A Marriage Worth Fighting For

“How’re the kids?” he heard himself ask. Heard the scratch in his voice, too.

Hell, it hurt not to be with them. Alicia would have said he barely saw them, but, shoot, that didn’t mean he didn’t care. His awareness of their peacefully sleeping presence when he came home to the apartment at night or left in the early morning nourished him at a level he’d never tried to put into words. The times he did see them were incredibly precious, if demanding, and for all the times when he wasn’t around, he had enormous confidence in Alicia as a mother.

Damn, did he not tell her that enough, or something?

He tried to remember the last time he had, and couldn’t. To him it was so obvious—why did she need to hear it?

“They’re asleep,” she said. “Tired.”

“What did you do today?”

“Went to a park. We had a picnic. Which ended up taking place in the car because it began to rain. But we had fun anyway.” The forced cheeriness in the word fun reminded him that he wasn’t the only one who’d had to carry on as usual today, despite the upheaval of their separation.

“I’m glad,” he answered her mechanically, then cut to the chase. “What have you said to them, Alicia? What do they know?”

“I haven’t said anything yet. For them, we’re on vacation, that’s all. At some point, of course—”

He jumped in. “You can’t just spring it on them. And you can’t do it when I’m not around. We have to tell them together. I will not have my children exposed to that kind of conflict or have them doubt my role as their father in any way.” In his urgency, he spoke with more anger than he’d intended.

Hell, he was so unused to anything like this!

He wasn’t thinking of the prospect of divorce, there—of course he wasn’t used to that!

But he wasn’t accustomed in any area to having his will thwarted. This seemed almost shameful on his part, certainly nothing to be proud of, but that’s how it was. He was a top surgeon. People did what he wanted. Always.

Alicia, too. Maura and their previous nanny, Kate, another two nannies before that. And Rosanna, the rare times he saw her.

Abby and Tyler were almost the only human beings who ever defied him.

“Time to get out of the bath now, sweetheart. Both of you.”

“No! Not yet!”

“No, no, no!”

He realized he wasn’t comfortable when that happened. He tended to opt out and have Alicia or the nanny take over. “Here, they’re unmanageable tonight, and I’m tired.”

But Alicia was speaking now. He focused quickly on her voice down the line. “Of course I won’t just spring it on them, MJ. Is that really who you think I am? Someone who would risk destroying my own children’s sense of emotional security that way, like Anna and James are doing? Someone who would use them as a weapon against you?”

“No … No, I’m not suggesting that.”

“You seemed to be.”

“Look, it wasn’t intentional. It wasn’t. Our marriage is nothing like what Anna and James had. If you’re saying it is—”

“No, no, I’m not. You’re right. There’s no comparison.” Something they agreed on! He felt a brief moment of relief.

“All I’m saying is that I want us to do this right. If we have to do it at all. I don’t want it, Alicia. If there’s anything I can do, anything I can say, any way I can change, or we can both change, talk so that—” He stopped.

Hell, was he begging?

She stayed silent at the end of the phone, after he’d broken off. He waited, head pounding, jaw tight. Should he seize the window opened up by her silence? Take the initiative? He didn’t know how.

She spoke again before he had any answers. “You’ll have to come up here again.” The words were slow and careful. “I do know that. Maybe it’s best not to put it off. Can you get some time?”

“This weekend,” he said quickly, while the back of his mind buzzed, rearranging his schedule, working out a few favors he could call in. In his position, it wasn’t easy to get a chunk of time off at short notice.

Alicia knew that, and he hoped she would see his willingness as a step toward—

Toward having this whole thing just go away!

But he’d begun to accept that this wasn’t going to be an easy fix.

“If you could, that would be great,” Alicia said, still with that slow, careful way of talking, as if she was having to bite her tongue not to yell at him or blurt out a hundred deeply felt grievances. “It doesn’t need to be the whole weekend….”

“It’s going to be the whole weekend. I’ll drive up Saturday morning, back down Sunday night.” Another ten hours in the car. He didn’t care.

“All right, if you want. I think you’d better book into a motel.”

“What will the children think of that?”

Thick silence. “Make a reservation, please, MJ. It—it may turn out that you can cancel it …” He felt a rush of relief and hope. Short-lived.

“… if we can stay civilized enough for you to sleep in the study.”

“In the study?”

“I made up a folding bed there for Maura—of course, she never used it—and I haven’t put it away yet. There are really only the two bedrooms. Abby and Tyler are sharing. But they don’t need to know where you’re sleeping. Anyway, they’re not going to see our choice of sleeping arrangements—” a pause “—the way an adult sees it.”

“No.”

So this was how she saw the physical side of their marriage, as a “choice of sleeping arrangements.” It felt like a body blow. Like a kick in the—

Yeah. There.

“Was there anything else you wanted to say?” Alicia asked him carefully.

“Uh, no. Face-to-face, of course. But not now. Could you call and cancel Rosanna for tomorrow? I don’t want her—”

“Yes, okay, that’s probably a good idea.” She took a breath. “So can you text me with a rough arrival time? In case I’m out with the kids?”

“Sure.” He got through another couple of rounds of practical back-and-forth, then flipped the phone into the breast pocket of his shirt, his mind still snagged on the “sleeping arrangements” thing like ripped skin snagged on a rusty nail.

In other words, it hurt. Bad.

Did she mean it that way? Was she completely dismissing the sex life he’d always viewed with such satisfaction and pleasure and pride?

They were great in bed together. They were. They were dynamite.