We’re in bed when I say it, he on his stomach, eyes closed, me stretched out next to him, watching his fists clench the pillow.
If you lost your wife because of this, would it be worth it?
Something I’ve asked myself over and over, in those dark hours between midnight and 5 a.m., which is about when I exhaust enough to drift into an hour of sleep before the alarm.
Unsure, still, whose answer I fear more.
Michael strums his fingers over the curve of my hip and thigh. She won’t find out. She can’t.
Quiet falls over the room, only the occasional creak of the sign outside interrupting it and Michael’s hand lingers, starting the familiar swirling in my center. That feeling like when I first start forming a new piece on the wheel, how the clay yields to my hands and the centrifugal force, as if already aware of its shape.
I say nothing, wait for him to return the question, but his breathing levels out and I know he’s drifted into sleep. An indulgence allowed to him only during our few hours together—he has a three-year-old and seven-year-old at home, and a full course load, and other obligations I don’t question. When he wakes, he’s hungry, like a bear emerging from hibernation. These post-nap, second-round fucks are worth the wait—slow and wide-eyed, inhales and exhales matching, our connection ferocious and deep, a wild blurring of our bodies into one taut gold thread of ache.
She won’t. She can’t. His sureness doesn’t surprise me. But, I wonder.
I slide toward Michael, away from my thoughts. He shifts so our bodies are flush. I bury my face into his neck, nipping at his skin. He murmurs something I don’t quite catch, but I think he says, You’re asking for it.
Winter solstice Michael came through my open studio looking for coffee mugs. He picked up a salt-glazed bowl, ran his fingers along the mottled surface. He asked what type of clay I used in my stoneware, where I sourced it. Then his gaze strayed to the wall of shelves in back. What’s with the broken stuff? he asked.
That— Pieces returned from friends and customers, pieces cracked in the kiln; I’d been saving them all. Kintsukuroi, I said.
He raised an eyebrow. He wore a thin silver wedding band. Like mine.
Golden repair. I led him to the shelves, held out the practice bowl. Real gold, in the lacquer. You won’t break it, I said, laughing. Again.
He thumbed the shimmer where cracks had been. What a noble concept, he said. Cherishing the broken. He handed the bowl back to me, and our hands touched and neither of us pulled away quite as fast as we should have.
We talked as people floated in and out, no one brave enough to interrupt us till the woman with the long gray braid hair and brilliant-watt smile started asking a million questions about my firing process, my temperatures, my underglazes. Michael winked, took a card and bowed out.
The woman said, He’ll be back.
Lots of browsing today, I said.
She cast her gaze toward the door, then picked up a bud vase, pot-bellied with a tight-curled lip, so thin as to be almost translucent. Is this for sale?
Not really, I said. I took the vase from her hands. It felt fragile as an egg. My first foray into porcelain. I’m not sure how they’ll fare.
I’ll take my chances, she said with a wistful smile. The soft skin of her face was deeply lined, like she’d walked a long way in the sun to arrive at my place. I wrapped the vase in kraft paper, said, Happy Solstice.
She cradled the bundle in her palms, and said, To the return of light.
We dress without speaking, unhurried and efficient. As I pull my socks on, Michael opens his wallet and tosses a twenty on the night table. If no one else knows, the maids in this hotel do, I think, because who else leaves such a tip for a few hours use?
After our first afternoon together—in a much fancier place—he left a fifty. Luck had it that both Dot and Anne were out of town and we spent hours naked between the bright white sheets, the electric fireplace roaring, unrushed and tender, the way it is when you first discover somebody—new skin, new fingers, new taste, new breath, new rhythm—coming together and apart once, twice, three times, till we joked about my needing one of those donut cushions.
It’d been years since I’d been with a man and I bled. Am I hurting you? he asked. No, no— We pressed together like we wanted to dissolve our skins, and fell asleep tangled. I woke to find blood smeared everywhere: sheets, pillows, fingers, sticky along my thighs, a fierce stripe across his lower belly.
Look at this mess, I said.
Michael got a towel and we sat cross-legged facing each other while he cleaned us. He slid the terry cloth over me, gaze on me as he did till I filled all over with desire. I said, It’s like I’m a virgin again.
He laughed his rusty grumble of a laugh and called me Artemis.
Why? I said.
The virgin huntress no man can tame.
I eased the bloody towel from his fingers.
Besides, you don’t seem like a Christine to me.
Only our knees touched. He traced a line from my bottom lip straight down my center into my pubic hair. I’ve never felt so exposed.
I’d been glad, that dusking evening, to go home to an empty house. Michael’d gone to pick up his kids, had made them dinner and read them bedtime stories. What did it feel like, I asked, to do that? He only said, Hard.
Now it’s easier. Now the bland rooms are familiar, our habits familiar. We shrug into jackets, I rummage in my purse for keys, he hands me my hat. We hug, bodies straining against all that fabric, and though I usually go first, tonight I say, I’m not going to leave yet. If you don’t mind.
He tilts his head, like he wants to ask why, but says, I have to run. Otherwise I’ll be late.
He kisses my forehead, my nose. His lips on my lips and I want to whisper, Stay with me, so I pull back and say, Go.
Alone in the inky twilight of the room, I draw back the curtains and watch him cross the parking lot to his truck. Does he do this for me?
On the nightstand next to the twenty is a notepad and pen and I write: Call us selfish and dishonorable, but nothing has ever felt this pure.
Dot doesn’t look up from her laptop when I come in. I toss my keys into the bowl by the door, slip out of my coat. How was yoga? she asks, eyes on the screen.
Backbends and arm balances, I say. A good class. How was your day?
Long. I’ve just got to answer these emails. Then I can help with dinner.
I can handle it, I say. Want anything special?
She says, I’m not very hungry.
Do you not want me to cook? I can graze.
She sighs and snaps her laptop shut, taps out a beat on the table, looks at me over her glasses. How about stir-fry? she says. Then, Your arms look good.
I open the fridge door, rummage through the crisper drawers. What I want and don’t want is for her to come touch my biceps, to hug me without my asking, though I count on her not doing this, not coming close enough to smell where I’ve been. Thank you, I say. All that throwing for the craft fair, I guess.
Nothing to do with your new yogini lifestyle?
I’m half turned toward the counter with a tub of tofu in my hand and we catch eyes. For the first time in what seems like ages, we smile. Maybe a little, I say. You want wine for fortification?
Not right now, she says.
She heads upstairs and I pour a glass of red and turn on the radio and stand at the counter, staring into the dark backyard. I think about my question in the curtain-dim light of the motel, wonder if it was unfair. Dot must be on the phone, the floorboards overhead creak as she paces—the clomp of her boots against the old wood even though I ask her to take her shoes off at the door. Have always asked that, since we first met, to keep the floors clean. A pair of slippers unused in the front closet. My own feet are bare—it is late April, and still cold, but I like to feel the ground beneath me.
What would it be like, to have Michael here? Does he sit in the kitchen with Anne while she cooks? Help her chop? Play with the kids instead of zoning out on the computer? Not that it matters. He isn’t mine. I put the wine down and close my eyes. He is not mine. But I imagine him slicing peppers, talking about minerals and aquifers, how water filters through rock, the nostalgic look he gets when he talks about digging in the earth, and there’s that question again.
My answer spins like an unruly vessel, mouth too wide, walls too thin, unable to support its own weight.
I cube and sauté, I season and stir. As if I might build, with the mundane rhythms of my life, a sort of scaffolding.
Dot doesn’t appear till I call for her. She rubs her eyes, says she’s sorry.
For what? I ask. I pour more wine.
I’ll have some now, she says, getting one of my small tumblers from the cabinet. She never uses a glass; she insists wine tastes better drunk from clay. One email after another, she says. I can’t get on top of things.
I managed fine alone, I say.
As always, she says. Smells delicious.
We clink, say Cheers. I hesitate, about to add more, but Dot’s already drinking, and what would I toast to right now anyway?
I see the note before Michael does and slide it into my purse while he stares out the window before pulling the drapes. Has housekeeping left that note for the last three mornings? Has no one been in the room since we were last? Is our schedule that predictable? We’ve only been coming to this motel for a few weeks. Before that, we used the house of one of Michael’s colleagues, on a research trip to Istanbul. Before that, another motel. Before that, others.
My youngest has a fever, Michael tells me as he unzips his vest. I was up all night with cold cloths and Gatorade. I said I had a department meeting I couldn’t miss.
We could have canceled—
He slips his fingers beneath the hem of my t-shirt. And miss this?
I missed you, too, I say.
He grasps my waist, holds me a little away. Looks like he’s trying to memorize me. And then he says, We shouldn’t— he reaches for my jeans zipper, tugs, eyes not leaving mine. Talk this way. It makes things—
I stop his words with my mouth.
We move slow today. Michael lets me lead, on his back holding my hips, he stares up at me, eyes half-closed. He whispers, You’re exquisite.
Shhhh, I say.
No, I mean it, he says. You should be bronzed. I lean forward to kiss him and it must be how I tilt my hips—he tangles his hand in my hair and draws me down so our stomachs, our chests, our mouths seal, seamless. He breathes into me, says, I’m going to—
He falls asleep almost as soon as I roll away. I trace the dark smudges below his eyes, stroke his sandpapery cheeks with the back of my hand. Naked, mouth open a little, snoring—this is what makes things difficult, I think—how much he trusts me.
I pad over to my bag and pull out the note.
I’m not God, I just clean the rooms.
What had I expected? Advice? Understanding? Absolution?
I tear the note into small squares and take it to the bathroom and toss it in the toilet, squat and pee before I flush. Michael sleeps. I do a few sun salutations but the carpet grosses me out so I spend the next hour thinking about my kintsukuroi project, if I’ll get it done for the fair.
I get in to bed and whisper, Time’s up. Without opening his eyes, Michael wraps his arms around me and holds me to him. He shivers. You’re warm, I say. Better get home and have some chicken soup.
He moans a little when he sits up. Sweat beads along his temples. If only you could bring me chicken soup, he says. In nothing but an apron.
I toss him his underwear. He doesn’t budge. Here, I say, picking his underwear up from the bed, lifting his leg, then the other. Let’s get you dressed and out of here.
He pulls me close again. The heat of his skin presses through my t-shirt. Not yet, he says. Those department meetings always run late.
But we don’t make love. Instead, he holds me, his chin buried in the crook of my neck, one of his legs over mine. His heart thumps against his ribs, my ribs, my heart, our flesh and bones softening like clay as we form a new body.
The craft fair and the yoga are honest, in their way. Every week I hit the Wednesday advanced class at noon, and I’m at the wheel most spare hours—my wrists ache—which is normal enough. Dot doesn’t question my whereabouts or distracted state. She has her own packed schedule: fundraisers and staff parties and volunteering and potlucks; these last I’m invited to, but have to decline and she comes home with rinsed-clean bowls and hugs from the hosts, wishes for my presence next time.
She falls asleep before me. I’m up most of the night, searching for things online that only leave me empty once I see them. Dot’s gone by the time I drag out of bed. I can’t remember the last time she kissed me goodbye or even left a note. Maybe I’m silly; maybe I should have stopped expecting love letters years ago. Drinking coffee alone before I head to the studio, I haunt our house. The silence, the unmade bed, the pile of magazines on the coffee table. Someone lives here, we live here, but the place feels vacant. Dust on the picture frames and a pile of unopened mail and unpaid bills—my chores, neglected.
This morning, frost laceworks the windows and sunlight wavers along the walls. Winter should have let us out of its grip by now—first week of May, and by mid-afternoon it’ll be warm enough to lose a layer or two—but things remain frozen. I trace the crackled ice with my fingers, try to memorize the fractals. On the back of an envelope, I draw a heart and leave it where Dot will see.
By the time I get to the studio, the sun’s high, and there isn’t time for me to throw before I meet Michael. The broken pots hunker on their shelf, surly and jagged. Might as well.
In my tool cabinet sit the resin and the lacquer in their squat little jars with tiny, tight Asian characters on the label. Little bag of gold powder with a price tag that made Dot shake her head in disbelief. The process increases the object’s value, I told her. An ancient practice. But she’s never been one for metaphor.
And it is a process. Caught up in the filling, the smoothing, the dipping of the brush into the gold—how decadent to devote such energy to repairing what others might toss away—I lose track of time and don’t come to till my phone buzzes. A message from Michael: where are you?
I’m a half-hour late and don’t want to leave. I text back: studio. lost track of time. come here?
Ten minutes later he’s locking the door behind him. We’ve been here together two or three times—that balding maroon velvet chair by the window finally making itself useful—but we try to avoid personal spaces, places where our spouses might appear without warning.
I almost checked in, he says. And I got this strange feeling.
Sometimes he talks like this—though he looks like a lumberjack and doesn’t believe in his wife’s God, he swears by a buried intuition I can’t help but be crazy for.
I’m waiting in my truck and who walks out of the lobby but one of my colleagues. Straightening his tie and looking rather satisfied, followed a few minutes later by another colleague, dazed and her shirt buttoned crooked.
We’ll have to switch motels again, I say.
Michael shakes his head like he’s clearing some thought he doesn’t want. I wondered, he says, if that’s what we look like.
I put down the vase I’m brushing and stand. He stares out the windows, his mouth tight. He doesn’t move toward me as I do him and I have to turn his face. Limn his lips with my fingertips, edge him in gold. No, I say.
You weren’t there, he says.
No matter what they looked like, I say. That’s not us.
He turns my hands over, revealing the life line and head line and fate line, all the creases bright with gold. He says, How do we look?
Like this, I say, leading him to my work table. I sweep the gold brush over his palms, close his fists, reopen them. I slide my palms next to his so our heart lines align. A long road. If I blur my vision I can close the gaps between.
How is it you’re so wise? he asks.
I’m not, I want to say. It’s just how I feel. That some turn at a crossroads or crossed-stars brought me to you. Words mean nothing. We stare at our palms.
Michael says, Let me help you with your pots.
I hand him clean brushes, show him the steps. Kintsukuroi, he says, savoring the word. He learns quick and fits the pieces together with great patience. He gives over his entire concentration to each bowl, each vase, puzzling the shards together, gliding on the gold.
No one will forgive us. No one will care how my heart swells with the sight of his clean fingernails, the dark hair curling on his forearms, the wrinkles radiating out from his eyes. He catches me watching, says, What?
Nothing, I say. You’re good.
I always wanted to work with my hands.
Why don’t you, I almost ask but there’s no reason to poke a sore spot that has nothing to do with me, so instead I say, You are rather talented in that department.
First smile of this afternoon and my ribs feel like they could shatter.
We don’t go back to the motel.
Part of me regrets this, part of me is relieved. I wonder if there are unread notes in the waste basket—notes other guests ignore, or read and interpret as they need to, like a horoscope.
We go to a different motel, but it’s too shabby, too depressing. We drive up to the waterfalls and park where no one can see us. We use my studio, more often than we should.
Dot’s musical goes up and I miss all three performances because of how behind I am. She accepts my profuse apologies with icy sadness. She says, more than once, You have to get your work done, I understand. But she doesn’t. And why should she—I am plainly being unfair. She tells me after the final show that the kids got standing ovations, that it was one of their best, and I say, Next year, I’ll be there. Next year, she reminds me, she’s handing the reins to the assistant director. Maybe someone videoed it, she says, drumming her fingers on the counter. I’ll ask around.
The next weekend, Michael and Anne go on holiday and I throw until my wrists turn stiff and fiery and I have to strap on ice packs. I doze in the velvet chair and wake as the sun sets, the clear almost-summer rays spilling in the windows. I’m not usually here this late. The light illuminates the kintsukuroi pots—all lined up in a mirage of perfect wholeness.
The weekend of the craft fair my wrists burn like they’ve been in the kiln and when I drop the coffee mug Dot hands me and scald my foot, she digs my wrist braces out of the medicine cabinet and says, I’ll come with you—you’re going to need help wrapping and handling the money.
I don’t, I think, but say nothing, go upstairs to my closet and find the arm warmers she bought for my birthday last year. It’s awkward to wear them over the braces, but at least the comments will be about the pretty yarn rather than questions about what I did to my wrists.
Dot hovers while I get ready, asking me what she should wear, like she’s never been to a craft fair, like it even matters. She asks if she can bring anything out to the car and I tell her the boxes by the back door, but when I come down, she’s gotten distracted by a phone call, she’s laughing, standing by the window. I heft the boxes, slam the screen, wait in the passenger seat for her to finish, and we drive across town in silence so thick we’d need a chainsaw to cut it.
But once inside the drafty old building, I’m glad she’s there. I shoulder the bags, and she unloads the car into the dumbwaiter, makes several trips to the booth, unwraps my wares and helps me with the display. Just before the doors open, she says, I’ll grab us some coffee.
I vow to be nicer; I vow to say thank you when she returns.
She’s gone for a while—probably bumped into someone from work—and my first customer is Anne. We’ve never met, but I recognize her the moment she appears. She’s smaller in person, more delicate than I’d imagined her. The room falls quiet and blood rushes in my ears. Act normal, I tell myself.
She picks up a kintsukuroi vase—I brought only a few, I haven’t even priced them—and says, This is gorgeous. How much?
I debate: tell her it’s a display? name an outrageous price, five-hundred, maybe? but Dot walks toward me, holding our coffees, and the sounds of the room return, chatter, coins changing hands, kraft paper wrapping breakables—and I say, They’re $50 each. Real gold in the lacquer—but they’re not functional. You can’t put water in it.
Anne turns the vase over, runs her fingers along the base. She says, But with a few lunaria pods—it’d glow.
I want to hate her. I want to say, I know your husband, I know that spot on his thighs that makes him quiver. But she’s standing there, holding the vase out to me along with a fifty, and her face is so wide open and graceful; she has a crooked eye tooth and a lopsided smile.
Dot takes the vase and the money, says, Christine hurt her wrists.
Anne points at the arm warmers, says, Great cover-up.
And like I’m possessed, I extend both arms to her, palms up, and say, Cashmere. Anne touches one wrist, then the other, says, Exquisite. And look at that wishbone stitch.
You’re a knitter, I say.
Anne looks surprised, but nods. A hobby, she says. Nothing quite this lovely.
Dot hands Anne the wrapped vase and Anne gives a little wave. She weaves through the now crowded room. Her slim hips, the perfect straightness of her hair across her t-shirt makes me want to weep. I want to call after her: I didn’t mean to love him. I never wanted this to happen.
Dot says, Here, drink your coffee. It’ll help you wake up.
Michael comes to the studio Monday morning. I’m surrounded by half-unpacked boxes, my hair unwashed, my hands dusty. What a nice surprise, I say.
He roughs his hand over his chin. Did you sell any of the pieces I did?
I didn’t bring yours.
He says, It’s on our mantel. First thing I see when I come in, last thing I see before leaving.
Michael, I say. It’s just a vase.
Your vase. In my house.
Break it, I say. Say it was an accident.
Michael shakes his head. I can’t do that.
Then what? It’s not like I had a choice—
I know, he says. I’m sorry. It must have been awkward.
I remember Anne’s fingers tracing the stitches of my arm warmers, her smile as she took the vase from Dot.
Complicated, I say.
I never answered your question, he says, and though it’s been a couple months, I know exactly which he refers to.
It wasn’t fair of me to ask, I say. Loosening the straps of my braces, I tug one, then the other, off, massage my wrists, my palms.
It was fair, he says. I owe you that at least.
We lock eyes. I hate the unknowing, the fear, I glimpse there.
I’m not in any rush, I say.
He takes my face in his hands and kisses me, soft as the first time, lingering way too long before he lets go.
Michael parks the truck overlooking the waterfalls. He hasn’t looked at me during the entire bumpy ride out here. The ticking of the engine and the water crashing down on the rocks fill me with dread. I wish we were at the motel. I wish Michael would undress me, reveal the lace bra I wear, the new underwear.
Last night was summer solstice and an almost full moon but Dot was too tired to sit out back with me and I spent hours on the porch steps alone, gulping rosé with the words where the light pours in running through my mind. My head hurts now, the wine bottle empty and Dot grimacing as she tossed it into the recycling bin.
I could write a fifty-page list of reasons not to feel bad for myself—food deserts and abandoned children and pit bulls trained to kill, GMOs blighting our agricultural landscape and fresh water going scarce, drone attacks and homeless veterans and stray cats—but here I am in the passenger seat of this F-150, wishing I had aspirin and a soft pillow, wishing Michael would pry my fingers apart and kiss me instead of clenching the steering wheel.
He says, I’ve been thinking—
I stare at the riot of green leaves, sunlight filtering down in watery bars.
He says, We have to stop.
You could leave Anne, I say. I’d leave Dot, for you.
Christine, he says. We can’t be responsible for that kind of wreckage.
A woodpecker takes up hammering somewhere nearby. In my peripheral vision, I see Michael reach for my hand, but draw back when I make no motion. I hear him say, I’m sorry.
Please, I say.
I can’t, he says.
I know, I say.
I’m sorry, he says again.
Please, stop saying that.
We’ve been reckless, he says. Selfish.
I crack the window, afraid the heat inside my chest will ignite, send splinters flying.
Michael hits the steering wheel. Damn it, he says. Nothing feels right.
Stop, I want to say. Stop.
When I first set eyes on you, in your studio, I thought some piece of me might crumble if I never held you or tasted you or breathed you. I shouldn’t have—I couldn’t resist you.
Don’t.
I can’t leave Anne, he says. I need to be there for her, for my family. And I want to be there. I couldn’t live with myself—knowing I’d hurt them.
How then? I want to ask. How?
Christine, he says, turning in his seat, cupping my cheek so I have to face him. Please forgive me. I wish I trusted my heart the way you do.
I lift my hand to cover his, pressing my cheek into his palm. For a long time we stay like this. Until I release him and say, Take me back.
In the studio parking lot Michael cuts the ignition and we stare into the thicket of brambles that edge the pavement. We do not kiss; we do not say goodbye. I hope he’ll do something, anything, to change this moment. He takes my hand in his and turns it, traces the lines of my palm. We’ll find a way to live with this, he says. I meet his eyes—they mirror my own, exhausted and shell-shocked and dry.
I’m not so sure about that, I say.
We will, he says. We’ll scar up.
But how deep the line he cut down the center of me, how long it will take to heal. I think of our new body, cracked in two. The gold we smeared on our life lines, our fate lines, our heart lines.
We’re strong, he says. We have to be. He closes my fingers and holds my fist between his two hands. With my free hand, I press a finger to my lips, then to his.
Don’t leave me, I want to say.
But already I can see how we shine.
I climb into my car, arrive home with no recollection of the drive, compose my face in the rearview.
Dot’s on the couch, bare feet on the coffee table, watching a music video on her computer. She glances up at me, says, You’re early. What happened?
Nothing, I say. Not feeling well.
Too much wine last night, she says with a ghost of smile.
Not that, I say. A cold, maybe. Summer flu.
You’re pale, Dot says. Go get in bed, I’ll bring you tea.
I don’t need tea, I say, closing my eyes against the sunlight flooding the room. All I want is to go upstairs and draw the shades and slip between the cool sheets of darkness. I need to rest.
Dot turns her attention back to the screen. You should have come home sooner.
—end—