“An emergency already?” asked Lillian, sitting down.
“Oh. No,” said Heather, looking up, smiling. “Just clearing off some old messages. It sounds silly, but I never get a chance to do that—”
“I know,” said Lillian. “Kids down?”
“Yes. Yours?”
“Yes. I didn’t dare leave when they weren’t.” Lillian picked up the drinks menu and studied it. “An espresso martini,” she said. “I wonder which part of that would be more disastrous? The vodka or the espresso?”
“Both,” said Heather. “And why didn’t you dare?”
To the bartender Lillian said, “Beer. Same as she’s having.”
“Not the espresso martini?” asked the bartender. When she first entered the bar Lillian would have said he was rather plain, but she saw when he smiled that he had nice teeth, very white and straight.
“God, no. Too old for that.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.” The bartender kept smiling, and continued to smile after he slid Lillian’s beer over to her and went to check on the college girls.
Lillian said, “I didn’t dare because they seemed irritated with me. Everybody seems irritated with me! Maybe I take up too much space, maybe that’s the problem. Do you think we’ll feel irritated when we’re grandparents?”
“I expect so,” said Heather. “I expect it’s universal. Wanting your children to grow up and leave you alone, and then, once they have, wanting them around you.”
“And then when they are around you—”
“Wanting them to go away again!”
They were silent.
“So,” said Heather. “Total change of subject. But it’s on my mind. I applied for a part-time job, at a law firm.”
“You did! Good for you.”
“No,” said Heather. “I didn’t get it. I think I blew the interview.”
“Oh, Heather. I’m sorry. Were you really disappointed?”
“That’s the thing,” said Heather. “I wasn’t, not really. I mean, I felt like an idiot. But I was relieved.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I was sort of… scared to join the real world.”
“I could see that,” said Lillian. “Liking the idea more than the actual. You know, having someplace to go every day. Wearing real clothes. Accomplishing something.”
“Yeah,” said Heather. “That was all appealing, for sure. But sometimes—” She folded her cocktail napkin into tiny squares, then unfolded it again.
“Sometimes what?”
“Sometimes I feel like I’m hiding from the world,” she said slowly. “And I worry that when it’s time to stop hiding I won’t know how to be a real person anymore.” She squinted at Lillian. “Do you know what I mean?”
Lillian nodded. “I do. But there’s your mistake. You can’t think about the big picture. The big picture is very, very dangerous.”
“But… shouldn’t we? Aren’t the kids going to be grown up sometime? And then what?”
“Yeah,” said Lillian. “I don’t know. But I, for one, shouldn’t think about the big picture. I can’t. I’ll go mental. I can’t handle the big picture. I have to keep my picture very, very small.”
“Because of Tom,” said Heather.
“Of course because of Tom.”
One of the college girls’ cell phones rang. “Hello?” she said, mouthing something at her friend and pointing at the phone. “Oh my God, it’s too funny that you called. What? I’m with Jess. It’s so funny because her cell phone rang, and it was you, and then you called me—” She paused, nodding vigorously. “And we thought you were, like, driving by and you saw us.”
“Oh my God. Are you serious?” The blond girl tipped the phone away from her mouth to talk to her friend. “She crashed into somebody’s BMW convertible when she was eating her ice cream.” They collapsed into giggles, leaning across the checkerboard table. “You’re too funny,” the girl said. “Like, what did you do next? Did you run?”
“What do you think you’ll do?” asked Heather. “Will you forgive him, maybe?”
Lillian sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t want to forgive him. But I don’t want to destroy my own life just to make a point either. I don’t want Olivia to keep asking every day where her father is, and I don’t ever want to have to tell her he’s not coming.”
Heather leaned forward over the bar. “It’s just sex, you know. It was just once. Just bodies bumping together.”
“Gross,” said Lillian. “What a way to put it.”
“But it’s true.”
“Is that what you would say if it were Geoffrey?”
“Oh, Geoffrey,” Heather said. “I can’t imagine that.”
“But if it were?”
“Honestly?” said Heather. “Honestly, I don’t know what I would do.”
“Sometimes,” said Lillian. “Sometimes I’m so angry with him that I can’t even see straight. And then other times I feel like you do: it’s just sex. But then I get mad all over again.”
“Because on the other hand,” said Heather. “It’s sex.”
“Exactly,” said Lillian. “It’s sex. It’s us. You know?”
“I know,” said Heather.
Lillian thought about Father Colin in the bookstore talking about forgiveness, talking about the feeling of warmth that had flooded through him after the boy beat him up. “Because maybe what he did with that horrible little slutty assistant only lasted a few minutes, and maybe he was drunk, and maybe he’s sorry about it and wishes he never did it, but he still did it. He still was able, for a few minutes or an hour or two hours or whatever it was, to imagine life without me.”
“I know,” said Heather again, softly.
“Can you imagine what that feels like? He’s the love of my life, the only one I ever wanted to be with. My knight! And he was able to imagine life without me. He was actually able to pretend I didn’t exist. I never would have done that to him.” Her voice cracked at the end of the sentence. She thought about Father Colin and his secret. He said he’d had to forgive someone as an adult. But he hadn’t said whether he had done it or not. What if he hadn’t? If Father Colin couldn’t forgive everyone, how was Lillian supposed to?
“And that’s why you’re still here,” said Heather. “I get that.”
“That’s why I’m still here.” She thought of her parents’ overstuffed house, of the growing laundry monster in the corner of the den, of Olivia nursing her doll through a bout of homesickness. She thought of Jane up in Lillian’s old bedroom: Jane, who would give anything to get out of there. And here was Lillian, able to leave anytime she wanted to, and refusing to do it.
Lillian sighed and circled her coaster in the wet spot the bottle had left on the bar. “Maybe I need revenge. Do you think I need revenge?”
“No,” said Heather. They both looked at the bartender, who was sliding wineglasses upside down into the racks above his head. “No, you don’t need revenge. That will just make everything worse. It’s a myth that revenge makes you feel better. Don’t do it.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lillian. “I don’t want to talk about it. I want to talk about anything else.”
“Such as?” said Heather.
“Let’s see,” said Lillian. “Oh! I know. Stephen’s going to be a stay-at-home dad.”
“He isn’t!”
“He is, swear to God. Jane told me so.”
“Now, that’s interesting,” said Heather. “He’ll hate it.”
“I don’t think he will.” Lillian emptied her beer and signaled to the bartender to bring two more.
“Don’t you?”
“I don’t.”
“But it’s so lonely! Right at first, with a baby. That’s hard for a mother, never mind for a not-mother.”
“Jane’s worried that people will judge her,” said Lillian.
“They will.”
“Heather!”
“I’m not saying they should. But they will.”
“But w
hy?”
“They just will. They’ll wonder why she didn’t take a longer maternity leave. They’ll wonder why she bothered to have a baby at all if she wasn’t going to have a hand in raising it. They’ll wonder all sorts of inappropriate things.”
“Yeah,” said Lillian. “I guess you’re right. They won’t say those things, though.”
“No, but they’ll wonder. And she’ll sense them wondering. And then Stephen will get all sorts of credit for what he’s doing, as though it involves some sort of heroism—”
“Right,” said Lillian. “People will come up to him at the playground and say things like, ‘How do you like being a full-time father?’ ” Here she talked in a fake voice, sounding rather like a Muppet. “But nobody ever asks us how we like being mothers.”
“And,” said Heather, “when the baby is really small, and he’s carrying it around in a sling or something, and he goes for a cup of coffee, everyone in the coffee shop is going to go nuts over him. ‘Oh, look at that dad with the baby.’ Like it’s really special. ‘He must have taken the day off to be with the baby,’ or some crap like that.”
“Yeah,” said Lillian. “You’re right.”
“It’s annoying.”
“It is annoying.”
“But it’s life.”
“It’s life.” Lillian went on, “I was talking to her the other day, and it was strange. She seemed so… I don’t know. Vulnerable. And frightened. I usually think of her as this powerhouse. Business woman, MBA, all those things I am not. But when I saw her in that little bed, my little bed, in her shorts and her big T-shirt, she just seemed regular. And scared.”
“She should be scared,” said Heather. “It’s the scariest thing in the world.”
“Yeah. I know. But maybe they’ve got it all worked out.”
“I doubt it,” said Heather. “Nobody does, not really, not until they’ve been doing it for a while.”
“And even then—”
“And even then.” Heather balled up her napkin and rolled it along the edge of the bar.
“But maybe what they think they have worked out will actually work out.” Lillian looked briefly up to the ceiling. When she looked back down, she saw that the bartender was looking at them. She gave him a tiny smile and looked quickly away.
“Maybe it will. Stephen’s a doll. If anyone can do it, he can.”
“That’s right!” said Lillian. “I’d forgotten. You and Stephen.”
“Me and Stephen,” said Heather. “Very funny.” She rolled her eyes and grimaced.
“You know you had a thing for him.”
“Did not! There never was a ‘me and Stephen.’ ”
“Not officially,” agreed Lillian. “But if he’d been a couple of years older—”
“Oh, stop it.”
“Or not my brother.”
“Stop it.” Heather was smiling. She checked her cell phone for the time. “Shit. I’ve got to go.”
“Curfew?” said Lillian.
“Something like that.”
“Really, a curfew?”
“Of course not. I said I’d be back, that’s all. So I plan to be back.”
“And if you don’t, you’ll turn into a pumpkin?”
“Oh, shut up,” said Heather fondly. “You, of all people.”
“Right?” said Lillian. “I know. I’ve got no rights for criticizing other people’s marriages—”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Sure it is,” said Lillian cheerfully. “But it’s okay.”
Heather hugged Lillian. “Call Tom,” she said. “It’s what you really want to do.”
“I don’t know,” said Lillian to Heather’s shoulder. “I don’t know if I can.”
“You do know,” said Heather. “You can. Call him.” She picked up Lillian’s phone and scrolled through the numbers. “See?” she said. “It’s right here. Home.” Then she paused, looking. “Lilly!” she said. “What’s this?”
“What?”
“This, under the Cs. Colin. You have Father Colin in your cell phone?”
“Maybe.” Lillian took the phone back and dropped it into her purse. “He gave me his number, just in case.”
“In case of what? A religious emergency?”
“I don’t know,” said Lillian. “Just in case.”
“Oh, sweetie,” said Heather, and she hugged Lillian again. “This is not your summer, is it?”
“I know,” whispered Lillian. “I know that.”
After Heather had gone Lillian remained at the bar. She hadn’t noticed the college girls go, but suddenly the bar was empty.
“Another?” said the bartender, coming over, white cloth now tucked into his belt.
“Sure,” she said. “Keep ’em coming.”
“Really?”
“No. But I’ve always wanted to say that. Just keep one coming.” She studied her reflection in the mirror behind the vodka bottles. In this light, from this distance, she didn’t look terrible.
“It can’t be that bad,” the bartender said genially. He had a dark, slender face; his hair was cut in a way that she was sure was meant to disguise the fact that it was thinning; his hands were small and almost feminine. And yet he had those perfect teeth, and when he smiled at her Lillian felt her cheeks warm and was thankful for the dim light inside the bar. He slid the beer toward her and took her empty glass.
“It is.” Lillian was looking out the window, where she could still see Heather’s figure retreating down the street. She watched her until she turned a corner and was swallowed up by the darkness. It was funny, wasn’t it, that you could know someone so well for so many years of your life, and then you could live apart from them for so many more years, and when you saw them after a long absence you found that all along the two of you had been moving along on parallel paths and had arrived at the same point.
She turned back to the bartender, who was looking at her intently. “I’m here, right? I’m drinking alone. On a Monday night. I’m far from home. I’m living with my parents. On a foldout couch. It is that bad. It’s worse than that bad.”
She thought about Father Colin, about how the day in the bookstore when she’d opened up to him, and he to her, and how quickly he’d shut down. It was strange, the similarities between a priest and a bartender. Untouchable, somehow, both of them, and therefore safe.
That day in the bookstore she’d been worried that Father Colin was going to spout a Bible quote about forgiveness, or that he’d chastise her for her circumstances or for her feelings about those circumstances. But he hadn’t: he’d just listened. He was a good listener. She thought that’s what she needed now more than anything. Not someone to prod or solve or apologize or pontificate, but just someone to listen.
The bartender squatted to unload glasses from the dishwasher. She could see the top of his head, the way the hair on his crown grew in whirls, like eddies. It seemed too intimate a view of someone she didn’t know and so she looked away, and as she put her hand just under her collarbone she thought she could feel a clot of rage and shame. What a relief it would be, wouldn’t it, to have it gone.
She retrieved her phone from her bag and scrolled once again through the numbers. What would Tom be doing at that moment? Sleeping, probably. Or out! Maybe he went out every night, cajoling a neighbor or a friend to join him for a drink. Yes, probably he was out.
And Father Colin? I’m a terrible sleeper, he’d said. A complete insomniac.
She dialed.
When she pulled into the parking lot he was standing outside, fully dressed, hands in his pockets, backlit by the unsettlingly bright light on the rectory’s porch. He could have been a suburban father watching a baseball game the way he stood there, with a casual and proprietary air. She took her time getting out of the car, locking it carefully behind her in what she recognized later, thinking back on the night, was probably an unnecessary action, and which probably helped reveal the fact that she did not have all of her faculties at her dis
posal. She walked unsteadily toward him and he tipped his head in her direction. “Lillian?” he said. “Have you been drinking?”
She made a small gesture with her thumb and index finger to indicate: a little. She motioned toward his clothes. “It’s after midnight,” she said. “Why are you up and dressed?”
“Come in,” he said. “I’ll make you coffee.”
He led her into the kitchen she had passed the day she brought the paper for the bake sale. Same green Formica countertops, same aging appliances. She sat at the table, which was some sort of old wood, pocked and well worn. The kitchen chairs had those thin round cushions tied to the legs with fraying red threads. Grandmotherly, she thought, the way they slid around on you when you sat down.
Father Colin began fiddling with a coffeemaker on the counter. He looked at her severely as he filled the pot with water from the tap and said, “You shouldn’t have been driving.”
She bristled at that but she said, “I know.” Under the bright lights of the kitchen, away from the bar, the bravado she had felt an hour before was beginning to disappear. She tapped her fingers on the table and said, “Do you drink?”
The coffeemaker spit and hissed. It too was old. “Not much,” said Father Colin. “There’s a tendency in my family for that to go badly.”
“Oh?” she said. “Your father?”
“When he was alive. And my brother, when he’s not careful, which is most of the time.” He poured the coffee, then carried a mug to her. He poured himself a smaller amount. First the alcohol, and now the caffeine. She would have to pump and discard gallons of milk. Still, she felt the coffee begin to shore her up. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t drink much anymore, since the babies. I don’t think I can handle it.”
He smiled, losing the stern look he had worn since she pulled up. “It’s not a problem. I’m glad for the company. I haven’t had many postmidnight visitors here.”
“Did you in Boston?”
He shrugged.
“What were you doing? When I called?”
“Writing. A sermon.”
“Oh.” She rubbed her hands over the grooves in the table. She could never have imagined, back when she was studying for her confirmation with Father Michael, that so many years later she would be sitting in the rectory kitchen, slightly woozy, talking to a priest. She took another gulp of coffee. “How does that work? Do you just sit there and wait… for God to talk to you, or something? Tell you what to say?”
The Arrivals: A Novel Page 23
