“I don’t know what you expect to happen tonight, but it’s not going to happen.”
“Do we have to have this conversation here?” Susie said.
The kids had sat down at the table. Julie and Ben were arguing about something—American Pickers, which is what they’d been watching. Willy looked pale. Sounds echoed in his head, and he had the feeling you get in an indoor swimming pool, of faint distortion. The smell of boiling water … he felt hot and cold. Margot was still reading, turning the pages of her book in a mechanical way.
“I don’t expect anything,” Liesel said.
“Yes, you do. But it doesn’t mean anything, she’s just staying over to help Cal settle in.”
“He sleeps at Paul’s house all the time, whenever he comes to stay.”
“But not usually with Dana here. It’s confusing for him.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“You’re not making sense,” Jean said, but her mother snapped.
“Stop telling me this all the time, that I don’t understand, that I’m not making sense. I understand more than you think.”
“In this case, I don’t think you do.”
“What do you mean?”
But Jean was unhappy now, too. She didn’t want to say it. “She’s seeing somebody else, in New York.”
“How do you know this?” Liesel asked.
“She told me.” And then, when nobody said anything, Jean added: “Don’t shoot the Essinger,” to make a joke of it, but her eyes were wide with apology or shame, and she was looking at her mother.
“When did she tell you?” And Nathan asked, “Does Paul know?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what Paul knows. She told me in the Spider House a couple of nights ago.” After a moment, she said, “I didn’t think it was my secret to tell.”
“So why are you telling us now?”
“I don’t know,” Jean said. “I didn’t want you to get your hopes up.”
But Liesel was angry now. “I don’t see how she can come here like this, and not say anything, for a whole week, and pretend that nothing is going on. I don’t understand her.”
“She said something to me,” Jean said. “You invited her.”
“Listen, I’m trying to get the kids something to eat, can we do this elsewhere?” Susie carried the pot to the sink and poured the pasta into the colander. Steam rose.
“What does it matter, the kids don’t care,” Nathan said. Julie and Margot had started eating—the fish was hot, and Clémence sat with them, to regulate the ketchup. There were bowls of cut cucumber and carrots. She ate one and looked at her husband, a warning look, but he ignored her. “They’re not even listening.”
“Of course they’re listening,” Susie said. “Of course they care.”
“What don’t we care about?”
Julie had cheered up. For some reason the presence of adult disaster put her on good behavior.
“None of your beeswax,” her mother told her.
Liesel had gone red in the face. “I’m upset now. I don’t understand her at all. She’s a very cool customer.”
“I don’t think any of this is her first choice,” Nathan said.
* * *
“That felt a bit rushed.” Dana was putting Cal in the backseat, leaning over to reach the buckle.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, like we were making an escape.” She got in herself and closed the door. “We could have waited for Cal to eat with his cousins.”
“I had food at home. I made it so we could eat together.”
She waited for him to turn the car around. “It just felt like … I’ve been there all week. I don’t know.”
“If you want to go back, I can take you back.”
He was driving across the bridge, over the creek. The grass was covered in fat leaves, which glowed in the dusk, pumpkin-colored. Lights had come on in the houses overlooking the park.
“I don’t want to go back.”
“You said you wanted to do this.”
“Okay.”
“If it matters to you, we can go back in the morning. We can have breakfast with everyone else.”
“Yes.”
“I thought, after a week, you’d be glad to get away.”
“I am glad, I mean it’s fine. I like your family,” she said.
By the time they crossed the river, night had fallen. Paul let Cal play with his phone, he didn’t want the kid to go to sleep. They took I-35 and the headlights streaming against them were like the bombs in Space Invaders, repeated blips. The quality of the graphics was very basic. Neighborhoods with parks and swimming pools passed by below them, front yards, driveways, places where people lived, but it all seemed a little abstract, and Dana had the computer-game feeling you get, where life is made up of simple data and measurable tasks. In the dark she could sit in the passenger seat and look out the window and not feel observed. Paul wanted to talk.
“What do you think of Henrik? I had a good time with him last night.”
He wanted her opinion because he wanted to have a certain kind of conversation, which she didn’t want to have. She said, “I think he’s sexy,” partly joking, and to put him off. But maybe this was the wrong thing to say, it sounded like flirting.
“He seems to me somebody who’s still open to experiences. A lot of people his age aren’t anymore. That’s attractive.”
More and more, he sounded like his father. She was the teenage babysitter, being driven home.
What surprised her is that she felt guilty about Stephen. Would she mention it to him, that she spent the night at Paul’s place? Would he care? This morning he asked her … it wasn’t really clear what he was asking. To have a baby with him. They hadn’t even had sex. All day this phone call had been running through her head.
A therapist once told her, people create the situations they want to respond to. And it’s true, something had to change. She wanted to leave their apartment and get a place of her own. Maybe she could move in with Stephen but that seems like, just substituting … and it isn’t fair on Cal. With everything up in the air, at least, his home, where he was born … but how much of your life can you live like that, according to the needs of a four-year-old boy? I’m thirty-one now. In two years he’s going to be in school full-time, and after I drop him off, what am I going to do. I need something to do. She was sick of living in the … what Jean called the self-expression economy. Freelancing, taking photographs. She wanted to do something where it was important you showed up on time and did your job. At least I think that’s what I want. Until she came to Austin she had no idea how unhappy she was.
It’s a fifty-minute drive to Red Hawk Road, the last half through empty landscape. Once you turn off I-35 you hit the real dark, there are depths of it, which you start to feel like pressure in your head. Like swimming to the bottom of the pool. Paul said, “I’ve been reading a lot of different things.” She said, “What are you reading?” but didn’t listen to the answer. Behind her, in the car, Cal was still playing on the phone—she could see his face in the glow. The game made a noise but much of it was drowned out by car noise.
Paul kept his eyes on the road. “It’s a shame we’re not arriving in the light.”
“I’ve seen the house before.”
“I know, but I’ve been … working on the backyard.”
“I’ll see it in the morning,” she said, which changed the tone and frightened her a little.
He wanted to know what was going on at Wheeler Street. “I’ve been feeling bad all week for leaving you to … leaving you there alone.”
“Without your protection?”
“You know what I mean. It just feels weird.”
“I’m sorry if you didn’t want me to come,” she said.
“That’s not it. That’s not what I mean at all. You know that.”
If she responded, it would be like saying she wanted him to reassure her. But that’s not what she wanted. They
were going past a stretch of cookie-cutter houses, beige siding, a recent development, which meant that the streets were decently lit. But then at the traffic lights they turned off again onto one of those Texas highways named after a number, which quickly led them back into nothing much—trees and telephone poles by the side of the road.
He said, “I feel like I’m in the middle of an argument with Nathan.”
This is something they used to fight about—that he wouldn’t talk about his family with her. She felt left out, so maybe now he was trying to make an effort. But it sounded over-rehearsed.
“What’s the argument?”
“We were talking about it yesterday at this brunch thing. He wanted to schmooze the judge, I don’t know. He kind of left me waiting around for him. Sandra Bullock was there, I could have … it was stupid, it didn’t matter. Nathan said that we have this chance to live unusually good lives, but you have to make certain sacrifices.”
“What’s he talking about?”
“He means … I said to him, not everybody wants to be Judge Kirkendoll. He’s very ambitious, I used to be, too. But you don’t interact with the world and come out of it a better person. That’s something I’ve learned this year; you come out worse. Which is why people like children, because they haven’t interacted yet.”
Maybe he was trying to niggle her, in which case it worked. He wasn’t arguing with Nathan, he was arguing with her—about living in New York, about moving to Texas, to the middle of nowhere.
“You heard about Ben, right?” Her voice was rising; she tried to keep it down. “He got up in the middle of the night to throw stones at Julie’s window. That’s not … I wouldn’t call it innocence.”
They had reached the outskirts of Wimberley, such as they were. Dana could see lights, but then the road doubled back and they headed away from them again. “Come on, Cal,” Paul said, turning around in his seat. The boy was nodding off; the iPhone lay in his lap. “We’re almost there, just hang on. We can all have supper together.”
He switched on his brights, and there was a flash of water ahead of them. It had rained heavily overnight, and the road ran down through the channel of a river. She had forgotten that part, the only time she ever came to his house was last summer. A kind of concrete platform served as the intersection; maybe half a foot of water lay across it, a moving surface.
“Jesus,” she said, but he plowed right through.
You could feel the weight of water against the tires, and then they pulled up the ramp on the other side. Her heart was racing, and suddenly the vague uneasiness she had felt, and which had been building in her, turned to fear. The houses were set far back and apart from each other at the end of steep drives. She could see the river below them, a different-colored darkness; they were going along the side of it. Paul kept his brights on—nobody else was on the road.
“You don’t think he learned that at home, do you?” he asked. “You learn that kind of thing at school.”
After a pause, she said: “You don’t think kids should go to school?”
Paul could feel the atmosphere changing. “I have two years of Stanford. You went to Amherst. My brother is the smartest person I know. And yet when it comes to educating our kids we farm it out to other people. The most important thing … what they think and know, teaching them to think, we let other people do the work—we don’t even pick the people. We let the state do it, or whatever. It doesn’t make sense.”
Then his house appeared, a low-roofed box, illuminated by little lights in the grass. She said, “Maybe I’ll be a teacher. That’s something I’ve been thinking about.”
She wanted to change the tone.
“What age?” He was parking the car.
“Kids. Elementary school.”
“You’d be a very good teacher,” he said.
“I don’t know. I don’t know that I’m somebody kids warm to.”
“That’s not the job.” But he hadn’t contradicted her, which he realized. “Kids love you,” he said. “Cal loves you.”
“Of course, I’m his mother …”
But he wouldn’t be put off. “You’re very good with Cal, he’s a good kid. I see him with his cousins, he’s very confident. That’s you, that’s not me.”
The house was cold when they got in—because of the concrete floor and the wall of glass at the back. There was a stove, and he wanted to light the fire; this was part of his idea. He didn’t like to run the heating when he wasn’t around, he liked to get by on natural heat. Being cold, lighting a fire, warming up, these things gave him something to do. But he turned on the heating now and put a pot of water on to boil. He drew the curtains. Dana felt like she should take off her shoes. Cal was running around—there was a ball his father let him kick inside the house, one of those plastic inflatable balls you get for a dollar. She wanted to tell him not to, but it wasn’t her business.
“Give me something to do,” she said.
But there was nothing to do; he gave her a glass of wine. She was starting to freak out and trying hard not to show it, so she seemed a little cool. Even after a year the place looked under-furnished—sounds echoed, and you could feel outside the house, beyond the curtains, empty landscape. There were prairie dogs, possums, skunks, coyotes out there; even bears. Rattlesnakes and bats. Animals outnumbered the humans. Cal seemed happy at the table. It didn’t matter if he made a mess—the floor was easy to clean.
She said, “This is very good,” meaning the sauce, which sat in a cast-iron pot on the stovetop of his industrial oven. Paul bought the beef from a guy he knew who kept his own cattle, a writer who was on the staff of Texas Monthly. Every year he killed a few and sold them to friends. Paul put the meat in the freezer and worked his way through it. Dana thought, it must be weird for Cal, seeing us like this, eating together. He didn’t seem to mind, but also, with him around, this wasn’t something she could talk about. It cut off other conversation. Paul told her about the meat.
Afterward, she gave her son a bath.
Paul watched her from the bathroom doorway. “I’ll clean up,” he said.
The sense of orchestration, which she felt strongly, didn’t actually require from her any reaction—she could just go along with it. At home in New York in their apartment he often used to cook while she put Cal to bed. He cared about food more than she did, it was part of his job to pay attention to what he ate. Sometimes when she turned off the light and emerged, he gave her a glass of wine and went in to kiss their son goodnight. Then they ate supper. It never occurred to her at the time that this narrow and limited life would end. Because it was fine with her.
Cal’s bedroom had one of those plastic Ferraris with a mattress inside. This is where he slept without her. The floor had a thick carpet covered in toys; she got down on her knees to put on his pajamas. It was late, past his bedtime, he had wet hair, but Paul said he would read to him in front of the fire. He seemed to be in control. The fire was going brightly now, he turned off most of the lights, and Dana was aware of an intensification of her feelings, which had to be kept in check. She poured herself another glass of wine and listened to him read.
He said, “Do you want to put him to bed?”
“It’s your house.”
“He won’t see you for a week.”
“Sure, I can put him to bed.”
But there was something missing in her, something absent, which Cal noticed. She said, “Come on, big guy,” and carried him from the sofa. He had brushed his teeth, he had done a pee, he was very tired. But when she turned off the light, he wouldn’t let her go—he held onto her hand. His bed wasn’t really big enough to lie down in, but she tried. “I’ll just lie with you here a minute, until you fall asleep.” Her head was propped against the wheel of the Ferrari, her legs fell over the side. She was quite uncomfortable but waited anyway, partly because she didn’t want to face Paul, and this was also a gesture—of self-assertion. I’ll come when I want to come. But Cal wouldn’t go to sleep. When she tr
ied to get up (her neck ached), he grabbed her shirt. Her eyes were used to the dark by this point, and she could see his expression.
“Lie on top of me,” he said.
So she lay on top but it wasn’t enough. And he was starting to get on her nerves—she didn’t like to be pulled at. “Go to sleep,” she said. “I want to talk to Daddy.”
In the end, Paul had to come and put him to bed. She left them to it. She was very close to the edge, but it took him a few minutes and she had time to calm down. When he came out again, he said, “I told him I would give him your cardigan,” so she took it off. It was warm in the house by this point, but not that warm. And then Paul closed the door behind him, making the face you make when you can’t tell if something’s going to work. But Cal stayed quiet—he didn’t call out.
“What do you want to do?” He opened another bottle of wine. “Do you want to watch a movie?”
In a corner of the L-shaped living room, Paul had set up a projector. There was a blank wall in front of it; a soft gray sofa faced the wall.
“Sure, I’m easy.” He leaned in to kiss her, and she let him. “Let me just go to the bathroom for a second,” she said and took her purse.
The bathroom was large, with a window overlooking the backyard, which sloped down to the river. There were no blinds or curtains, but you couldn’t see much, because the overhead light reflected off the glass. The bathtub was still full of Cal’s toys. They were wet and slimy with bubbles—Dana hadn’t bothered to put them away. She sat on the toilet seat with the lid down and took out her phone. She didn’t know who to call but she had to call somebody. Maybe Jean … she tried her number, but it was an English cell, and the dial-tone sounded funny. No one picked up, so she called the number at Wheeler Street and Nathan answered.
“Hello.” She could hear singing in the background … they were probably sitting in front of the tree. Liesel had said she wanted to light the candles. It was nine o’clock.
“Can you pick me up?” she said. “I don’t know any taxis around here.”
“Is something going on, are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I just don’t think this is a good idea.”
Christmas in Austin Page 41
