Alison could see Robin’s curly blond hair through the small glass panes at the top of the door. She felt a quick panic—the last thing she wanted to do was talk to her neighbor. But it was too late; Robin had seen her and was tentatively waving the fingers of one hand, anemonelike, through the glass.
Alison took a deep breath and opened the door.
“Here. I made banana bread,” Robin said, handing Alison a foil-wrapped loaf. “It was all I could think of to do.”
The loaf was still warm, and somehow comforting in Alison’s hands: the solid heft of it, its mammal warmth. “Robin—thank you.” How kind. Alison felt a tickle in the bridge of her nose.
Oh no; she was going to cry.
“I won’t stay. I just—” Robin said.
Alison shook her head, clenching her jaw. Despite her efforts, her eyes filled with tears.
Robin took the loaf from Alison and placed it on the counter. Then she clasped her hand and led her to the table. “How about some coffee?” she said gently.
Alison nodded, unable to speak. She watched as Robin rummaged in the cabinet for filters, washed out the carafe, spooned coffee grounds from the bag on the counter into the filter, and then filled the carafe with water and poured it into the pot. Normally she would have talked to fill the silence, protested about being served, worried after her neighbor’s feelings, but she did none of this. She still felt hollowed out. Her eyes, her skin, her mouth and ears only an epidermal shell, the bones providing structure. Her brain reptilian, merely recording movement, sensing light and dark.
How could she go on?
Miraculously, Robin seemed to know exactly what Alison needed. She was quiet, watching the coffeemaker, glancing over to smile at her every now and then.
Robin was not Alison’s type. She was in the Junior League; her twin ten-year-old boys played golf; she and her husband belonged to the tony country club on the edge of town (though Alison knew, through the neighborhood grapevine, that Robin’s husband, a banker, had lost his job twice in the past three years). She was probably a Republican. Alison’s friends tended to be other women who felt adrift in some way, who’d gone freelance and were having trouble drumming up work, who found themselves unexpectedly pregnant again after a baby or two, who were as conflicted as she was about being a stay-at-home mother. Alison had often marveled at Robin’s seemingly unambivalent feelings about motherhood and work. She seemed preternaturally content—busy, involved in the schools (endlessly planning book fairs, movie nights, class parties), on the executive board of the PTA. Alison had not-so-secretly wondered what deep well of need Robin had that was so readily filled by the quotidian details of domestic life.
But now she was merely grateful.
Robin found a coffee mug, filled it, brought it to the table along with the milk. “Sugar? Sweetener?”
Alison shook her head. She poured milk into her coffee and took a long sip.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Robin asked. She fished a knife from the block on the counter and cut into the banana bread. Steam rose from the plate. She put it in front of Alison, who pinched off a bite. She couldn’t even taste it; the bread was like Styrofoam in her mouth. She had an impulse to spit it out but forced herself to swallow. “No,” she said.
Robin nodded. She sat down in the chair across from Alison.
“The boy died,” Alison said.
“Oh,” Robin exclaimed. “Oh, Alison”—putting her hand to her mouth.
“I … really … don’t want to talk about it.”
“All right.” After a moment Robin reached out and put her cool fingers on Alison’s forearm. “I’m here when you need me. Okay?”
She started to get up, but Alison said, “Please—don’t leave. Stay for a minute.”
“Sure. Of course.” Robin sank back into her seat.
Alison forced herself to smile. It felt as if her mouth were smiling on its own, a purely mechanical activity. Then she started to cry.
Robin sat at the table with Alison as tears streamed down her face. She cried and cried, until the fluid seemed to have been drained from her. Then she cried some more. Robin got up; even through her tears, Alison was aware that she was looking for a box of tissues, but she didn’t find one and ended up tearing off some paper towels and handing Alison a big wad.
Charlie came into the kitchen. He was clearly startled to see Alison sobbing wordlessly into a white muff, and Robin sitting there. “Oh, goodness,” he said, patting Alison’s shoulder. “Honey, can we let Robin get back to her family? I’m sure she has things she needs to do this morning.”
“Do you want me to stay?” she asked Alison.
Alison shook her head. She did want Robin to stay but was ashamed of being so inappropriately needy.
“Anytime at all,” Robin said. “Just call me.”
She gave Charlie a sympathetic smile, which Alison understood as: we will both take care of this person. No man should have to shoulder this alone; I can help.
And she wondered: Why didn’t Charlie marry someone like Robin? His life would be so much easier.
After Robin left, Charlie sat at the table with his entire hand covering the bottom half of his face. Alison recognized this as a rare but significant gesture in Charlie’s repertoire, signaling that he was flummoxed.
“I called a lawyer,” he said after a while. “Ben’s roommate from Harvard. Nice guy. Lives in Bergen County.”
Alison nodded.
“He said it sounds fairly straightforward. He needs—everything.”
She sniffed and cleared her throat. “Today?”
“No. Tomorrow is soon enough. The police report. Etcetera.”
She nodded again.
“We’ll get through this, Alison.”
“Will we?”
He looked her in the eyes, but his gaze was opaque; she couldn’t read what he was telling her.
She took a deep breath. “When I called you last night, the first thing you said was, ‘What did you do?’”
Charlie sat back. “Well. It was a shock, getting that phone call.”
“You were so—cold.”
“I was asleep, Alison,” he said tetchily. “You woke me up.”
“Still.” She could feel the tears gathering inside her again.
He wiped some crumbs into a pile.
“‘What did you do?’” she repeated in a self-pitying whisper.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said.
But she couldn’t let it go. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand where that came from.”
“There’s nothing to understand,” he said. “Don’t read too much into it. In fact, don’t read anything into it.”
She looked at him dully. She didn’t want to read too much into it. She didn’t want to read anything into it. But his halfhearted protestations weren’t helping much.
“We need to be thinking about the next steps,” he was saying.
Next steps. Baby steps, she thought. One foot after another, toddler steps. Phantom steps—steps the three-year-old boy who died would never take. Here I am, going to that place, the most maudlin place, she thought. But she didn’t care. She lived in that place now.
Chapter Five
Early December
When Alison called to invite Claire and Ben to dinner in Rockwell, Claire recognized it for what it was: a peace offering, of sorts. Things had been strained between the two women for some time. It was hard to pinpoint what had happened, exactly; it was a matter of slipped confidences and injured egos, Claire thought, that reinforced the sense that they had little in common anymore. Alison always seemed so busy, in a breathless sort of way. Claire couldn’t fathom what she did all day at home with the kids, but whatever it was made it impossible for her to have a sustained conversation. After several maddening phone calls (with children yowling in the background or tugging on Alison’s sleeve, and Alison repeating questions she’d already asked), Claire gave up. Alison hadn’t called her, either.
A
nd there were other things. When Claire had called—as a courtesy to Alison—to let her know that there were certain places and events from their childhood that Alison might recognize in her novel, though they were camouflaged—Alison had been irritatingly literal-minded about the whole thing. She’d paused for a moment and then asked, pointedly, “Am I in it?” Not, “How interesting, what are you learning about yourself?” or even “Good for you, what an ambitious project.” Claire had explained patiently that nobody was “in” it exactly; like any creative work, the book incorporated bits and pieces of memories and impressions and events and transformed them into something else.
“So I’m not in it, then,” Alison said stolidly.
“No. Not really. I mean, parts of you might be. My main character has a friend named Jill that might seem familiar to you. But it’s not really ‘you,’ if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t,” Alison said.
Claire sighed. “The friend has blond hair, for one thing,” she said. “And other details have been altered.”
“But what you’re saying, basically, is that she is me.”
“Alison,” Claire said, “come on. You know what a novel is.”
“Of course I do. But this doesn’t sound like a novel to me, Claire.”
“Look, we’re arguing semantics. The essence of it is true,” Claire said. “The emotional reality. My emotional reality. But places and names have been changed and some events combined and rearranged beyond recognition.”
“Uh-huh,” Alison said.
And then, apparently in retaliation, Alison had rejected an article, without warning, that Claire had written—as a favor to her—for the women’s magazine she worked for. Claire was paid a kill fee, but she was annoyed by Alison’s insinuation that the piece was slapdash and ill-conceived.
So they hadn’t spoken in ages. Until now.
At first, when Claire and Ben arrived, all of them behaved a little awkwardly, as if they didn’t know one another well. But within a few minutes, merlot and candlelight and soft music had smoothed their conversational edges. The kids were upstairs, apparently with a babysitter, and Alison had actually set the dining room table in advance and prepared hors d’oeuvres in the living room. (They weren’t always so formal; on several occasions Claire and Ben had trekked out to Rockwell for take-out Chinese or empty-the-fridge pasta medleys at the island in the kitchen.) Claire was surprised to find herself a little nervous; as they made small talk before dinner she drank one glass of wine quickly, and Charlie rose to get the bottle. When he came over to refill her glass, he mouthed, “I miss you.”
Startled, she looked into his eyes.
He held her gaze.
She felt herself flush.
They were all sitting at the dining room table eating baby lettuce with blue cheese and pears when Claire turned toward Charlie—she was next to him, diagonally across from Ben, in their customary foursquare configuration—and inadvertently knocked her wineglass into his lap. Red wine seeped through his khakis, dark like a period stain, and both of them sat there stunned for a moment before the other two figured out what was happening. Charlie sat back and Claire started laughing; she couldn’t help it, and then she took her napkin and began to blot. It was wildly inappropriate, her face hovering over his lap, and he pushed her away, embarrassed, as Alison went to the fridge for some club soda (which of course they had in there somewhere: the well-stocked suburban refrigerator). But as Charlie pushed Claire back, he held her wrist. She could feel it, though no one else could see.
For the rest of the evening she sat at the table, watching the others but not listening. Yes, she nodded, yes, and smiled slightly, a vague, all-purpose response. Alison glanced at her sharply a few times, but she was accustomed to Claire’s moods. Her way of compensating was to natter on. “There’s a big sale at the ABC outlet in Hoboken,” she said, “and you know, Charlie, we really need a rug for the bedroom. I can’t stand stepping on that cold floor every morning. What about sisal, not the scratchy kind, wool, maybe in a neutral or something? Do you guys have a rug in your bedroom? I can’t remember.”
“Just an old Oriental that’s falling apart,” Ben said. “We could use a new one. What do you think, Claire? Should we brave the sale this weekend?”
All Claire could think about was the feel of Charlie’s thigh under his khakis, the long stretch of muscle, the thin, taut skin. “We could do that,” she said.
Ben launched into a story Claire had already heard about a guy in his office who was dating Miss New York. “I’ll clear,” she said, getting up from the table. She gathered empty glasses and a serving plate and attempted to arrange them in her arms.
“Be careful,” Alison said.
Charlie stood up and took a wineglass from Claire. “I’ll help.”
Ben caught her eye. She could tell that he was annoyed and a little hurt that Charlie wasn’t listening.
“You sit,” she told Charlie. “I’ve got it.”
“I need to stretch anyway,” he said.
At the swinging door to the kitchen she turned around and pushed through backward, and Charlie looked at her with a funny smile the other two couldn’t see.
“What?” she said when they were in the kitchen, the door squeaking on its hinges behind them.
“Escape,” he mouthed.
“It’s actually a funny story,” she said, turning her back to him and opening the dishwasher. “It’s just that I’ve heard it before.”
“They get old, don’t they?”
She didn’t answer. Then she said, “Can you get the plates?” When he left the room she found someone’s half-finished glass of wine, and took a long swallow.
He came back in with the plates. She was rinsing a bowl in the sink. For a moment they didn’t talk. “I want to touch you,” he said quietly, and though he had never said it before, she nodded without surprise, as if she’d been expecting it. He ran his hand down her neck and she arched her back. Fingers on skin: the contact was an electric shock. Her body stung where he touched her—cheek, shoulder, upper arm, hand. For so long she’d avoided looking him in the eye for this very reason: as she looked into them now, cerulean blue, she saw her own need reflected back. He kissed her neck and she felt the roughness of his lips, chapped by the wind. Without shutting off the faucet she turned to face him, touching his scaly lip with her tongue. He pushed against her, opening to her, his mouth, his hands, his legs. She felt pulled in, like something she had seen once on a nature special, a rabbit being swallowed by a snake, the serpent’s jaw unlocking, mouth open wide, neck muscles constricting as it eased the rabbit in.
Chapter Six
“We should go out there,” Ben said, pacing back and forth in front of the living room window. “We could take their kids for the afternoon or something. I feel so damn—helpless.” He sighed. “You know, I handed her a second martini. I forced it on her.”
After the phone call from Charlie, Ben had gotten out of bed and gone down to the French Roast on the corner for two lattes, coming back with a newspaper, several morning glory muffins, a bag of clementines. Since returning from his errand he’d been restless, jumpy, miserable. Somehow Ben’s hand-wringing had the opposite effect on Claire, making her withdraw. She recognized her father in this: his own unresponsiveness in the face of her mother’s volubility. Ben’s messy emotions were so big it was hard to find a place for her own, admittedly more complicated, feelings.
“I think she might’ve had more than two,” Claire said. She was sitting on the couch, distractedly leafing through the New York Times Book Review. She put it down. “Anyway, our going out there today is not going to help. I’m sure there are plenty of people looking after the kids and bringing casseroles and all that. We’d be in the way. And besides, Ben, I’m leaving for two weeks tomorrow. I’ve got a lot to do.”
Ben stopped pacing and looked at her. “You’re still holding a grudge, aren’t you?”
It took her a moment to realize what he was talking
about. “What? No. I just think we should give them space. She needs some time alone, and they need time as a family.”
The thought of seeing Alison and Charlie together like this filled her with dread.
“It’s just—appalling. Unbelievable,” Ben fretted. “There has to be something we can do.”
“You did find them a lawyer,” Claire said.
He shook his head. That wasn’t enough.
“We could send flowers,” Claire said. She wanted to be alone, away from Ben’s needy articulation of disbelief. She was desperate to talk to Charlie, to find out what he was thinking and feeling, but she didn’t know how or when she might get a chance. What was going to happen now? Alison must be shattered. Charlie would, of course, have to attend to her. And what then? Matters that had seemed relatively simple yesterday—the deception, the affair, feelings that had been reawakened after so many years—now felt immensely complex.
“Flowers … I don’t know,” Ben said. “Aren’t they a bit—funereal? Or falsely cheerful? It seems like the wrong message, somehow.”
“Of course, you’re right,” she murmured, and Ben went off to call Zabar’s, to see if they would send a gift basket to the hinterland, and then trekked over to the store to handpick the items. A task, an errand, was exactly what Ben needed. Faced with being able to do nothing, he needed something to do.
He’d always been that way. The evening of their first real date—they’d made a plan to go out for Thai in the Village a few days after the party where they’d met—Claire had sat on a bench in Washington Square Park and watched him walk toward her, alone with his backpack and a paper cone of flowers: a tall, gangly, dark-haired Harvard student with a soft smile and little gold glasses that were too round for his face. She could tell that he felt a bit exposed coming toward her like that. Even then, before she knew him, she saw through his thin veneer of self-assurance to the insecurity lurking beneath, instantly identifying in him what she recognized in herself.