Don’t Make Me Turn This Life Around by Pagán, Camille (top novels of all time txt) 📗

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“Maybe September? The weather will be cooler.”

He leaned forward. “I recall you saying, ‘Maybe April’ and ‘Maybe June.’ Should I plan on doing this myself?”

“Don’t be like that. Work has been really busy.”

“Libs,” he said sternly. “You can’t pull the workaholic card on someone who wrote the book on living in the office. It’s a ten-hour drive to Michigan. We could get it done in a single weekend.”

Could and should were two different things. Our father had died in February, right after the twins’ twelfth birthday, and I’d spent the rest of that month, and all of the following, bursting into tears in inappropriate places. I knew that the minute I saw my father’s headstone next to my mother’s, I’d revert to sobbing violently every time I saw a nice old man at, say, the bodega down the street. Thanks, but no.

Our server had returned. “We’re not ready to order just yet,” said Paul as she placed our drinks in front of us.

“Actually,” I said, “I’m ready.”

He sighed deeply. “Go ahead.”

“Caesar salad with chicken,” I told the server.

“Same, but no croutons or dressing,” said Paul.

“Hold the joy,” I remarked.

“Nothing tastes better than being thin. So! Weekend in Detroit!”

“Shiloh often works Saturdays or Sundays. You know that.” Paul was still looking at me like he was expecting me to say something else, so I added, “I’ll talk to him about it and get back to you, okay?”

Now both of his eyebrows shot up, and he was staring at me so intensely that I had to look away. “Libs, I say this as someone who adores you and loves you more than anyone else in the world: Have you been screened for depression?”

I turned back to him so quickly it’s a wonder I didn’t give myself whiplash. “That’s not something to joke about.”

“You know full well that I wouldn’t joke about that.” Paul had struggled with depression and anxiety most of his life. “I’m being dead serious.”

“Har.”

“Again—not joking.”

“Neither am I,” I told him. “I know the signs: I’m not hopeless, I don’t spend twelve hours a day in bed, I don’t want to hurt myself or anyone else, and I haven’t lost interest in sex.” It was a shame I couldn’t say the same of my husband.

Paul held up a hand. “While I’m glad you know what to watch for, I didn’t need to know that last one.”

“You asked.”

“I suppose I did.” His face was pained as he glanced across the restaurant. “Speaking of depressing things, I do have news.”

My stomach sank. As kids, Paul and I had our own language; I guess we still kind of did, because I’d secretly known he was going to tell me something I didn’t want to hear from the moment I’d spotted him at the booth where we were now seated. But after being wrong about my cancer returning, I’d been hoping this was one more thing I’d gotten messed up in my head.

“Is it the boys?” I said.

“No, they’re great.”

“Work?”

He shook his head, then leaned across the table and said quietly, “Charlie and I are divorcing.”

I stared at him blankly. So much for that shared lexicon—he may as well have just spoken to me in Urdu. “I . . . um . . . what?!”

“We’ve been mulling it over for months, but we finally came to an agreement yesterday.”

I felt like he’d just socked me in the gut. “But you and Charlie are the happiest couple I know!”

“No,” said Paul slowly, the way I sometimes did when the twins were being dense, “we’re your closest couple friends.”

“Siblings can’t be friends,” I said, as if this had anything to do with anything. Regardless, he was right. Though Shiloh and I had a small but tight social circle, we spent the most time with Charlie and Paul; the four of us, I’d always thought, balanced each other. They’d been a major deciding factor in our moving out of a charming house with three large bedrooms in suburban New Jersey and into the city. They couldn’t just ruin that.

“My point is, you think we’re happy because you want us to be,” said Paul.

I winced.

“We’ve been growing apart for years now,” he added.

“So grow back together! Go to couples counseling! Don’t . . .” I was getting choked up. Bad enough that our father had died. Now Paul was telling me he was purposefully widening the crack in our family’s foundation? “Just don’t divorce after more than a decade of marriage,” I whispered. “I’ve already done that, and let me tell you, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

He patted my hand. Why was he so calm, when I was having to work hard not to cry into my club soda? “I know, and I’m sorry, Libs. I knew you’d take this hard, which is why I didn’t tell you about it until we were sure.”

I sniffed. “Me taking it hard? What about you? And Toby and Max?”

“We’ve actually been going to therapy as a family. They knew it was a possibility, and I think they’re as okay with it as they can be.”

“You’re saying you told your teenaged sons, but you didn’t tell me,” I said, dabbing at my eyes with my cloth napkin.

“Should I have asked you to join us in therapy?”

Yes. “No.”

He sighed deeply and didn’t speak for a while. When he opened his mouth again, I wished he hadn’t. “I had an affair.”

“You did what?” I said, so loudly that the couple seated at the next booth immediately turned to stare.

“It was an emotional affair,” said Paul in a low voice. “I didn’t touch him. It was just a friendship that accidentally turned romantic.”

“Oh, that’s a relief!” I said sarcastically, though it was, a little bit. If spit and communicable diseases had not yet been swapped, maybe there was still hope for Paul and Charlie to save their marriage. “What were you thinking?”

His brown eyes were flashing with anger, and something else I couldn’t readily identify. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

“Fine. It was