Jane frowned back at Ivy but didn’t say anything, and Ramona admired her restraint. She wasn’t sure why Ivy was acting like Jane’s mother, but it wasn’t very pleasant to be in the room with the two of them.
Ramona rose and patted Ivy’s knee through the sheets. “I promised Frank I’d help with the streamers,” she said.
“But wait,” Ivy said. “What was your news? We never got to that.”
“Oh,” Ramona looked at Jane, but she didn’t appear to be paying attention. Her back was to both of them as she looked out the window. “It’s nothing. I’ll tell you later.”
JANE
She left while Ramona and Frank were busy with the decorations, explaining that she should go and pick up her kids, but now that she was outside and sitting in the driver’s seat of Ramona’s Mustang, Jane had no intention of going to her parents’ house.
The route to Rex’s place was familiar now, and she drove there in under a minute and parked out front, trying to decipher who was home. There were no cars in the driveway and no signs of life on the front lawn, which was free of its usual clutter. The curtains were pulled back from the front window where she’d seen his wife or ex-wife only two days ago, but no one passed by.
Jane couldn’t explain, even to herself, what she was doing sitting in front of this man’s house. Despite Ivy’s annoying way of reprimanding her, Jane knew that, essentially, her friend was right. When she and Adam had decided to have children together, she’d understood in a solid, uncomplicated way that this was the end of her selfish viewpoint on the world. She was no longer first—it was that simple.
It hadn’t felt like any sort of loss those first years with Rocky. When Fern was born it had gotten more difficult, exponentially so, but still, Jane had been happy, for the most part, with her life.
What had happened since then? At some point, her family had begun to drain the life out of her—it was almost a physical feeling, similar to hunger or fatigue—but you couldn’t admit this to anyone, could you? You couldn’t tell someone that your loving husband and kids were turning you into a lifeless husk.
The notion that she had chosen the wrong life for herself had begun to surface last night in Ramona’s hotel room as she lay alone in bed looking through the gap in the curtains toward the mountains, waiting for dawn to make them visible. She had fallen asleep before that happened but in the morning had felt her usual pleasure upon seeing the mountains’ pale peaks against the clear sky. Maybe she belonged here, in the desert surrounded by mountains.
She didn’t miss the flat green of Wisconsin that was currently iced with spring snow. She didn’t miss her husband or her house or her friends. When, she wondered, would a pinch of longing hit her? Would it ever? And the question was: If she’d chosen the wrong life, then what did the right one look like?
Jane unlatched her seat belt, then checked her teeth in the rearview mirror. She was here to tell Rex that she couldn’t come by and stargaze later, but thanks for asking. That was it. It would be rude to ignore him completely. If he wasn’t here, she could leave a note on the door.
Outside of the car, she felt exposed. The sun pounded down on her bare shoulders as she took the concrete walkway up the lawn to Rex’s front door. A boy on a scooter watched her from half a block away. His gaze felt sharp with judgment, and she wondered if he was a friend of Polyhymnia and Calliope. Jane waved to him, but he didn’t wave back, just turned and rode in the opposite direction.
Her knock on the door sounded loud and angry, and she wished she could erase the sound and start over, tap the door gently with her knuckles. There was a doorbell, she noticed, but thought pushing that button would be overkill now, after the aggressive knock. She was wearing a straight, cream-colored cotton skirt, and she saw there was a spot of coffee near the hem. Checking her dark pink tank top she saw there was coffee on that too. These two stains were enough to make her want to turn around and get back into Ramona’s car, but just then the door opened, and Rex stood before her, smiling.
“It’s a little early for constellations,” he said.
“I know. I can’t come by later. I just wanted to tell you that.”
He nodded at this news, then stepped back from the door and held out his arm, gesturing toward the dim recesses of the living room. “Well, come in and we’ll figure out something else to do.”
“I can’t,” Jane said, but she made no move to go. “I have to pick up my kids.”
“I do too. But not for an hour or so. They’re over at a friend’s, around the corner.” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the direction.
“Mine are being doted on by my parents and probably having the best time they’ve had since we got here.”
“Well, then, you should let them stay a little longer.” He reached out and looped his thumb and forefinger around her wrist, then tugged her gently over the threshold before she thought to protest. “It’s hot out. Have some lemonade with me, then go.”
In the kitchen, he poured lemonade into two ice-filled glasses. Jane tried to avoid looking at the photo on the fridge, but she was drawn to it, to the dark-haired woman that he either was or wasn’t married to. She wanted to ask what had happened between them to cause the split or to ask why the photo remained on the fridge if he was, indeed, divorced, but these questions were too intimate, so she kept quiet and accepted the lemonade with a smile. Maybe his wife had chosen the wrong life for herself as well and just recently figured it out.
They sat at the round kitchen table by a window looking out on the backyard. The telescope was in the exact same place it had been on her last visit, and a row of empty beer bottles surrounded its base, as if to create a sculpture or a shrine. She had almost expected to fall into this man’s arms the moment they were alone—they had kissed last time they’d been together, after all—but it was awkward between them now, and Jane could hardly meet his eyes across the table as she sipped her lemonade.
“My wife left me because she said I didn’t contribute enough, that I was just living here as if I were a renter,” he said.
Jane looked up quickly, still not quite meeting his gaze. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t true, not completely, but I could have done more.”
Jane nodded, uncertain how to respond. “You seem like a good dad.”
“I’m trying. I’m getting better, that’s for sure.”
“How are your kids doing with it all?”
He tucked the loose strands of hair behind his ears and sighed. “They’re okay, I think. Kids are resilient, right?”
“Right,” Jane agreed, though she had never believed the truth of that statement. Kids were affected deeply; they harbored pain for years and years and remembered this pain again as adults when they had kids of their own.
“She has them two nights a week and every other weekend, but they live here with me the rest of the time.”
“Oh, that’s good. Nice for you, I mean.”
“Definitely,” he nodded. “Now I just have to find a job.”
“What about nursing school?”
“That’s one possibility,” he said. “I’m weighing all my options.”
Finally, she forced herself to look directly at this man across from her. The skin around his eyes was marked by soft crow’s feet, and their color was such a deep black-brown she could hardly make out the pupils. Jane still couldn’t figure out how he had such pale skin and hair and such dark eyes. It must just be some genetic blending of his parents, she decided, that didn’t show up very often. It made him seem constructed of spare parts, a face created by someone’s imagination rather than born from a woman in a hospital.
“I’ve been thinking about you a lot,” he said.
Jane could feel her cheeks grow hot. “I’m sorry if Ivy was rude to you.”
“Oh, she wasn’t really. She just assured me that you and your husband would get back together and I should get the hell out of the way.” He shrugged and sipped from his glass.
“She might be right.”
He nodded slowly, not speaking.
“Or not. I’m not sure yet.”
At her words, he rose abruptly, knocking the table with his knees, and the lemonade in Jane’s glass sloshed out and onto her tank top.
“Oh, crap. I’m sorry,” he said, then got a towel and wetted the corner at the sink before handing it to Jane.
She worked at the spot just below her left breast then realized she’d left a huge wet circle that looked worse than the actual lemonade.
“It will dry fast,” he said, seeming to understand her discomfort. “I’m glad you came by.”
So she was being dismissed. He began walking down the hallway toward the front door, and Jane followed him, suddenly desperate to stay here now that she was no longer welcome, to be close to him for a while longer. “How about a tour of the house?” she suggested when they reached the foyer.
“Um,” he looked around the small room by the front window. “There’s not much to see.”
“I don’t care.”
He shrugged and went back down the hallway. Jane followed, understanding that she’d shifted the current between them. What had almost been finished was now about to begin.
He led her to the girls’ room first. Jane peered in at the pink metal bunk beds, the disco ball hanging from the ceiling. Diaphanous, pastel clothes were strewn across the beige carpet as if there had recently been a party or a dance production of some sort.
The den had several bookshelves, which Jane took to be a good sign, as well as a flat-screen TV and a wraparound green suede couch. The house was clean but not particularly neat. Stacks of magazines and open mail sat on the coffee table. Two purple socks rested on one of the bookshelves, and there were several pairs of tennis shoes strewn along the hallway. She wanted to inspect some of the titles of his books, but Rex crossed the space quickly and led her down a hallway.
He had turned businesslike and brisk, and Jane wanted to draw him back out, to coax him into offering up his lazy, half-formed smile, but couldn’t think how to do it. Her flirting skills were rusty and in fact had never been that effective. Besides, her last attempt at this sort of relationship had ended in such embarrassing disaster that she was hesitant to open herself again to that sort of danger.
“Last room,” he said, stopping on the threshold of the master bedroom. A skylight above the unmade king-sized bed imprinted a rectangle of yellow sun on the navy sheets, and she felt shy even looking at this giant bed together, so she stepped into the room and pretended to admire its other furnishings: a green La-Z-Boy, a boom box atop a cheap-looking oak dresser, a rowing machine covered with stuffed animals.
This room seemed to confirm the truth of Rex’s divorce. A few T-shirts hung in the open closet, but the rest of the space gaped with emptiness. There was nothing feminine in the room either. The only picture on the wall was the logo for a motorcycle shop in San Diego, complete with flames and vicious-looking skulls. The absence of his wife’s belongings was an actual presence in the room, and Jane tried to ignore it. “Looks like this gets a lot of use,” she joked, pointing to the rowing machine.
He smiled. “My girls like to pretend it’s a guillotine or something. These are the animals being sent to the gallows.”
Jane laughed, thinking these girls would get along perfectly with Rocky, then turned and stepped closer to Rex. He faced her, the bed directly behind him, and Jane thought she might walk around him and just sit there on the bed, in that rectangle of sun, but she couldn’t work up the nerve.
“Your shirt’s almost dry,” he said.
She looked down at the fading water mark and nodded, and then he was next to her, placing a palm over the spot that covered her rib cage. It was an awkward place to touch her, but it sent a desire through her so absolute she knew she needed to follow it through or be left wondering, so she raised her face and leaned to kiss him on the neck.
This kiss transmitted her current of yearning into him, and they began to undress without speaking, then got onto the bed with silent purpose.
Rex’s body was long and thin and finely muscled, like a piece of carved ivory. He was virtually hairless, and Jane searched his skin for a freckle or mole. When he turned to the night table for a condom, she saw the pink half-moon of a scar at his waist, and felt relief to find him marred in some way. She herself had four silvery stretch marks rising up from her pubic bone like smoke, and the tan lines from her bathing suit broke the smooth flow of skin in an unappealing way she’d never noticed before.
Their coupling was not particularly graceful. He was taller than Adam, and their bodies did not fit each other as well so that she found herself adjusting positions under him and moving her hips at the wrong times. A strand of his hair loosed from the tight knot at his neck and kept brushing Jane’s cheek in an irritating way. But he touched her with a tenderness that felt particularly sweet, considering they were practically strangers, and his gaze was so guileless, so open, that she could feel herself unfolding toward him, wanting, even, to love him.
When he finished and separated his body from hers, Jane’s knot of desire was not completely loosened; still, she felt deeply relaxed. They lay beside each other, the rectangle of sun warming their calves as the sound of a lawn mower raked the nearby air.
She tested her conscience for guilt, but found there was none. Even though she had been officially separated from Adam for several days—and had left him behind in her mind months ago—her body had not quite felt like her own until this moment. It was a sensation of lightness, as if she might lift off from this bed and float through the window toward the horizon.
But when she turned onto her side, she saw that Rex, staring up at the ceiling, had tears in his eyes. “What is it?” she asked, touching his arm and propping up on her elbow.
He shook his head, as if to deny he was crying, but said, “Kristina.”
“Oh,” Jane said, sounding stupid to herself. “I’m sorry. Should I leave?”
He shook his head again. “No, I’ll be okay in a second. This always happens lately.” He turned his face toward her and offered up a rueful smile.
Lately—Jane absorbed the word. Did this mean he’d taken several women to this bed since his divorce and cried every time? She could ask him but decided she didn’t want to hear the answer, whatever it might be.
He turned onto his side, facing her, and swiped a hand across his eyes, clearing them before he reached out and touched her cheek, then smoothed back her short hair. The weakness she’d just witnessed made him less appealing, and Jane suddenly wished to be inside her car, driving across town.
“You should come back later with the kids. I’ll set up the telescope.”
“Maybe,” she said.
They didn’t speak as they pulled on their clothes and walked back through the house toward the front door. Jane recalled her tour of the place as something that had occurred long ago, instead of less than an hour before. At the front door, he leaned down and kissed her on the cheek, then squeezed her shoulder, and she stepped outside.
REX
He watched Jane get into her car and drive away, then was instantly coated in sticky regret. Why had he cried in front of her? It was the sadness again, that same grinding despair had descended immediately after they separated and lay back. It didn’t make as much sense to him this time because he really liked this woman, but it had been waiting for him, and he had been unable to avoid it.
He brushed his teeth and combed his hair, then walked around the corner to pick up his daughters, feeling weighted down by the sun on his shoulders. The friend’s mother, Andrea, opened the door with a tight smile, then made him wait on the stoop while she retreated into the dimness of her home and found Polly and Callie.
Andrea was a friend of Kristina’s who had never liked Rex, even before the divorce, though he had no real idea why. She was younger than he was and had more conservative ideas about how kids should be raised, though he couldn’t elaborate
on what these ideas were except that they involved a lot of church and rules. It surprised him that she and Kristina were friends, but he guessed his ex-wife liked Andrea’s generous supply of cocktails and frequent offers to have Polly and Callie over to play.
Andrea reappeared in the doorway, his daughters trailing behind her. The woman was so small he would have mistaken her for a teenage girl from far away, but up close her brown hair was graying at the temples, and her thin, unpainted lips were already beginning to form lines from pursing them so often. On the porch, she nudged the girls toward him grudgingly, as if she didn’t think they should be in their father’s presence. Each one latched onto a hip and he felt fortified by their physical attachment, as if they were propping him up.
“Hey, cutie pies,” he said, putting his hands on their small shoulders.
“They ate some cornflakes,” Andrea told him in a flat voice. “And some yogurt.”
“Okay, thanks,” he said, wondering why she was telling him this. “Did they have a good time?”
“Of course,” she said, looking defensive now as she crossed her arms over her chest. “They always have fun here.”
“Well, next time Beth and Angela can come to our house.”
Andrea smiled, but Rex sensed her whole body tensing up at the offer. “Sure, sometime. We’ll see. They’re pretty busy right now.”
When they were back on the sidewalk, heading toward home, Rex felt himself begin to relax. The remaining sadness from this afternoon lifted away as he listened to his daughters tell him about their day. There had been a bubble-blowing contest, a burial for a stuffed skunk in the backyard, and several long games of British Bulldogs, whatever that was.
“How did the skunk die?” he asked.
“Fell into the toy box from the top bunk,” Callie told him.
“That doesn’t sound too serious.”
“Dad,” Polly said. “It wasn’t real.”
“Oh, all right,” he said. “That’s good.”
He began to think about Jane as he listened, wishing they could spend the evening together, that she could join him and his daughters for dinner and stargazing. He wanted to show her the constellations and explain their stories. He wanted to feed her fresh pesto made from the basil in his garden. He wanted to carry her back to the bedroom after the girls were asleep and toss her onto the bed, laughing.
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