The Transformation of Things by Jillian Cantor Page B

husbands got home early, and evenDave worked long hours, so what did I have to compare it to? He sat down, leaned back in the chair, and smiled as I started eating. “You seem happy,” I said, between bites.
    “I made my first sale today.”
    “Congratulations.” I smiled at him. “That was fast.” I felt bad that it hadn’t occurred to me before that Will might actually be good at this job. And why wouldn’t he be? He was smart and handsome and well-spoken. I would’ve bought something from him if he’d shown up at my door before we met.
    “I know.” He nodded. “It was.” He chewed carefully, as if trying to piece out what he wanted to say next exactly right. “Maybe I got confused over the past few years, hell, I don’t know, forever. About what was really important to me.” He put his hand on my arm. His fingers were warm, and I closed my eyes and imagined them on my waist, pulling me toward him, pulling me closer.
    “You were a judge,” I whispered, opening my eyes. “That was important to you.”
    “Shit, Jen, I don’t know.” He pulled his hand away and held up his wineglass. “Anyway,” he said, “I made a sale. Life goes on.” He clinked his glass to mine, and then swallowed it all down before pouring himself some more. I took a sip of mine. “You know,” he said, when he finished the wine, “this is nice.” He reached for my hand.
    “This is nice,” I repeated. I thought about all those times when all I wanted was Will to pay attention to me, Will to stop working and get out of his study and want to be with me. And now here he was, doing and saying all the right things. Yet I could see it in the way his face was stretched and tight and tired, in the way he’d drunk his wine too fast: Underneath, he wasn’t happy here with me, with me and nothing else.
    “I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me,” he said, interrupting my thoughts.
    “Oh, Will, I don’t hate you.” I stared into his blue-sea eyes, a little glassy from too much wine, and I knew that I could never hate him. But I felt this oddly terrifying sorrow for him: His career had defined him, everything about him, and now, I knew, he was going to have to figure out who he was, who we were, without it. Sale or no.
    “That’s good,” he said. “That’s very good.” He paused. “I don’t want to lose you.” The sound of his voice faded and dropped, as if he was whispering from the next room, and I suddenly had to strain to hear him. Still, the words rang softly in my ears: I don’t want to lose you.
    I wanted to say something back, but I was overwhelmed so all I could do was nod. I wanted all of it back, that life we’d had once, that life of laughter and passionate sex and good conversation. That life of being happy. Together. But I wondered if happiness was something you could find again, once you’d lost it, or if, after it was gone, there was no way to really erase all the things that had made it disappear in the first place.
    “I know,” he said. “I know.” As if he really did know, as if he could tell what I was thinking. He touched the ends of my new, shorter hair. “I like it,” he said. “It highlights your face.”
    “Do you really think so?”
    “I do.” He moved his hand down, so it covered mine, and then we sat there like that for a while, eating in silence. I wondered, if my neighbors were watching, if they’d be able to see it, the way, as the two of us shared our dinner at the kitchen table, the inside of our house had become just a little more illuminated.
    * * *
    After dinner Will retreated into his study. As I scrubbed saucy splotches off the counter I wondered what exactly he was doing in there, and why he still went in there every night. I didn’t think he was working. But maybe it was a habit that was hard to break, the one thing from his old life that he couldn’t let go of, that space of cherrywood and beige damask, that space that was completely and uniquely his. Or maybe it