Chapter 132 THE WAITING

Chapter 132 THE WAITING
He does not come home until seven. I know he is at the project site because he texts me at three and at five — ordinary project texts, measurements and decisions and a question about the interior wall colour that I have already answered twice and that I answer a third time because he is asking about the wall colour because the wall colour is something he can think about without thinking about the other thing and I understand this and I answer it.

I call Jade at four. Not to tell her about the pregnancy — the pregnancy is not mine to share yet without Rook in the room, the order matters and the order is Rook first, always Rook first. I call her because I need to talk to someone who will understand what I am describing without being told what I am describing.

I say: something is wrong with Rook. Not wrong wrong. Something he is carrying that I don't know about. She says: how do you know. I say: I can see it. She says: how long has he been carrying it. I say: I don't know. That's the part I don't know. She says: is it serious. I say: I think it might be. She says: what are you doing. I say: waiting. She says: good. That's right. She says: he will tell you. He always tells you. I say: he said one day. She says: then you have one day. I say: I know. She says: Wren. I say: yes. She says: you are the person who stays in the room. He knows that. Whatever it is he's carrying — he knows you will stay in the room. That's why he said one day and not never. I hold the phone and I do not say anything for a moment. Then I say: thank you. She says: call me when you know.

I do not write book three. I try twice and both times the page stays empty because the part of my brain that produces sentences is currently occupied with the thing I am not writing about, which is the one-day wait and what could be large enough to require it from a man who told me about Niamh on the first day because that was the only version he was willing to have.

I make dinner. I set the table. I do the things that can be done while the things that cannot yet be done wait for tomorrow. This is the discipline of the work — you do what is available and you trust that the unavailable things will be available when the time is right. It is a discipline I have applied to journalism and to Margaret and to book three and to every piece I have written that required patience. It is harder to apply to the man I married.

He comes home at seven. He ducks at the doorframe. He comes into the kitchen and he sees the dinner on the table and something in his face does the loosening that happens when he has been away from home and arrives back to the specific warmth of a room that is his. Then he sees my face and the loosening tightens again slightly because he knows I have been waiting and he knows what for.

We eat. We talk. He asks about the book and I tell him about the empty page and the wall colour texts and he almost smiles at the wall colour. After dinner he washes up and I dry and we move through the kitchen in the domestic choreography of people who have been in kitchens together long enough that the movement is automatic and the silence in it is comfortable even when the silence is also full of something that has not yet been named.

At nine he says: can we sit. We sit at the table. Not across from each other — beside each other, which is not our usual configuration for difficult conversations. Difficult conversations in this house happen across the table, facing each other. Beside each other is different. Beside each other is the configuration of people who are on the same side of the thing, whatever the thing is.

He puts both hands flat on the table. I recognise this gesture because it is mine — the gesture I make when I need the surface to ground me while I say something I have been carrying. He learned it from watching me do it and he is doing it now and the recognition of my own gesture in his hands does something to me that I am going to write about later when I am able to write again.

'Tomorrow,' I say. 'You said tomorrow.'

'I know,' he says. 'I cannot wait until tomorrow.'

I turn to look at him. He is looking at the table. His hands are flat on the surface. He is the thirteen-year-old who decided needing things from people was how you got left and the twenty-five-year-old who has been working against that decision for years and the husband who told me about Niamh on the first day and the person who just said I need a day and then came home six hours later and said I cannot wait until tomorrow.

'Tell me,' I say.

He tells me.