Five Days by Douglas Kennedy Read Free Book Online Page B

childcare (except the occasional babysitter or mother-in-law). We suffered broken nights courtesy of babies with colic and were able to laugh about our four a.m. tetchiness the next day. We were frustrated about our lack of latitude. But even though we both felt a little closed in, a little overwhelmed with children and financial obligations, what I remember most about those years together was the way we fundamentally got along, dodged so many potential areas of conflict, helped each other through rough patches without ever playing the ‘I did this for you, now you do that for me’ game. We seemed to be a reasonable match.
    A reasonable match
. It sounds so profoundly pragmatic, so down-to-earth, so devoid of passion. Well, ours too has never been the love story of the century. Nor, however, is it one of those marriages where the last time we made love Clinton was president. Sex is still there – but even before Dan lost his job and began to disengage from me, it had lost its basic exuberance or the sense of mutual need that fuelled it for so long. When we met the attraction was (for me anyway) the fact that he was stable, unflappable, together, responsible. Unlike the man who came before him and was . . .
    No, I don’t want to think about that . . .
him
. . . today. Even though, truth be told, I think of him every day. Even more so over the past two years when the realization was hitting me so constantly that . . .
    Stop
.
    I have stood still.
    Stop
.
    You lose things and then you choose things.
    Didn’t I hear someone sing that somewhere? Or as my dad once ruefully noted when he said to me, in passing, during the weekend of his seventieth birthday, ‘To live a life is to constantly grapple with regret.’
    Is that the price we pay for being here: the ongoing, ever-increasing knowledge that we have so often let ourselves down? And have settled for lives we find just adequate.
    Stop
.
    This morning underscored for me what our life together has become. Dan sleepily reached for me when the alarm went off, as always, at six a.m. Though half-awake I was happy to have his arms around me, and to feel him pulling up the long men’s shirt I always wear to bed. But then, with no attempt at even a modicum of tenderness, he immediately mounted me, kissing my dry mouth, thrusting in and out of me with rough urgency, and coming with a low groan after just a few moments. Falling off me, he then turned away. When I asked him if he was OK he reached for my hand while still showing me his back.
    â€˜Can you tell me what’s wrong?’ I asked.
    â€˜Why should there be anything wrong?’ he said, now pulling his hand away.
    â€˜You just seem . . . troubled.’
    â€˜Is that what you think I am?
Troubled?
’
    â€˜You don’t have to get angry.’
    â€˜â€œ
You seem troubled
.”
That’s
not
a criticism?’
    â€˜Dan, please, this is nuts . . .’
    â€˜You see! You see!’ he said, storming out of bed and heading to the bathroom. ‘You say you don’t criticize. Then what the hell do you do? No wonder I can never,
ever
win with you. No wonder I can’t . . .’
    Then, suddenly, his face fell and he began to sob. A low throttled sob – so choked, so held back. Immediately I was on my feet, moving towards him, my arms open. But instead of accepting my embrace he bolted to the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. I could still hear him crying. But when I knocked on the door and said: ‘Please, Dan, let me—’ he turned on the sink taps and drowned out the rest of my sentence.
    Let me help you. Let me near you. Let me . . .
    The water kept running. I returned to our bed and sat there for a very long time, thinking, thinking, despair coursing through my veins like the chemical dye I have to shoot every day into people who may be harboring a malignancy.
    Is that what I am harboring here? A