by Adam Mitzner
“An excellent point and question,” I say. “Let me see . . . I have this to say for myself. First, I love my Jacob very, very much. Second, I want to hear everything—and I mean everything—that happened to him today, starting with the moment he woke up.”
I scoop my son into my arms and begin to squeeze him. He giggles and squirms, but not in a way that suggests he wants me to break the hold.
“I don’t remember what happened when I woke up,” he says when I finally let him go.
“Hm. Do you remember what happened when you came home from school?”
As he thinks about it, his eyes roll back and to the right. His little brows knit together tightly.
“Yes. I had a snack when I came home. Livie made it for me.”
Livie is our babysitter. Olivia is how she’s known outside of our family. When she joined us, Jacob was just eighteen months and he couldn’t master her four-syllable name. Hence the nickname. Livie’s a college student at Iona, charged with picking Jacob up at school and occupying him away from a screen until Stuart is done with his workday, which is never later than 4:30.
“Was it . . . peanut butter and jelly?”
“How’d you know?”
I didn’t, really. It was a guess.
“Because moms know everything.”
“And what did you have for dinner?”
He can’t remember at first. “Chicken fingers.”
“Were they good?”
“Uh-uh.”
I get up from my son’s bed and open his dresser, fishing out the pajamas on top. Ironman.
“Time to get ready for sleep,” I say, handing him his pj’s.
I put Jacob to bed so infrequently these days that my son is visibly surprised that I’m doing the honors tonight. If that weren’t enough to make me feel like the worst mother ever, my absenteeism over the past weeks—months really—is brought home when Jacob tells me that I have the ritual out of order.
“Teeth brushing, then pajamas, then story,” he says.
I correct the mistake. After he’s brushed his teeth and put on his pj’s and we’re back on his bed, I say, “What story do you want to read tonight?”
“Mike Mulligan. It’s what I always read.”
Although I wouldn’t have thought it possible a minute ago, I now feel even guiltier. I should know the book my son always reads before sleep. The last time I read to him, which I swear couldn’t have been more than a month or so ago, his favorite was something different. A book about trains, I think.
“Where is it?”
Jacob reaches over to his night table. He grasps the book with both hands and passes it to me as if it’ll break if it hits the floor.
“Get all snuggly,” I say.
He wiggles under his covers and then pulls them up to his shoulders. “Ready.”
“Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel,” I say, then open the cover and begin to read.
After the story is finished, with Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel, Mary Anne, firmly ensconced in the basement of the new town hall, I ask Jacob if he’d like to read something else.
“No . . . I’m really sleepy,” he says.
“Okay,” I say, masking my disappointment that my time with Jacob is coming to an end. “Sweet dreams.”
My son closes his eyes and turns away from me.
Stuart is waiting for me on the living room sofa when I return from Jacob’s bedroom. He puts down his Kindle and offers to make me dinner.
“That’s okay. I’ll fix something for myself.”
“Don’t be silly. You just got home, and I’ve had three hours to unwind already. Besides, all I’m going to do is put the chicken fingers I made for Jacob in the microwave. Relax. I’ll pour us both a glass of wine.”
A moment later, Stuart places a plate of chicken fingers and roasted potatoes on the place mat in front of me and hands me a glass of white wine. As I begin to eat, Stuart talks about his work. It’s a subject that has never interested me. It’s all petty faculty disputes over the most trivial things, parents who think their kid is the next Picasso and don’t understand why Stuart doesn’t recognize true genius when he’s in its presence, and pressuring even seven-year-olds to get into the “right” college.
Tonight he’s going on about the school’s new principal, a woman named Natalie Owens. The changes Natalie seeks to implement at P.S. 216 have become a recurring theme of Stuart’s repertoire. It has something to do with sculpture, I know, but I was only half listening when Stuart mentioned it the first time, which means that I’m now uncertain whether the principal wants to introduce more or eliminate it. It’s too late for me to ask Stuart for that clarification, so I simply nod as he speaks.
He segues from that topic to ask about my day. I tell him that everything is fine and smile to reinforce the point. In fact, my day was terrible. Thankfully, my lie is enough to end that topic of discussion, as Stuart doesn’t inquire further. I breathe a sigh of relief that I’ll be spared from having to provide him with any details. I take the opportunity to suggest we adjourn back to the living room.
Stuart settles into the club chair and immediately returns to his book. I take residence on our sofa and turn on the television. There’s nothing good on, so I begin watching a rom-com I saw twenty years ago and didn’t much like even back then. At least it’s on a pay channel, so there won’t be any commercials.
At ten, I tell him that I’m exhausted and get up to head to the bedroom. Most nights we head to bed separately, lately because I’ve still been at work when Stuart goes to sleep. On those nights when I am home, he normally stays up later than I can.
Tonight, however, Stuart follows me into our bedroom.
Even though in nearly every way Stuart appears to the outside world to be a beta man—slight in stature, balding, somewhat effeminate-sounding voice, working a job that is held in most schools by a woman—in the sack he’s nothing but alpha. Tonight he dispenses with foreplay, gently enters me, and then rests his body on top of mine and establishes a slow, steady rhythm.
It’s been quite a while since Stuart and I had sex. So long, in fact, that I can’t remember the last time. I shut my eyes, trying to escape into the feeling, hoping to block out my pain for a few minutes. To my pleasant surprise, it works. So much so that when Stuart increases his tempo, I feel myself approaching the threshold. Stuart must sense that I’m close because he holds off his own pleasure. I climax, and he releases just a few thrusts later.
Before withdrawing, Stuart whispers in my ear, “I love you.”
For the third time this evening, I feel guiltier than I had previously imagined possible.
3.
ELLA BRODEN
The transformation from Cassidy back to Ella Broden is akin to the way scuba divers ascend slowly to the surface to avoid the bends. Right now, I’m in the middle. I look like Cassidy—heavy black eyeliner, crazy tousled hair, and clothing that I might as well have painted on—but in Gabriel’s presence, I always feel like Ella.
I never eat before I perform, which means I’m famished after my set. We select a pub a few blocks away from Lava. Actually, Gabriel chooses it after we walk by several much nicer places. His selection doesn’t surprise me—I know Gabriel’s aversion to fancy restaurants. It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate a good meal, but he believes spending $150 on dinner is obscene. It’s just one of the many ways he’s different from the other men with whom I’ve been involved.
Aside from the bar area, the space is relatively empty. We’re seated in the back, and I ask the waitress for a glass of white wine—Ella’s drink. Cassidy is a more of a whisky chick. Gabriel asks for a beer they have on tap, as he always does.
When the waitress walks away, Gabriel says, “I really liked the song you wrote. It’s . . . very powerful.” He chuckles. “I thought I’d heard it a hundred times through the bedroom door, but it sounds different onstage.”
Sometimes, when I can’t sleep—often, since Charlotte’s murder—I sit at t
he piano and quietly sing “Never Goodbye.” It feels as though I’m talking to my sister. I thought Gabriel was asleep during those sessions, but apparently not.
“I read this story once about Glenn Frey, you know, from the Eagles?”
Gabriel nods.
“When he was starting out, he rented a place on top of Jackson Browne’s apartment. He claimed that he learned how to write songs because the ceilings and floors were so thin that he could hear Jackson Browne writing ‘Doctor, My Eyes.’ He went over the hook a million times, until he had it exactly right.”
Gabriel smiles at my bit of musical trivia, but he’s not going to let me change the subject so easily. “How does it feel, singing it?”
Another thing that differentiates Gabriel from all of my previous relationships is that he cares about my internal life. He claims it’s an occupational hazard of being a police detective. They’re trained to disregard the surface stuff, the signals the perp wants you to see, and delve deeper. To detect, he says, playing on the root word of his vocation.
“It’s hard. Not gonna lie.”
“Do you really feel the way you say in the song?”
Charlotte was an aspiring novelist. Despite her disclaimers about her work being fiction, I always assumed it was autobiographical. Apparently, Gabriel thinks that’s true of my lyrics too. I can understand why, in this case, he finds that disconcerting. “Never Goodbye” is heavy with suicidal imagery. I suspect the line he’s most troubled by is the one about wanting to swim down until I’m lost forever.
“Sometimes.”
He nods, the interrogator in him trying to coax more out of me with his silence. It works.
“Less every day, though.”
The waitress is back with our drinks. Gabriel lifts his beer to eye level.
“To it getting better each day,” he says.
“Cheers to that,” I say as I clink my glass against his.
Gabriel orders a steak. He likes them prepared well done. I shake my head every time he utters the words. For my part, I’m not in the mood for red meat. Although I usually think twice about ordering seafood in a pub, I throw caution to the wind and ask for the seared tuna—rare.
“Any more thoughts about an apartment?” he asks as we wait for our food to arrive.
My father wants to buy me an apartment. He first made the offer about five years ago, right around the same time he purchased Charlotte’s place for her at Riverside and 108th. He said it was a good investment for him because he wouldn’t be throwing money away on rent during her undergraduate years at Columbia. Claiming he didn’t want to treat us unequally, he offered to buy me one too, even though I was already gainfully employed by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and supporting myself—albeit in far less luxury than I’d experienced as his dependent.
My father still hasn’t put Charlotte’s apartment on the market. It’s sitting dormant, like some type of monument to her life. He dutifully makes the maintenance payments each month, although to the best of my knowledge he hasn’t set foot inside since her death. Neither have I. I think he’s hoping that if he can buy a home for me, it’ll ease the pain of letting go of the one tangible piece of Charlotte’s life that still remains.
“Not really. I just moved . . .” I say.
“Well, that was a matter of necessity. This would be by choice.”
My sister’s murderer went straight from my bed to Hell—right after I jammed a knife into his throat. I never spent another night in that apartment. After a few days of staying in my father’s guest room—a lovely space overlooking Central Park—I returned to the West Village and the “comforts” of a fourth-floor, walk-up, one-bedroom sublet that looks out on an air shaft and smells of curry courtesy of the Baluchi’s downstairs.
My lease expires in six months. At that time, I’ll have to make a decision about where to live. Not just where, but how as well. With Gabriel? Off my father’s charity? In a place I can afford on my own because I’ve cast aside my singing dream and gone back to practicing law?
But as I learned over this past half year, six months is a very long time. The world might look vastly different by then. Mine certainly did six months ago.
“It’ll be an excuse to get new furniture, at least,” Gabriel says with a sly smile.
“Are you saying you don’t care for Jeffrey’s interior decorating?”
Jeffrey is my ex-boyfriend. When we broke up, he left me his furniture as a parting gift. I’ve kept all his stuff to this day. Well, except for the box spring and mattress; they were soaked in blood.
“Did I tell you that he got passed over again?” I ask before Gabriel can respond to my question about Jeffrey’s taste in furniture.
Jeffrey dumped me to fully dedicate himself to the effort of becoming a partner at one of those assembly-line law firms. The kind with thousands of lawyers working eighty-hour weeks, fifty-two weeks a year. Even though our breakup was one of the best things to have ever happened to me, I can’t deny enjoying a little schadenfreude over his failure to make partner.
“No. How’d you find that out?”
“He called my father, looking for a job.”
“Did he give him one?”
“No. I think my father’s still hoping that I’ll come back to work with him.”
Gabriel nods, but I can see the wheels turning in his head. He’s got his detective hat back on.
“Do you miss it?”
Once again, classic Gabriel. Most people would ask whether I’m considering going back to work for my father. Gabriel doesn’t care about what I’m going to do for work as much as he does about what I’m feeling. I haven’t been in enough relationships to establish a statistically significant sample size, but I’m still reasonably certain that Gabriel is an outlier in this regard.
“Not criminal defense,” I say. “I could never do that again. But prosecuting. Yeah, I miss that. Thing is, I really love singing. And I’ve enjoyed having a break from a real job too, but a lot of the time my daily existence feels very self-indulgent.”
It never ceases to amaze me how Gabriel is able to get me to divulge my innermost thoughts. Whenever anyone else asks about my life, I just tell them I’m living my dream. For some reason, I don’t put on that show for him. Perhaps it’s not for some reason, but for the best reason: I want him to know the real me. Even if I don’t truly know myself.
“Is that why we’re going on a double date with Lauren Wright and her husband tomorrow night?”
Lauren is my former boss, the chief of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Special Victims Bureau. I was her deputy for four years, until I resigned nine months ago to join my father’s firm. That job lasted only three months. My sister’s murder made it abundantly clear to me that I didn’t want to devote my life to defending the bad guys.
“My only ulterior motive is introducing her to you,” I say with mock innocence.
Our dinner tomorrow night will be the first time Gabriel and I have gone out with others as a couple. He hasn’t even met my father yet. At least not as my boyfriend, although they crossed paths during the investigation into Charlotte’s murder. But Lauren is family too. She’s much more than an ex-boss. She’s my mentor, my role model, the woman I admire most. My mother died when I was still in college, so I never got to see her through adult eyes.
“Then I’d better be on my best behavior,” Gabriel says as he flashes his A-smile, the one that never fails him with members of the opposite sex, including me.
“You’d better,” I say. “If she doesn’t approve, you’re history, my friend.”
After dinner we go back to my apartment. I suggest we take a cab, as the temperature has dropped to near freezing, unseasonably cold for pre-Thanksgiving New York City. Gabriel says the walk will be fun. He takes my hand, which, as cheesy as it sounds, is truly all the warmth I need.
We’re at the point in our relationship where even though the sex is not new, it’s still implied when we spend the night together. If my
past is prologue, though, soon enough one or the other of us will claim to be too tired, or will have to wake up early, and that streak will be broken. For now, I try to enjoy the certainty of knowing it’s going to happen.
I need to shed the last vestiges of Cassidy first. It’s a hard-and-fast rule with me. I don’t pretend to be her when I’m not at Lava, having learned the hard way never to blur that line.
I turn the shower to its hottest setting, letting my closet-size bathroom steam up before regulating the temperature so I won’t be scalded. Then I step under the spray and wash Cassidy away. I watch the black mascara swirl around the drain.
4.
DANA GOODWIN
I give serious thought to calling in sick, even though no doctor or test would have validated my self-diagnosis. Still, I don’t see how I can possibly function at work in my state. I feel certain everyone will be better off if I stay home today. Yet, at 7:15 a.m., when my snooze alarm goes off, I haul myself out of bed and into the shower.
Stuart always gets up earlier than I do. In the mornings, he’s on “Jacob patrol,” which is how we refer to getting our kindergartner ready for school. After I’m dressed, I cross paths with Jacob and Stuart in the kitchen. They each have bananas up against their ears.
“Mommy! Daddy and me have banana phones,” Jacob says.
I decide not to correct his grammar, but Stuart does. “It’s Daddy and I, not Daddy and me.” Then to me, “It’s the only way you can talk to the monkeys. The reception in the jungle is so bad that cell phones don’t work.”
“Say hello for me,” I say.
“Why don’t you get a phone so you can talk too?” Jacob asks.
I take the banana out of Stuart’s hand. Into the end of the peel I say, “Mr. Gorilla, this is Jacob’s mom. I just wanted to say hello. I hope you have a nice day swinging from the trees.”
I hand the banana back to my husband and then kiss Jacob on the top of the head. After I kiss Stuart on the lips, I head out the door.
As soon as I log on to my computer, I see that the preliminary hearing being handled by one of the younger ADAs has been adjourned. I had planned on observing, but it’s the prerogative of judges to cancel things at the last minute, which means that my morning has suddenly become free. On most days that would be grounds to celebrate, or at least to attend to the various matters that are piling up on my desk. Today, however, work is the last thing on my mind. I close my office door and ponder how things got to this point—and whether there’s anything I can possibly do to make them better. Or at least different.
