Wade’s fault, you know that right?”
“He says he didn’t sleep with that intern.”
“But he puts himself in situations where people think he’s cheating. I mean, what is Chloe supposed to think if he runs off with young women into the copy room and closes the door.”
“I get your point.”
“But I get what you’re saying too. This could be a chance to get them to talk.”
“I’ll call Chloe. You talk to Wade.”
“Okay. At least he’s talking to me now, after yesterday. You’re still okay about him talking about us on the radio?”
She nods. “I told you I was.”
“I’m just checking. Keeping the lines open.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Now people know our business.”
“They always have.”
“But now a lot of people do too.”
She shrugs. “I don’t give a crap about what they think. They don’t know me. They don’t know us. Let them think what they like. Anyway, that’s not what the story is about. It’s not about what I did, what you did. It’s about second chances and forgiveness. If they don’t get that then screw them.”
Two hours later the room is full of women and laughter and gifts. I’m feeling a profound sense of deja-vu, like I’ve only just seen this exact scene, which I have. Same scene, different people. I leave Quinn to her second baby shower in so many weeks and walk downtown to the Ritz to visit Wade. On the way I contemplate telling him that Chloe is in my apartment.
He’s a mess. I never thought that I’d see him like this. He’s falling apart by slow increments and I know exactly what that is like. Of course, my downward spiral was hidden away in a basement flat, not in some five star luxury suite.
“How you doing, buddy?” I ask him.
“How do I look like I’m doing?”
He’s crumpled like a piece of screwed up paper. Normally he’s clean shaven but he’s let his whiskers grow. I wonder of that’s standard operating procedure for husbands out in the cold.
“You look like crap,” I tell him.
“That’s just what I was going for,” he replies with wry grin.
“Did she hear the program?”
He nods, loses his grin. “Yeah. She messaged me. But she’s not buying it. She’s angry, and she has every right to be.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Can’t be helped. I was always going to screw up, the question was when.”
“You didn’t screw up. It’s a misunderstanding. She’ll get that eventually.”
“But I did. You were right. I was an idiot to spend time with that girl. She’s barely over eighteen. I’m like twenty years older than her. Damn it.”
“Next time you’ll do better.”
“There might not be a next time. Damn it, I miss her, Judd. I miss her like there’s a hole in me. What does this mean?”
“Obviously it means you love her.”
“I’ve just never been here before. I’ve screwed up before, but I’ve just moved on. And I’d feel... nothing. Even Quinn. When I walked away from her I just let it go. But this is different. And I don’t know if I can handle it.”
“That’s good,” I tell him reassuringly. “You can use that. These feelings, they mean something. She just needs to know that. And you missing her like this - it’ll draw you back to her.”
“But she won’t see me.”
I smile. “Quinn and I have a plan for that.”
“Yeah?”
“There’s another seminar next week. Quinn and I are going. You’re coming too.”
She shakes his head. “How am I going to convince her to go with me?”
“Leave that to Quinn. She’s probably having this exact conversation with her right now. And listen, we’re going so we can find another counsellor. You two could do the same thing.”
“Do we need that? We’re nowhere near were you were.”
“You’re joking right? You hear the words coming out of your mouth? Look around you. You’re in the dog house, my friend. Okay, so it’s a pretty nice dog house, but it’s one just the same. And if you don’t get some help, some professional help, then you will be like me, trying to get the trust back and falling on your ass doing it.”
“I can’t find a single flaw in that argument.”
“There isn’t one,” I tell him.
Sunday
The day is upon us. The day we have both been dreading. It’s an irrational fear, I know it, and I think, deep down, Quinn does too. One day before her thirty fourth week he stopped moving, be stopped living, strangled by his own lifeline.
Today is not his birthday. That was seven months ago and I was too caught up in my own tragedy to even consider him. I don’t know if Quinn thought of him, but I think she would have. She is sentimental like that, instinctively remembering special dates. Without her reminding me, I guess it was forgotten.
I feel a deep sadness in my heart when I wake, a long time before the sun has risen. I lay there, with Quinn still sleeping, snoring gently beside me, going over and over again the events of that day. She called me at work, told me he’d stopped moving, then told me to meet her at her doctors. I was late, delayed by a significant lack of parking. When I arrived she had been crying. She’d heard the heart-rending news and then had to hear it again. And then a sequence of events quietly began, so unobtrusively that neither of us realised it at the time. None of it was her fault – it was all on me – it was all started by me.
Wendy said offhandedly that I deflect feelings and emotions with logistics. I guess that’s what I did. I pushed back my grief and began to think how I could fix things. And so, without walking through the pain with my beautiful, hurting wife, I turned to her doctor and asked when we could try again. To Quinn it was like he didn’t matter – that I would move on to another baby without giving him a second thought. I guess, somewhere inside her, she may have thought that I might move onto another wife with the same detached precision. Her fears of abandonment would work upon her so that she would pull away from me, and as my well-practiced objectivity kicked in, I would pull away from her too. Thus our downward spiral would begin, dragging us into the abyss of destruction, betrayal and pain.
She didn’t need what I gave her. She needed me to be present with her. She needed my absolute attention. I needed to attack the situation like it was a problem that could be solved with logistics. It was that difference, or rather our ignorance of it, that was our undoing. I suppose, all things considered, she was attracted to Wade because he was interested. He did give her his time, his attention. It was because he found her beautiful and wanted to sleep with her, and who wouldn’t, and she should have known that. But she was lonely, confused, hurting. And then, after she had started sleeping with him, his attention kept her there while I kept ignoring her. What a fool I was.
But things are different now. I know what she needs - at least I think I do. She is thriving on my attention, and while that continues I won’t change my approach. It was difficult at first. I’ve had no practice in it, but as time progressed I found it easier. I’ve found that spending time with her is no longer a duty but a privilege, a joy.
The one thing that I can only begin to understand is how she will be feeling today. I mean, I know that she will be afraid, I get that. I’m afraid a little myself. But there is sadness that has been building these last few days that I find hard to penetrate. I can only imagine how the loss has affected her, how today it will return and attempt to overwhelm her. Well, I won’t let it. I will stand by her today and every day.
She stirs and I turn and find her awake and regarding me with sleepy eyes. The sun is up and the city is active outside our bedroom window.
“How long have you been awake?” she asks me quietly.
“A little while.”
“You’re thinking about today.”
“Yeah. I was wondering…?” I let the words linger in the air. I want to ask her about seeing him, about
returning to that small plaque and leaving a flower like we used to do. But maybe that’s not what she needs.
She rolls over to me and slides in under my arm. “I think I’d like a distraction.”
“What did you have in mind?”
Quinn’s family Church is draped in white. The decorations remain but they are looking a little worse from the weather. The same people I saw the week before struggle up the slippery path to the front door, entering quickly to escape the cold.
I help her out of the car and down the path. Her arm is around mine. Her hand grips me tightly – not like she is afraid, like she relies on me to hold her up, to keep her steady. We get to the door and she turns to me, her eyes voicing unspoken words. Then, when she gets her answer, she enters and leaves me out in the cold.
It’s warm inside. There is gentle music playing and laughter rings in the air. It feels safe, like home, and I’m being invited inside by something deep within my soul.
And it’s almost enough for me to go inside and join her.
In the next episode of Twenty Four Weeks…
Quinn realises the full extent of her brokenness… Wade offers Judd more than he bargained for… Quinn tells her story…
“The other day, when we were at the farewell, you asked me some questions and I kind of answered them, but not fully. I said we’d talk again and we need to. But before I could talk to you I needed to talk to Mary.”
I nod my head.
“I told her what you asked me and we talked through it, and we’ve come to a pretty frightening conclusion.”
…
After the show, after