Empire Falls

going to blab to somebody who’ll buy it out from under him. Every time I try to pin him down about anything, he gets that sly expression, you know? The one he always gets right before Horace gins him.”
    “Janine.”
    She continued staring at her reflection, as if meeting his eye would amount to some terrible admission. When she finally did, there were tears, and it occurred to Miles that there might be something she wasn’t telling him. Something she wasn’t sure of herself.
    “What, Miles?”
    “Are you having second thoughts?”
    She wiped the corner of one eye with the strap of her leotard and gathered her defiance again, causing Miles to wonder, as he had on and off for two decades, what there was about this combative stance that Janine found so attractive.
    “No. Don’t worry,” she assured him. “I’m going through with it. I promise. This time next month all you’ll owe is child support.”
    “I never said I wanted you to go through with anything,” Miles reminded her, suddenly feeling the kind of tenderness toward his ex-wife that occasionally crept up on him when he wasn’t paying strict attention.
    “It’s not Walt and me I’m worried about. What I still don’t even begin to understand is us.”
    “You mean how we managed to make such a mess of everything?”
    Janine made a face at him. “Hell, no, Miles. That part’s easy. We messed things up because we didn’t love each other. What I’d like to know is why. I mean, I told you why I didn’t love you. Everything you did during the last twenty years that pissed me off, I told you about.”
    Miles couldn’t help but smile. True, Janine’s list of his shortcomings was long, comprehensive, and subject to constant revision.
    “Now here we are almost divorced and I’m getting set to marry somebody else, and you still haven’t told me why you didn’t love me. Does that seem fair? I mean, if you were ever inclined to get married again—which I don’t recommend— you’d at least know what to do different, right? Because I was honest with you.”
    “What do you want, Janine? A list of marital grievances? You took up with Walt Comeau, for God’s sake.”
    “Well, sure, throw that in my face.”
    Now it was Miles’s turn to study his reflection in the glass. The man who stared back at him looked exasperated.
    “It’s not fair, and you know it,” she continued. “I mean, sure, fine. I took up with Walt, so you’ve got a gripe. But I took up with Walt because you didn’t love me. I know it hurt your feelings, me falling in love with him, but you shouldn’t pretend you were in love with me, Miles, because we both know you weren’t.”
    “What’s my part in this conversation? If you’re going to speak for both of us—”
    “Are you telling me you loved me, Miles? If that’s what you want to tell me, say it. I’ll shut up so you can.” When he looked down at his hands, she said, “I didn’t think so.”
    She was right, of course. In the deepest sense, he hadn’t loved her. Not the way he’d intended to. Not as he’d sworn he would before God and family and friends, and this simple truth embarrassed him too deeply to allow for anything like analysis. No, he hadn’t loved her, and he didn’t know why. He also didn’t know what to call whatever it was that would’ve prevented him from telling her, even if he had known. If you didn’t call it love, what did you call the kind of affection that makes you want to protect someone from hurt? What was the name of the feeling that threatened to swamp him now, that made him want to take her in his arms and tell her that everything would be all right. If not love, then what?
    Still, she was right. Because whatever it was he felt for this woman whose life had been joined to his for so long, whatever it was certainly couldn’t be confused with desire and need and yearning. Miles knew that much, if only because he’d tried his best to confuse them.
    “Why are you tormenting yourself, Janine?” he said. “If Walt makes you happy, what else matters?”
    She studied him for a minute, then gave up. “Beats the shit out of me,” she admitted, forcing a smile. “I guess I’d just like to hear you say I’m not a horrible person.”
    “I never said you were a—”
    “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Miles,” she said, sliding out of the booth. “You never said anything.”
    “H E KEEPS SAYING he can climb like a monkey,” Miles told his brother. They were