This Time Will Be Different

8

When Jack was sure she'd fallen asleep, he got out of bed and went to the kitchen. He made toast. He usually took butter but tonight ate it with olive oil like Sarah did. Somewhere a car alarm was going off.

Shortly after they'd met in Ireland and then returned to the States, Jack took Sarah to dinner at the Rose Tattoo Café near the art museum. They'd sat up in the balcony overlooking the old-style bar area, and Sarah had talked at length about her art and all the illustrators she loved. Later, he'd driven her back to Princeton; in her apartment she showed him books of all the artists she talked about from the "Golden Age of Illustration." Jack was superficially familiar with a few of the artists—Maxfield Parrish and N.C. Wyeth—but most of the names were new to him. More than the art, what Jack remembered was the passion with which Sarah talked about it.

He grabbed his notebook and brought it back to the kitchen table. What Sarah never understood was that he didn't write in spite of their marriage but, in a way, because of it. At first it had just been about the world he'd thought up, but now it was different; the writing had become about something else.

He was at a critical scene in the longest of the stories, where one of the main characters in the collection learns his wife is pregnant. Since the man is a Cree though, he cannot possibly be the father of his wife's child. This revelation embitters the man and leads him down a destructive path—it turns him into a villain of sorts. Jack hadn't figured out all the details yet, but it was his plan that—by the end of the book—this character would be redeemed somehow.

In stories, there could be heroism and great deeds and redemption.

In the real world, there was just . . . life.

He started writing. For some reason, in spite of everything else that had happened, his mind drifted back to the homeless man, Ben, and his brilliant green eyes. He filled up five pages in forty minutes. Eventually his hand grew cramped and he stopped. He washed dishes, dried them, and put them away in the cupboard. He looked around his apartment for some task to fulfill. In the bathroom, he saw he'd left his pants and shirt folded on the counter. He went to put them away when he remembered the card the Korean woman had given him. It was in his pants pocket, precisely where he'd left it. Seeing the thing gave him a disoriented feeling—like he was learning for the first time about his own infidelity. Why am I this way? He took one last look at it before tearing it up, releasing the specks of paper above the toilet bowl, and watching them rain down like little pieces of confetti onto the still surface of the water.

He stood there, looking down into the toilet, when he heard footsteps. "What are you doing?" Sarah asked, sleep in her eyes. He had not been a good husband, he knew. He had done unforgivable things. He hadn't done right by the one person who he ought to have done right by. He needed to do better. But how many times had he said "never again" only to repeat the very actions he had sworn off? Why would this time be different and last for any longer than a week or a month or until the wretched feeling in his stomach was quelled and the events of the night subsided into some less immediate past? Because this time will be different, he thought. It just will. But how many times had he said that? Any objective person would conclude there was no good reason to believe things would be different this time. And yet he wanted them to be—more than anything.

"Nothing," he said. He pulled the handle and watched the little pieces of paper whirl down the drain.

"What was that?" she said.

"Nothing. A note. To myself." The words cracked in his throat.

"A note?" she said.

"Tonight's not the night to talk about all this, remember?"

"You're right."

"Come on then." Jack took Sarah, the woman he loved, by the hand. She squeezed, and—though she might not have meant anything by it—he felt reassured, consoled, hopeful, from the gesture.