Apart at the Seams

by Melissa Ford

  I turn off the running water and pick up the dishtowel so I can start drying the cutlery and return it to the drawer. “Of course it does! We’re in this together. Ethan, we’re in this together. And if we’re in this together, we need to start making decisions together. Big decisions like our jobs or where we live.”

  “But that’s exactly it, Ari. We’re in this together. So I should be out there in Minnesota with you. Together. And if we’re going to talk about big decisions like our jobs, it would be nice if you included me in your grand plan to take over the fashion world and launch your own design studio.”

  “Well, you’re going to get your wish because the design studio is on the back burner right now,” I shout, waving the cup I’m holding in the air as if I’m erasing that idea from my life. Drops of water spray onto the counter.

  Ethan looks contrite for a moment and sits down on the sofa with Beckett, who starts climbing on his lap, bouncing up and down while pushing down on Ethan’s head. “I’m sorry. Because of your mother?”

  “No, I decided to stop working on setting up my own business this afternoon. Because . . . because that idiot Noah Reiser told me that he liked me. I wasn’t going to tell you because the whole thing was so stupid. But he told me he had a crush on me, and I said that made me uncomfortable. And I’ve cut off all contact with him. So . . . that’s done. He’s out of our lives, and I’m back to square one in finding someone to wear my designs.”

  Ethan lets out a soft sound, and at first I can’t tell if it’s directed at me or not. He catches Beckett’s legs as he tries to climb over Ethan’s shoulder. “What a dick. You’re better off without his help. He makes me want to go down to the Nightly and punch his smug face.”

  There is no smugness in Noah’s face, I think.

  “Well, he’s out of our lives. So that’s that.” I put the final plate back in the cupboard and then fold the dishtowel, hanging it neatly from the handle on the inside of the cabinet.

  “Ari, I don’t want to fight with you. Can we just table all of this right now? Let’s focus on your mother.”

  “Well, I can’t focus on my mother because I have your sister’s bachelorette party tonight.” I don’t mean to sound so bitter; it isn’t Rachel’s fault that my mother is sick and my friendship with Noah imploded this afternoon.

  “Do you want to call her before you get there and tell her about your mother? So you don’t have to tell her in front of those other women?”

  “I’m not telling your sister,” I say. “Not now. Not before her wedding.”

  “She’d want to know,” Ethan insists. “She would be devastated to find out that you’re dealing with all this stuff and didn’t let her know.”

  “She’s focused on her wedding right now. And she should be,” I quickly add. “I put her aside all through Fashion Week and the Emmy outfits. I just don’t feel close enough to tell her about this right now.”

  “Maybe talking about this could bring you two together,” Ethan offers. He gently takes the remote control out of Beckett’s hands before he can bring it to his lips.

  “I’m not using my mother’s breast lump to fix our friendship.” I look at the clock on the stove and shake my head. “I have to go get ready. Do you have Beckett?”

  He picks him up, as if to indicate that he has the situation under control, and I go into the bathroom and lock the door behind me, sitting down on the edge of the bathtub. I press my forehead into my knees and fold my arms around my legs, holding myself while my entire body silently shakes.

  Chapter Fifteen

  FOR THE NEXT two weeks, I try not to think about my mother and her upcoming surgery, while Ethan does his best to be helpful, making sure he gets home when he says he’ll get home and taking the garbage down the hallway to the chute before I point out that the trash can under the sink is overflowing. My mother’s news triggers another responsibility diet, and he squeezes himself back into that hypothetical, snug best boyfriend outfit that he wore when he first moved into the apartment.

  I make a deal with the universe in exchange for making my mother well, promising that I’ll honor my mother’s convictions about the importance of female friendships and be Rachel’s best friend in the entire world to make up for disappearing during Fashion Week craziness and throwing her the worst bachelorette party of all time. The problem is that it feels impossible to pick up the phone and call Rachel, text Rachel, or show up at Rachel’s apartment, as if the emotional distance between us has opened up an actual chasm for all my words to fall into. I don’t know how to pick up a conversation again that I left hanging months ago.

  I can’t even throw myself into her blog and find out what is happening in her life through her posts because for the first time in the almost two years since she started her online journal, Life from Scratch, it has been dormant for days. I saw some discussion on Twitter about her engagement to Adam, which I guess she never formally announced on the blog. But since then, she’s been strangely silent, which makes me feel when I’m on her site as if I’m sneaking through a deserted house, waiting for a ghost to come sweeping out from under the closet door.

  Every time I open her blog to check for an update, the same post silently accusing me of having an affair greets me, and I feel a rush of shame and anger when I reread her words, thinking about the day in Union Square as well as the expression on Rachel’s face when she asked me if I had a crush on Noah.

  And, of course, I miss him.

  I miss the text messages that popped up at random times in my day. They felt like the light from stars, distant messages traveling outward, a constant dispatch marking a presence. Ethan and I used to text like that, before we moved in together, and I miss that communication that let me know he was thinking of me when we weren’t together. Now our text messages are much more functional; what time will he be home, can he pick up milk for Beckett, what should we have for dinner. I sometimes scroll back, all the way to the messages he sent the day he moved in, just to reread them. Green light. Red light.

  Noah is still sending me messages, but I leave them unread; not because I’m angry but because I don’t know what to do with them. They’re like shoes that no longer fit that you don’t want to give away, either.

  So I miss him. I miss the possibilities Noah brought with him. I miss his untranslatable words. I miss his promises of help. I miss feeling as if I was on the road to becoming Arianna Quinn, designer, rather than stuck in the role of Arianna Quinn, finisher. I liked thinking of myself as a person who started things rather than cleaned them up, following someone else’s patterns.

  I try to find that feeling again, working on the dress I started for the Thanksgiving dinner and continuing to sketch. But it’s difficult to be the only person believing in myself.

  I put in long hours in the loft. It feels good to complete things, even if they’re not my own creations. I stay so many extra hours that I finish my work and help out some of the samplehands, which makes it easier to ask Francesca for time off to travel. I smile tensely when she hints that there may be a small design job for me with the spring line if I’m willing to continue to put in these sorts of hours at Davis & Howe. Weeks ago, I would have done anything to have Francesca pay attention to me and hear a promise like that, no matter how insubstantial. But now, it just makes everything feel farther away. If my mother really is ill, I won’t be able to work like this and make Francesca happy. I’ll need to put my career on the back burner.

  The only time I feel at peace, strangely enough, is when I’m doing the alterations for Rachel’s wedding gown. It’s not the same as talking with her or even reading her blog and getting a one-sided update on her life, but I feel close when I feel the material in my hands, even though she hasn’t really worn it yet. I pour all of my apologies, all of my unspoken words, into those stitches. The dress becomes a tangible reminder that life goes on; weddings will happen, babi
es will be born, dresses will get made. Everything continues, even when you want the world to stop.

  I wake up before everyone else one morning to finish the alterations while the sun starts to rise. I want it done before I leave for Minnesota. I gently bring my needle through the material, piercing it with care, like a lion mother tenderly carrying her newborn with her teeth. Beckett is still asleep, and Ethan will wake up soon to run before he goes to work. It is still dark out, New York partly quiet like a party that’s dying down.

  By the time the city has woken up, I’ve finished the hem, smoothed out the dress, and slipped it back in the garment bag. It was the final task standing between my trip to Minnesota and myself, and as I zip up the bag, I realize there is nothing left to distract myself with. Now there is just my mother to think about, and my future with Ethan. I curl up on the sofa, pressing my cheek into the sofa cushion, wishing that someone would show up and fix everything, righting my future, which feels dangerously off-kilter.

  I must have fallen asleep because I hear Ethan’s voice, softly calling my name, his face a few inches from my own. “Are you awake or asleep?” he asks even though my eyes are now open.

  “Is Beckett up?”

  “No, I woke up and you weren’t in the bed.”

  “I came out here to finish the adjustments to Rachel’s wedding dress,” I tell him.

  “Oh, great. Is it done?”

  I sit up, brushing my hair off my face so I can see him better. “How come, when I leave you alone in bed to do something for Rachel, you tell me that it’s great. But if I spend a half hour at the kitchen table after you’ve gone to sleep, designing something for myself, you give me an enormous guilt trip?”

  Ethan blinks at me. “What? I don’t do that.”

  “Yes, yes, you do. You’ve made me feel like I’m neglecting you any time I do work, whether it’s for myself or for Davis & Howe.”

  Ethan closes his lips tightly, as if he’s trying to trap words from escaping from his mouth. “I’m sorry, Ari. I didn’t realize I was doing that. And I thought we were setting aside talking about work and jobs and travel and all of that stuff until you were back from Minnesota.”

  “Why don’t we talk about it now?”

  “I don’t think this is a good idea. I’m barely awake.”

  Ethan stares at me, as if willing me to stop whatever he thinks is about to flow out of my lips. But I don’t know what I want to say. All I know is that everything that has been simmering for the last few months is suddenly coming to a boil without warning. He keeps kneeling on the floor, watching me carefully.

  “So?” I tell him, my words feeling like a finger poking his shoulder.

  “If I have any problem with your work, it’s just . . . you make yourself so stressed out. And you bring that stress with you wherever you go. With your shoulders scrunched up to your ears, and all you talk about is this deadline or that deadline, or how this is going to be what it’s like every time Fashion Week rolls around. That’s sort of scary, you know.”

  “I like being busy.”

  Ethan finally moves onto the sofa beside me and plants the palms of his hands on each of my knees, rubbing them gently as if he’s kneading a ball of dough. “I know. You like being busy. You like being needed. You like feeling like things are happening. I’ve known you for almost eighteen years, and you’ve always been driven. But . . . maybe I need to take care of someone, too. And it’s really hard because you’re rushing around so quickly that you never pause to let me take care of you.”

  He makes a movement with his hands to imply that I’m running by him quickly, a soft whoosh of air escaping from his lips.

  “I would love it if you took care of me,” I say carefully, as if I’m picking my way through a cluttered room, trying not to break anything underfoot. “I wish you had taken that other job a few months ago.”

  “What other job?” Ethan asks. “The stock image one? Are you crazy?”

  “I know,” I say throwing my hands up in the air. “I’m crazy. I would take the full-time job with the benefits and the bigger paycheck. That’s crazy.”

  “Is that what all of this is about? Money? You want me to get a different job that pays more money?” Ethan questions.

  “No, that’s just it, I don’t want you to get a different job. I want you to keep the one you have for a really long time. I want us to stay put and build our lives together here and not keep rushing off to new things.”

  “So why are you bring up that other job?” Ethan asks incredulously.

  “Because I want you to make choices that keep you in one place for a very long time,” I shout, waking up Beckett in the process. I can hear him start wailing in the other room, and I throw my arms up in the air in frustration. But Ethan starts grinning, and he grabs me in a ferocious hug, knocking me into the sofa cushions.

  “Ari, you are a complicated lady. I’m not going anywhere. Except to make us breakfast. Why don’t you go get Becks.”

  I go into Beckett’s room. He’s standing up in bed, holding on to the top of the crib rail, and he lifts his arms so I can pick him up. I sink down into the glider, burying my face in his neck and whisper, “I don’t think he understood a word I was trying to say.”

  By the time I collect myself and come out to the kitchen, Ethan is cracking eggs into a glass bowl. He scrambles them, takes out a pan, turns on the stove, allows it all to heat up. I give Beckett a sippy cup of milk, and he watches me over the top of the plastic cup.

  “I don’t have a class until right before lunch. I can call the school and tell them I’m going to be in late. Ari, I want to take care of you. Let me come with you to Minnesota. I’m going to go on one of those discount airline sites where you can bid on last-minute tickets,” he tells me, flipping open my laptop. The eggs on the stove sizzle as if they’re loudly reminding Ethan not to forget them.

  “You know, I need to get to work. I should go get changed.”

  “Call in sick,” he tells me. “Just today. Just stay home with me today. We need this.”

  “I’m already taking off for my trip home. I need to go to work. How will we pay rent if I get fired?” I ask.

  He stares at me for a moment. “Is this still about money? I now get that you want me to teach photography forever, but if you got fired, I would take a different job.”

  “So you’d leave your job?” I question. “We’d both be out of work?”

  “I would take freelance work, I’d ask Gael to float me some stuff, I’d borrow money from Sarah. There are a lot of Plan Bs.”

  He slides a portion of eggs onto a plate and pushes it my way with a slice of toast, leaving the pan itself on the back burner with bits of egg stuck to the surface. I get up and fill the pan with water so it can soak in the sink, loving the angry burst of steam it gives off, a small release. I take a bite of the eggs to soften the moment, aware that he’s about to tell me that he was going to take care of that. “Thank you. For making the eggs.”

  “Ari, do you know why I want to marry you?”

  Beckett bops his head to some music that only he can hear and tells us, “ba ba ba ba ba” while he bangs his hands on his high chair tray. “Up!”

  I set down my fork and take him out of his high chair, shaking my head.

  “I want to marry you because I love you. Because if I had more money, I would rent a skywriter to tell all of Manhattan how I feel about you.” I cringe, thinking of hot chocolate with Noah and his joke about the skywriter, and Ethan notices and adds quickly, “But skywriting isn’t permanent. Marriage is. I want to tell the world how I feel about you and Beckett. You’re my family: you, me, and Beckett.”

  He finishes his proclamation by taking my fork out of my hands and setting it next to my plate. “We need a day for ourselves,” he says. “You, me, and Beckett. We’ll go to the zoo or somethi
ng like that. Or we can grab a Zipcar and head out of the city. Take a bunch of wrong turns and see where they take us. I’m just going to jump in the shower, okay?”

  He doesn’t wait for an answer, and the moment he closes the bathroom door, I call Martina to tell her that I’ll be dropping off Beckett in a bit. I would take the day if I thought we’d really figure out something about ourselves as we walked around the zoo or took wrong turns, but I know that nothing will be accomplished by taking our problems out of the apartment. As I bring Beckett into my bedroom to get dressed, my eye catches on Rachel’s wedding gown. I give her a call, and it rings several times, but she answers it before it can go to voice mail.

  I can hear street sounds in the background, and they make me talk louder. “Your dress is ready for a final fitting. Do you think you could swing by this morning?”

  She doesn’t ask me why I’m at home on a Tuesday morning or explain why her blog has been dormant for weeks. Instead she goes on about the television talk show she’s about to film, stressing over and over again that she’s going to be talking about her divorce book, as if it’s a secret message to me. This is where you’ll end up, needing my book to get through your breakup, if you’re going to have an affair on my brother.

  I stare at the phone in disbelief. I’ve known Rachel long enough to be able to hear what she isn’t saying between every staccato sentence. Finally she gets to her accusation, as if she’s been slowly creeping toward it for dramatic effect: “You started cheating on my brother with Noah.”

  I think about our drinks at Chocolat and the late night at the diner, and how I kept seeing Noah even after he told me he liked me. I liked being liked. Was that cheating? Even if we never really touched, was it an affair if I confided in him things I didn’t tell Ethan? If I shared some part of me that I didn’t lay bare for my boyfriend? Is it an affair if I miss him now?

  It feels as if someone is dragging a seam ripper through me. I look at the closed bathroom door even though I know Ethan can’t hear Rachel through the phone. Still, there’s a possibility that he could hear my end of the conversation over the sound of the water. “I’m not cheating on your brother,” I hiss. “I told you, I haven’t even spoken to Noah in weeks.”