Page 40 of Shame

I step closer. Not touching, but close. And I reach for her hand again. This time she doesn’t tense up. I brush my knuckles against hers, then slide my hand up the sleeve of her coat. The contact, even through layers of fabric, instantly warms me inside.

For a second, I hover my hand over her hip, the shape of her familiar and wonderful and entirely off-limits. Then I wrap my arm around her and pull her in against my chest. As I press my face to the top of her head, I feel tears slip out again, and the fucking therapist was right.

It’s cathartic this time.

She shakes inside my arms, and I squeeze her tighter. “Tell me when to let go.”

She sobs and burrows her face deeper into my chest. I curse myself, and that shame monster inside me growls and hisses, happy with the mess he’s made.

But I’m going to fix it. Piece by piece.

When she finally nods and rocks back on her heels, I let her go.

“Thank you,” she whispers, not lifting her head to look at me.

That’s okay. It’s going to be, anyway.

I squeeze her shoulder one last time, then step back towards the elevator. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Her head jerks up. “What’s tomorrow?”

I give her a little smile. “Whatever you want. Maybe another walk. We can get more shit off our chest.”

She laughs and nods. “Okay. Tomorrow.”

19

Grace

The morning of the show,I do something I’ve been putting off for two weeks. I go to public health and get tested for sexually transmitted infections. It’s an anonymous clinic, straightforward, and I’m told I’ll have results within a week.

It’s the first time I say out loud to another human being that my husband cheated on me. The nurse asks if I need any other resources, and I take a pamphlet on counselling.

“Has he been tested?”

“I don’t think so.”

“He should.”

That really doesn’t feel like my responsibility, but she’s right. I stubbornly want him to come to that conclusion on his own. He keeps saying he wants to make things right, fix us, but that has to start with fixing himself and taking responsibility for the mess of his own life.

He stepped up with press support for the show, though. Better than I expected. On our walk yesterday he told me he’d arranged forThe Starto do a spread on the show, as I asked, but his media manager at work had also made some calls to magazines, and he’d followed up personally with invitations to opening night.

It was more than I asked for, and almost too good to be true.

So I stupidly get my hopes up.

And yes, photographers show up mid-afternoon at the gallery to take daytime photos of the pieces. I get pre-show calls from reporters, and it sounds from their questions like the bent of the articles is in the direction I want: serious art with erotic undertones, an unexpected new star on the Toronto scene after commercial success, blah blah blah.

It’s great.

But then the show starts, and Luke is nowhere to be seen.

I’m an idiot for hinging my happiness on him, of course.I know that. And yet a few days of regular contact and thoughtful conversation tumble me back into that idealistic place of wishing my husband wasn’t a fragile man child.

His brother shows up, though. I’m standing with Alex when Sam and Hazel arrive. She waves energetically, bless her heart, and warmth floods my chest. I can do this. I have friends.

None of them know I’m dying inside, but it’s a slow death. Subtle.

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