I load up the car, closing the door very, very softly, and then go upstairs and scoop up Simon—pillows, blankets, stuffed animals and all—and make my way down with him to the car. He wakes up, startled, as we get to the front door and he looks around.
" Shhh," I say. "I'll tell you what we're doing when we get in the car. We're going on an adventure."
He rubs his eyes and shivers happily. "Really? An adventure?"
"We have to whisper," I say. "It's a secret adventure."
I get him all settled in the car, look around to make sure I have everything, running through a checklist in my mind: my clothes, Simon's clothes, pillows, blankets, toiletries, toys, shoes, jackets, purse, alarm clock...
I smile at Simon in the rearview mirror. "You ready?"
He nods, eyes bright.
"Oh!" I say. "A couple more things." I run back inside and grab the garlic press. Then the hand blender, the olive oil decanter, and the cheese slicer. I've noticed that Alex's kitchen lacks a few of the essential amenities.
As a last thought, I scrawl a little note to Dana and Teddy, saying we've gone to Alex's. I'll be in touch when I'm ready.
***
It’s awesome being there. Alex helps us bring in our bags, and then the three of us eat English muffins and honey in the kitchen: nobody is in the mood for sleep after the excitement of our arrival. I may never sleep again. The blackness outside has made the windows like mirrors, and I can't get over how calm and right it looks: Alex and me with Simon, eating a middle-of-the-night snack and talking. Simon looks around the apartment, and Alex shows him how everything works, and points out all the neat little touches, like the little button on the floor of the dining room, which was once used to summon the servants during dinner.
"Wowie zowie, we stayed up all night long!" says Simon, his eyes shining. It's true; it's nearly 4:00 a.m. by the time I get his bed made up and manage to settle him back into it. I put Boo Bear and Sausage Duck and the rest of the menagerie all around him.
"You like it here?" I whisper, and he nods. "That's good. Now get some sleep, and stay in bed as late as you want to. No kindergarten tomorrow, and I don't have to go to work."
"Mommy," he says, "I was just wondering. Why are we here?"
"An adventure, remember?" I say. "We're going to take a little vacation."
"Where are you going to sleep?"
I point to the double bed three feet away from his single one. "Right there. You'll be able to see me when you wake up."
"Do Daddy and Auntie Dana know where we are?"
"Sure they do. I left them a note."
"Are they going to come and try to make us come back?" he asks.
"No. Now shhh. It's late. Let's get some sleep."
***
The next day we sleep late, and when we wake up, Alex puts on what he calls some "welcome to Alex's life" music—John Prine and Norah Jones. I unpack everything and put our clothes in drawers, and put the kitchen stuff out on the counter. Alex laughs when he sees the garlic press.
"Good thing you brought this along," he teases me. "I meant to tell you mine is out for repair and they don't know when it's going to be fixed."
He gives us Apartment Lessons. You have to wiggle the handle on the toilet twice after you flush or it runs forever. The shelf in the linen closet is loose and sometimes, if you grab things off it too fast, the whole shelf falls down on you. The wallpaper is peeling a little bit in Simon's and my room, and if you're interested, you can sit there and take a tour back through the centuries by peeking under each layer, all the way back to the time of Queen Victoria and possibly the dinosaurs. He winks and tells me that, after I called, he even did a special cleaning of the bathroom because he knows that women see dirt in bathrooms that no man can see.
"This," he says, "is, I'm afraid, as good as it gets in here. If you see soap scum or filth, then I'm sorry. I just don't have the chromosomes to do any better."
"No, it looks pretty good," I say. "Scintillating, actually."
"Scintillating," he says and runs his hands through his hair. "I like that."
Then he takes Simon to the backyard and pushes him on the special tire swing, and introduces him to two kids next door, Brandon and Sean. Later, the three of us go to the playground at East Rock Park, and I watch another woman watching us push Simon on the swings. She must think we're just a regular mother and father, out taking our boy to play.
Saturday drifts by, and then Sunday goes much the same way. We read the paper, cook dinner together, watch a video with Simon on the couch. Whenever I meet Alex's eyes, he smiles at me. I can feel all my insides untwisting themselves and then retwisting themselves in whole new ways.
On Sunday night, after Simon is tucked into bed in what he calls "my new room," Alex brings out two glasses of wine, and turns the music down low, and he and I stretch out on the living room floor and talk. We have to be on the floor, the old-lady couches are too scratchy and tend to sag in the middle. After you've sat in them for even two minutes, I tell him, it's as though your chest and thighs are fused together.
He laughs. "I haven't spent much time on them since I moved in. This has been more like a hotel room than a home." He hesitates a moment and then asks, "So how are you feeling? Are you okay with everything? Is your garlic press feeling at home here, do you think?" He smiles, and I reach over and brush his hair away from his eyes, and then we're kissing. He moves over on top of me and cradles my head in the cup of his hands.
"I'm not sure we can do a whole lot here, with Simon in the next room," I whisper. "Kids have a sixth sense about these things, you know. He'll be in here with us in no time."
To my surprise, he suddenly rolls off me and onto his back, as though I've admonished him. "I'm sorry. I should have thought."
"No, no. It's fine. I mean, I want to. I just know how awkward it could be." I let my fingers walk over to his chest and stroke him.
He's quiet for a moment, and then he says, "By the way, I arranged with Steve at work to handle the board and the phones tomorrow night for you."
"You're not going to be there?" I feel a pang of disappointment.
"Well," he says, giving me a long look. "I thought I maybe should be here, putting Simon to bed. But now I realize I should have asked you first. You might have made other plans. And he might not want me to watch him."
"Oh," I say. "Wow. I feel ridiculous. I hadn't even planned that far. I didn't even think..."
"I mean, if you'd rather take him back to your house, and have Dana and Teddy watch him, I understand."
He's looking as though I've hurt his feelings. I reach over and take hold of his hands. "No! No, I'm glad you called Steve. I don't know what's gotten into me, not even thinking of what would happen tomorrow night. But, no, you're right. I think Simon would much rather be here with you than with Dana and Teddy right now."
"Well," he says, "I think I'm going to turn in early."
"Yeah."
He gets to his feet. "So... another thing. Since I'm not going to be at work tomorrow night, then I've really got to go in during the morning. Check on things. Get the paperwork done."
"Oh. Sure. Of course." I know he's telling me no sex and pancakes. I pick up our hardly touched glasses of wine, and we go into the kitchen. Things feel so awkward I can't stand it. I feel like turning to him and saying we have to clear everything up right now. But it wouldn't help.
"You'll be fine here, though, right? Got everything you need?" he says, not looking at me.
"Oh, sure."
The phone rings just then, and before I can think, I reach over and pick it up. It might be Teddy, I think, who's worried sick and has looked up Alex's number in the book and can't stand not knowing for one more second how we're doing.
"Hello?" I say.
There's a long silence, and then a woman's voice says, "Oh! Is. . . Alex there, by chance?"
"Sure. One moment." Embarrassed, I hand him the phone.
He grimaces and says, "Hello?" And then
, with a guilty look: "Oh, hi. Wait. Okay, okay. Just stop for a minute. Let me get on the other extension." He hands me the receiver. "Would you mind hanging this up for me?" He mouths the word Anneliese just before going off to his bedroom and closing the door.
I wait for him for awhile, listening to the muffled sound of his voice in the next room, punctuated by long silences. When his conversation goes on for half an hour, I take my miserable self off to bed and lie there listening to the noises of the city at night: dogs barking, cars braking, even the distant roar of traffic from the main roads. After a long time, I hear his bedroom door creak open and then the bathroom door closing. I squeeze my eyes shut and put my pillow around my head. That night I dream I'm lost and scared in a deep dark hole, and at last someone is coming to rescue me. But then, in the dim confusion of the dream, I realize the rescuer turns out to need rescuing, too. Both of us just go sliding on down.
34
Monday morning, I drive Simon to kindergarten and then go back to the apartment by myself. It feels weird to be there without Alex. All this big foreign furniture, the stuffy couches, the vague, wavery photographs on the walls. The only tiny piece of Alex in here is his desk. I stare at it, hungry to start going through it to learn more about him. I want to know what he writes in all those looseleaf notebooks, how he arranges his pencils and pens in the drawers. I want to turn on his computer and read all his e-mail and his documents. But I don't. This is so odd, the third day of living in a man's house, eating together, sharing a bathroom, coordinating showers and bedtimes—and not really knowing him. I've never been a stranger in anyone's house, I realize. I can't imagine that I'll ever really be comfortable here.
It's so horrible being at the beginning of things, the way we're not used to each other's moods and silences. Cringing, I think of all those strained moments between us, the over-apologizing, the feeling of walking on eggshells. This is too soon in our relationship for us to be sharing a place, I realize. That's what's wrong. This was never supposed to happen.
You don't have to be comfortable here. This is just a transition while you figure out what to do and where you belong. This, Lily, is what we call change.
I manage to walk away from the desk, leaving it untouched, but then I find myself in his bedroom. I open his closet door and stand there looking at all his shirts and jeans and pants, staring into the closet as though the way he hangs his things up might tell me what I need to know. On the floor is a jumble of shoes, and I sit down and look at them without touching them. The whole time, I'm halfway listening for his key in the lock, hoping that I'll have enough warning of his arrival that I can spring back over to my own room. It would be awful if he came in and caught me here gazing at his possessions, my hands clasped behind my back so that I won't give in to the pitiful temptation to caress them.
This morning at breakfast he'd cleared his throat and apologized about the phone call last night. Here we go, I thought, with awkward apologies again.
But I did my part. I said, "Oh, no, no. I felt bad that I answered, and that she was possibly upset that... well, that someone else might be here, you know."
"Oh, yeah. Well, that's going to happen, I suppose. You can't not answer the phone. What if someone needs you?" He took the last sip of his coffee. "I guess I now understand why people have those caller ID thingies. I always thought people who had them lacked a sense of adventure about picking up the phone."
Simon looked over at him, hearing that word. "We're on an adventure," he said solemnly. "That's why my mommy and I are here."
Alex laughed and tousled Simon's hair as he took his cup to the sink. "That's right, my buddy Simon. We're all on a great adventure here."
***
After school is out and we've driven back from Branford, Simon and I go off to explore the neighborhood and play at the park. I tell him that after supper I have to go to work, and that Alex will read him stories and put him to bed. I'm expecting that he'll make a fuss, but he doesn't. He just looks concerned for a moment, gazing off into the distance, but then I can see him shift gears, those little wheels turning in his head. After a moment, he says, "When are we going back home?"
"I don't know," I say. "Do you want to go back home?"
He hesitates just a moment, and then he says, "No. We're on an adventure."
On the way home we stop at a mom-and-pop market on the corner, and I pick up dinner: a tray of store-made lasagna and some lettuce for salad. The Italian man behind the counter gives Simon a lollipop and winks at me, as if we're in cahoots somehow. I smile back at him, and he asks me how long I've lived in the neighborhood.
"Well..." I'm about to explain that I don't really live here when Simon pipes up: "Two whole days. We came for adventure," and the man laughs.
We walk back along the sidewalk toward Alex's house and Simon says, "Do you think that Auntie Dana has had her baby yet?"
"Oh, no. That won't be for a long time."
"She says I have to share my room with the baby."
"How do you feel about that?" My breath is high up in my chest.
"Babies make a lot of noise."
"Yeah, they do. You don't really have to share your room with the baby, you know."
"Will we still be here when the baby is born?"
I look at him. "I don't think so. Why? Do you want to be?"
"Do you want to be?"
"No, no," I tease him and lean over to tickle him. "Do you want to be?"
He laughs and squirms away from me, and we chase each other around in circles on somebody's patch of grass next to a large two-story house with a wraparound porch. "No, no, no! Do YOU want to be?"
"The great thing," I tell him when we finally stop and have collapsed right there on the grass, "is that we don't have to figure that out just yet. We can do whatever we want."
***
On Tuesday morning, I come out from walking Simon to his classroom and nearly run smack into Teddy. I didn't even see him at first. But there he is, lurking in the shadows of the hall, looking drawn and worried. He is unshaven, with his curly hair sticking up in little right angles. When I reach him, he steps in front of me.
"What are you doing here?" I say, surprised.
"Obviously I came to talk to you," he says. He looks awful. I don't think he's slept in days. There are huge bags under his eyes. "Can we go somewhere and talk?"
"All right," I say warily. "What about the diner? You look like you could use a caffeine fix."
We drive there in separate cars. Naturally I get there first; Teddy drives the same way he does most things, with a complete certainty that something bad might befall him, so he needs to go very slowly so he can prevent it. By the time he comes in, I already have a table by the window, and I've ordered us coffee.
He slides into the booth and immediately picks up a napkin and starts shredding it. "How's Simon doing?"
"He's fine."
"So you're at Alex's. He's that guy I met at the party, Dana said."
"Yeah."
He clears his throat, frowns, looks down at his pieces of napkin, and pushes them away. "So. He must be a nice guy, huh? Have you known him a long time?"
"Longer than you've known Dana, I suppose. Although with, uh, less intensity." It's cold in the diner. I fold my arms and watch him. I've known Teddy long enough to know this agitated look means that I'm about to get a cry for help from him.
"Are you always going to be this mad, or do you see this going away anytime soon?" he says finally.
"I have no idea." I take a sip of coffee. The waitress glides up, and we give our order. Teddy wants poached eggs, well done, and a side of tomatoes. I say I want two eggs over easy with a side of wheat toast. The waitress's bracelets jangle as she writes everything down.
"You shouldn't eat eggs over easy," Teddy says, "because you never can be sure they really cook them thoroughly."
The waitress looks at me. "Over easy is fine," I say to her, rolling my eyes. Then I turn to Teddy. "You know, this is one of tho
se long-standing arguments that we don't have to have anymore. It's just one of the benefits of not being married to each other."
"But I care about you."
"But it's not up to you how I eat my eggs."
"Okay. You're right. You're absolutely right. I'm sorry." The waitress smiles at him and goes away. He looks uncomfortable, starts turning his wristwatch around and around, and then he lets out a huge sigh. "Listen, this isn't easy, but I have to tell you some stuff."
He has that same look on his face that he used to have after one of his dates I'd set him up on, like he's wondering how to make me really understand why this latest woman didn't work out. So this is it, I think, what I've been expecting. Enough time has gone by now, and he can't take it. He's now going to start listing his complaints about Dana—all those picky little things he finds wrong with women, plus now the big one: And then she gets pregnant and claims the baby is mine. What will I do, Lily? You've got to help me get out of this...
He shakes his head. A piece of spittle is caught in the crease of his lip. "God, this shouldn't be so hard. Okay. I'm just going to say it." He laughs a little, lays his hands flat on the table, palms down. "All right. It all sounds like a stupid cliché, but I've got to tell you: I have fallen so hard for your sister. I have never in my life known I could feel this way about anybody."
I stare at him.
"She's—well, she's amazing," he says. "God, Lily, she's you. She's you without all the... the togetherness, you know?" He exhales loudly and runs his hands through his crazy hair. "Without being so put together. She's you but weak and cuddly and vulnerable and confused. And I love that. Oh, she's screwed up as hell. Even I know that. God, the things she comes out with. The way she's painted that goddamn cottage. I can only imagine how you feel when you look at it there, what she's done to the place... it's criminal what she's done to that cottage." He laughs.
My mouth is hanging open. I clamp it shut.
He looks at me. "But she just got to me anyway. Who knows why? I just fell in love with her. That's all I wanted to say. I thought you should hear it from me. It's the weirdest, goddamnedest thing that's ever happened to me."
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