Learning to Stay by Erin Celello Page A

He doesn’t seem to notice one house over any other.
    I reach over and link my fingers with his.
    “Brad?” I am afraid of what I’m about to ask, but I feel I have to, and so I plow ahead, giving scant thought to the words I’m saying before they tumble out. “When you asked Cheri if she wanted to know what a real problem was, you were talking about over there, weren’t you?”
    Brad doesn’t look at me. His gaze is still fixed outside his car window and his face is stony. He nods.
    “What were you going to tell her?” I ask him.
    “Stop it, E.,” he says.
    “What was it like over there, babe?” I press. I am suddenly desperateto know what he knows. To understand the sort of life he’s lived all these months away from me, from here. To have confirmed or denied that he saw the terrible things, or worse ones, that fill the news each night.
    “Goddamn it, Elise. Drop it.”
    I’ve seen documentaries on the two world wars, Vietnam, Rwanda, and Kosovo. I’ve seen the cable news coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan. I know what the definition of atrocity is. But that was over there, and Brad is here. And I need him to share this with me. I need to feel close to him again. For him to feel that closeness, too. There’s a huge hole in our life together, cut out of the last year by preschool scissors that left ragged edges and pieces strewn about. If we can arrange those pieces into a complete picture that we can both see, maybe then we can resume living this life we built together.
    “There’s nothing that happened that would make me think any different of you,” I say. When he doesn’t respond, I squeeze his hand and whisper, “You can tell me. It’s okay.”
    Brad snatches back his hand, and when I look into his eyes, they are wild and brimming.
    “Goddamn you,” he says.
    When I slow to a stop at the intersection of Sherman and Gorham, Brad opens his door and gets out.
    “Brad!”
    He looks at me before he slams the door. He shakes his head and jogs off.
    Twice I roll down the window and call to him to get back in the car, but he ignores me. I resort to trailing him at a speed so slow, it’s nearly idling. If it weren’t for Brad’s outfit—khakis and an untucked button-down shirt—you’d think he was out for a jog, his cadence is so steady and sure.
    Outside the car windows, twinkling lights—some multicolored and some white—are blurred by the tears pooling in my eyes. It’s a kaleidoscope of merriment meant for someone else this year.
    When I’m certain that Brad is, in fact, headed home, I drive ahead of him. I’m able to start a fire and open a beer for each of us by the time he arrives. When he doesn’t come inside, I meet him on the front porch.
    I hold out a bottle to him. “This is a cold and very funny-looking olive branch,” I tell him. He doesn’t laugh, but he takes the bottle from me.
    “Come inside,” I say. “I have a fire going.”
    This is the way we’ve weathered many a Wisconsin winter—a crackling fire and just the two of us, talking, at the end of the day. It isn’t regular or planned enough to be a routine, but they are the key moments—the day stretching out behind us like a race well run and our voices floating in the dark—that I will remember above any others.
    Brad shakes his head and pats the space on the porch step next to him. “I’m tired of being hot. I’m tired of sweat. It’s good to feel cold,” he says.
    I’m wearing only a long-sleeved shirt and a thin sweater, and the winter wind cuts straight through to my skin, but I sit down next to Brad. Tonight, we don’t talk. We sit and sip, staring out at the streetlights coating the scene with an effulgence that makes it look as though it’s been painted on canvas.
    When the shivering my whole body is doing migrates to my teeth, Brad wraps an arm around my shoulders and pulls me close. I shut my eyes and breathe deeply, and as I do, I hear Sondra’s words in my ears. But they’re drowned out by