Read Online Golden State: A Novel by Michelle Richmond - Free Book Online

land in Hopland (which he did) to starting his own radio station (which he didn’t) to building a beautiful set of bookshelves by hand (which he did) to learning how to surf Kelly’s Cove (which he didn’t). I was the type to calculate all the obstacles in my way and, using those calculations, decide whether something was worth pursuing. I had always secretly liked the fact that for Tom, the next big possibility was always just around the corner.
    Now he had it in his head that the next big possibility was, once again, us, but I saw the warning signs.
    “Admit it,” I said. “I always know when you’re going to Norway.”
    He pulled my chair closer. “It’s an art, not a science. You have been wrong.”
    “I’ve got to get some sleep. Wake me up before you leave.”
    “You can sleep anytime,” he said, frowning. “I’ll make some coffee. We can talk.”
    I’d heard it before. He stays up all night and sleeps during the day—a pattern he established long before he became the Voice of Midnight. A small percentage of the population is neurologically wired to be nocturnal; surely, Tom belongs to that subset. He would never admit it, but I know he views my work schedule suspiciously. In the beginning of our marriage, I made an effort to go to shows with him as often as possible. I was never cut out for it, though, even in my twenties: staying out until three in the morning listening to some band he insisted I’d be crazy to miss, then waking with a monster headache and pounding back coffee and aspirin before morning rounds. Eventually, I stopped going to the shows with him. One night several years ago, when I bowed out of backstage passes to anOgres show at the Bottom of the Hill, Tom couldn’t hide his disappointment. “You’re not as fun as you used to be,” he complained.
    “I’m doing a diagnostic lecture with seventy-five first-year residents tomorrow morning. I need to sleep.”
    “Right.” He turned away. “I forgot what an important person I’m married to.”
    Later, he apologized, but his barb had struck the heart of a fundamental difference between us. He’s the perpetual big kid, always up for fun; I’m the serious one. During the years with Ethan, we were more in sync than at any other time in our marriage. I’d finally found a way to let my guard down, experiencing the world through Ethan’s eyes. I worked saner hours and learned to say no to unnecessary commitments—conference appearances, weekend volunteer work. For a while, I stopped publishing, surprised to discover that I didn’t really miss it. Meanwhile, Tom became more settled. He took wholeheartedly to the role of father; when he wasn’t working, he was home. He no longer felt the need to see every new act that came through town. We developed an affection for places that had held no interest for us before: the zoo, the Discovery museum, the old cannons of the Presidio, where Ethan loved to climb. To our astonishment, domesticity suited both of us.
    And then we lost Ethan. If there was one defining rupture in our marriage, an unforeseen event that rearranged everything, it was this. A loss that neither of us was prepared to face. One that we failed to see each other through.
    After that, the ground shifted so slowly, I’m not sure either of us noticed it for what it was. I retreated into my work, into the seriousness of my days, while Tom started going out more often, staying out later, hanging out with an increasingly rowdy crowd. He’d do things that were completely ordinary in his world: the occasional line of coke, a weekend here and there in Vegas, snowboarding trips to Tahoe with guys from the station on slopes way beyond his skill level, one of which ended in a broken collarbone. It was nothing extreme, really, but it was enough to make me wonder, sometimes,what we were doing together. When he watched me fall into bed at nine o’clock at night, exhausted from a day with patients, uninterested in the new Wilco album