
"You hid it. What else are you doing with him?"
"You know better than that."
"Oh, really? How? How do I know you're not having an affair?"
"Because I'm not. Because you should know that. You should know I wouldn't do that to you. To us."
"Un-fucking-believable. You're still in love with him, and you want to sleep with him."
"No."
They talked for an hour, neither of them yielding. Ada's voice grew softer; Owen's became harder and louder, until his words were coming in a scream, and she walked out on him, and didn't reappear until evening. He followed her to the third floor, but she locked the door in his face and refused to open however hard he pounded.
Ada picked up the phone in her third-floor room, to call Sarah and tell her Dougal's album had been signed, but someone was already on the line, a female voice. She listened.
"Hello?"
"Gina, it's me."
"Hello, lover," Gina said, her voice syrupy. "I bet I know what you want."
"Is now okay?"
"For my man? Any time's okay."
"Be naked when I get there. Ten minutes." He hung up.
Ada watched him leave from the third-floor window, her hand gripping the phone. He had the nerve to accuse her of an affair, when he was having one with his secretary? It didn't even show any class -- she was easy pickings, barely out of high school. If she had brains to match her breasts, she'd win a Nobel. Her bra so big it looked like a harness under those flimsy tight blouses she liked to wear. Should have been an exotic dancer, not a secretary. For a moment Ada had an image of Gina on Owen's lap, pressing her breasts into his face. How was Ada supposed to compete with that? Gina was a cartoon: too much chest on a girl who still had her baby fat.
She wrote her husband a letter, left it on the hall table, and packed what she needed to live for a week. Then she called Sarah.
"Can I stay with you for a while? Owen is having an affair... Only to get away and think it over... Thank you... That's not... That won't help... I'm on my way over."
Sarah met her at the door and tried to hug her, but Ada pulled away.
"Don't," she said. "I don't want to talk to anyone. I don't want to touch anyone. The only thing I want is short hair. Can you cut it for me? Straight across at the nape of my neck?"
"Why?"
"I only grew it long for him."
They set a chair in the middle of the kitchen and wrapped a sheet around Ada, then Sarah cut straight across.
"It looks awful. Please let me even it out."
"No. I'll go to a beauty parlor. Thank you."
"What do you want me to do with this?" She held out her fist, the hair trailing from it.
"Anything. Stuff a pillow with it. I'd like to rest."
"Is the couch okay? It's all I have."
"That's fine. Here, I brought Dougal his album."
"This doesn't feel right." She pulled the record from the sleeve. Only a half came out. She held it in her hand and looked at Ada. "He did this, didn't he?"
"I'm beyond caring right now." She took the album out of Sarah's hands. "I'll ask Wyatt to replace it."
Sarah handed her the spare keys on a ring. "I'll unplug the phone so that prick can't call."
Dougal let himself in shortly after midnight, and Ada closed her eyes until he'd gone back to Sarah's bedroom and she could resume staring at the ceiling. It seemed like she'd just fallen asleep when she was wakened by Sarah leaving.
"Where are you going?"
"I have an all day shoot. Dougal's gone. Help yourself to anything in the fridge. And if you talk to that bastard you're married to, tell him to stay out of my way, or he'll be speaking falsetto."
"Shame on you." But she had to smile. She couldn't sleep, and couldn't wake up, so she took a long shower. Washing her hair was easier than it had been in years.
Wearing a towel, she called Wyatt. "Do you have an extra copy of that album you autographed?"
"Ada? Is that you? It's customary to say hello first."
"Can you spare a copy of that album?"
"Sure. You want to drive down and get it?"
"Maybe tomorrow, I don't know. I'll call you."
"I've got some errands in the city. I could drop it off."
"I won't be home."
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing. I have to go now."
The only good thing about driving was that you could think while you did it. At the first stop light she saw Owen's car in the rear-view mirror. She put her car in park and walked back. "Leave me alone. Don't follow me."
"Just listen -- "
"No. I said everything in the letter. I'll call you when I'm ready to talk."
"Ada -- "
"No. You leave me alone, or I won't come back. I'll divorce you." She walked away before he could answer. When the light changed to green, she kept the car in park and turned on her emergency flashers and waved the cars in their lane to go around on the left. Owen's car stayed behind hers. A moment before the light turned red she leaned on the horn and gunned the car through the intersection just ahead of the side traffic, leaving Owen stranded.
Now, where to eat? Somewhere Owen would never think to go. One of those awful fast-food places by the medical center. She decided on the Taco Bell. She'd never been to one, and it was even worse than she'd expected, so she left the Number Three half-eaten and drove aimlessly for an hour. When she saw a barbershop she stopped and had her hair cut the length she'd worn it in college.
Wyatt was waiting on the steps at Sarah's when she returned.
"Your hair," he said. "It was so beautiful. What the hell got into you?"
"My right mind. Why are you here?"
"You said you wouldn't be at home. I looked up Sarah in the phone book. It seemed like the likeliest place. I wanted to be sure you were okay."
"You must have something better to do. Go back to Lawrence."
"The hell with that. I'm not leaving."
"You still have your gift for saying alienating things."
"You're the one to talk. You call out of the blue, ask for a copy of the album and hang up on me, and now you're trying to blow me off. Anybody else, I wouldn't put up with it. Come on. Tell me about it."
She sat next to him. The space was barely wide enough for two. "I didn't mean to be so rude," she said.
"I know." He put his arm around her shoulder.
"Don't," she said. "That's not appropriate."
He took his arm away.
"Thank you... I need something. Something specific. Like a cigarette. Maybe this is why people smoke, it relieves that... feeling... I'm anxious, so anxious. It's like I'm a towel, and someone's wringing me tighter and tighter, and I'm worried I can never be like I was, all those creases will stay there and I'll have an ugly soul forever and I'll be twisted and hateful. It's not fair. I didn't do anything to deserve this." She told him about the argument, the overheard phone call, the vandalized record album. Then the older, deeper problems: Owen's secretiveness, his need to dominate, her inability to connect with the person behind the mask. She was thinking out loud, the way she used to in the lab.
She stared blankly at the passing cars. "Thank you," she said, "I know I talked too long."
"You needed to. But I'm the wrong person for this -- dirty laundry."
He had always been the right person. She had always known how to talk to him, in ways she'd never been able to talk to anyone else. But she didn't say it. She didn't want to nourish the love he still felt.
"Dump that shithead. He hurts you."
"It's not the way it seems. He loves me."
"He has a strange way of showing it," he said. Then, "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to give him a second chance. But there are going to be rules. If he breaks them, I'll leave him." She stood. "Thank you," she said. "I'm going home now."
He handed her the album. "If you need anything, if you want to talk, call. Any time."
"No," she said, "I won't. I'm part of the problem. I haven't been committed enough. Don't look so shocked. Owen saw it all along, it's why he's always been jealous of you. I love you, Wyatt. After all the years, I still love you. Something I can't control draws me to you. It's simple, it's true, I can't deny it. Just saying your name makes my heart beat faster. All the years of not knowing where you were, or if you'd found someone else, I couldn't forget you, I prayed that you were happy and healthy. But I made my choice and I have to live with it. I have to make my marriage work. I love him, too, and we're making a life together... Don't look like that, you'll break my heart. I know you were hoping to get me back. I know you love me." She smiled. "I can't see you. Sooner or later I'd sleep with you, and then I couldn't face myself. I have to be faithful, I have to keep my promise, and I couldn't do that if... You're like an addiction. The only way to stop it is to stay away. I should have listened to you before it was too late, but I was young and I didn't know any better. The worst part is that I hurt you." She looked at him a long time, then said, "Goodbye. I'm always saying that to you, aren't I? Goodbye," and touched his cheek with the palm of her hand. "It has to be done this way. You should have forgotten me a long time ago. I'm going to forget you. If you respect what I want to be, how I want to live, then you will never call, and never write. Please. We have to get on with our lives. That's all. I think I've said what needed to be said." She smiled at him the way she would have smiled at anyone. "You should go now." She walked up the stairs, leaving him at the bottom.
She left the two albums together, with a note sticking out of one, explaining that the broken one had been replaced with another. Wyatt was gone when she came down the stairs and put her things in her car. At home she let herself in and picked up the phone and called her husband at work. Gina answered.
"I don't care if he is on the other line," she said. "This is his wife, and I'll talk to him right now... Owen, you have an hour to get home... If you don't, I'll be gone, and I won't come back... Good."
She made her preparations and sat down to wait at the dining room table. When he came she indicated the chair across from her, and he sat.
"Don't talk," she said. "If you say one word, I will walk out the door and file for divorce. I'm going to talk and you're going to listen. Nod if you understand."
He said nothing, nor did he nod.
"I can leave," she said.
He opened his mouth, saw her stand, and nodded instead.
"Good. Let's get started." She picked up the phone. "Rule number one. You're going to fire Gina and give her enough money to go away and never come back." She punched in the office number and handed him the phone. "Now. She has to be gone tomorrow."
"Gina?" he said. "Gina. I have bad news. I have to let you go."
"Call me when you're done," Ada whispered. She went in the kitchen and closed the door. It was fifteen minutes, and Owen didn't call, but opened the door and beckoned.
"Well?" she asked.
He nodded.
"All right. Rule number two. I will not see Wyatt any more. I want you to understand, I never so much as kissed him, but you were right, I wanted to, and more, and now that I see it, I'm going to make sure that nothing is going to happen, nothing can possibly happen, because he is out of my life, permanently." She took a match from the box of kitchen matches she had set on the table, and lit a corner of the photograph of Wyatt, the only one she owned. The paper and chemicals charred and bubbled and the features vanished one after another, until the fire licked her finger and she dropped the burning paper in the ashtray. She poked at the pieces and burned the fragments until there was nothing left but gray ash and spent matches. She did the same with each of the letters he had sent her from L.A., and the clippings she had saved, using a metal wastebasket instead of the ashtray. "There. That's done. I'll give Dougal all the record albums." She looked at her husband. His expression was stunned and passive. She was tempted to say, "Get a grip." The pleasure she was finding in this surprised her.
"Rule number three," she said. "Separate bedrooms. No sex. You're going to have to find a way to make me trust you again. When that happens, you'll know. You have to do something. If you don't, I'll leave. You have six months, starting today."
He nodded.
"Rule number four. This is the most important one. No more affairs. No one-night stands. Nothing. If you do, I'll divorce you. I will find out. You've had other affairs. I know you have. I wasn't willing to face the truth before, but I'm going to be watching from now on, and there will be no more. This is a marriage, and we are together, and there's no room for anyone else. Just you, and me."
He nodded.
"Rule number five. This is the hardest. Stop hiding. You have to open up." She moved around the table and knelt next to him. "Owen, I love you. I loved you because you needed me more than anyone else ever needed me and I could finally stop being alone and be with someone in a way that meant something, I could finally be with someone and make a life together with him. Wyatt didn't need me the way you do. He can live without me. He'll always land on his feet. You saw something in me you'd never seen before. Something you wanted. Something you needed. Something you had to have. You told me so. I don't know what it is, but I want to give it to you. I don't understand myself. I don't understand you, or how you see me. I just know that you need me, and I want to give myself to you. Is this true? Do you need me? Do you want me to stay?"
"Yes."
"Then let go. Let go. Let me in." She stood behind his chair and leaned down and wrapped her arms around him, her cheek resting on top of his head.
"Yes. Thank God. That's all I wanted to say at the stoplight. Just to ask you to stay,"
he said, staring at the table as she tightened her arms around him and he put his hand on top of hers
and felt her cheek press against the top of his head. He felt a vast relief,
and something else, a numbness giving way, like anesthesia wearing off.