The Book of Why by Nicholas Montemarano Page A

the year my second book was published, the year one of Cary’s songs was used in a sweater commercial, the year I shaved my beard and immediately grew it back because I didn’t like to see my own face. There was the year we watched every Woody Allen movie, the year I started running, the year we made our own bread. There was the year the towers fell, of course, a difficult year for entirely different reasons. There was the next year, the year of color codes for fear, but for us there were no codes, just fear, and ours had nothing to do with planes flying into buildings or anthrax or smart bombs—our fear, I should say mine, was a much more personal, a much more selfish fear.
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    After the year of hello was the year of silent Saturdays. Our first year of marriage—one of my favorites.
    No talking. Just gestures and facial expressions and touch to know what the other wanted, what the other was feeling. There were gifts in silence: to put my finger to her lips to say hungry , to have to touch more, to make love without words and to lie, after, with only the sound of our breathing. Every Saturday every year until the last, when I didn’t not want to hear her voice, didn’t want her not to hear mine.
    The last year, I couldn’t not speak. It was too quiet. I would panic, would forget she was in the bedroom, would call out to her, and she would walk into the living room, her finger to her lips to say, Silent day, did you forget? and I would say, “I don’t want to do it anymore,” and she would mouth, Are you sure? and I would say, “Say something, anything—it doesn’t matter.” Then she would sing to me—not words, just sounds, humming—and that way I could hear her voice, but she could still say that she hadn’t spoken.

 
    WE CHOSE NAMES before we tried. Lucy and Vincent for Lucy Vincent Beach, our favorite place on Martha’s Vineyard.
    Cary was against it: she was content living in the present; she didn’t want to pretend something was real when it wasn’t.
    To believe, I told her, is to make it real.
    She smiled at me, rolled her eyes. Our differences, then, endeared us to each other. I believed in knowing; she believed in uncertainty. I believed in control; she believed in surrender. I believed in what could be; she believed in what was.
    â€œBut you wrote me a fan letter,” I joked. “Chapter 6 cured you of your bucket problem.”
    â€œI was flirting,” she said. “Besides, I still have my bucket problem.”
    â€œSweetheart,” I said, “you need to read my next book.”
    In my mind, we already had twins, a girl and a boy, Lucy and Vincent. Born before they were born.
    I reminded Cary that she had done something similar with Ralph. Her previous boyfriend didn’t want a dog, and so for a year Cary pretended she had a dog named Ralph—a joke, yes, and to annoy her boyfriend, but also to win him over, to convince him that having a dog would be fun. She pretended to walk the dog; she set a bowl of water on the kitchen floor; she bought a collar, a leash, and a rubber bone.
    The boyfriend didn’t find this funny or charming, but aggressive. No surprise, they broke up, and a few months later a friend called about a litter of puppies. Cary fell in love with the first one she picked up, a German shepherd that looked exactly like the dog she’d been imagining.
    â€œYou see,” I told her. “We really do see the universe the same way.”
    â€œBut I’d imagined a male dog.”
    â€œSmall detail,” I said. “You wanted a Ralph, you got a Ralph.”
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    The first time we tried, Cary felt a sharp pain in her abdomen. She was the type not to make a fuss over pain, but it became so severe that I had to take her to the emergency room in the middle of the night.
    She sat beside me, her eyes closed, and tried to take deep breaths. Every so often she winced, then