The Dissident

by Nell Freudenberger

  “I’ve been waiting to meet you too,” Aubrey said shyly. “I’m really sorry to barge in on you—I know you have a full house. I’m staying at the Beverly Wilshire, but Phil and I could definitely go out to dinner tonight—”

  “Of course not,” Cece said, recovering a little. “It’s such a plea sure to have you. If I’d known it was a possibility, I would’ve done something special. I’m afraid we’re just having the old standbys—although my daughter would like it to be carbohydrate-free, and my husband doesn’t eat turkey.” Cece heard her own laugh and thought of her mother: laughter that had nothing to do with plea sure or amusement, but was simply a nervous placeholder.

  “I brought a little something,” Aubrey murmured, holding out the heavy white shopping bag. Cece glimpsed the neck of a bottle of red wine, a box of marrons glacés. She felt the subtle shift of power, as if she were exchanging it for the gift. Aubrey stepped inside.

  “It’s just that this case I’m working on suddenly seems as if it might settle,” she said. “And I got an extra day off, and I was going to call, but then I just thought I would surprise him.”

  “He’s going to be thrilled!” She sounded so strange, she thought even Aubrey would have to notice. But Aubrey was blushing and looking around, as if Phil had given her the compliment himself.

  “I think he’s in the pool,” Cece said. “I’ll just go—”

  “Or maybe I should go?”

  The red sweater set off Aubrey’s olive skin. Cece noticed how delicate her bones were, her upper arms and clavicle. She was wearing an unusual necklace—an ornate, filigreed cross on a fine gold chain.

  Aubrey saw her looking at it. “It belonged to my grandmother. I’m not religious, but she was Greek Orthodox. It’s a little fussy.”

  “It’s lovely,” Cece said. “The pool is just through there.”

  “Thank you,” Aubrey said.

  Cece let Aubrey out the sliding doors. Then she went back to the kitchen. Gordon was crouched by the oven, getting ready to baste.

  “Who was at the door?”

  “Phil’s girlfriend. It’s a surprise.”

  Gordon turned at looked at her. “The famous Audrey!”

  “Aubrey,” Cece corrected. “She’s working on a case. It suddenly seems as if it might settle.”

  “Terrific,” Gordon said. “What can I do?”

  Cece gave him the beans to string. Through the French doors, she could see Aubrey at the edge of the pool. She saw Phil hoisting himself onto the deck (he did look better since he’d started swimming), holding her by one shoulder, since he was wet. Aubrey threw her arms around him anyway.

  “Is she pretty?” Gordon asked.

  “Can’t you see?”

  “I’m not wearing my distance glasses,” Gordon said. “I was looking up the Ottawa Traverses online. This branch has been involved with lumber for a century, but I e-mailed one woman who mentioned that she believed there was an ancestor who traded furs with the Algonquin Indians, when it was still New France. That would have been before the Revolution.”

  “The American revolution?”

  “French,” Gordon said. “This is all pure speculation, of course.”

  There was a scream from outside. Phil had grabbed Aubrey’s shoulders and pretended he was going to push her in the pool. She pretended to hit him; he playfully defended himself. It was lucky Mr. Yuan was working upstairs, since they would certainly want the pool house to themselves for a while.

  Gordon squinted out the window at Phil, who was holding the door open for Aubrey: “She doesn’t look thirty-seven.”

  “No,” Cece said.

  “Why haven’t they gotten married? Doesn’t she want to?”

  “I believe so,” Cece said.

  “What is he waiting for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No one’s getting any younger,” Gordon said.

  63.

  THEY PUSHED DINNER BACK TO SIX-THIRTY, TO GIVE PHIL AND AUBREY some time together, and everything had to be reheated. The stuffing and the rolls were fine, but she’d left the turkey in too long.

  “I apologize for the turkey,” Cece said. “It’s a little dry.” She noticed that Mr. Yuan had eaten everything else on his plate, but left the meat in a fastidious heap.

  “Jasmine’s family deep-fries their turkey,” Max volunteered.

  It was perhaps the first thing he’d contributed to the conversation, and Cece wanted to encourage him. “Maybe we should’ve done it that way.”

  Olivia made a gagging gesture.

  “Some friends of ours were having a tofurkey this year,” Aubrey joked. “Thank goodness we came here.”

  “I think tofurkey sounds good,” Olivia said.

  “Which friends are those?” Phil said. He looked stony, closed up; in this mood, there was no way you could reach him. She wondered if that bothered Aubrey, or if it was only Cece’s special perspective that made her notice it. Aubrey seemed like a very nice person—but there were limits to everything. If Phil’s girlfriend knew what had been going on for all those years, she would certainly not sit here making polite conversation, trying to ingratiate herself.

  “Chris and Alison,” Aubrey prompted Phil. “You know, she’s my yoga instructor?”

  “Do you do yoga?” Olivia asked.

  “She’s very good at it,” Phil said.

  “You’re not really good at yoga,” Aubrey explained. “You do it at your own pace, so you’re not competing against anyone else.” She turned to Olivia: “It’s a great thing to get into while you’re still young. You can get very flexible.”

  “Mm,” said Phil.

  Aubrey rolled her eyes and elbowed him under the table.

  Gordon turned to Cece. “I bought you that yoga tape,” he said. “Whatever happened to it?”

  Olivia bounced childishly in her seat. “Do we still have it, Mom?”

  “I could look,” Cece said. “I’m sure we do.” Why was it only now, in front of Aubrey, that she felt this deep regret? Shouldn’t her husband be the person who inspired feelings of shame and remorse?

  She looked at Gordon, motioning to Lupe to refill the water pitcher. He seemed perfectly at ease, leaning back in his chair so that you could see the slight curve of belly over his belt. It was not the belly that she minded, not at all. She had welcomed the changes in his body, partly because they corresponded to her own, and partly because they were the first signs of vulnerability he had ever shown her. Nor was it the fact that right now he was perhaps sixty percent present at the dinner table, and forty percent still shut up in his office, hunting down stray Traverses in remote corners of Canada. Cece couldn’t understand why your ancestors who lived two or three hundred years ago were any more interesting than, for example, your neighbors, who weren’t related to you, but who lived next door right now. Did this family he was researching have anything to do with their real family—with their worries about Max, or about the two of them—or was Gordon just using “Travers” as a random sample?

  “It’s a practice,” Aubrey told Olivia, and then addressed the rest of the table: “I hope that doesn’t sound pretentious.”

  “I think the word pretentious is overused,” Joan said. “It’s not pretentious if you’re not pretending.” She looked at Mr. Yuan, as if she were waiting for him to argue or agree. Cece noticed that Joan’s cheeks were flushed from the wine.

  “It’s not pretentious if you’re not pretending!” Phil exclaimed. “Somebody write that down!”

  “Oh, shut up.” Joan turned to Aubrey: “Phil still teases me, but I do think that in America our anti-intellectual bias is becoming stronger and stronger. It begins in high school.”

  Mr. Yuan laid down his fork. “Is that the case?”

  “Poor Joan was too smart for high school,” Phil said.

  “At least Joan was successful in high school,” Gordon remarked.

  “What do you mean by successful, Gordo?”

  “I wasn’t popular like Oli
via, that’s for sure,” Joan said. “And Max,” she added, a second too late.

  Joan was trying to help, but she had made it worse. Cece looked at Max, who had pushed his turkey to the side of his plate.

  “I’m not popular,” he said. There was a silence.

  “I’m sure you are,” Joan said lamely.

  Leave it, Cece thought. For God’s sake, let’s move on. She would’ve liked to move right past dinner, past dessert, past books and bedtime, into the middle of the night. Once everyone was sleeping off their dinner and she was the only one awake, then, finally, she would be able to breathe.

  “I wasn’t popular either,” Aubrey said.

  “Aubrey’s mother died when she was ten,” Phil told them. “She had to take on a lot of responsibility.”

  That was too personal to share with strangers, but Aubrey didn’t seem to mind. Everyone looked at her sympathetically. Cece realized they had forgotten to say what they were thankful for.

  “The death of a parent is perhaps the most intense trauma a child can experience,” Gordon said.

  “Oh,” Aubrey said modestly, “I don’t know about that.”

  “Can I go upstairs?” Max asked.

  Cece didn’t blame him. “Don’t you want dessert?”

  “Can I take dessert upstairs?”

  Cece said yes. She felt they owed it to him.

  “I’m so sorry,” Joan whispered to Cece, when Max was gone. “About the popular thing. I think I’ve had too much wine.”

  “It’s fine,” Cece said, more sharply than necessary. She looked up and noticed Mr. Yuan watching her. His expression was sympathetic, and at the same time there was no question that he knew exactly what was going on.

  After dinner Olivia uncharacteristically offered to help with the dishes. Max was upstairs on the phone with Jasmine (she could see the red light next to line two), and Mr. Yuan had gone with Gordon to walk the dogs. Phil and Aubrey had left for the Beverly Wilshire, Phil carrying an unfamiliar overnight bag on one shoulder. They had said good night in the hall. Cece had encouraged them to come back over the weekend, for a swim, and Aubrey had agreed politely. (Of course there was a beautiful pool at the hotel.) Phil had held the door for Aubrey, who disappeared out into the driveway, where her rented black Acura was just visible in the shadows. Phil had paused for a moment, and Cece had shrugged, idiotically, as if to say, “Don’t worry, I’m fine! Have a super time!” Phil had stared at her a moment too long, letting her know he knew it was just an act, and then shut the door behind him. She heard laughter from the driveway, and Aubrey, in a different voice from the one Cece had heard before:

  “Could I use a drink…”

  She stood in the foyer, listening while the engine started and the car backed out of the driveway. She heard it brake at the stop sign, and then fade away into the rush of Sunset traffic.

  “Mom, there’s a hole in this trash bag!” Olivia called from the kitchen.

  “Then put it in another one.” But she hurried back anyway, through the dining room, the napkins like crushed white flags abandoned on the table.

  “I did it already,” Olivia said, when Cece reached the kitchen. “Do you think Uncle Phil will ask Aubrey to marry him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why not? She’s so cool.”

  “I agree,” Cece said, setting the dishwasher to the scrub cycle.

  Olivia twirled around on the terra-cotta tiles, stopping expertly on one toe. “Do you need any more help?”

  “No,” Cece said. “Thank you. I think I have it under control.”

  64.

  PHIL STAYED AT THE BEVERLY WILSHIRE ON FRIDAY AND SATURDAY night. He and Aubrey didn’t come over to use the pool, and Phil didn’t call to let her know when he’d be coming back. Part of her hoped he would decide to go home to New York with Aubrey on Monday; that would probably be the best thing for everyone. She could picture getting the call from New York, a bad connection, a payphone, because Phil wouldn’t have wanted to call from Aubrey’s apartment: “Can you hear me? Ceece, are you there?”

  She was sleeping now, but only four or five hours a night, and she got tired early. A little after ten on Sunday night she knocked on Max’s door to check on him. She tried to remember exactly when it was that things had been reversed, and it had become accepted that the parents would go to bed before the children.

  “Hi,” Cece said, and waved at him: Max was wearing a pair of enormous headphones, which he lowered just slightly when he noticed her standing there. The beat was so loud that it seemed as if the music would make a bruise on the very pale skin below his ears. From Max’s room she could see that Mr. Yuan’s bedroom was dark; the dissident was probably out in the pool house, hunched over his extraordinary scroll. His concentration these days was impressive: one hundred and eighty degrees from when he’d first arrived. She thought it must be that way for all artists: they had slumps, followed by periods of furious creativity.

  “I just wanted to say good night,” Cece said. “I’m turning off the ringer now—unless you’re expecting a call?”

  Max shook his head.

  “I’m a little tired,” Cece said. “Maybe from all the cooking. I’m glad you liked the pumpkin pie; your sister didn’t touch it.”

  She never knew what to say to him anymore, but she wasn’t sure it mattered. She felt like quantity of communication was more important than quality, at least for the time being; you never knew what might prompt a response.

  “I enjoyed the weekend, though.”

  Max tilted his head in the direction of the pool house. “Is he coming back?”

  “You mean, up here?” Cece said. “I don’t think so. He seems to prefer the pool house now that Phil’s gone, which makes me wonder—”

  Max gave her an uncomfortable look, as if she had something stuck in her teeth.

  “Oh,” she said. “Were you talking about Uncle Phil?”

  Max took the headphones off completely, flipped onto his stomach, and began fiddling with the treble and bass. Gordon had said that the new stereo was a way of showing Max that they trusted him, and that they weren’t punishing him for what had happened. Cece liked that idea. The only problem was that when she looked at the stereo on the floor by Max’s bed, she saw the Beretta Cougar. The transformation had happened so easily: toy to gun and back to toy. What was to keep it from happening again?

  “If you minded having him, you should have told me,” she said. “Or your father. How are we supposed to know, if you don’t say anything?”

  Max sighed.

  “I should’ve asked you and your sister. It’s just—I didn’t know he was coming.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “You remember,” Cece said. “He just showed up.”

  Max was still facing the stereo; she had to talk to the back of his head. She loved the way the black waves of his hair folded one into the other, like weaving. Gordon had once had hair like that.

  “I thought you knew,” Max said, turning finally to face her. It surprised her.

  “Why wouldn’t I have said something if I had known he was coming?”

  Max shrugged. Didn’t he believe her?

  “It wouldn’t have even made sense to invite him, while Mr. Yuan was here.”

  “O-kay,” said Max, clearly exasperated by the conversation.

  “I don’t think Phil is coming back,” Cece said. “I’m pretty sure that was about it.”

  Max barely nodded, then sprang up toward the bathroom.

  “Max?”

  He turned around. He was taller than she was, of course. His features were his father’s, but he got his fair, sensitive skin from her. She remembered the way it had looked when he was an infant, and she would bathe him in a plastic tub in the sink. It was like rice paper, with the green veins forking just under the surface. The pimples on his neck now made her want to kiss him. She wanted to tell him that everything would be fine, if he could just get through the next couple of years.


  “Good night,” she said instead.

  65.

  PHIL CALLED ON MONDAY NIGHT, RIGHT AFTER DINNER. IT WAS STRANGE to hear Lupe summoning her to the phone, as if the last four months had been a dream, and she had suddenly woken up to find everything the way it was before.

  “Are you in New York?” she asked.

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Phil?”

  “Why would you think I was in New York?”

  “I don’t know. I thought—”

  “You don’t think I would’ve called you?”

  “I just thought you might have gone back today.” Why did she sound apologetic? “But you’re still in L.A.?” Cece caught herself hoping that the “you” was singular, that Aubrey had gone back alone.

  “That’s why I called,” Phil said.

  Now that Phil was gone, Mr. Yuan had moved his things back down to the pool house, his allergy mysteriously cured. Cece was about to offer Phil the upstairs bedroom, and then she thought of Max. “What are you going to do?” she asked instead.

  “Aubrey’s staying another week. She has some friends in Pacific Palisades.”

  “Oh, uh-huh,” Cece said. “I see.”

  “She has her laptop,” Phil said. “So she can work from here.”

  “Great!”

  Phil hesitated. “We have some things to work out.”

  “That’s good,” Cece said. “I mean, I hope you do. Work them out. She’s lovely.” Cece heard the bright fakery in her own voice, but she couldn’t stop. “Olivia thinks you should get married!”

  Phil was silent, but she wasn’t going to prompt him. She’d done her part—gone above and beyond the call of duty.

  “What do you think?”

  “What?”

  “What do you think I should do?”

  Cece was standing in her study, which smelled of guinea pig. Ferdinand rustled in his shavings. There were running footsteps overhead, and then the sound of a door slamming shut. How could he ask her that?