“What do you mean?”
“I mean, do we actually know why butterflies land on us?”
“I’d like to believe science has progressed beyond that point.”
“Well, I’ve never heard any theories on it.”
“Should we be suspicious about that, though?”
“Yes! We don’t think it’s sweet when flies land on our food. Because flies vomit every time they land on food. Did you know that?”
“That’s not a myth?”
“No. They need to do it, to digest the food,” he says. “So what if butterflies are like that, too? What if they, like, orgasm every time they sit on your forearm?”
“You think that’s why they do it?”
“The horny bastards.”
“And we think it’s so sweet.”
“And they’re like, Uh huh.”
“So I see things are going really well for you here, Doctor.”
He laughs. “Now it’s your turn.”
“For what?”
“I said a weird thing so now you need to say a weird thing. Balance me out.”
“Fair enough. Okay. Well. I don’t wash my back unless I’m married to someone.”
“That’s not weird. Who washes their back?”
“Obviously not you.”
“That’s the worst you got? That’s your secret? That your back is filthy?”
“Yep.”
“I, for one, am scandalized.”
A squirrel hops along the ridge of the hot tub.
“So where did you go yesterday?” she asks.
“The cemetery,” he says.
He spent the night driving around, unsure of where to go. He just had to get out and away from all the people. He couldn’t face them.
“I wanted to talk to you,” he says. “But it would have been too confusing.”
So he drove to the cemetery and sat by his wife’s grave until he fell asleep.
“Jim was right,” he says. “I was a totally different man with Wendy. A better person. Because I was in it. But with Lila, I really was just standing there. I let her run the whole relationship. Like she was my camp counselor or something. And I did love her for it. How could you not? I felt such … gratitude, if that makes any sense. Such appreciation. She made things happen. She performs life very well. If it’s her birthday, she throws a party. If there’s a week off, she’ll book a grand tour of Europe. If she’s getting married, she’ll throw the goddamned most elaborate wedding possible. That kind of thing made me feel … part of the world again. Part of something bigger than myself, you know?”
“I know.”
“But then all the people would go home or we’d be on the airplane, and there’d be nothing to say. Or I felt like everything I said annoyed or bored her. And I guess I kept trying because it felt like my fault. Maybe I was annoying? Or really boring? And here was this wonderful woman who was offering me a second chance at a normal life, a wonderful woman who just booked us a trip for two to Paris, and Germany, and all the places I dreamed of going, so don’t screw it up. Don’t sit on the plane and cry about your dead wife. Instead, I’d sit on the plane trying to come up with things to talk about at dinner. Would literally plan out topics of conversation. Like I was practicing being a person. And she was right to run away from all that. Lila was brave. I told her that back at the hotel. I told her she was very brave.”
It occurs to Phoebe that maybe, in some way, they were all brave. Even her husband—not for lying, not for cheating, that was not brave. But for going after what he wanted. For being the one who could admit when something was wrong. For packing a suitcase and leaving the house because the house was sick.
“And Lila told me everything,” he says. “How she had actually been interested in Jim, and Jim had been interested in her, and how much she hates art. Honestly, that was the part that confused me the most. She kept going on about how she didn’t want to be in a marriage where she was expected to sit around and talk about the Cubists every day. Which was very confusing, since I don’t think I’ve ever said one thing about the Cubists in my life.”
“Now you have.”
“And she wanted to go to Canada? Said something about learning how to ski.”
“She doesn’t know how to ski already?”
“I know, I was surprised,” Gary says. “I was like, Wait, this whole time you didn’t know how to ski! Had I known, I would have called the wedding off months ago.”
“Obviously.”
“It spooks me,” he says, “that I didn’t call off the wedding. After the rehearsal dinner, when I came to you, I knew something was wrong.”
“So what happened?”
