With or Without You

by Caroline Leavitt

Genres: Marriage & Divorce; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

After almost twenty years together, Stella and Simon are starting to run into problems. An up-and-coming rock musician when they first met, Simon has been clinging to dreams of fame even as the possibility of it has grown dimmer, and now that his band might finally be on the brink again, he wants to go on the road, leaving Stella behind. But when she falls into a coma on the eve of his departure, he has to make a choice between stardom and his wife—and when she awakes a different person, with an incredible artistic talent of her own, the two of them must examine what it is that they really want. Unapologetically honest and intimately written, With or Without You is a contemporary story of what happens to relationships as the people in them change, whether slowly or in one cataclysmic swoop.

Release date: August 4, 2020

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

THEY WERE ARGUING AGAIN.

Stella, her nose stuffed from a cold, her lungs clogged, wrapped her arms about herself, flopped down on the couch, and grabbed for another tissue. She blew a puff of air to get her hair out of her eyes, which were watering and itchy. Her hair felt too long, her body too clammy. She thought she had taken a Sudafed a bit before, and then another later, but if she had, they weren’t working. Simon was leaning against the dining room table, still wearing his lucky traveling clothes—black T-shirt, black jeans, black boots—lucky because he was afraid of flying, and he thought that something as simple as a uniform that once got him through a transcontinental flight filled with turbulence, lightning, and oxygen masks would be a talisman to protect him. Planes terrified him, even though he’d memorized all the precautions. In the event of a crash, you were supposed to sit with your legs firmly planted apart, not in the fetal position the way everyone else was—otherwise you’d break your legs and never be able to walk or even crawl away from the burning fuselage. Bring your own food so you didn’t get food poisoning or sour your stomach. And never, ever take a seat at the front or in first class because that was the part of the plane that broke off first, snapping like a hard pretzel.

Disaster. Everywhere he looked, when he thought of flying, he saw disaster.

His suitcase lay open on the table, a jumble of dark clothing. Hers was on the floor, everything in tight rolls, more than enough for the week she was taking off from her nursing job at the hospital to go with him. He was staring at her the way he would if he didn’t know her, which he’d been doing more and more lately, something that unnerved her so much that she wanted to shake him, point to herself, and say, I’m right here. All you have to do is look.

She took another sip of wine, just to calm herself, maybe to add some heat to her body, to stop the queasiness rolling through her. Outside, it was another freezing February New York City winter, the snow blazing down in sheets against the windows and layering over the sidewalks. There was a blizzard advisory for an accumulation of twelve inches, complete with school closings and warnings for the elderly and the infirm to stay inside. It was the main reason they were here tonight in the apartment. The airports were closed, and their flight to California wouldn’t be rescheduled until tomorrow night at the earliest. The weather was too snowy for them to drive, plus they didn’t have enough time.

Simon’s band was once successful, but that was twenty years ago, when she had first met him and he was just twenty-two himself and his band was riding high with Simon’s megahit song, “Charlatan Eyes.” Simon didn’t even really sing back then; he was just harmony and played bass guitar to the lead singer Rob’s aching wail. Once, Stella had even heard the song as Muzak in an elevator at Macy’s, and while everyone else in the elevator seemed to ignore it, she flushed with pleasure. Over the years, the band still played for decent-sized audiences and recorded a few more albums. A few more songs got some play, and Simon began to sing more of his own songs, but the band didn’t build, the audiences and the stages their manager booked became smaller, and the awards they were all so desperate for never arrived.

The band had reached a crossroads. Their manager was thinking of retiring and Simon was worried that he was about to slide into rock-and-roll obscurity and never escape. He kept reminding himself of all the older musicians he knew who still toured and played and had no intentions of ever quitting, because what else was there but the joy of this? His band had kept on, even in the face of younger and younger bands, younger dreams, too. “Dad rock,” someone had once called the band, which Simon knew meant you didn’t rock at all.

But now, all that could be different.

Just last month, the band had been playing at Lobster’s, a dive on the New Jersey shore, all chipping gray cement walls and scuffed floors, no chairs or tables, so you had to stand. Then this guy strode in, and for a moment Simon hadn’t recognized him. Not until the guy lifted his face and took off his dark glasses and Simon saw those familiar odd green eyes. He saw the gleam of oil that slicked back that famous wild mane of black hair, and there was Rick Mason, twenty-six years old with three Grammy wins to his name, settling against the wall, leaning forward, and listening to the band. Really listening. Afterward, Mason even came backstage and told them how influenced he had been by their early work, how when he heard they were playing this joint he had his driver bring him right over. He talked about how blown away he was by Rob’s voice, how it soared so high that it made him feel like every glass in the place would smash. He talked about Kevin’s drumming, and then he turned to Simon. “‘Charlatan Eyes,’ man,” he said, shaking his head, awed, and Simon froze in wonder that Rick Mason actually knew he was the writer, that the two of them were actually sharing the same space. “So I got this idea,” Mason said. “What would you guys think about being my opening act for a two-night gig in Los Angeles? And if that worked out, well, maybe the rest of the tour, too?”

Simon had been so shocked that he felt his tongue freeze in his mouth, but Kevin grabbed Mason’s hand and pumped it. “We’re in,” Kevin said. “We’re so in.”

And suddenly, there it was right in front of them, shiny as a new dime: hope. They would be noticed, they would get a new manager, one who could break them out to the bigger labels. Maybe Simon could even sing what he wrote.

It happened so fast, with the news traveling like a river breaking through a dam. There was a small mention of them in some of the music publications in print and online, how they were opening Rick Mason’s show. Simon cut out the item and kept it in his wallet, another lucky piece that eventually ended up in tatters because he kept taking it out and rereading it. Simon began coming home at four in the morning after rehearsing, so keyed up that he couldn’t sleep, damp and sweaty and so exhilarated that Stella tried to be happy for him, too, although inside she felt selfish, sad, and guilty.

He saw hope, but she was on the ground. This gig was just a two-night engagement, and even if it became a tour, it didn’t necessarily mean stardom. Mostly she thought of all the things that she herself wanted, and like Simon’s dreams, they had an expiration date she couldn’t ignore.

She loved this apartment they were in and she loved him, but she felt it was time to make some decisions. She had been hoping that the grind of his traveling might finally stop. He could still do what he loved—write songs, do some session work—and he could do it right here with her. Wasn’t it time to move on, to build a bigger life? Finally get married. Have a child.

“I’m glad you’re going to be there for all of it,” he said.

She had told him she’d go to LA because it was so important and it was the first time she’d be traveling with him in a very long time. She agreed only because it had seemed to matter so much to him—he was so anxious that everything turn out different this time. “You’re going to be my lucky star,” he told her. They were going out four days before the actual concert and Simon had convinced her that they could get some vacation out of it, too. But now she wasn’t so sure because she knew he’d be rehearsing all the time. It felt like he was angling for more from her, rushing toward this new life and wanting her to speed there with him when still nothing was for certain.

She had given up things for him before. After their first year together, she’d left her job as an RN because it was so exciting to travel with him. And then being on the road got old, or maybe just she did. But by the end of her second year of touring with him, she began to feel the need to be a nurse again. It was like a physical pull. She missed having a community of doctors, nurses, and staff that she saw every day.

She yearned for the feeling that she had a place to be, with a job that was important. It was such a different life from the one Simon had. She hadn’t known what to expect when she first told him she wasn’t touring with him anymore, that she’d call him every day, that she’d miss him like crazy, but she couldn’t go. To her surprise, he nodded thoughtfully and said he got it. He said he understood her loving something the same way he did his music, needing something of her own. And maybe, too, she thought, he was even a little relieved when she went back to nursing, because then he wouldn’t have to worry about her increasing restlessness on the road.

Now she felt him watching her. She knew he wanted to talk about catching the next possible flight out, about what it would be like to be Rick Mason’s opening act, about what could happen, about all the crazy pot-of-gold possibilities. But she wanted to talk about her own dreams.

“What are we doing here?” she said. “Why can’t we make a decision?”

They were both forty-two. She knew how everything changed when you hit your forties. Everyone took stock. She wanted to buy their apartment while they had the chance. It was that rare thing, a rent-stabilized place they had found years ago, just six months into their relationship, just by pure luck and word of mouth, and so cheap and affordable they’d snapped it up the second they saw it. A small one-bedroom with an actual alcove that would fit a daybed. It was on Twenty-Second Street off First Avenue, and it had gleaming wood floors and a high ceiling and all the rooms were filled with light. They could just afford it on her nurse’s salary and his money from the band. And Simon’s parents (or at least his mom) sometimes sent them money when they least expected it, which helped out immeasurably. But Stella knew the landlord was planning to convert the building to co-ops. They could stay renters if they wanted, but they had an opportunity to buy at an insider’s price, which she knew would pay off for them down the road with equity and tax breaks. And if they got married, another thing he didn’t want, they’d have more tax breaks. They could even be solvent enough to start a family before it was too late.

But that was another thing that Simon didn’t want.

“Why this again and again and again?” Simon asked her.

“I need to talk about it.”

“Stella,” he said wearily. “Can’t we argue about this another time? Isn’t it enough that we have the weather to worry about? If this LA thing turns into something, if we get the whole tour, maybe then we can consider it.”

“Why can’t we consider it now?” she said. “What if we take out a loan? This place is only going to zoom up in value.” She paused. “Two other apartments were snapped up already.”

“You want to be saddled with a loan?” Simon said. He poured another glass of wine and then topped off hers.

“We could break through one of the walls. Or we could have that alcove be a baby’s room.” She waited, suddenly a little scared.

“Stella, Jesus,” he said. “Kids were never part of what we wanted. It was always just you and me. You said that was enough.”

It was true. When they had first met, she didn’t want anyone around her but him. A child would complicate things. She remembered her parents’ relationship, how close they were, like a seam in fabric, and though they had loved her, she always felt like she was the hanging thread at their hemline, always terrified that any moment they might snap her free. She wouldn’t want any child of hers to ever feel like that. But then when she’d hit her late twenties, she started noticing pregnant women, babies as glossy as pearls, and her whole body had yearned more and more for them. At her last visit to her gynecologist, the doctor had paused after she was done with the exam. “Just something to chew on,” the doctor said, “but your chances of conceiving are getting slimmer and slimmer. At thirty-four, they’re sixty-three percent. You have a five percent chance once you’re in your forties.”

Stella had felt herself crumple at the doctor’s words. Her mom had had her when she was forty, and Stella was only two years beyond that. And she knew women who had gotten pregnant at forty-four or even forty-six. But would she be that lucky? She felt time whizzing past her. “You could think about adopting,” the doctor said. “But that’s not so easy, either. And it can be very pricey. Or we can talk about donor eggs. Or surrogates.”

That night, when she told Simon her concerns, he was unmoved.

“You know I don’t want a kid. And that doesn’t make me a villain,” he said now.

“And it doesn’t make me a villain for wanting it.” She touched his arm. “I don’t want to look back and think, Oh, my God, I should have done this.”

“I like our lives the way they are now,” he said. “I’m happy with us like this. Aren’t you?”

Stella stared at him. The wine was tart and red, and Stella finished her glass and poured another. “I’ll go back to school, be a nurse practitioner. It’ll pay off for us. A big money jump.”

“You’re going to work, return to school, and have a child? How are you going to do all that?”

“I will. I can. And aren’t you part of this, too? We’ll figure it out.”

She knew that Simon hated when she did this, mapping out the future she wanted and planning on how to get to it. He teased her about not being spontaneous. He kept telling her about the wonder he found in the world, the way he felt when he got lost in playing or singing, standing in front of a crowd. Instead, she was always thinking about equity, about how when they were old, they could sell this place and move someplace less exorbitant than Manhattan, even though she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. She wished she could rush ahead into the future because if Simon could see how it would be, she knew he would change his mind. She could see everything unfurling like a road map and all she wanted was to get to her destination.

“There’s no such thing as true security,” Simon said. “It’s a myth. You just want it because you didn’t have it with your parents.”

“That’s not true,” she said, even though she knew that it was. Her parents had been bohemians, her mom a substitute Spanish teacher at the local school in Park Slope before the neighborhood was cool, never knowing when she’d have work but liking it that way because of the freedom it gave her to sew and design dresses. Her dad taught woodworking at the same school and did a little carpentry on the side. But it was never enough. They rented an apartment instead of owning their place or even living in a house like all of Stella’s friends did, and sometimes they didn’t have the money for the electric bill, something that always terrified Stella as a child, even as her parents joked and set out candles, claiming it was romantic. Stella worried that her life might always be dark. She had never wanted to be that scared again, which was why she went into nursing, where she always would have steady work, she’d always be needed, no matter where she lived.

“We could be able to afford a child,” she said. “And I’ve seen how good you are around kids.”

“I like kids and babies. I really do,” Simon said. “But I’m just not equipped for them. What if something big happens in LA? What kind of father would I be, always on the road? How many babies did you see when you came on tour with me?”

“A few,” she said. “A lot.”

“You know that’s not true. And you know that kids become teenagers who hate you.”

“Our kid will never hate us,” she said, prickling with anger. She tried not to imagine a teenager, storming out the door, face shuttered. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

“Why the fuck do we have to argue about this again?” He threw up his hands. “I don’t want this! You do!” He gave her that look again, like he was unpeeling her, causing her to lift her hands to her face to make sure she was still all there, all in one piece. She grabbed for a tissue and sneezed into it, and her eyes began to well.

“You could want it.” Her voice rose to a shout. A sting settled in her throat and her sinuses hurt. She had had colds like this before, and she knew how they liked to travel to her lungs, breeding into full-blown bronchitis, despite all the vitamin C and zinc and cold meds she’d take. If she couldn’t nip it now, she’d be in bed for days, miserable and sick, something she couldn’t afford. If she dared to get on a plane like this, her sinuses would probably blow right out. She had to get better. She just had to. She drank a bit more wine, hoping it would make her sleepy enough to doze it off.

Simon covered his face with his hands, as if that might make him invisible.

“Why can’t we ever really talk about us?” she said, persistent in pushing him. “Everyone around us has homes they own, a family—”

“You know that’s not true. And we’re not everyone.” He folded one black sock over the other, so it looked like a tongue, and then he hurled them to the floor. “Anyway, we are so talking about us.”

“No. Not really. I’m talking and you’re deflecting me.” She sneezed again and hunted for more tissues. He sighed and looked around the apartment. He drained his wineglass and filled it again.

“You’re making me really, really sort of pissed off,” she said.

His mouth tightened.

“Spit it out,” she said. “Go ahead. Say whatever it is. You know you want to.”

He shook his head. “No, not now. You’re too upset for this conversation,” he said. “Too snuffly.”

“I hate it when you tell me how I feel,” Stella said. “You never used to do that. You used to listen. You used to really hear me.” Her sinuses were so clogged that her eyes hurt. This argument felt different, angrier than usual. They were both fed up. She was tired of feeling so raw, like her body was filled with shards of glass. Her whole face ached.

“Do you think if we keep having this conversation the answer will eventually come up different?” Simon said.

Stella wished that she could just get up and dramatically storm out, stay away for a few hours, and then come back to find everything changed, including him.

“Why do we always have to do what you want,” she said. Her anger swelled. She braced a hand along the wall.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey, hey, hey.”

She heard the alarm in his voice and she made a decision. “I changed my mind. I’m not going with you to LA,” she said. “I’m sick. I feel crappy. I just want to stay in bed.” As soon as she said it, she felt a flare of surprise, because she didn’t realize until now that it really was what she wanted, that it seemed like the answer. He could go to LA and miss her, and she could be here and miss him, and then, when he got back, they could reboot.

“You’re telling me this now?”

“I guess I am.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Well, we’re not leaving at least until tomorrow night. You can baby yourself until then, get better—”

“You don’t understand. I’m not telling you not to go—I would never do that. But I can’t go with you this time. I can’t do it.”

“I don’t understand you.” He touched her face. “This gig is something new, something special. And you used to love touring.”

He was right. It was a long time ago, but she did at first. The excitement of new cities. All those new people to meet. Being so crazy in love that nothing else mattered. She could watch Simon shine onstage, and when he sang, she felt he was singing just to her. But then, more and more on those trips, she had huge patches of time that she had to try to fill herself. She began to get tired of it, to want something other than all those towns going by in a blur. Chicago. Santa Fe. Sedona. The coffee shops where she picked at pie and drank herself jumpy with coffee while she waited for him to finish rehearsal. She tried to find hourly work as a nurse, but there weren’t always jobs.

“Traveling together’s romantic,” he said.

“Right, romantic. Guys and instruments, and hotels with a tiny bathroom that always smells funky. I don’t want to be treated like I’m part of the entourage. I never fit in.”

“Who says you have to fit in? You had fun on tour. I know you did.”

But the last tour she had gone on hadn’t been fun at all. The music had suddenly gotten too loud for her and she started using earplugs. She knew all that screaming noise was messing up her hearing, but she wondered also if maybe the loud music was hurting her. If it was, then she had to protect what she had. “People are going to think you’re my mother, with those earplugs,” Simon said at one point.

He was teasing her, but she still felt hurt. She had looked over at him and noticed a few girls nudging their way closer, laughing at her, mimicking the way she twisted her hair out of her face so she could get the earplugs in. And then the plugs hadn’t even helped; her ears had rung for days afterward. And shortly after that, right before her twenty-sixth birthday, she told him she wasn’t touring with him anymore.

“You’re not worried about him on his own for so long? You won’t miss him?” her friends asked. But Stella knew how much Simon loved her, at least at first. The early days, when they were in their twenties, when she toured with him and he had some fame, there had been plenty of girls hanging around. She had gotten used to seeing the other members of the band partying it up in hotel rooms, the door wide open, the whiskey flowing, the girls so young that they looked illegal. Rob had guys and girls both. Even Kevin, who loved his girlfriend, would wait for her to crash into sleep and then he’d saunter into the party room just like the cock of the walk, eyeing every woman like they were appetizers on an endless menu. Simon refused to participate. He spent what little free time he had with Stella, walking around whatever city they were in, later hanging out in their room, away from the rest of the band. She never had a reason not to trust him. Their whole time together, there had never been a suspicious hang-up on the phone, a note stuffed into their mailbox, a stain of lipstick. And when she had stopped touring with him, Simon had called her every night, sometimes talking for hours. Occasionally she could hear the band members shouting and laughing in the background, but they were with their wives or their girlfriends or, like Simon, on their own. She told herself it was by choice.

“I’m not going,” she repeated.

Simon grew still. “You don’t think it’s going to pan out for the band?” Simon said. “Is that it? You think two days and, boom, it’s over for us?”

“Did I say that?”

“Your face did. Your whole body.”

Simon reached for his guitar and picked out a few notes, something he always did when he wanted to retreat into his own private little space. She didn’t understand how he could do that, trance out of the world.

“Simon,” she said, and he kept playing. “Simon,” she said again, and he plucked a string so hard it snapped. She touched him. He felt so far away.

He looked at her from under his thick lashes, something that once would have made her want to kiss him. Now, though, she was simply annoyed. Grow up, she wanted to tell him. Keep pace with me. She gulped more wine, tears crowding behind her eyes.

“We’re getting older,” she told him. “We’re not kids here.”

“Forty-two still qualifies as kids,” Simon said, and Stella knew he meant it. Simon still wore the same tight T-shirts and jeans he did when he was in his twenties. He spent hours in the gym. His hero was Mick Jagger, prancing around the stage in his seventies, making everyone believe nothing was ridiculous, nothing is impossible. Up close, she could see the fine age lines etched on Simon’s face. One day, she caught him using her expensive skin creams. She watched him brush her mascara wand over his hair, coloring the gray at the temples. When he saw her watching him, he gave her a goofy smile. “McCartney dyes his hair,” Simon said. “I’ll bet you anything Mick Jagger wears a wig. We’re not old. Not yet.”

“We’re getting there,” she said. “Our forties are rushing past us. Then comes fifty. And whoa, coming right at you, there’s seventy.”

“Now you’re being silly,” Simon said.

She didn’t have to ask herself what she loved about him, why she had stayed for so long. She knew there were scientific explanations for love, that pheromones could make you attracted to someone, that even kissing was tasting each other’s DNA and seeing if you could make good, healthy children. Love, she had read, was a chemical addiction to dopamine.

Was it something chemical that allowed her to forgive him when he forgot to meet her at the movies or a restaurant where they actually had a hard-gotten reservation, when she had to nag him to see a doctor for checkups, to keep his inside as tuned and cared for as he did his outside? She remembered every anniversary they’d ever had. The first time he saw her. The first time they made love. The first time he said I love you.

The last time.

Simon f. . .