Free Dream of the Blue Room by Michelle Richmond Page B

things work; maybe that scared him.
    “What did you say?”
    “Nothing. I just dumped the cartons of rice and broccoli beef on the plate. We sat on the sofa and watched TV and ate without talking. Conan O’Brien was interviewing this four-year-old kid who could nibble Kraft cheese singles into the shapes of all fifty states.
    “He didn’t want to make this trip, but I begged him. I convinced him we should make one last-ditch effort to stay together.” I feel sick at my stomach, remembering how I showed up one evening at Dave’s place across the park. I was haggard from lack of sleep. I sat on the sofa for more than an hour, clutching his hand, rattling off a list of reasons I thought we should work it out. I asked him if he still loved me. He paused for two minutes. I know it was two, because I was watching the clock, the minute hand sweeping slowly over the white face. “I do,” he said finally.
    “Then you owe it to us to try, don’t you?”
    “Okay,” he said. “But I can’t make any promises.”
    I describe this scene to Graham. He listens silently. At the end of the story, I find myself laughing at the image of myself on the sofa, halfway through a box of Kleenex, begging. “Humiliating, isn’t it?”
    “So, this last-ditch effort to save your marriage. Is it working?”
    “Every now and then Dave will do something—look at me in a certain way, or make some comment—that makes me think he still cares. But then he’ll be so distant, and I’ll think there’s no hope for us. Maybe we’re missing something that married couples are supposed to have. I’m not sure what it is, exactly.”
    “At least you tried. There’s something to be said for that.”
    “Have you ever been married?”
    “For about ten minutes when I was twenty-five.”
    “What happened?”
    “I was selfish with my time, my space. And travel. I loved to travel, and I didn’t want to be held back. I really enjoyed my solitude. It worked out okay, too, until recently. Then I got sick, and I started wishing I had somebody. Maybe I should have settled down with someone a long time ago. Then she’d be with me now. I wouldn’t have to face this alone.”
    He squeezes my shoulder. I don’t know how to respond, so I just put my arms around his waist and hold him. It feels strange to be holding a man who is not my husband.
    “If we’re not careful the ship will leave us,” I say finally.
    “That wouldn’t be so bad. Me, you, Nanjing, some fancy foreigners’ hotel.”
    I move away from him and walk down the dock. He follows. “I just told you my life story. Don’t I even get a kiss?”
    “I’ve been married for twelve years,” I say over my shoulder. “Give me time.”
    When I glance back, his hands are in his pockets and he’s looking at the ground, walking slowly, like a man who isn’t ready to reach his destination. “That’s the one thing I don’t have.”

    Back in our cabin, lying in bed, Dave says, “Why didn’t you ever tell me about the horse accident?”
    “I never thought of it. Compared to what you see every day on the job, it’s nothing.” I think of stab wounds, car wrecks, domestic violence. I think of the smoldering remains of the World Trade Center, and of Dave in his ambulance, heading toward the disaster three years ago, and the sick feeling in my gut when I saw live pictures on TV of the towers collapsing, people fleeing, their faces and clothes and hair covered in a surreal pink-gray ash. At the time, pacing back and forth in our apartment, fearing for Dave’s life, waiting desperately for the phone to ring, I loved him more than ever. I told God that, if He’d just bring Dave home to me, I’d patch up everything, love my husband forever, forge a new devotion. For some months afterward, the commitment held. But eventually the old malaise took hold of us, the bickering returned, and it was a struggle to stay together in that apartment, each of us trying, but failing, to hide our