Oh love, it's a brittle madness, I sing about it in all my sadness
It's not falsified to say that I found God so inevitably well,
It still exists pale and fine. I can't dismiss,
And I won't resist and if I die, well, at least I tried
Jason Mraz, "On Love, In Sadness"
Late in the month of June, flash floods prevented Stephanie from driving into New Jersey to get to her first-graders. She called in a substitute and stayed home for two days, hoping to perhaps use this time to rekindle the romance of her marriage to Mark. But instead, she found herself sitting on the couch for the majority of the morning and early afternoon, downing coffee and watching talk shows and movies on cable. Mark spent the majority of his time in the production room.
How different he was now that Roger and Collins were back, Stephanie mused to herself. Suddenly, all of his energy and passion were drained. They hadn't slept together in a month, which was making her anxious. She wanted a baby with Mark, badly, but he no longer seemed interested in her. Several awful thoughts wreaked havoc in her mind—was he having an affair? Did he no longer find her attractive? She had privately begun dieting and going to the gym, hoping to reshape herself so that Mark would want her again. She was a size six when they married, and she was now a size eight. She feared that what her mother said was true: women gained weight after they married.
The rain from New Jersey made its way into the city in the afternoon. Stephanie got herself off the couch, showered and dressed in a pair of old jeans and a soft-knit jersey tee. It was sage green, a color that Mark loved her in. He said it set off the dark red of her hair.
She approached the door to the production room and knocked.
"Come in," said Mark's voice, a bit annoyed that he was being interrupted. Stephanie cracked the door open anyway.
"Hi, babe," she greeted softly.
"Hey," was his simple salutation. He held a pen between his teeth. His brow was furrowed.
"I…I was thinking: why don't we go out for dinner tonight?" She sidled up to him and put her hands on his shoulders. "We could go somewhere quiet…talk…"
"Can't," Mark said quickly, removing the pen from his mouth. He scribbled something down on the clipboard that rested upon his knee, crossed something else out, and replaced the pen. "I have these segments due."
"Dinner won't take long, Mark." She slipped her hands around his chest.
He sighed and glanced at the digital clock that rested on the shelf beside his computers. "I'm going to Collins' in an hour. I don't know when I'll be back."
Stephanie removed her hands. "Oh."
"We can do dinner another time."
She paused. "Sure."
"Are you upset?"
Another pause. "No. It's okay. The weather's crap, anyway."
Mark knew that tone of hers, that tone that told him she was disappointed but would carry on anyway as if nothing was wrong. He'd become familiar with that tone over the past five years.
He waited until Stephanie closed the door of the production room to take off his glasses and pinch the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. He was stretched thin, no doubt about it.
At two o'clock, Mark pushed his high-backed office chair away from his semi-circle of desks and rubbed his eyes. He was supposed to be at Collins' already. It had become a habit, now that he was back in town, to meet up once a week, the lot of them, even though Joanne was frequently unavailable.
Mark went to the closet to slip on his dirty Converse sneakers and headed back towards the living room, where Stephanie was reading a book, her feet propped up on the heavy wooden coffee table. Mark vividly recalled what an ordeal it was to get that damn table up to the fourth floor apartment.
"I'm…I'm headed out to Chelsea now," Mark announced.
Stephanie looked up from her book. "Oh. When will you be home?"
"Don't know. Before dinner I guess."
"You guess?"
"I'll give you a call," Mark promised. He paused. "So…goodbye, then."
"Wait, Mark," Stephanie called out as he walked to the door. "Aren't you going to kiss me?"
"Oh. Right." He turned around and went back towards the living room. She tilted her head towards him and smiled sweetly. He kissed her on the cheek—dutifully, perfunctory, as if he was kissing his grandmother. Her smile evaporated once his back was turned to leave. "See you later, Steph."
She waited until she could no longer hear his footsteps to release the tears she'd been holding back for several hours.
Roger bought a hot cheese Danish and a large cup of coffee at a deli and went to enjoy them on a bench on the perimeter of Central Park, where he was shaded by the overhanging of trees. It was still drizzling, but the rain was icy, leaving a damp chill in its wake.
As he chomped down on his Danish, Roger glanced at the cheap Timex buckled around his wrist. He should have been at Collins' house half an hour ago, but he didn't feel up to going. He thought about calling Mark, but he feared talking Stephanie.
What a strange girl for Mark to be married to: a svelte, porcelain kitten, too submissive and soft-spoken. A complete one-eighty from the women he used to date.
Before Maureen, there had been Elise. She and Mark had met at Brown, before he dropped out. Elise was a crunchy, outspoken activist who didn't shave or use shampoo. Raised by hippie parents, Elise was a hardcore vegan who dragged Mark to protest after protest, played guitar (badly, Roger might add), and ended up dropping out of Brown a year after Mark did to join Greenpeace. She broke up with him in a letter postmarked from Iceland. Mark, in his morbid sentimentalism, hung it on the refrigerator with a magnet, and left it there until Maureen moved in two years later.
For some reason, Mark found himself dating women who were dominant, controlling, who wore the pants, called the shots. He was more than happy to be led around on a leash by a pretty girl. Roger had a feeling that, with someone like Stephanie, Mark was completely lost.
He finished his Danish, gulped down the last of his coffee, and tossed the garbage into a nearby trash receptacle. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and headed towards Chelsea.
As Mark let himself into Collins and Luc's apartment, everyone was gathered in the living room: Collins and Luc on the couch, Maureen sitting cross-legged on the floor, and Joanne in an overstuffed yellow armchair. Maureen was completing an amusing anecdote that had occurred while she was directing a production of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit:
"…So, we're all sitting in a circle on the stage, after the first time we've ever run the show, and we're all in our street clothes and whatever, and I was trying to get them to recite their lines as fast as they could, to help them pick up the pace," she was saying. "In the first act, during the séance, Brett delivers this line, 'Violet, be quiet', to Christina—and without missing a beat, Christina jumps up and shouts, at the top of her lungs, might I add: 'Only if you put your dick in my mouth!'"
Collins and Luc doubled over in laughter and Joanne was giggling softly, looking like she'd heard this story quite a few times.
"I heard Noel Coward was gay," Luc said, "but I could only imagine his reaction to that adlib."
"Please don't tell me she did that during the actual show," Collins chuckled.
"No, no, no," Maureen grinned, "but it definitely broke the tension." She noticed Mark standing in the doorway. "Hey, Mark."
"Hey," Collins waved.
"Hi," Mark said, entering the bedroom. He pulled up a chair. "What's going on?"
"Oh, Maureen was just telling us about her motley crew of actors," Collins replied. "Where's Stephanie?"
"At home," Mark replied. "She had to get a substitute to teach her class today. There was a lot of flooding over there."
Collins gave a small frown, "And she didn't come with you?"
"No. She wasn't feeling well," he lied badly. "She'll come next time."
"Alright," Collins replied skeptically. "And Roger is…?"
"Where Roger is, is anybody's guess."
Mark returned home around nine PM. He slipped off his Converse and wandered into the kitchen, where he found Steph, sitting at the kitchen table with her legs tucked underneath her. A mug of tea was within arm's reach.
"Hey," he said in greeting.
She glanced up at him. "Hi."
"Sorry if I'm a little late. Roger showed up at the last minute, as always. Did you make dinner?"
"No," she said. "I didn't. You didn't tell me when you'd be back, so I just grazed tonight." Mark's head was already in the open refrigerator before she finished the end of her sentence.
"Mm-hmm," was his nonchalant answer. He shifted a few things on the refrigerator shelves. Olives, sun dried tomatoes, tofu.
"How is he?" Stephanie asked.
"Looks like hell. I don't know where he's staying, but it might as well be under the boardwalk at Coney Island."
"Not Roger. Collins."
"Oh. Well, I guess he looks about the same. Except for the oxygen tube he's hooked up to. Looks perfectly normal." Peanut butter, orange juice, a bowl of grapes.
"Mark?"
"Yeah?" Pasta salad, three apples, a carton of eggs.
"I'm pregnant."
Mark froze. His voice suddenly became stuck in his throat. "I—unh, you—that's… great."
"Great?" Stephanie raised an eyebrow. "I'm pregnant, we're finally starting a family, and all you can say is 'that's great'?"
"I didn't mean 'great'," Mark pulled away from the refrigerator and closed the door. "I meant, wonderful. Really. That's fantastic, Steph."
"You mean it?"
"Of course I do," he said with a small smile, all he could muster at this point. He kissed the top of her head. "I'm really happy."
"You are?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"That's so nice to hear, Mark," Stephanie wrapped her arms around Mark's waist. "Maybe this is a sign."
"A sign of what?"
"That we're going to make it," she said cheerfully.
"Mm-hmm," Mark replied in a non-committal tone. "Sure. Make it." He kissed her forehead again. "I'm off to bed. See you there?"
"Yeah. Mark? I love you."
"Love you, too." His words were thrown over his shoulder as he left the room, as casually as a jacket.
A/N: The anecdote from Blithe Spirit is true. I was involved in a production where, during a dress rehearsal, that actually happened. Credit is given where credit is due: thank you to Christina Cummings and Brett Druck for the best rehearsal ever!
Also, a moment of silence, please, for Helga, my laptop, who died just as I was saving all future chapters to my flash-drive. Thanks for being patient with this next chapter, and be aware that the next few chapters will be posted at a little bit of a slower pace, at least until my laptop is fixed.