She had never seen him like this before.
She closed the door to the hallway and locked it, then slid down to sit on the floor. Tears were streaming out of her eyes.
What should she do? He was almost pathologically even tempered. She didn’t even know he could get angry, let alone at her. In their entire marriage, they’d had one fight, when he didn’t want to go to her office Christmas party because it was too loud and crowded. She said they could leave early, or that he could just come in with her and stay for ten minutes and leave her and she’d get a ride home with someone else, but he wouldn’t budge. She’d gone herself, and sulked for the next day, punishing him. This man gave workshops to hundreds of people, after all. He had gone to three colleges where there were many people and noises.
He brought her flowers the next day and apologized. Came to Mara’s holiday party a few days later.
But nothing, nothing like this. She had never been scared of him, or his anger, ever. She didn’t really know he’d been capable of it.
She sniffed, wiped her eyes on her sleeve and kissed Pebbles’s little head. The puppy answered with a snore.
Lauren debated calling Steph to ask if this had ever happened, but didn’t want to put his mother in the middle. Instead, she went to Google and typed in a few words: Asperger’s, autism, anger, loss of control.
And then, after she’d read a few articles that seemed to describe what had just happened to a T, she looked up “anger when your spouse is terminally ill.”
Then she called her sister and told her everything.
“Oh, honey,” Jen said when she was done. “Can you blame him?”
“It was scary,” Lauren said, wiping her eyes.
“Were you afraid he’d hurt you?”
“No! No, of course not. It was just so shocking. Like he went Incredible Hulk on me.”
“He’s probably repressed a lot of shit. Do you guys talk about . . . oh, fuck, now I’m crying, too. Do you talk about everything, Lauren?”
“Sort of? We have. I just didn’t expect . . . this.”
“You struck a nerve.” She swallowed loudly. “And if the statistics are right, you were saying the truth.” Jen drew in a shuddering breath. “That fucking dog may well outlive you. I think I want to punch a wall now, too.”
“What do I do about Josh? I don’t even know where he went. I hope he’s talking to Ben. I hope Ben kicks his ass, quite frankly.”
“I think you should probably just . . . cut him some slack, Lauren. He loves you so much. You’re his whole world.”
She knew that.
She hung up with her sister, feeling slightly less alone. For the first time, she wondered about her and Josh. Was it selfish of her, being in a relationship that was doomed? Should she . . . divorce him? It had been really easy to picture him as her rock, her hero, but maybe this was too much for any human heart to endure.
Maybe, she thought, tears dripping onto Pebbles’s head, maybe it would be better if she cut him loose sooner than later. Because she would be leaving him. They both knew that. Divorce might be easier for him to handle. She knew he loved her; that was almost the problem.
Lauren cleaned up the Sheetrock, though obviously she couldn’t patch the hole in the wall without the proper supplies. She took the puppy for a walk. She texted Josh, then called him. He didn’t respond. She had the immature idea to pretend she felt horrible to guilt him into coming back, but she immediately dismissed it as a teenage move (though tempting, sure).
She texted again, saying that she loved him and wanted to talk. He didn’t respond. She called him. It went to voice mail.
She pictured herself going through IPF alone. Well, she wouldn’t be alone. She had Jen and Darius, Sarah, her friends, her mother, her coworkers. There would be plenty of people, and maybe a shared burden would be best (because let’s face it, she’d be a burden).
He came home around ten that night.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
He looked at the wall and didn’t say anything else.
“You scared Pebbles,” she said. “And me.”
“Sorry.”
She rolled her eyes. “Shitty apology, Josh.”
He stood there with his arms at his sides, looking as if it were the first time he was in his own body—stiff, agitated, foreign. “You can’t make jokes about your life, Lauren. Not to me.”
“It wasn’t a joke, honey. The odds are—”
“No! Stop.”
“Joshua,” she said, going to him and taking his hands. They felt like dead things, like pieces of wood. “I have a terminal disease. You know this. I know this. The odds are this dog will outlive me. Plus, she’s prettier than I am.”
“Every time you say something that’s supposed to be a joke, it’s . . . it’s like a knife in my chest,” he said.
She pressed her lips together. “I’m sorry. I don’t . . . I just don’t want to be like my mother. I have to be able to make a joke.”
“No, Lauren!” He jerked his hands away. “Not about your life! Stop trying to be Princess Butterflies and Rainbows all the time!”
She threw up her hands. “You’re the one who just punched a hole in our wall and didn’t return my calls for seven hours. Should you be lecturing me about how I should handle my own diagnosis? Just because you’re a super-genius doesn’t mean you know how to do this. No one does.”
The conversation was going off course, and Lauren’s throat locked down. Being Princess Butterflies and Rainbows (a new name, and one she kind of liked) . . . that was her thing. She clung to that. It was her defense mechanism.
“Josh, I think we should talk about it if you can . . . if we should . . .” The words were a lot harder to say out loud. “Sit down, honey. Come on. It’s me. Let’s talk.”
They sat. The puppy put her paws on Josh’s knee, and he scooped her up, not smiling.
“Honey,” she said, “if you can’t handle what’s coming, then maybe we should . . .”
He looked at her, alarm in his eyes. “What?”
“Maybe we should separate. If this is going to be too hard for you. I would understand that, because I know how much you love me. And if seeing me die—”
“Don’t say that!” he yelled, and Pebbles jumped off the couch with a reproachful look.
Then Josh clamped his arms over his head and sank onto the couch and just . . . fell apart. Big gulping sobs racked his body. In that moment, Lauren’s heart broke all over again. She pulled his hands away from his face and wrapped herself around him. After a second, he hugged her back so hard she could hardly get a breath in.