Page 17 of Kill Your Darlings

“That makes one of us.”

“Good, I’m glad you had fun.”

“I’m not sure I did.” Wendy had stripped off all her clothes and crawled under the covers.

“You looked like you were having fun.”

“I had fun with Daniela. I had fun dancing. What was going on with you and that mousy girl from down the street?”

“Who, Ellen?”

“Yeah, Ellen. Didn’t she just have a baby?”

“She only came to the party for an hour. Didn’t she say happy birthday to you?”

“If she did, I don’t remember. She clearly came to see you.”

Thom pulled on the flannel pajama bottoms he liked to sleep in and got into his side of the bed, propping himself up on his pillows. “Are you jealous of a twenty-five-year-old new mom?”

“Jesus, Thom. Of course not. I’m just scared you’re going to get drunk and decide that whatever teenager you’re obsessed with should hear all about how you married a monster.”

“I don’t think you’re a monster. You know that.”

“Maybe youshouldthink of me as a monster.”

“Why is that?”

“You’re not the only murderer in this family, you know. You’re just the only one who can’t move past it.” Despite how tired she was, her spoken words felt cathartic, like the beginning of something.

“Sure, sure,” Thom said. “We were in it together.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “It’s... never mind. It’s late. I’m drunk. Jason will be back soon.”

She was quiet for a moment. Thom reached over and touched her shoulder. “Disregard everything, okay?” she said as she turned to her side.

Thom leaned over and kissed the side of her neck. He’d forgotten to brush his teeth. As he slid back to his side of the bed, he said, “Fifty years, darling. Fifty years we’ve been twins in this world.”

She fluttered a hand toward him, not sure if he noticed. The room spun a little when she closed her eyes so she opened them again. The spins made her feel like she was in her tiny dorm room at Rice. Had it been that long since she’d had this much to drink? She was worried she might be sick but decided to try closing her eyes again. This time they stayed closed.

iv

Wendy was snoring gently and Thom was thinking about getting up, pulling on a sweater and a pair of socks, and drinking a whiskey by the fireplace. But that just seemed like an inordinate amount of work. Instead he stared at the ceiling and thought about what Wendy had just said about her being a murderer. It felt like a confession, a rarity from his buttoned-up wife these days, but then again, it was a sentiment she’d professed before. Everything they’d done, they’d done together. That was what she had always said. It’s what he’d said as well, parroting her, even though down deep he felt as though the blood was still on his hands and his hands only. That unfortunate metaphor brought it all back for a moment, the blood pumping from the knife wound in a woman’s neck, her shocked eyes. He sipped some water and told himself to think of something else. He thought of the party and how he’d felt strangely detached during the wholeaffair, which was unusual for him. He liked parties, as a rule. And he liked birthday parties even more, especially since his wife seemed to loathe them. Maybe he couldn’t have fun tonight because Wendy seemed to be the one having fun, drinking too much and cutting it up on the dance floor. Meanwhile he’d been sober, and he kept remembering that scare he’d had earlier in the day when he’d been out shoveling, his heart skittering in his chest like a small dog having a bad dream. Thinking about it now his heart seemed to respond by aching a little. He took several long breaths. Dying at fifty was a perfectly reasonable age to die if you looked at the entire history of humans. Fifty would be ancient to a caveman. Still, despite the lucky life he’d led, it suddenly seemed tiny to him. Like his whole life experience added up to one of those nothing-much-happensNew Yorkerstories. Something by Ann Beattie, maybe. Which was ridiculous, because his life had been full of events, his life had played out in part the way he’d only dreamed of when he’d been a teenager, obsessed with film noir and adventure stories and fatalism. He’d murdered for love and he’d murdered for money. He’d published several essays. He’d had a beautiful son. He had friends. He lived right on the ocean. Why did his life seem so constricted?

He curled onto his left side, his sleeping side, even though he knew it would be at least an hour until he fell asleep. He thought of Ellen Larson. All they’d talked about at the party was parenting, Thom relating to her that Wendy had secretly felt no love for their son until he’d first smiled at her while making eye contact, and then she had felt more love than she’d ever felt before. It wasn’t his story to tell, of course, but he’d sensed it was something Ellen needed to hear.

“I can’t wait,” Ellen said, “but childbirth was an amazing experience.”

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

“But you were there.”

“Well, yes. Feeling enormously relieved that the baby wasn’t coming out of me, while also feeling completely left out from the experience. A strange day.”

Ellen had only stopped in for one drink and then she left. He’d watched her exit the VFW hall, feeling an undefined longing. It wasn’t sexual, so what was he longing for? Maybe that she’d come over for coffee dates and she’d confess to him that she, too, had committed cardinal sins. Maybe she would need saving, or she would recognize that he needed saving. Thom pushed her out of his mind and instead began to play out the most frequent fantasy he indulged in, one in which he woke up transported in time. He was always sent to one specific day, during his junior year abroad at Mather College’s Rome campus. Jill Ringgold, same year as he was in college, came to visit the campus from her own semester abroad in Paris. Thom had been acquaintances with Jill prior to her arriving in Rome. They’d taken a class together on William Blake, and they’d chatted at parties, but nothing more than that. But on the day that Jill arrived at the Rome campus, Thom was the only person she knew there, and the two had spent it together, walking through the city, drinking coffee, then switching to wine. She told him about the eating disorder she’d had in high school. He told her how he’d forgotten to bring any pictures of his girlfriend with him to Rome and now he was having a hard time picturing her face. Late that night they strolled back to campus along the Via di Santa Prisca, the night having cooled enough that Jill had her arm interlocked with Thom’s. Their hips bumped as they walked. Thom remembered that it had felt like a movie, that at any moment they might lift slightly off the sidewalk or break into song. Instead, they hesitated outside of Thom’s dorm-room entrance, then Jill asked if he was going to see his girlfriend Maggie soon. He told her he was and that she was due to join him in Florence in a week. She kissed him on the cheek—he could still sometimes feel her lips almost touching his—and that was that. Thom knew then how easily he could have pulled her into his room withhim, and he’d been regretting not doing it for years. Lately, at night, he played out different scenarios in his mind. In these time-travel fantasies, he’d be returned to that moment outside his room, that dilapidated hallway with its broken floor tiles. Instead of the chaste kiss that had actually happened, she’d wind up in his room. And it wasn’t just a sexual scenario that he imagined, although that was a large part of it. Sometimes they stayed together. In those scenarios their lives were completely changed. But mostly they just spent the one night together, and Thom imagined that a simple act like a one-night stand might alter their lives as well. Jill’s fate would be different. And maybe Thom would never have reconnected with Wendy, a thought so complicated that Thom would return to that night in Italy, fantasize about what might have happened if they had truly kissed. And that pleasant thought was usually enough to gently prod him into the semiconscious state that passed for sleep these days.

2013

November

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