We Have Everything Before Us

by Esther Yin-Ling Spodek

  Sarayu wants to get to the restaurant—she can’t help rushing—but she doesn’t want to be early. Phil is frequently on time, and she wants him to wait. It’s been two weeks since his wife, Linda, emailed Sarayu to tell her about the divorce, and to ask if Phil was with her. Of course he wasn’t with her. The email was a shock. “I know all about you,” Linda wrote.

  Why did Sarayu open the email this time? Was it the heading, “a message from Phil Anderson’s wife?” Why do people open emails that should be left alone? Are they so easily manipulated by their inane curiosity, the reason why they get caught up in email scams and send money they will never see again? She had never seen herself that way.

  “Is he with you? We are getting a divorce, which, of course, is partially your fault. It’s his fault too. Is he with you? I’m praying for both of you, for you are both sinners and you will get your just desserts.”

  Sarayu did not believe the mumbo jumbo of Linda’s judgmental Christianity. She did not believe in paying for your sins. She was doing nothing with Phil. But she did believe that they were getting a divorce.

  “Please do not contact me again,” she wrote in return to Linda’s email. She wanted to tell her to fuck off, but as a medical professional, she knew it wasn’t a good idea to antagonize someone who is crazy.

  Now she was going to meet Phil for dinner. She took hours deciding what to wear. She did her makeup, washed it off, and did it again. She had picked the date and the restaurant. She knew that he would have to come all the way into Chicago, to come to her, something he had rarely done during their affair.

  PHIL IS EARLY and self-conscious. Behind the maître d’s stand he can see his reflection in the mirror, and he moves so that he isn’t directly in front of it. A large man in a black open-collared shirt asks him if he can help. “I’m waiting for someone,” Phil answers.

  “Do you want to wait at a table?”

  “Yes.”

  Phil follows him to a semi-secluded four top in the corner, not far from the kitchen. The maître d’ hands him the wine list and puts two menus down, and before leaving the table he takes Phil’s order for a pinot noir. The kitchen door pops open and Phil hears metal clank and the pop and rush of frying oil. He watches through the window at the front of the room, desperate for a drink. Then, finally, he sees her. She stops to smooth her skirt before pulling the glass door open.

  A moment of glare from outside blocks her face from his view, and he can only see the top of her head, her dark hair in a halo of light. Then she moves and he can see the skin of her lips stretch in a smile. She has her hand out to him, as if to shake his, but he reaches for her cheek, awkwardly, brushing it with his lips. It seems to take her by surprise.

  “I’m not late, am I?” she asks.

  “No, no!” He smiles. He can’t help his enthusiasm; he is so happy to see her grinning at him. He doesn’t want to chase her away. “I think I am early.”

  “I’m sorry you had to travel so far, but I like this restaurant,” she says.

  He nods. After all the evenings they spent together, eating in hotel rooms, or even an occasional picnic along the river, far from his house, he has never known what her favorite foods are.

  “I see you’ve already ordered something to drink. I know what you like. Do you know what I like?”

  “I suppose a chardonnay. Tell me about your new job.”

  She smiles and looks down at the tablecloth. Phil watches her large oval eyelids and thinks that they are smooth and beautiful.

  “The hours aren’t always great. But I have stretches of free time to see people and I have a social life now. I didn’t have much of one before. I grew tired of the complications of traveling so much for work.” She smiles as she makes eye contact with him.

  He feels she is in control of the conversation, that she knows what she is doing as they wait for the next thing to say. Sarayu appears more confident than he feels, though he could be wrong. Is she nervous at all, or sorry that they are here? He takes a moment to recover from these thoughts, and to concentrate on what he should say to her that would endear him to her, something small and even meaningless, not the real drama in his life, not his parting from his wife. He is brought back to the immediate. “Other than that, I hang out with friends. Nothing too exciting,” Sarayu says. “What about you? You are getting a divorce?”

  Phil shrugs. “I don’t see much of my family right now. Jilly is still at school, and Isabel spends her time with her mom.”

  “Linda?”

  “The almost-ex? She stays out of the house when I am there in the daytime. She is getting her own place. The girls will spend the summer living in both houses. I may see them more.”

  “Of course, it won’t be like it used to be. Your daughters are grown up. They don’t want to stay at home and hang out with their dad.”

  Phil laughs and shakes his head.

  “You know what I mean. Tell me you wanted to stay home all the time with your parents when you were a teen.”

  “You’re right. I didn’t.”

  She touches his arm lightly, then pulls her hand away. “Where is Linda looking for a house?”

  “Same town. Same neighborhood. It’s a small town and she seems to have taken all of our friends.” He laughs to make it seem like a joke, when it really isn’t one. “It’s all fine. I’m busy with work and the vegetable garden. And keeping up the old workout schedule.”

  “I can see you’re still doing that.”

  “Keeps my mind clear.”

  The waiter brings Sarayu’s wine, a basket of bread, and takes their orders. Normally this would be a time where Phil would make a toast, but to what? Here’s to admitting faults and moving on? So, he tells her about work and how difficult it is in the recovering economy to get businesses to sign maintenance contracts, to bring in new clients, that earlier in the year they had had to lay off two of the women in the office. By the time their food comes, they are on their second glasses of wine and Sarayu begins to pick at the food on her plate, something he has never seen her do. He is struck by this sign of vulnerability, the sort of thing he sees his wife do. He realizes that he has been talking too much, and that he has not told her that he is sorry for the way he treated her in the past. He looks up from his plate. She smiles in a way he remembers.

  “I don’t mean to take up all the airspace,” he says.

  She shakes her head as if to say that it isn’t a problem.

  “Do you come to this restaurant a lot?” he asks.

  “Yes. It’s only a few blocks from my apartment. My girlfriend used to date the chef.” Sarayu takes a small mouthful of food. She chews. There is another space in the conversation, and Phil watches her and waits for her to say something else. She looks at him, then down at her plate. “She is still friends with him, even though they don’t go out anymore. So, it’s not awkward when she comes here to eat.”

  “That must be challenging,” Phil says.

  “You know, I have regretted what happened,” he says.

  She looks surprised. Her eyebrows crease. “Which part?”

  She is angry, he thinks. “No, no! I don’t mean the relationship. I can tell by your face that you think I’m talking about the affair. I don’t regret that, except that it upset my wife. I regret breaking up.”

  She drinks her wine.

  “And I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t want to hurt you, and I handled it badly. But I didn’t know how to handle it.”

  Sarayu puts her fork down. She sits back. “It’s not like you haven’t broken up with your mistress before.”

  He is surprised at her retort. He didn’t see the punch coming and he didn’t expect her to have this attitude now that they were meeting to have dinner.

  “And you didn’t do it on your own,” Sarayu says. “I was there as well.”

  He begins to smile with embarrassment. “Yes, you were,” he says quietly. “But I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m so sorry I did.”

  Sarayu looks at
the small pile of food she has made on her plate. “I have never understood why people meet at restaurants over meals to discuss significant and unpleasant things. It ruins the meal. It ruins your appetite.”

  “I didn’t want to ruin the meal.”

  “Then what is all of this?” She spreads out her hands to show the length of the table. “This idea to meet? Was it your idea or mine? I don’t remember. I chose the day and time and place. And it isn’t like we used to eat out at many restaurants. You hid me away in hotel rooms.”

  He shakes his head. “I am so sorry.”

  “Am I supposed to sit here and listen to your divorce story and feel sorry for you? Am I supposed to take some responsibility for your wife wanting to leave you? Because whatever was wrong between the two of you was wrong before I came along.”

  Phil has nothing to say now.

  “I can’t do this.” Sarayu is looking him in the eye with an unwavering expression. “I thought I wanted to see you. But I can’t finish a meal with you.”

  Then she begins to lose her composure, at first in a small, quiet movement as her locked gaze breaks and she looks at her hands in her lap. He expects her to rise up and leave the table, and he breathes deeply to prepare himself for this public rejection and embarrassment. Then she puts her face into her hands and begins to tremble. Her trembling accelerates. He looks at the leftover food on her plate, and when she begins to sob, he says to her, “Let me take you home. Just walk you to your apartment and see that you get inside.”

  “I hate crying,” he hears her say into her hands. She is embarrassed.

  He gets up from the table and walks to the maître d’ to pay. “I’m sorry,” he says as he signs the credit card receipt. Sarayu looks up and begins to wipe her wet face with her napkin. He takes her gently by the elbow and leads her out of the restaurant.

  She doesn’t speak as they progress down the block. They approach her building. A cooling wind moves amidst the leaves on the large full trees. Sarayu walks upright. Her shoulders and bare arms are even. She leans into him, then pulls away. “It’s ok,” he tells her quietly. “I’m just walking you home.” He knows she probably feels humiliated, and it hurts him at the center of his chest. He is the reason for her discomfort.

  THE DRIVE HOME feels long, but as he pulls into his driveway, he is thinking about Sarayu, walking side by side to her apartment, taking her hand as he said goodbye, he said that he missed her. Then, her whisper, a crackling voice, the kind that betrayed a terrible discomfort, she said that she still loved him. And they parted. At home, his daughter and wife are asleep. He goes to his bed, undresses, and climbs beneath the bedclothes. For the next four hours he falls into a deep and dreamless sleep, the kind he has not had for a long time.

  19

  KAYE OPENS THE door to a skinny young man with a soul patch and full lips. “Yes?”

  “I’m looking for Clara?” he says, tentatively. “Does she live here?”

  “I’m her mother.”

  He stands on the concrete landing below where Kaye has opened the porch door. They are eye level. He seems old for Clara, maybe twenty-five? And it’s two thirty in the afternoon. Clara is still at school.

  “Is she home?” the young man asks.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Jared. I arranged to meet her here.”

  “She’s seventeen, Jared.”

  Jared’s pale face turns scarlet. He palms his shaggy blond hair and looks at his shoes. “Sorry?”

  “She’s still at school right now. She’s not due to come home for another hour.” Kaye reminds herself that the legal age in Illinois is seventeen. “Did she tell you that she is a high school student?”

  “Oh no.” His hands are now in his front pockets. “I’m not her boyfriend. I’m here about the room. The room for rent. Are you the one renting it out? It was listed on Craigslist? A room in northwest Evanston? Not far from the football stadium? Near a bus stop? With kitchen privileges?

  “What room? I’m not renting a room.” Kaye briefly considers actually renting the room. She will be rid of Clara in a year when she goes to college. Maybe it would be better to have a lodger than a daughter who hates her?

  “She put her room on Craigslist?”

  “I suppose it isn’t for rent, then.”

  Kaye had always thought teenagers were idiots with undeveloped brains, trying to operate as if they knew what they were doing. She isn’t changing her philosophy, but momentarily she is almost impressed at what her daughter has done to express how much she hates her. What has happened to the girl who cried when Kaye left her at preschool to fend for herself, because Kaye wanted time off from playing with Clara, from watching to make sure she didn’t do anything dangerous, from seeing that her small brain was constantly stimulated while Kaye’s own couldn’t concentrate on a book. It wasn’t her idea to have a kid, Kaye thinks, it was Eric’s.

  Kaye is furious. How far did Clara think this joke would go? Should she call Eric at work? “Did you make an appointment with her over the phone?”

  He looks blankly at her, as if waiting for an apology. “Email.”

  “It’s strange she would give you this time.”

  “I’m early. I walked all the way from campus. I didn’t know how long it would take.”

  “I appreciate that,” Kaye says. “But there is no room for rent.”

  Jared begins to turn around. “Thanks anyway,” he says as he walks down the path.

  Kaye watches him leave. At least he was polite, she thinks. She runs to Clara’s room. It is easy to guess Clara’s computer password, for it is the name of her beloved Scottish grandmother who passed away ten years ago of lung cancer. She came to visit every summer and would sit in the screened porch puffing on the Marlboros she picked up in the airport duty-free shop. Janet. The same password Eric uses. Such a clever twosome, Clara and Eric.

  Kaye is waiting in the kitchen when Clara arrives home an hour later. She has been waiting there, drinking coffee, and her stomach is feeling sour from the third cup as she hears Clara’s key in the door. “Come in here!” she says in her loudest voice.

  “Hold on. I have to go to the bathroom.” Clara sounds calm to Kaye.

  Kaye stands at the sink and washes the coffee pot, listening for Clara’s footsteps. She puts the pot and the mug in the drain just as Clara steps into the doorway. “Tell me about Jared. And Craigslist.”

  “Shit. I forgot about that.”

  “He was early. You were still at school. What were you planning? I went to your computer and found that you had taken pictures of your bedroom. You posted them on Craigslist and tried to rent it out!”

  “You were on my computer?”

  “It wasn’t difficult.”

  “That’s private. God, you are such a bloody bitch! I can’t believe you would go on my computer.”

  “His name was Jared. He came all the way out here from Northwestern to look at the room. You made an appointment with him. Were you drunk when you set this up?”

  “No. I’m not like you.”

  “What are you talking about?” The bottom falls from Kaye’s stomach. “I am not a drunk.”

  “Believe what you want.” Clara looks at the ceiling, then at her mother.

  “Don’t you talk to me that way.”

  “Why? What do you ever do for me? You hang around the house hiding all the time. It’s not like you watch what I am doing. You never pay attention. You are so fucking self-absorbed.”

  “I am not having this conversation with you if you talk to me like that.”

  Clara turns and begins to walk away. “One more year and I am out of here,” she calls back.

  Kaye leans back against the counter. She doesn’t know what to do or say. It isn’t the first time. The next thing she hears is the front door slamming shut.

  WALKING UP THE parkway to her front door, Eleanor writes an imaginary email to Phil. “Dear Phil: I’m sure we can be ‘just friends,’ except that I have this image of you
naked and limp in the darkness of my garage. It’s not something I want to think a lot about. So how would this work?” She climbs the porch steps, past the place where she sat with Phil, where she kissed him.

  The street is quiet and dark with the long shadows of clouds. A tall thin woman holding a cigarette between her fingers in one hand, and a leash in the other, walks her vizsla on the sidewalk. She takes a long drag near Eleanor’s front lawn as the dog sniffs for a place to relieve himself. She smiles and waves the cigarette hand at Eleanor.

  Inside, Eleanor’s house is quiet. It’s late in the afternoon, and she assumes Eugene, home from school, is doing his homework. Liam appears on the stairs. “Can I go to Pete’s house?”

  Immediately she wants to say no. So, she does, not because she has a reason, but because she feels tired and light-headed, and it just comes out of her mouth.

  “Why not?”

  “I said so.”

  “Give me a reason.”

  “I don’t have to. Don’t you have homework?”

  He retreats, stomping up the stairs.

  In her bedroom, she takes out her laptop and sits on the bed. “Dear Phil: It isn’t that I don’t want to be friends. I don’t know how. What do I do now? Mostly I find you sexually repulsive. Yet, if I’m honest, I’m also still attracted to you, perhaps the problem is that I can’t get the garage incident out of my head and I can’t stop being angry. At me. At you. Should I just ignore you?” She knows the answer to this. Delete.

  PHIL WAKES UP in a strange bed, and for a split second, even with the late afternoon sun hitting him in the face from the open window next to the bed, he wonders where Sarayu is, and he almost thinks that he can smell her apartment as he did two nights ago, then realizes that he is in the guest room of his own house, the room his wife has taken. He is lying on top of her bed. He remembers that she wasn’t home and he had decided to look through her things, not for anything in particular. He discovered that she didn’t fold her underpants and bras, but just put them in the drawer. Her socks lay in an unmatched mass. She hung her T-shirts on hangers rather than place them in the dresser. And her jewelry she had tangled in multiple cotton-lined boxes piled on a shelf in her closet, instead of in the wooden jewelry box he had once given her as an anniversary present. Some of the more expensive pieces he could not find. Not that he cared. His search had been tiring and he had picked up a book, lain back on the bed, and fallen asleep.