Bread Alone Read Online Free PDF Page B

the aluminum-sculpture coffee table. “Of course not. I mean, yes, there’s something I want to tell you, but it has nothing to do with a woman.”
But he didn’t look at me.
“I’ve just been really unhappy. I’m not even sure why, except I feel confined, like I can’t move. Sometimes, during the day, I’m sitting there in my office and I feel like I can’t breathe.”
I started to touch his face, but he intercepted my hand and placed it in my lap. I said, “Maybe you should go see Dr. Geary and—”
“I just had a complete physical in January. There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“Then what is it?”
He blinked twice. “It’s my whole goddamned life. The house, the job”—he paused, but only for a second before plunging on—”us. Everything. This guy I knew at the club dropped dead during a squash game last week. He was only forty-five, for Chrissake. It makes you question what the hell you’re doing. What we’re doing.”
I felt a lurching sickness in my stomach. “Can’t you tell me what’sbothering you about … everything? I thought this was what you wanted. I mean—”
“So did I.” His eyes had lost their clarity, become like flat, blue stone. “I don’t know if JMP is where I belong. Whether I should try a bigger agency. Or even a completely different—Where do I want to end up ten or twenty years from now? Maybe there’s something else, somewhere else I haven’t even thought of yet.”
While he cataloged possible causes of his malaise, my mind raced. I wanted to shout at him that he was too young for a midlife crisis. I had to stifle the impulse to reach over and trace the line of his dark eyebrows, his perfectly straight nose, the plane of his cheek. I remembered how his face felt next to mine, the crisp scent of his Polo cologne, the way his hair slipped between my fingers like corn silk.
“David, believe me, I understand. You’re working too hard. The money’s not that important to me, honestly. I want you to do whatever you want to. Whatever makes you happy. I don’t need—”
“You’re not listening to me.” His voice took on a too familiar edge of impatience. “What I’m trying to tell you is that I need a complete break from the whole …” His hands opened, then closed into fists. “I need to have the psychological freedom to take risks, to fail. I can’t feel like you’re depending on me to take care of you.”
“I don’t want you to feel like I’m depending on you. I wouldn’t mind if you depended on me a little more. I’m perfectly willing to go back to work, so you can—”
“Wyn.” He cleared his throat. “You’re missing the point here. What I need is to be completely independent. Of you.”
A somewhat belated flash of insight. This wasn’t about us, it was about him. What he wanted. What he didn’t want.
He said, “I’ve wanted to tell you, but I didn’t know exactly how to explain it. And the other problem is, you don’t deal well with the unvarnished truth.”
Sudden tears pooled in my eyes and overflowed, dripping into my lap. He handed me the pressed, white linen square he just happened to have in his pocket.
“David, the unvarnished truth is, I love you. Don’t you—?”
“It’s not that I don’t love you.” The words sliced cleanly through the mush of my sentiment. “I just think it was a mistake to get married. Like we did. So quickly. I don’t think we really knew each other. And I need …” He picked up the handkerchief off the floor where I’d dropped it, handed it to me again. “I need to figure out what’s important to me.”
Sound concerned, but not hysterical. “If that’s how you’ve been feeling, why didn’t you say something before now?”
He looked pained. “I shouldn’t have to tell you that we’re miserable. Don’t you even know when you’re unhappy?”
“I know it hasn’t been so wonderful lately, but we’ve had seven good years. Let’s not throw it all away just because—”
“Wyn, listen to