The Behavior of Love by Virginia Reeves

Author:Virginia Reeves
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

Chapter 21

They agree to tell Bonnie and Pete together, meeting them at the Third Street house. Benjamin is asleep in his playpen, Justin asleep in his car seat, Hank entertained by the television in the living room. The adults sit around the kitchen table, two six-packs of beer in front of them that Ed doesn’t think are enough.

“No whiskey,” Laura said. “Please.”

“But how can I get you so drunk you’ll forget this whole thing and come to bed with me?” He was trying levity, the wit and humor he originally wooed her with.

“No whiskey.”

It’s been a week since she left. Laura doesn’t believe he hasn’t told Pete already, but he hasn’t. He can’t. He doesn’t know if he can even now.

“You sure you want to do this?” he’s asked her each of those seven days. “There’s still time to back out.” He’ll reach for her, and she’ll back away. He hasn’t touched her since that last morning, though he’s tried every time he comes to her new house to take Benjamin and the dog for a walk. “Join us?” he’ll ask. Another shake of her head. He’ll reach for her when he brings them back, and she’ll shake her head again.

He tells himself it’s just a separation. He’s agreed to tell Bonnie and Pete only because he thinks they’ll take his side.

They each open a beer, and Pete says, “You guys are way too serious. What the hell is going on?”

“We’re getting a divorce,” Laura says.

“No,” Ed says. “That’s extreme. We’re separating for a bit. Laura’s taking some space.” He gulps down his beer, reaches for another.

Bonnie and Pete are silent, staring.

Finally, Bonnie says, “I don’t like it.”

They all laugh nervously.

“I don’t, either,” Ed says. “Help me talk her out of it, won’t you?”

But the laughter is gone because Bonnie is looking at Laura, and Laura is crying and starting to speak words that aren’t quite words yet, until they suddenly are, and Ed is listening to a version of the life he thought he was living, cast in a light that makes it foreign and ugly. “And I was so lonely,” she’s saying, “lonely and trapped and so angry and then so sad, and he couldn’t see that I was disappearing, that I needed him. I was so tired of competing with his patients, with Penelope. I needed him to make me believe I was real and important and part of something, and the few times it came, it left so quickly, which was nearly worse than it never coming at all. And I just want to be whole again.” Her voice is breaking, but it smooths out here. “I need to be whole again.”

Ed tries to pull her against him, to comfort her, to make her feel safe and whole. He can do that. But she struggles away, lurching to her feet, toppling the chair behind her, and shouting, “Goddamn it, Ed. You don’t get it. I needed your arm around me years ago. I needed to be your fucking wife.

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