Rachel's Hope

“David,” she began tentatively. Her face felt strained, her mouth screwed up too tight to speak. “David,” she said again, “how come if things are so bad with the company they have you working overtime so much?”

He set the paper down and gave her a blank look. “What do you mean by that?”

“I just wondered, that’s all.”

“I have a lot to do. They give me work the other guys used to do, the guys they laid off.”

“I see.” Her voice was the size of a pinprick, light, airy.

David gave her a second look, close, scrutinizing. “Is something wrong, Rae?” He called her that sometimes. “Are you all right?”

“Sure. I had a bad day, I guess.” Might as well plunge ahead, might as well. “Something funny happened, David,” she said. “I can’t figure it. I saw you today, David, but you didn’t see me.”

David’s expression stayed the same, his eyes watching her, but something in his face seemed to change, shift. “You did? Where?”

“At the Hamburger House. We—Brian and I—went there for dinner. We took food out. We came home and ate.”

“The Hamburger House?” A light came on in David’s eyes, a dazed brightness, as if his mind were weighing many things at once, so that he could not yet speak. Finally he said, “What were you doing at the Hamburger House?”

Rachel looked at him, surprised. “I just told you; Brian and I—”

“Oh, yes, I know that, but I mean…well, why didn’t you say something if you saw me?”

“You were busy, David. You were with someone.”

As if light had dawned, David broke into an extravagant laugh. “Oh, you mean Kit. You saw me with Kit Kincaid.” He settled back and picked up his paper again, as if by such a gesture he was dismissing a topic too insignificant to pursue. From behind the paper his voice flowed evenly, nonchalant. “Kit is the secretary in our department. Her car wasn’t running so I gave her a ride home. Neither of us had eaten, and it was getting late, so we picked up a sandwich. You should have called us, Rachel. You should have said something.”

She shrugged uncertainly. “You looked so engrossed, so close somehow, I felt like an outsider. I felt—” Rachel was aware of her voice growing quivery all of a sudden. She thought she might cry. Was it relief? What? “I didn’t mean to sound stupid, David, like a suspicious wife or something. It’s just that I had a big dinner planned, and then there you were—”

“I called and said I had to work, baby.”

“I know you did.” She felt suddenly stupid, tongue-tied. “But it seems like you have to work so much lately, and I had this idea about tonight being special.” On impulse, she got up and went over to David, slipping onto the arm of his chair, letting her arm circle his shoulder, resting lightly, carefully. “I guess I couldn’t stand seeing you look so happy with that girl. I mean, you really looked…happy.”

“Rachel, will you stop it! Stop hounding me. I told you what happened. I’m sorry you were upset.”

Rachel eased her body off the chair arm, going down on her knees, sitting like a silly, foolish schoolgirl. She was looking at her husband as if she might be begging, as if she might be screaming for something inside, screaming against the complete silence of her mouth, her lips.

David’s hand, large and manly, came to rest on Rachel’s shoulder, found the back of her neck and rubbed gently, soothingly. “I didn’t mean to shout, Rae. Really, I’m sorry. It’s just that I don’t like you going on like this about Kit.”

“Are you…in love with her?” This a whisper, hardly spoken, this from Rachel who could not believe she had asked it.

The directness of the question took David by surprise. He said unthinkingly, “I don’t know.”

The two of them had been sitting in a calm, orderly room surrounded by handsomely elegant, well-placed furniture, with soft light emanating from quiet lamps and everything proper, in its place, where it belonged. This room, one segment of their condo, was fine, and she and David had been fine until this moment, having a serious but comprehensible discussion.

Now nothing was right at all, and nothing Rachel could do would make it right. In a moment, less than a moment, neither the room nor David nor Rachel made any sense at all.

It was bizarre, this conversation. It was idiotic, the whole thing. What was she doing asking David about being in love with another woman?

“Well, you asked me,” David said defensively, seeing the look on her face. “You asked me, so I figured you knew. You asked if I love her, and I told you the truth. I don’t know. You want me to play it straight with you, don’t you, Rae?”

“I didn’t know anything!” she railed, the very breath snatched from her lungs. “I don’t know why I said that, why I asked if you love her. I d-didn’t know—” She was drowning in a welter of confusion and could only stammer that she really didn’t know anything at all.

He stared at her. “You mean, you really didn’t have any idea about Kit? Then why in the world did you bring it up? Why did you have to push me, Rachel? Why couldn’t you leave things alone?”

Her head spun, the lamplight blinding her. “I don’t know…”

David put a tentative hand on her shoulder, then removed it. “I didn’t want to hurt you, Rachel. I could have lied. I started to! You know I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I know,” she said, not looking at him, not seeing anything, still dazed, groping with a blizzard of conflicting thoughts whirling in her own head.

“Hang it all anyway,” David said, his brows knitting over dark flashing eyes. “This whole world is going down the drain, you know that? I’m going down the drain, and the whole world, too. What’s the use of anything?”

Hearing this new torment in David’s voice, Rachel snapped out of her own preoccupation. Her mind was clearing fast. “David,” she said, “talk to me. We’ve got to talk about this. I have to understand what’s happening.”

“What’s the use? I mean, really, what’s the use of anything?”

“I have to understand this, David.” She felt a sudden urge to reach out and touch him but she held back. Instead, she got up from the floor and went over to the sofa and sat down. It was a lovely sofa, the color of spring roses, but there were crumbs from potato chips on it, and she brushed them off. Certainly, she thought, some of these things that had happened could be undone, brushed aside like crumbs, forgotten. She had to find out where she and David stood. “David,” she said, forcing her voice to remain calm, “tell me what’s going on.”

He had the newspaper again, rolling it up, twisting and turning it, unaware that he was destroying it with his very hands. “I don’t know what to say, Rachel,” he said, his hands busy with the paper. “What can I say? I mean, Kit and I have gotten to be good friends. We didn’t plan anything. We just hit it off, you know. Things sort of clicked…”

“When was this?”

“A couple of months ago, I guess. Late in the summer.”

Rachel forced herself to ask the question that seared her heart. “Are you having an affair, David?”

A flash of surprise and indignation crossed David’s face. “No. No, Rachel. Believe me, it hasn’t gone that far. I wouldn’t. We’re friends. Special friends, I guess. We see each other now and then, for lunch. This was the first time we’ve ever met after work, but I guess you won’t believe that.”

“You’re right, I don’t,” Rachel replied in a flat tone.

Suddenly he slammed the paper down on the table, jarring a crystal dish that sat on its polished surface. “I shouldn’t be telling you this,” he said. “I must be crazy saying anything at all. I must be crazy.”

Rachel’s heart hammered. She felt the pressure of tears behind her eyes. “I need to know, David,” said Rachel. “Everything. It’s only fair…”

Her husband grew quiet, apparently gathering his thoughts. He leaned forward in his chair, his shoulders slumping, round and heavy, his eyes focused somewhere in space. He massaged his knuckles. “You know yourself, Rachel,” he said in a small, tight voice, “things haven’t been good between us for a long time. You know that.”

Tears glazed her eyes. “We’ve had our problems, yes…”

He looked at her, his eyes glinting with fire. “Problems? Problems? You bet we’ve had problems. I’m not excusing myself, believe me, I’m not, but…I guess it seemed like an escape to be interested in someone else for a while. It was harmless, Rachel, really.”

“But you said—” Her tongue felt thick, pasty, her voice a whisper. “You said you don’t know if you love this girl, this Kit. You said you don’t know.”

He shook his head. “I—I don’t know.”

Rachel inhaled sharply. She couldn’t hear her own voice over her thundering heart. “But you might…you might love her?”

David stared hard at his hands. “I just don’t know,” he said.