“Writing up something for the temple. I volunteered to do it. They wanted someone with good graphics capability.”
I stand still as an animal threatened by headlights. “Oh,” I say. “I didn’t know we were doing that.”
“I took Jane and Isaac on the Saturday you were indisposed in the city. They have a program for kids, I heard. Turns out it’s more for Daisy’s age.”
We’ve never taken them either place, church or temple.
“While Leigh errs, Simon straightens.”
He hits one of the keys hard. “Oh, cut the crap, Leigh. You’re way out on this one.”
I redirect, away from the betrayal.
“Who is this girl? She’s absolutely stunning,” I say. “Drives a blue Miata. I’m not sure if I should have followed them or what.”
He stops typing. “What would that have achieved?”
I can’t think straight on this. “Shouldn’t I be concerned here? He’s fourteen, for Christ’s sake. And she, clearly, is older, since she’s driving that sexy car. Is this what fourteen-year-old boys do? Find women who can drive them places? Two minutes ago, he was hitting grounders in Little League. I just can’t get my mind around this.”
I sound just like Mother, without the grace.
“Around what?” Simon laughs. “This is precisely what you’ve given him permission to do!”
“You seem relieved about this! Doesn’t it bother you at all? Don’t you feel any compulsion to go out and find him?”
Simon turns back to the computer and effects the involved process of turning it off—screen, printer, monitor, an order he has taught me not to violate, as I could “blow the mother board” or commit countless other computer atrocities.
“Leigh,” he says, as if it’s the last word in the language he wants to have to say, “I have learned, pretty recently, that however bothered or upset I am about anything that happens has no impact on the event or its perpetrators. I have learned that what I feel and think doesn’t matter. How am I supposed to get upset about Isaac riding around in a car with a beautiful girl?”
How like my father he is, with all his wisdom.
“I guess you can’t.”
“It wouldn’t help anybody.”
“So I should just let him stay out all night.”
“I have met the girl. Her father had me put in a system at their house. I took Isaac along. He also knows her from camp, where she’s working in the office, not that she needs to work. Her father also owns the camp. We’ve talked. So unless you want to involve the police, we need to trust him to come home or stay there. If you like, I’ll call her father. I’m glad you saw him with her. We can take shelter in the fact that no crime is being committed.”
“Do you think I’ve committed a crime?”
He sits forward, his face gentler than I’ve seen it since before the crime.
“I’m too tired to think about it at this point. All I want to know is how we’re going to live. I’m not sure this cot thing is going to work out. I can’t pretend like you can. And I don’t know if I can forgive you. You’ve reminded me that we see things differently, and that troubles me. And as harsh as it sounds, I don’t think it’s fair that you get to stay in this house when you’ve threatened the very life inside it.”
“A lot of things aren’t fair,” I say. “It isn’t fair that Isaac’s dad left him when he was four months old, or that people get lonely enough to have affairs to begin with.”
“I think that’s too easy,” he says.
“Do you want me to pretend I haven’t been lonely? You say I’m so good at pretending—I’m not. I like having a man look at me when he’s talking to me.”
“I’m looking at you.”
“But the gears are working against that,” I burst out. “You’re thinking of the next thing, the next project or task or event, so what you’re seeing isn’t me at all, but tomorrow. Or, if you do see me, you just see some person you have kids and a house with.”
“And when you look at me, what do you see?”
“I see rules. I see structure. I see love in its standard definition. I see the end of me.”
“You see someone to complain about.”
“I guess so.”
“That’s not so good, is it?”
“I guess not.”
Instead of moving into rage, he rolls toward me on the chair we fought about buying at Staples last month.
“Do you think he’ll give you back the beginning of you? Do you really think he can do that?”
“He’s pointed some things out,” I say. “Without meaning to, he’s shown me a part of myself that I’ve buried in duty, and it’s a part that I like.”
“And you no longer think I’m capable of doing that.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you’re in love with him, so of course it appears that way. It’s hard to believe I’m capable of doing anything for you when you’re in love with him, isn’t that true?”
“Yes, that’s true! But I don’t see any reason, outside of anger and pride, to abandon the life we’ve made because of this. I just don’t see the reason! I haven’t done this to hurt or spite you! And I don’t blame you for feeling anything you may feel about anything! But I can’t leave my house and children because I love, in whatever ways I do, two men. I can’t. You’ll have to get the authorities to drag me out of here. I’m not going.”
Simon laughs. “I’m not going to do that.” He leans back in the contrary chair and flips a pencil he’s been turning in his hands over his shoulder.
“What, then?” I say.
“I’m not sleeping on this cot.”
“Okay, then I will.”
I lie down on it, as if I’m testing its firmness and durability. “It’s fine. You take the bed.”
“No,” he tells me, moving from the chair over to me. “No, that won’t do either.”
He kisses my ear, cheek, jaw, then my mouth, chin, neck, and down the center of my chest to my navel. He looks up briefly.
“Stop?” he asks.
“It’s okay.”
“Are you with me?” he says. Or him? I know he means to ask.
“Yes,” I say, amazed.
He makes me come with his tongue, and I cry out again and again, too loud for this house, for all of us, the cot groaning beneath me.
“Are you with me?” he asks again as we lie on our sides afterward, thin people facing each other.
I tell him I am.
“Let’s sleep here. Let’s say you’re the concubine and my wife is upstairs asleep among her maids in antique splendor. You don’t even have to dress and sneak out of here before dawn. One of my grooms will take you home.”
“What’s my name?”
“Connie.”
“Connie?”
“Connie the Concubine. Connie Lingus. Connie, short for Constance.”
As tired as we are, we roar over this.
“Where does Connie live?” I ask.
“Wherever she wants,” he says, drifting. “Some women do that.”
While he sleeps I listen for cars, for Isaac being driven home by his concubine. But there are no cars. No raccoon fights or cats in heat. No snoring or humming fridge. My ears are full all the same, and it’s deafening, the change in this house.
• • •
“Who slept on the cot?” Jane calls as I’m getting out cereal.
“We did,” I call back.
She appears in the kitchen, as if by magic.
“You and Daddy?”
“Daddy and I.”
“You’re sleeping with Daddy again?” she pants.
“Jane, honestly.” I turn my back on her to get Daisy into the high chair and get her bib and spoon.
“Mo-om!”
I face her, lean against the counter, sipping coffee with cream, utterly satisfied.
“Are you and Daddy getting back together?”
“It appears so.”
“Oh my God!” she s
creams. “Adrienne’s going to take a fit!”
I stop her right there. “Here’s the deal,” I say. “Adrienne doesn’t know everything. There are things occurring on the face of this earth this very minute that Adrienne has no notion of and could never process or judge. Do me a favor, and don’t believe everything Adrienne tells you.”
“Where is he?”
“Where is who?” I’m thinking of Isaac, who didn’t come home last night.
“Daddy.”
“At the store. We’re out of jam. And I thought we needed croissants.”
It’s actually true that I have a craving for croissants, but she lets it slide. “Is Isaac up yet?” She’s so animated, so delighted that we’re under one roof, that I don’t want to tell her he isn’t.
“Probably.”
“Did you guys talk? Is he talking to you?”
“Not yet.”
“Are you driving us to Grandpa’s for brunch today?”
“Yes.”
“Oh God, I’m so happy!” She hugs me swiftly, then sits for Honey Nut Cheerios.
“Hap-py!” Daisy bangs out with her spoon.
“Mom, you’re gaining weight.” Jane warns.
I look down. I’m in shorts, which isn’t usual for me. My legs do look fat today. Sometimes after sex they look that way, wide and wiggly.
“I’ll bear that in mind.”
“It’s okay, Mom,” Jane says. “You can be fat. As long as you’re here, you can be fat or thin. I don’t care.”
“Thanks.”
“If you get really fat, though, you should see someone about it. It means you’re depressed. And people might talk.”
“They’re already talking.”
She laughs, and I get more coffee, which I shouldn’t have, as it will make me hungry later, and then fatter when I honor the hunger. I join them at their breakfast, Beethoven is on the classical station where my kitchen radio dial rests. Before the sonata concludes, I hear the front doorknob turn. I force myself to remain seated. Isaac walks into the kitchen and looks at each of us without speaking.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi,” says he.
“Do you want some breakfast?”
“Yeah,” he says.
“What would you like?”
“I’ll have that.” He points to the Cheerios.
“Where were you?” Jane says. “You look like shit.”
I put the bowl and spoon down in front of him.
“Out,” he says. “You look like shit, too.”
“Do you two mind?” I say. “There’s a civilized baby present.”
“Out where?” Jane says.
“Wherever.” He starts shoveling.
“Did you stay out all night?” she says.
“Pretty much,” he says. He shoots me a triumphant, fuck-you look.
“Aren’t you tired?” she begs.
“I slept.”
“That’s nice,” I say. “Then you’ll come with us to Grandpa’s today.”
“Sure.”
He’s too smooth, too easy, too pleased. He’s had sex with that beautiful girl, and that’s that. Mostly it’s been me dishing out truth for other people to swallow. Now it’s my turn to swallow it.
• • •
The four of us ride into Manhattan in a glaring haze, the A/C on high, a new tape of Isaac’s by M. C. Hammer playing at an intolerable volume. Simon’s meeting us there after an errand to the computer wholesaler. I wish he were here, just to turn down the tape deck.
“Turn it down, Mom!” Jane shouts into my ear.
“No problem,” says Isaac. Downright jaunty, he is. Agreeable, interested, and in my face.
“Do I get to meet her?” I ask.
“Am I meeting him?”
“Sure.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“Then you won’t. But he’d like to meet you—again.”
“Well, she doesn’t want to meet you, Mom. Sorry.”
“May I know her name?”
“Her name is Alex. Alexandra.”
“She sounds like a snob,” Jane interjects.
“Like you’d know anything about snobs,” Isaac retorts.
“Alexandra what?” Jane demands.
“Alexandra Aidinoff.”
“Aidinoff,” I repeat. My mind reels. A name like mine. Jewish, maybe. They’ll make him convert.
“Where’d you meet her?”
“Camp,” he says coolly. “She’s helping in the office. Her dad owns the camp.”
“How old is she?”
“Jesus, Mom. How old is he?”
“Forty-seven. How old is she?”
“Nineteen. Does it matter?”
“I think it matters to you. It means she can take you places in the car.”
“Did you sleep with her?” Jane asks, thrilled.
“Put a sock in it, Jane,” Isaac orders with disgust. But I catch him smiling into his shirt.
“What does she look like?” I can’t help it. I want to hear him describe her.
“Like you, Mom. She looks just like you.”
“Except she’s nine feet tall and looks like Brooke Shields,” Jane cackles.
“Just one thing,” I say, feeling horribly dwarfed. “You call. You call and tell me you’re at a friend’s house and you’ll be out all night. And then you let me talk to one of her parents. Only so I’ll know you’re not dead.”
“No problem,” he says.
“Mom and Daddy are back together,” Jane announces. “In case you were wondering.”
“Hallelujah. She’s back together with all of our fathers.”
I pull over, once we’re in striking distance of Daddy’s apartment, into a metered spot. I grab the front of his shirt so hard he doesn’t even attempt to fight me.
“You listen to me carefully. I had you when I was younger than your new friend, and I don’t need to go into what a total party it was raising you when I had no husband, no money, and just about nothing to recommend me. But I’m your only mother, I’m it, and I’m not going to take this shit from you for one more minute. Have your girlfriend! I won’t stop you! But mouth off to me like you just did ever again and I’ll get in touch with her parents faster than yesterday and tell them she’s sleeping with my fourteen-year-old boy who doesn’t use birth control. I’ll make sure you never leave your room again, in addition. You got me?”
He stares, frozen, at the dashboard.
“YOU GOT ME?” I yell.
“Yes,” he murmurs.
“WHAT?”
“Yes!” he shouts back.
“Good! Now take your sisters upstairs. I have to get a coffee ring.”
He gets out, slams the door as I expect him to, and stands on the curb while I get Daisy out. Jane, frightened, looks up at him and slips her hand into his. I give him the baby, who clings to his neck like a chimpanzee.
“Don’t drop her,” I tell him.
• • •
I get a pecan ring at the bakery, practice deep breathing in the elevator to prepare to hold my temper at Daddy’s, and give the doorbell a good punch. I don’t expect a warm greeting, and I don’t get one.
Daddy’s handing out frosted theme cookies, Miss Piggy for Daisy and Power Rangers for Jane and Isaac. “The children are well,” he says finally. “All in order, I see.”
“All in order,” say I.
“Good to know. Your mother should be here soon.”
“She’s back?” I’m surprised. Usually she stays on when she goes to Nantucket.
“She called yesterday. Apparently things weren’t so easy up there, and she decided to return.”
Today it annoys me that my father always speaks as if he’s reading from a book.
“What went wrong? I thought Amanda was very spry still.”
“Oh, Amanda’s very spry. Your mother wasn’t visiting Amanda. She went to Vineyard Haven to visit an old flame who’s had a stroke and can’t get around too well. Add that difficulty to hi
s homosexuality—your mother has never seemed to mind that fact—and I suppose you’ve got an even more remote chance of a good visit!” Tickled, Daddy begins to fuss over the table, adding my pecan ring to the mix of bagels, cream cheese and chives, lox, onions, and sliced tomato.
“Sounds like he has a few strikes against him,” I say, furious.
“It’s a nice ring you’ve brought,” he says.
Vernon. She went to visit Vernon. She still knows him!
“Daddy,” I say.
“Yes,” he says in his what-is-it tone.
“Simon’s coming.”
“Yes? Good.”
“And Isaac has a girlfriend.”
Isaac looks up from the antique music box he’s been winding up for Daisy.
“And why shouldn’t he?” Daddy says, walking over and cupping the back of Isaac’s dark head. “A boy like this?”
“And I’ve got a book contract, I think. Or I’ll know by the end of the month, probably. And we’re just fine, except for Fowler, who’s got Lou Gehrig’s. But we’re all here, and I think we’re fine.”
“Lou Gehrig’s?” my father says. “Fowler’s got Lou Gehrig’s?”
“Yes.”
“What’s that?” Isaac says.
“A degenerative disease of the spine and musculature,” I explain.
“Your mother didn’t say anything about Lou Gehrig’s,” Daddy says. “Why would she not have mentioned a thing like that?”
“I didn’t tell her what he had because I didn’t know until recently. I only knew that he wasn’t well.”
“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?” Isaac shouts, now on his feet.
“He’s dying,” Jane says. “He walks with a cane, and his legs and arms don’t always work. But he gives people things anyway. It’s like he knows he’s dying, so he wants to do everything he can before he dies. He looks just like you, Isaac. And he’s a nice man, right, Daze?”
Daisy looks up, then back into the music box to try and figure out why it has stopped playing.
“Is this true, Leigh?” Daddy asks.
I nod, not taking my face from Isaac’s, which is full of hatred.
“All of it.”
“Halloo!” Mother calls from the hallway, having let herself in. She finds us all clumped around the ugly facts. “Halloo, family! I’m sorry I’m so late. Isn’t anyone going to have anything to eat?”
• • •
For the first time in weeks all five of us are in one car. We left Daddy and Mother mulling over the Movie Clock in the “Weekend” section. All three children are asleep in the backseat.