Leaving Sophie Dean

by Alexandra Whitaker

  Henry cleared his throat. “That’s sickening.”

  Sophie shrugged.

  “And will you?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Take care of him.”

  “Oh, no. He died when I was thirteen. In his sleep. He had serious health problems of just about every kind. My mother went into a decline, of course. She was depressed for a couple of years, very withdrawn. My father and I just… And then eventually she sort of… woke up. And started volunteering with associations that give a break to the parents of handicapped children. And she became just as busy with her charity work as she had ever been with my brother. So I didn’t see any more of her after his death than before.” She laughed, then added, “She does do good work.”

  “Is he why you decided to become a healer?”

  “Oh. I don’t know.”

  “To help people like him?”

  “I guess so. And people like my parents. And me.”

  There was a sudden loud knock on the door.

  They started and stared at each other with round eyes. Sophie felt an irrational knee jerk of guilt—caught with her lover!—before she put it aside. It was Thursday afternoon, the boys were still in school, she and Henry were decently dressed, just finishing a late lunch; there was nothing to fear or apologize for. All the same, she tiptoed to the door and peeked through the peephole, then turned and made a laughing grimace at Henry. He shrugged to ask, Who is it? She straightened her shoulders, lifted her head, smiled, and threw the door open. “Marion! Come in, what a surprise! We’re just finishing lunch. Would you like some coffee?”

  “I hope I’m not intruding. It’s been so long since I’ve heard from you that I thought I’d—” The sight of Henry brought her to a stop. “Why, hello! You must be Henry. I’m Marion.”

  “Why don’t you two go outside?” Sophie said. “It’s warm enough in the sun. I’ll be right out.” So Marion had come over to snoop, and she’d hit the jackpot. Watching through the kitchen window while she made the coffee, Sophie noticed that Henry had the look of a man who had just gotten out of bed after making love, which he was, and she supposed she must look like that, too. It wouldn’t have escaped Marion, who was self-consciously running her hand through her hair, a habit she had in the presence of attractive men.

  “Here we are!” Sophie said, stepping outside with the tray.

  “I won’t stay,” Henry said. “Nice meeting you, Marion. Sophie, I’ll see you tomorrow. And this weekend at the retreat.”

  “But that’s next weekend.”

  “No, this. They changed it. Didn’t you see the notice?”

  “No.” Sophie looked at Henry with consternation. “But I have the children this weekend. What will I do?”

  Marion was grateful for an entry into the conversation. “I’m sure Adam will take the boys. Just give him a call.”

  To Henry, Sophie said, “Yes, that’s what I’ll have to do. I hope it’ll be okay.”

  “Of course it will!” Marion said, and, smiling at Henry, she added, “Adam is a devoted father.”

  “Yes, but the point is, he may have plans,” Sophie insisted.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, then, Sophie,” Henry said.

  She walked him to the door, where she made a face about Marion, and they laughed silently like children. He kissed her and left, and she was still smiling when she came back outside.

  “He’s very attractive,” Marion said. “I feel a little jealous. No, really, I mean it!”

  Sophie took a sip from her cup and asked, “How are things with you these days?”

  “Not as interesting as they are with you. It’s no small thing to have regained your sexual freedom, you know. No small thing at all. Tell me, are you in love with him?”

  “You know, I don’t think in those terms. I don’t think I could fall in love again so soon. But he’s good for me. He sees things in a different light. He’s very insightful—and so much fun!”

  “I’m happy for you, I really am. But be discreet—you’ll never get Adam back if he finds out you have a lover.”

  “He knows. And he has a lover, too, Marion, and he’s happy with her, so there’s no problem. Not all relationships can be salvaged. Or deserve to be.”

  “Ah, maybe not, but it’s knowing which ones, isn’t it? Well, the children seem to like her, that’s for sure. They came over to play the other day, did they tell you?”

  “No. That was nice of you.”

  “Well, I hadn’t seen them for ages.…” When no apology was forthcoming, she continued. “All they could talk about was Valerie this and Valerie that.”

  “I’m glad they’re taking to her. Henry was so right. He told me I had to give them permission to love her. Isn’t that an interesting concept? So I did, and as you can see, it’s working. The funny thing is, it’s made me feel better. I did it for them, but I’m reaping the benefits, too. I didn’t expect that. What goes around comes around, eh?”

  “How does he know so much about all this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Henry. Is he divorced?”

  “No. He’s just… wonderfully wise about human relationships.”

  “I see. Lucky Henry. And lucky you!”

  “Yes. Very lucky.” And at that moment she knew, with sudden certainty, that her friendship with Marion belonged to her old life, back in the suburbs with Adam, on top of a tall pile of oven gloves and play groups and loaded shopping carts and other obsolete paraphernalia from that era. Our friendships, it struck her, need regular pruning and deadheading, the same as our flowering plants.

  * * *

  Tension was in the air, more pungent than the smells of cooking, as the two women vied for supremacy in the cluttered kitchen, each grimly set on her own task, each hotly resentful of the other’s interference. Valerie was running late, looking fraught, stirring a sauce. Milagros, with lips pursed hard and eyelids at half-mast, was clearing a space on the table for the boys’ supper.

  “I told you to give it to them in their room!” Valerie said.

  “Mr. Dean said they could eat in here.”

  “Mr. Dean is not doing the cooking. Get that stuff off the table and take it upstairs. Now.”

  Milagros turned, her fists on her hips, her nose bunched up, her eyes now just slits. “I take my orders from Mr. Dean.”

  Valerie threw the whisk into the pan and whirled around to stare in disbelief at the source of this impertinence. Talk about the last straw! First Agatha refuses to come and cook, then Adam springs the news on her that the children are going to be there, because Sophie changed her plans at the last minute, and now the hired help comes over all fat and insubordinate. “Sorry. Let me get this straight. Did you say you’re not taking orders from me?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Oh, yes? Then it can only be for one reason—because you are fucking fired! Get your surly ass out of this house! Right now. Go. Go!”

  Milagros’s eyes widened in indignation, but she drew herself up proudly as she left the kitchen, calling over her shoulder, “Then you better set two more plates at your fancy dinner!”

  Adam, on his way into the kitchen carrying bottles of wine, overheard her parting remark and smiled at Valerie. “Are the children joining us? How nice of you, darling.”

  The front door slammed with a violence that rocked the house—Adam’s clue that something was wrong. “What…?”

  “I just fired Milagros.”

  “What? You can’t do that!”

  “Why the hell did you tell her the boys could eat in here?”

  “I thought they could join in the celebrations a little before bed.”

  “And how am I supposed to get a decent meal together in an underequipped, shittily laid-out kitchen, full of screaming kids?”

  “Relax, darling, you’re doing a marvelous job.”

  “I am not! This sauce is stick—” The doorbell rang, long and loud, and she wailed with dismay. “Oh, shit, shit, shit!”

/>   “I’ll get it,” he said, but at the kitchen door he met the two boys coming in for their supper, already in pajamas, their damp hair neatly combed.

  “Where’s Mila?” Matthew asked. “Is it suppertime yet?”

  “Get out!” Valerie ordered them. “Go back upstairs right now!”

  “Valerie!” Adam’s admonishment was interrupted by the doorbell again.

  “For the love of God, Adam, just give them something in their room, will you? I’ll get the goddamned door!” Valerie tore off her apron, raked her fingers through her hair, composed her face, and strode out of the kitchen to get on with the job of showing her friends how happy she was in her new life.

  * * *

  Ann leaned toward Adam during the cheese course and said in low tones, “It’s so nice meeting you at last. We’ve been hearing rapturous accounts.”

  Oh, shut up, Ann, Valerie thought. The evening was not going well. First there had been introductions and drinks and nervous chat, with Valerie painfully aware of the eyes of her sophisticated friends darting over the detestable house and feeling childishly obliged to jeer at it before they could. To avoid the bleak silence that was a perpetual threat, everyone launched gamely into the kind of insipid small talk that a pack of suburban halfwits might engage in, as though the atmosphere of the house were stronger than all their personalities combined, reducing them, regardless of background, education, or inclination, into a mob of backyard blockheads huddled around the grill. It’s not old houses that are haunted, Valerie mused as she drank, it’s new ones. An old house has been mellowed by generations of cultured inhabitancy, but here mediocrity seeps from the walls straight into the soul, like the poisonous gases released by new plastic.

  In the end, she had invited only two couples: Ann and Jeremy (he was also English), and Nick and Sara—both blissfully childless and relatively affable. All the same, Jeremy had been drinking enough to become aggressive, and Ann was slapping it back, too, and spoiling for mischief, by the look of her. But Nick and Sara seemed milder than usual—possibly they were just bored—and Sara was drinking only water. Interesting. Perhaps it was one of her new fads; she was prone to them.

  Valerie turned to smile at Adam and radiate some of that “happy couple” vibe she was so anxious for her guests to pick up on, but his place at the table was empty. Again. All evening he’d been up and down the stairs, attending to the boys’ endless requests for water, more stories, night-lights, and whatever else they could think of to ruin the evening. And each time he trudged up or down, it struck Valerie that something about him wasn’t quite right. His… aura. Or something. It’s funny how even people we love can look kind of… well, not ugly, exactly. “Fuddy-duddy” was the word that drifted into her mind. Vaguely she recalled finding something sexy about that once upon a time—but just what had that been?

  Her uneasy reverie was interrupted by a hard prod from Ann, an annoying habit she had when drinking. “…the maternal streak in you!” she wound up in a shriek.

  “What?” Valerie asked testily, rubbing her arm.

  Laughter around the table. Then Nick said, “Stop daydreaming in class, Valerie. We’re talking about children. You know—short people who talk in high voices? Sound familiar?”

  Great, Valerie thought, talking about kids, are we? All that’s left now is “how to keep the barbecue from smoking” and we’re off and running.

  “I was saying I thought there must be a hidden maternal streak in you,” Ann said with twinkling eyes. Valerie made a bored face, and Ann turned to Adam, who had just slipped back into his chair. “Valerie never seemed like much of a child person, and yet here she is! It just goes to show how broadening a new relationship can be.”

  “And how multifaceted I am,” Valerie said, smiling at Adam.

  Sara leaned forward and spoke earnestly. “It’s juggling career and child care that’s so complicated, though, isn’t it? I mean, it’s okay for you now, Valerie, but when you get that partnership, you won’t even be human by the time you get home. And to have to face children in that condition…”

  “Partnership?” Adam asked Valerie. “What’s this?”

  A brief silence.

  “Well, there’s nothing to tell, or I would have, of course,” Valerie said in an annoyed tone directed at Sara, who was suddenly very busy with the food on her plate. “You know what Masterson’s like. He’s been tossing ideas around.”

  “Has he made you an offer?”

  “Not exactly.” Adam raised his eyebrows, and she improvised. “I mean, he never comes right out and says things, does he?” And rather a lame improvisation it was, too, in Adam’s view.

  “Oh, don’t you hate that?” Sara said, eager to make amends. “I really hate that! People who don’t… you know, come right out and say things!” She looked around the table for help, but no one thought she deserved any, so she had to struggle on alone. “But back to the child-care thing… How can parents give the best of themselves, which is surely what any child deserves, at the end of a long day when they’re exhausted? That’s what I can’t figure out.”

  “They can’t,” Ann said. “Either you do a shit job of one thing or a shit job of the other, or if you’re really energetic and organized, you do a shit job of both.”

  “But there’s got to be a way,” Sara protested. “It seems awfully unfair that women have to choose between children and work when men don’t.”

  Adam cleared his throat. “Actually, men have to choose as well. Most choose their careers without even realizing they’ve made the choice. How many fathers are really involved in their children’s lives? I mean intimately—to the extent of knowing when they need bigger socks or what their favorite word is that week. I know it wasn’t until… until I found myself alone with the children that I really—”

  “Alone!” Valerie put in with a mock pout. “Thanks very much!”

  “But who cares about socks?” Ann said. “What about education? What about emotional well-being? The fulfillment of personal potential? To hell with socks! It’s the big issues that matter, not the boring domestic details. Aggrandizing them is just a way of fobbing them off on the women who are obliged to deal with them.”

  “Ah! But the details are not boring, and that’s the surprise! It only appears that way from the outside.”

  “It certainly does,” Jeremy muttered, tipping more wine into his glass, but Adam continued.

  “A child’s life is made up of hundreds of these small details and, like the pieces of a mosaic, they are what forms the larger picture. There are no big pieces, no larger issues—​that’s what I’m realizing. What’s big—and complex and fascinating—are the patterns formed by all the tiny pieces. There’s no such thing as ‘education,’ there are just many little things learned in the course of many days. And when you’re on the inside, there with your child, you can see the patterns gradually taking shape, and it’s exciting. It really is.”

  Nick had been listening closely and nodding along. “So if you ignore the little pieces, you lose the big picture,” he said. “Interesting.”

  “Oh, that sounds so right!” Sara said. “I don’t know a thing about it, but that sounds so right. My God, how complicated it all is, but what an adventure! It must be, I mean.” She laughed awkwardly.

  “Are you planning to have children one day?” Adam asked.

  She shrugged wide-eyed at Nick, who nodded his consent. “Well, we weren’t going to tell anyone until the trimester was up, but… the baby’s due in September.”

  As far as Valerie was concerned, Sara’s blushing announcement sounded the death knell to an already agonizing evening, since when people say they’re expecting a baby, social mores demand—even of fairly rude people—that certain questions be asked, to the ruination of the conversation. Have you thought of a name? Is it a girl or a boy? The pros and cons of knowing the sex beforehand… Valerie clenched her teeth on a series of yawns. Ultrasound scans, natural childbirth, sleep deprivation… Valerie drank wit
hout looking up. The glowing star of the evening was supposed to have been she, their damned hostess. The whole point of this gathering had been to reveal herself to her friends in her new role, appearing as quick-minded and dazzling as ever, but newly mellowed and enriched by love, a blossom open at last to its fullest. And instead dippy Sara was stealing the limelight with her Mother of the Race act. It was only after the advantages of breast-feeding had been exhausted as a topic that it dawned on Sara that she might be monopolizing the conversation, and although she did eventually say, “Now, that’s enough baby talk. Let’s talk about something else, for heaven’s sake!” and, resurfacing, Jeremy did cry, “Hear, hear!” and the subject did finally change to film and the latest box-office hit, but it all came too late to save the evening for Valerie. She sat chin in hand, her mind adrift, while Adam said, “He’s a trivial man. He can’t help it. The people and issues that interest him are trivial. In his films couples bicker, malcontents whine for effortless fame and loveless sex—all excellent stuff for comedy, of course. But that’s why his dramas can never be other than shallow and dull.”

  “Chronically superficial…” Sara mused aloud, shaking her head sadly. “Is a person just born that way, do you think?”

  That snapped Valerie out of it. “As opposed to what, Sara—an accident in the workplace?”

  “For the love of God, the man is funny!” Jeremy protested. “A little respect! He’s the comic genius of our times. I say leave the deep stuff to the fellas who can’t tell a joke.”

  “Is there any reason comedy can’t be art? We usually consider it a lesser achievement than serious drama, but does it need to be? I mean, is there anything intrinsically—” But Ann’s question was not destined to be answered that evening.

  “Speak of the devil!” Sara interrupted apropos of nothing, and she nodded toward the stairway, where the two boys were crouched, peeking owl-eyed through the banister. “Aren’t they cute?”

  “They’re usually very well behaved,” Valerie said, eyeing Adam. “Perhaps they sense that just for once the evening is not intended to revolve around them.”