by Sonja Yoerg
Jackie waits in her office, perched on the edge of her desk, to ensure Harlan has given up on her for the evening. Why did he bother to see her in person? He could have raised either issue easily via text—and the question about Nasira did not have to be raised at all. The only reason for him to drop by was to be able to judge her reaction to his oddly confrontational questions. She should have called him out, been more direct from the start. It’s a bad habit of hers, letting Harlan drive the conversation, call the shots without any pushback.
Maybe it’s because one of the few times she did push back, she learned her lesson.
In February 2010, Harlan’s mother died unexpectedly of a stroke in her sleep at her home in Newton, Massachusetts. She was seventy-seven years old. Harlan received the news at home on a Saturday morning, so Jackie was there, as she had been for most Saturday mornings for nearly two years. Harlan took the call in the kitchen, where he was making coffee. Jackie was upstairs, drying off from a shower, and heard his hushed tones through the open bathroom door. In Jackie’s experience, Harlan received few calls at home, which she attributed to his status as an only child and his preference for a clean separation between work and personal activities. She dressed, wrapped her hair in a fresh towel, and went downstairs.
He looked up, phone in hand, when she entered. Jackie noticed the coffee had finished brewing, but he hadn’t poured it. The refrigerator door was ajar.
“Everything all right?” she asked, careful not to suggest she had any right to information.
“That was Miranda, the woman who helps care for my mother.” His voice thickened. “She called to say that my mother died last night.”
Jackie came to Harlan’s side, slid her arm around his waist, and held him close. “I’m so sorry.” She waited for him to lay the phone down or put his arms around her anyway, but he didn’t move. She pulled back and studied his face. He stared over the top of her head. He was clearly in shock. Well, no surprise; it had been sudden.
“Miranda hopes to arrange the service for next weekend. She knows I have duties during the week. It was thoughtful of her.” His voice was wooden.
Jackie had heard Miranda mentioned once or twice before. Harlan didn’t talk much about his family, saying there wasn’t much to talk about when one is the only child of two only children. Harlan’s father, a physicist at Princeton, had died in a boating accident when Harlan was in college. His mother had moved back to her native Boston soon after.
Jackie reached up and laid her palm against Harlan’s cheek. “Let me know if I can do anything, okay?”
He nodded, but she wasn’t sure he was listening.
Jackie stepped around him, poured the coffee, and slid a mug over to him. She sipped hers and waited for Harlan to speak. She had questions but didn’t want to bombard him.
Without a word, Harlan left the room. Jackie followed him to the foyer. He grabbed his wallet and keys from the hall table.
“Harlan?” Driving was probably not a good idea on the heels of such news.
He half turned. “I’m fine, Jackie. I just need some air.”
She was about to offer to accompany him, but he was already out the door.
Jackie spent the next two hours tidying the bedroom, making breakfast, and researching flights to Boston. When Harlan returned, he was subdued, but not as closed down as previously.
“I’ve made something to eat.” She gestured to the fruit salad, yogurt, and toasted bagels on the counter.
“Thanks, Jackie.” He took a seat at the counter and spread cream cheese on a bagel. “I’ll leave Thursday so I have time to take care of things there.”
Jackie mentally ran through her schedule. “I can shuffle a couple of things and leave then, too.”
He lowered the bagel onto his plate. “You don’t need to come.”
“I want to.”
“Really, it’s not necessary.”
“This won’t be easy. I want to be there for you.”
“No, Jackie.”
Jackie let it go—for the moment. But over the next two days, she became convinced she was right. Harlan was fiercely independent, but that didn’t mean he had to bear his grief alone. It wasn’t healthy, even if he wasn’t close to his mother, visiting her only twice a year. Once he had described her as “ordinary and quite pretty,” and there had been no hint of animosity. But Jackie knew that no one loses a parent without fallout, so on Tuesday evening she brought it up again, and again he refused her company. She dug in. Being in a relationship meant supporting each other in difficult times, even if that relationship had many rules. She and Harlan might not be on a track to marriage, but they cared for each other deeply. Faced with this tragedy, she would show him how much.
“Harlan. In this one instance, you are not the best judge of what you need. I’m not going to try to steer anything or judge how you’re feeling in any way. I’m simply going to be there.”
“Jackie, as I said before—”
She covered his hand with hers. “I’m going.”
In the days running up to the Sunday service, Jackie was proved correct. Harlan seemed grateful for her company during lunch with Miranda and the minister and went so far as to ask her opinion on the choice of hymns. “I don’t know why she asked for singing,” Harlan said. “She hated church music.”
“I’m with her. But the usual choices are popular for a good reason.”
“Sensible.”
As they traveled from the church to the cemetery, the winter sun glinting off the hood of the rental car, Jackie thought of how far she and Harlan had come in their relationship. Only nine months before, Harlan had adamantly refused to attend Jackie’s sister’s wedding. Jackie had been hurt, and worried it was a bellwether for his lack of conventional commitment to anything beyond regular date nights. But those were early days, and now he was allowing her to share in his mother’s funeral—an order-of-magnitude change. She took Harlan’s hand in hers, and he gave her a distracted smile. She imagined his stoicism as a wall behind which a beautiful and terrible loneliness swelled like a sea whipped by hurricane winds. She would gently dismantle the wall. He would allow her. Only her.
His mother’s coffin was lowered into a hole lined with Astroturf. Harlan stepped out of the small gathering of mourners, most ancient, and bent to pick up a handful of dirt from the pile beside the hole. He dropped it in. The sound was large in the silence. He returned to his place next to Jackie, a hard knot in his jaw, his shoulders too square, as if he were propping himself up. He turned to her. She hadn’t expected it and wasn’t quick enough to adopt the neutral, calm attitude that had gotten her this far. Tears flooded her eyes; her pity for him was naked.
He absorbed it like a stench, his nostrils widening, eyes narrowing. She looked away. The wavering sight of the grave was more welcome than his stern disapproval.
The remainder of the day was filled with the business of death: a reception at his mother’s house and a final meeting with the lawyer, which Jackie did not attend. She asked no questions on the plane trip home, choosing instead to wait out his anger or grief or embarrassment—whatever it was he was feeling. Like so many of her stances with Harlan, this patience went against her nature. She saw this as a good thing since her nature had not previously succeeded in placing her in a relationship in which she could stay.
Harlan ignored her. When they landed at National, she followed him out of the terminal—practically running to catch up—and stood beside him waiting for a taxi. The flight had been delayed by weather, and it was past midnight, all yellow lights and sooty shadows. She shivered, tired from the journey and the emotional jockeying.
Finally Harlan spoke. “Now you see why you should’ve stayed home.”
“No, Harlan, I don’t.”
“I didn’t want you there.”
“Everyone needs support, and I—”
“Open your eyes, Jackie. I’m not like other people.” His tone was harsh, his face lined and drawn. The wall was as high as ever,
and it was costing him.
“I know that.”
He laughed, a dismissive bark. “Then why are you still here?” He made a shooing motion with his hand and turned his back to her.
Jackie sucked in her breath. He had never been cruel. Insistent and exacting, but not cruel. This was his grief.
She said nothing—what was there to say? The taxi arrived and, twenty minutes of silence later, deposited Jackie at her house.
“Good night,” she said from the sidewalk to the back-seat darkness. “Call me if you need anything at all.” She shut the door before he could answer.
On Tuesday, her text to him suggesting dinner went unanswered. When he encountered her at work, he pretended not to see her, or spoke as if to a stranger. Jackie stayed the course. Grief was a process. Two weeks after her initial text, she texted him again. The following Tuesday, Harlan replied: Friday 7 pm Enoteca. She dressed carefully. He smiled when he saw her, a genuine smile. During dinner he was solicitous, if somewhat subdued. Still grieving, no doubt. After that night, they resumed their regular schedule and their regular level of fondness and intimacy, and Harlan’s sense of humor returned. She never mentioned his mother again, accepting her pallid victory for what it was.
She takes a sip from the water bottle on her desk and thinks how during the short conversation with Harlan in her lab, she was perplexed, unable to tease out his motivation. Jackie has known him for a decade, and he just wriggled past her understanding of human behavior again. The problem in trying to understand Harlan, and therefore truly know him, is that he is, by turns, transparent and inscrutable. When he chooses, he slips behind a layer of gauze.
Jackie closes up the lab and leaves the building. Outside, the air is sharp, and the leaf-scented breeze clears her head. A group of students passes her, their conversation an excited tumble punctuated with laughter. Jackie walks more quickly, eager to see Miles and get his take on Harlan’s behavior. Miles hasn’t known him that long, but he’s undoubtedly more objective than she is. Like standing too close to anything, it’s hard to gain perspective.
And when it comes to Harlan, Jackie admits she has little perspective, only regrets and bruises.
CHAPTER 7
Miles is waiting at the bar, his back to the door, his head tipped back slightly, following the game on the screen. Thursday Night Football. Seeing him there moves her, the way his jacket strains across his back as he leans on the bar, an inch of blond hair over the collar of his shirt, the square of him. Her husband, especially when seated and viewed from behind, reminds Jackie of her father. There are other similarities: the deft movements Miles uses to fold back his shirt cuffs; the way he lowers himself into a boat as if sinking into a warm bath; how he grows still at the sight of sunlight spilled across water or a dogwood in bloom. Jackie didn’t immediately recognize these parallels, but in retrospect they help account for why she felt drawn to him and is at ease in his company.
She winds through the bar tables, goes to him, places her hand on the nape of his neck. “Hey, handsome.”
He swivels and smiles. Under his jacket he’s wearing the teal shirt she loves so much. It’s a fairy-tale color, the kind of perfect shade that’s hard to find. Miles brought it home from one of his trips—San Francisco maybe.
“Hello, beautiful.” He pulls out the neighboring stool for her. “Okay here? Or should we get a table?”
“Here’s fine.”
Miles lifts a discreet finger to the bartender, and Jackie orders a martini. Normally during the week she sticks to wine, but Harlan put her on edge. She touches Miles’s arm. “How’d your trip go?”
“Good! I signed that quarterback this morning. Lucas Bell, the one who can run. And plays smart.” Miles shakes his head. “What a rugby player he’d have made.”
Jackie lifts her hand for a high five, which he gives, grinning. “Congratulations.” Her drink arrives. “To Lucas.”
Miles touches her glass lightly with his beer glass. “To Lucas. May his draft pick be high, his endorsements be numerous, and his career be long.”
“What’s his family situation?” Jackie has learned from Miles that nothing compromises a player’s success—however defined—more often than family, whether it’s desperation for money, conflicting dreams for the aspiring superstar, or, sometimes, absence of support.
“They seem solid to me. Invested but not overly attached.”
Jackie bumps her shoulder against his. “Look who’s picking up my shoptalk.” She takes another sip of her martini. Feeling close to Miles, she’s ready to get Harlan’s visit off her chest. “Just before I left the lab, Harlan stopped by.”
Miles has been tracking the game. He swivels to her. “How’s he doing?”
“That’s just it. The whole thing was weird.”
“Weird how?”
“Well, the first thing he asked was whether I was going to the game on Sunday.” Miles slides a finger down his glass, erasing the condensation. “I told him I didn’t know anything about it.” Jackie expects Miles to jump in and say he forgot, innocent mistake. Instead, he is thinking hard. “What’s going on? Are you going with Antonio?”
“I was planning on it, yes, if he’s not slammed with coursework.” Antonio is a sophomore at Monroe University, a few miles away. “And it’s not as though I didn’t want you to come, too.”
“Then why did I learn about it from Harlan?”
“I didn’t want to get into it with you while I was away.”
“Get into what?” She has raised her voice, drawing a look from a woman sitting a few stools away.
Miles straightens and finally meets her gaze. “Harlan told me some things. It made me think you might not want to go.”
“What are you talking about?”
He exhales, takes a drink. “He called me two days ago and said he’d seen you drive by his house a couple of times.”
Jackie swallows.
“Did you?”
“Maybe. I don’t remember. Possibly on my way somewhere.”
Miles nods, as if expecting this answer. “And he also mentioned that you’ve been interrogating Nasira.”
“‘Interrogating’? That’s the word he used?”
“I think so. That was the message anyway.”
“I didn’t interrogate her.” She thinks back to her conversation with Nasira about her weekend plans, and how to explain it to Miles. “It started off as a friendly conversation about her weekend. Then she mentioned Greenbrier, and that had Harlan all over it. We didn’t go there until we’d been together for two years. They’ve only been dating a few weeks.”
“I’m not seeing the crime here, Jackie.”
“There’s no crime. I didn’t say there was. But Nasira was so cagey about it, unnecessarily.”
“She has a right to her privacy, doesn’t she?”
“Of course. I’m not the one who mentioned Greenbrier. It’s like she wanted me to know, but then wouldn’t cop to it.”
Miles shakes his head. “Are you listening to yourself? You’re not making any sense.”
“Wait. Add that to this tidbit. Today, when Harlan comes by, he asks me if Nasira can help out with his MRI study.” She takes a deep sip of her drink, watching for Miles to see her point.
“I don’t get it.”
“A postdoc isn’t an indentured servant. He doesn’t have to ask. He knows that. He was challenging me to say something about them.”
“And did you?”
“No. He wanted me to confront him about Nasira. I didn’t take the bait.”
Miles pushes his stool back a few inches, as if she has become contagious. “Jackie, I’m worried about you. And, frankly, so is Harlan.”
“Perfect. Let me get this straight. While you’re away on business, Harlan’s been talking to you about me, how I’m stalking him, how I’m harassing L’enfant.”
He glances around the bar. “Maybe we should do this at home.”
So now he’s calling her hysterical, too. Fantastic.
She downs the rest of her drink, lowers her voice. “Let me finish, Miles. Why, pray tell, didn’t Harlan come to me about this? He was just in my office, literally minutes ago, and didn’t mention a thing. And I know Nasira is of tender age, but she’s definitely old enough to talk to me herself, not go through Harlan and then through you. It’s like middle school.” Jackie’s stomach cramps from the hit of gin. She pushes her hair from her face; her forehead is damp.
Miles is facing the TV screen but doesn’t seem to be watching the action. He scoots forward in his seat, places his hands flat on the bar. “While you and Harlan and Nasira are swirling around each other, how do you think I feel?”
Her husband rarely draws attention to himself, to his needs. He’s the easy one who never causes a ripple. Jackie’s chest tightens. “Shitty, I’d expect. Irrelevant. I’m sorry.” She reaches for the truth. “I did drive by Harlan’s a few times. He’s right about that. And I promised you before that I’d let it go, and I have, for the most part. I’ve really tried. All the rest of it, though, that’s not me.” She leans forward, asking him to look at her. He does. “Harlan came to my lab, Miles. My workplace. He was really odd; I didn’t imagine that. It unnerved me.”
Miles weighs her words for a moment. “I can’t think of a reason Harlan would want to unnerve you. He invited you to the game Sunday, remember? I’m not saying he can’t be a little off sometimes—that’s Harlan—but I don’t want to focus on that. I want to focus on us, on why you are so wound up about another couple. You’re married to me. I feel like I shouldn’t have to remind you.”
Jackie’s nose burns with tears. She hates crying in public and regrets not leaving earlier. She takes Miles’s hand in both of hers. The warmth and weight of it grounds her, and she has the urge to climb into his lap, to fold herself up there, feel his strong arms around her, stay like that for a very long time. Jackie looks into his eyes and tries to say that without speaking. If she speaks, she will cry. She hasn’t meant to hurt him, although clearly she has.
“Hey,” he says, adding his other hand and squeezing hers. “You’re stressed. And probably hungry. Let’s order burgers, watch the game, okay?”
