things at all the right places. I mean, I am actually listening. I realise that I didn’t for a long time and this was just another fault in a long list.
I pull into the driveway like I did the week before. Grant and his wife, who I haven’t met yet, come out onto the porch when we get out. I take Quinn’s hand and lead her to the house. It seemed quite a natural thing to do, and I did it without thinking. She didn’t resist. I suppose she found it supportive, and I guess that’s why I did in the first place. She squeezed mine as we take to the steps.
I introduce her and she smiles sweetly. I know all her smiles and this is one of my favourites. She conveys openness, and seeing it for the first time made me fall in love with her. I haven’t seen it in a long time. I’m seeing it now and I’m losing my resolve to stay only friends with her.
Mary Upton is slightly shorter than Grant and maybe ten years younger. I wonder in an instant if there is some story to that. She has hair down to her shoulders without a hint of grey and her face has an easy smile but I can’t help but think that there is something behind that smile that I can’t see, some sadness, some long standing care. She wears a floral shirt and pink skirt. Perhaps that’s her uniform, in the same way that her husband always seems to me to be wearing the same thing.
Mary takes Quinn in to the house, perhaps to the room that I was in in last week. Grant and I walk into the garden. It is the end of summer and the garden is in bloom with a myriad of colors and scents. The air is abuzz with bees and shimmering. We sit on a bench in a secluded section walled in by tall shrubs, no doubt constructed for privacy. The morning sun is warm and I’m sweating, so I take of my jacket and lay it down next to me on the bench.
“Mary was pleased to get your call yesterday,” Grant says.
“I hope we didn’t inconvenience you too much.”
“Not at all.”
“Good.”
“Quinn will be well cared for, I promise.”
“I have no doubt.”
“And you have to be happy she’s here.”
I nod. “She changed her mind.”
“Was there any reason?”
I shift uncomfortably. “Yes... There was something I left out last week and well, I told her and she wasn’t too pleased. I think that it just drove home the point that she needs this as much as I do.”
“You held something back?”
“What was it?”
“Well...” I hesitate.
“This will be a whole lot easier if you don’t hold things back, Judd.”
“I know. Alright... When I was sitting Shiva with my family, and just after she told me about the baby, I... well, I was with a woman. We... we were together.”
“I see.”
“I guess that I’m not so good at the vows either. But in my defence we were getting divorced and I was in such pain and I was lonely. No one has touched me like that for so long. I mean, Quinn stopped touching me with any kind of love a year ago – I guess when she started sleeping with him. I needed it, and it didn’t feel so wrong at the time.”
“So you told Quinn about it.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I think at some point I would have had to. But it kind of slipped out, at the wrong time. She wasn’t pleased at all.”
He stroked his chin. “So you didn’t intend on telling her when you did?”
“No.”
“When did you tell her? What was happening?”
“She... well, she wanted me to sleep with her. We’d been out to dinner with friends and I guess she started to feel something for me, and then when we got home she made the offer - pretty strongly too.”
“And so you told her?”
“Not quite,” I say with a sigh. “I told her that we were friends and she was insisting.”
“Why do you think you told her then?”
“I don’t know.”
Grant sits back, wipes a bead of sweat from his forehead. “There’s no right or wrong answer here, Judd,” he reminds me. “There’s only how you feel. Just take a moment and have a stab at it.”
I do. There seems to me to be only one reason. “I guess I was trying to push her away.”
“Why?”
“I suppose I’m afraid to be with her.”
“Sexually?”
I nod. “I mean, I want to, but I just can’t. I can’t think about it because I keep seeing her with him. I keep seeing him with her and it just kills me. I’m know I’m holding all that in, and I shouldn’t, but I don’t want to hurt her – she’s doing a great job of that herself. And that’s not who we are anymore.”
He nods. “The friendship,” he says. Then he strokes his chin thoughtfully. “How do you see that? Is it there to connect you with her, or define a boundary?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Is it a way to keep her at a distance or a way to join you together?”
I consider his question for a moment. “A bit of both, I suppose.”
“Are you open to the possibility of more?”
“It’s hard to imagine.” I take a deep breath. “I guess, but then we’re not staying married. We need to be friends to make the parenting work. That’s the best that we can hope for.”
He nods, smiles slightly, like he’s seen something that I haven’t. If that’s true he doesn’t tell me. “What about this other woman?”
“Penny.”
“Is there a future there, do you think?”
“Maybe. There’s history, back when we were kids, and she’s got her issues like me. I don’t know. I’d like to think that I could find love again - and maybe with Penny - but if not then maybe with someone else.”
“You don’t think you could find love again with Quinn?”
I look down at my feet. “I feel something there. She makes me feel like I could love her again. But, can I trust her?” I shake my head. “When I look at her the same feelings I had when we first met come back to me and I find that I love and need her. She’s fragile and I want to protect her. Damn,” I say, “I just want to be the husband that she needs. But I know I’m not going to be that, not anymore.”
“Do you think that you’re trying to protect yourself from further hurt?”
“Absolutely,” I say, nodding. “I guess I don’t want to get too close to her so she can’t rip my heart out again. I couldn’t go through that a second time.”
“Alright,” he says, “let’s talk about what you do to protect yourself.”
And we talk about the walls I put around myself, how I keep my feelings and my emotions under tight control. We talk about how I don’t let anyone see the real me - even Quinn, who should know me better than anyone. We talk about the bricks that I place, one on top of the other, to build this wall – my cutting remarks, my sarcasm, my passive-aggressiveness. We talk about how I avoid the hard questions that make me uncomfortable.
And we talk about my story and how all of that related. I didn’t want to face the pain of our dead baby and I wanted to fix her pain, so I deflected our energy to another baby. I didn’t want to face the pain that Quinn was feeling, the grief that she held within her, so I kept her emotionally distant. She needed me and I shut myself down. And then, when we had reached the point where something had to give, I ignored the signs. I avoided the truth. And then Quinn seemed okay, but she was lying and sleeping with Wade, and I didn’t care. I ignored the signs of her infidelity too, because it was just too hard. I mean, no one can keep that kind of secret for a year without slipping up once or twice. Now I think of it, the evidence was there, if I cared - or perhaps dared - to look.
“Have you thought more about the last thing you said in your story?” Grant asks me.
“What was it I said?”
“That you love her.”
“We keep coming back to that.”
“You still have strong feelings for her – you said so yourself. You’ve even used the word ‘love’ once or twice.”
“Well, I can’t afford
to love her.”
“Because you’re afraid to get hurt.”
“That’s one of the reasons.”
“I think you need to explore exactly what are your feelings for her. I think you need to remember your walls and try and get past them to see the truth about how you feel. Don’t ignore it, don’t hide it, don’t joke it away. It’s real. You have to embrace it.”
“Embrace it.”
“Yes. And then you have to be honest with her about how you feel.”
“But I don’t know how I feel.”
“That’s why you need to explore it. That’s your homework.”
I hear Grant’s name called from the house.
“Okay,” he says. “Time’s up.” He stands. “And Judd...”
“Yeah?”
“Be gentle with her. She’s going to be a little raw after talking to Mary. There’ll be hurts that she’s just relived and she might need some space.”
“Okay,” I tell him, nodding.
Quinn’s eyes are red. Her makeup hasn’t smudged so I suppose she’s made some attempt at repair, but she can’t hide all the signs. Mary helps her down the stairs to the gravel driveway where Grant and I are waiting. She takes my wife in her arms and whispers something in her ear that I can’t catch.
“Next week,” Grant tells us and we walk back to the Porsche.
I don’t touch her, I don’t hold her hand. But I do open her door for her and close it behind her. I nod to the Uptons as I walk around to my side and get in next to her.
“Are you alright?” I ask her gently.
She nods, but she’s looking out the window.
I start the car and we move down the driveway to the road, the interstate and home.
She’s quiet on the way back to the city. She’s not talking incessantly