As it was, I decided no to Marlboro as I slid in on the other side of Will. Falling asleep, I pictured Jeff’s arm. When had I stopped thinking of Paul? Could you ever think about someone that way when they were actually there?
Will loved Detroit’s Arabic pastries. He carried a circular box up the tin steps of the plane and Lola lugged coffee with cardamom, a bag in each hand. “You’ll come again!” the director called up from the tarmac. On the plane, William settled in my arms, fitted perfectly. In high school, the one girl I knew who’d had sex said that after, when the guy put his arm around you or you sat on his lap, everything just fit right, a way it hadn’t before. I’d never really found that with another body, until now.
Sunday, Paul sat in a straight-back chair in my office, listening to what I had so far. I used Finale to play him both versions of instrumentation. He crossed his arms and listened. Then we took a walk and talked, in soft, adult voices, pushing the stroller. I’d have to call Decca Argo and tell them I’d be late with my songs; I’d ask to bump the recording date a year. Paul agreed; the collection would still get finished: it could still be great, only later. Strange that this caused no clamor. Where had I lost my rush? William was two and half, but I felt wetly joined.
We decided that I should take on a class at Colburn. They paid less than the Manhattan School, but they’d give me an office. Maybe I’d meet some friends.
We stopped at The Coffee Bean. A guy from work had introduced Paul to a coffee-based drink that tasted like a milk shake but wasn’t supposed to be bad for you. Now Paul just loved them.
“Gramma Ceil called the other day and said, ‘She’s been in Carnegie Hall, why doesn’t she quit while she’s ahead?’” Paul told this as a joke. Retire like Grace Kelly. Look at Elizabeth Taylor, who stayed. She got fat. Men had to keep working. But for a woman an unblemished record is best, even if that record is brief.
There were too many virginities.
At the park, a female couple, one short and one tall, loped across the grass with a toddler wearing a white dress. Will and this girl rushed toward each other, slowing as they neared. The women smiled up at us. Then Will stuck out his arm and pushed the girl. She fell straight back. He looked up, as if he’d just conducted an experiment.
The women, on their knees over the victim, looked at me with horror.
Monday morning, I called. My producer was respectful and brisk. He wouldn’t worry about me longer than the time of our phone call. I was a composer he’d thought would amount to more.
But Paul was encouraging. “You want them to be really good. It doesn’t matter if they’re done now or a year from now.”
Once I’d pushed the deadline back, though, it was revealed as a flimsy stage set. No one was waiting for me. Only William.
I was lost.
I shopped fretfully for Lola’s Christmas present. Lil and I talked about whether it should be jewelry or maybe a purse. And how much cash? If I asked Lola, she’d say she needed money, and then she’d send it home. I finally selected a Steuben bird. She’d told me she collected glass. I thought she could start a collection here. We could put up a shelf in her room. I held the bird in my hand. I’d tried like this once before; I’d found a nest with two paper-light, brown-speckled blue eggs and given it to my second-grade teacher. Now she lived with three other old nuns, in a bare apartment over a garage. I sent their commune a card with a check every Christmas. After a life of teaching elementary school children, they had insufficient grocery money.
I cashed my honorarium from the School for the Blind. We’d give Lola the wrapped crystal bird and a five-hundred-dollar bill in an envelope. Odd that this year, when I’d earned less than before, I considered that check mine to give. I still had money from a Copland prize, for work I’d done years ago. Coming out of the Beverly Hills store where I’d found the bird, I saw a sweater on a mannequin and bought it for Paul. Wasn’t that what you were supposed to do—married?
He looked around the room when he opened the box. We’d opened all the presents by ten-thirty. Now what? I always wanted time together, the three of us. I suggested a hike, but Paul said he was tired.
“The beach?”
“Kind of cold. Sandy.” He flicked on the TV. “Why don’t we just relax?” He made stacks of duplicate photos to send to relatives while he explained football to Will. First downs. Field goals. I roamed through the rooms, picking up paper, distracted by the noise of the announcers and the bands. Lola had gone to Ruth’s only the night before, but the house already felt unkempt. Finally, the phone rang.
“You guys free?” Jeff asked. “I found a church that has music.”
“When?” Paul didn’t like churches. We’d already declined an invitation to mass with my mother and Tom. But I wanted to get out of the house.
Jeff warned us that parking was terrible and we’d be better off walking, so we bundled up William for the dim afternoon. “And you can wear your sweater,” I said.
“Can I just ask how much it cost? I like it, but I don’t really wear sweaters.”
I shook my head.
“Come on. I can look on the statement when it comes.”
I’d paid the saleswoman half in cash. So I told him the amount that would show.
“I’m gonna take it back. I won’t wear it. I really won’t.”
We made our way, pushing the stroller, to the Spanish Revival church. A taper burned at the end of each aisle. Paul spotted Helen in a coat with a fur collar; she held open the songbook and they were both singing. Bing stood on the pew. Paul glanced at me. To him, there was something faintly disgusting about Christianity. We did one-two-three swoosh with William, but he shrieked. “I want to leave here this minute,” he said and kicked off his shoe. People turned. Paul had to crawl under a pew to retrieve it. Shoe in hand, Will on his shoulders, he walked down the aisle to tell Jeff.
“You free New Year’s?” Jeff asked.
As we walked home, rags of fog blew past. Our street looked closed, but at the end, yellow light spilled onto the sidewalk. The Indian restaurant. We’d eaten there once with Will asleep next to us in his car seat. But everyone inside appeared to be Indian. A man with an inwardly amused face handed us plates and nodded toward the buffet. The staff Christmas dinner. Will ate dahl and rice, now perfectly behaved. When he finished, I untied the cloth napkin and he ducked under tables with Indian boys who wore small red bow ties. When Paul pulled out his wallet, they wouldn’t let us pay.
This was where we belonged, among strangers. The Berends didn’t celebrate Christmas. Anyway, Paul had off only twenty-four hours.
“Merry Christamas,” the man called out into the street.
Just as I was putting Will down, Tom and my mother arrived, holding up a Mason jar. “It’s this sauce I make from the soft persimmons. Heat it up a little and put it on vanilla ice cream. Where is he?”
“He’s just going to sleep.”
“Oh.” She followed me in to look. “Oh,” she whispered.
My mother was wearing a long red cashmere dress and red shoes. Tom had on his same striped shirt. We put the jar in the refrigerator and went to sleep; tomorrow would be a regular day. Lola would be back.
Paul brushed my arm on the way to the shower, giving my skin a shiver. Two couples going out New Year’s Eve. An adult romantic form I’d never known. My mother hadn’t been half of a couple. I’d grown up around women who needed saviors, every single one of them.
“So she never married?” I’d once asked my mother as Julie loped out to her Chevrolet. I knew she’d been proposed to but had called it off.
My mother sighed. “She would have if she could have.”
Oh, why couldn’t she just. “Go ahead, Julie!” I screamed out over the dark lawn at the long-skirted, balding, beloved middle school music teacher. “Marry him! You’ll live!”
But that him was by then long gone.
I was married. I hummed, walking through our small house to find Lola to latch on my mother’s costume pe
arls. Lola would babysit both boys. Helen and Jeff had a new young nanny, but she wanted an off. They weren’t sure they liked her anyway.
Jeff arrived with a local newspaper that had a map for a midnight run to the beach. He followed me into the kitchen for a paper bag and wouldn’t leave until he’d ransacked our bedroom, opening drawers and not closing them, to get our sweats and running shoes.
The restaurant turned out to be half full. The handwritten menu contained only food I couldn’t eat without digestive disaster. Paul asked Helen a careful question; she answered, and asked him one, the conversation evenly distributed. Then she asked me if I still wanted to take the class.
I told her yes, definitely.
“Okay. Because I mentioned you to Mary and she thinks she can get you guys in.”
“To the school?”
“Oh, no. To the class.”
“Thanks.” Left, right, diagonal. “You hear that? We’re taking a parenting class.”
“We?”
“They’re taking private lessons.” I pointed to Helen and Jeff.
“Thanks a lot, bud,” Paul said to Jeff.
“Owe you one.”
Our appetizers arrived. This wasn’t fun. I felt too aware of my fork. But Helen asked Paul how his pilot was going, and he got started about the notes he’d received from the studio (Not enough strong women!) and then from the network (Who are these tough broads? Give me a girl I can like!). I laughed along to the stories I’d heard before, grateful that Paul kept up our side. It was relaxing not to have to talk. He started telling a story about the one woman in the Room. Everyone hated her. They hated her almost as much as the guy who made excuses to get out at seven.
Jeff asked how my work was going. Diagonal.
“The fan helps,” I said.
“Now we need you to kill the neighbor’s gardener for her,” Paul said. “Break his lawn mower.”
“Leaf blower.” I felt embarrassed by the attention. My head wilted over my plate. “This is delicious,” I said, like an idiot.
Frank Sinatra was singing the saddest Christmas song ever written. Let your heart be light.
“So what’d you get for Christmas?” Paul asked Helen.
“She wants these earrings that cost thousands of dollars!” Jeff exploded.
“I didn’t know they were so expensive,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I just like them.”
I knew the earrings she meant. Moms in the playclub had them. I’d never thought about diamonds before. Like nannies, they were something I’d only read about.
Someday soon, we all will be together.
“I’m not going to buy into this Westside life, it’s just not me,” Jeff said.
But she held her ground. “No one’s asking you to get pierced.”
“Maybe you should,” Paul said. “One’d be cheaper than two.”
Just then, a guy with tangled hair stopped at our table, pounding Jeff’s shoulder. “Hey man, so I did the deed.” He pulled over a chair and straddled it.
“Whoa!” Jeff said, slapping his back. “And?”
Paul interrupted to introduce us; the guy was Buck Price.
They’d been at the beach, he said, and he’d buried the ring in the sand. But when she got out of the water, she hiked up to the bathroom. “For like a mile. I kept my hand over the spot. And then, when she comes back, I say, ‘Let’s make a castle.’ I thought that would start some digging. But she says, ‘In a little while’ and goes to sleep! My wrist got pins and needles.” When she finally found it, she put it on and ran down to the water to rinse the sand off, but then she wanted to trudge up to the lifeguard station to see if they had a lost-and-found. “‘It’s from me,’ I had to tell her. ‘I put it there.’”
Jeff turned to us. “He’s the Paul in their relationship.” That was the story about us, that I was adored. But what good did it do me? What did that even mean when he was never home?
The waiter brought our dinners.
“After we’d been going out a year,” Helen said, “Jeff decided he only liked white plates. He wanted us to buy a set. I told him there’s a time in life when one buys dishes.”
“You want some?” Jeff offered a backward fork to the guy with tangled hair. He took the bite and gulped it. It was odd seeing a guy feed another guy.
“When he finally did propose,” Helen went on, “he leaned against a store window, full of china. Actually, it turned out to be porcelain. ‘So what do you say, let’s buy it.’ I asked, ‘Which?’ And he said, ‘All of it.’”
Paul didn’t mention my proposal. I didn’t either. Paul hadn’t accepted right away. He thought I’d gone from no interest to proposing. He thought I was a thirty-two-year-old woman who wanted to get married.
“I didn’t care about the wedding,” Helen said. “I just wanted to get it over with.”
“I cared about our wedding,” Jeff said.
The waiter approached. “Would you like another plate?”
“Nah, I’m getting up.” Buck Price took his drink but left his turned-around chair.
“A girl in my office went from a daily discussion of Is he good enough? to anxiety about the silver. If he wasn’t perfect, the silver was damn sure going to be.” That wide-open laugh. Helen felt superior, more in love. But was that even good for her?
“You picked the china?” I asked Jeff.
“And he switched my bouquet from roses to lilies of the valley. Without asking.”
“Much better flower.”
“A carefully set dinner table seems valuable to me,” I said. Permanence.
“And incidentally,” Helen said. “That girl? She’s still married.”
Jeff turned to Paul. “You knew right away with her?”
“Yup. She was it.”
“Did you have any serious relationships before?” Helen asked.
“Yes and no,” I said.
“No and no, for me,” Paul added.
“You had the Jewish Elizabeth Taylor. Paul’s grandmother told me his college girlfriend looked like a Jewish Elizabeth Taylor. Petite.” My hand went to my belly. This food! I’d be sorry later.
“But we’re as good-looking for women as they are for men,” Helen said.
“Hey, when’s the White House?” Paul asked.
“God, I’ve got to get shoes.”
“February,” Jeff said.
“But what about your poetry deadline?”
“I’ll just finish it early.”
“So how ’bout it?” Jeff spread out the local newspaper he’d brought. “You guys in?”
Helen laughed, crossing her arms. “I was thinking about dessert.”
Paul signaled the waiter.
“Do you really want that? Don’t you think we’d feel better in the beach air?”
“I think I’d feel better eating warm persimmon pudding. Charles says my body fat ratio is eighteen percent, which is ideal for women of child bearing age.”
I had my jogging clothes in a brown grocery bag under my chair. “I’ll go.”
“How ’bout you, man?” Jeff asked Paul.
“I’m in on the pudding.”
I changed jerkily, half drunk in the restaurant bathroom, tripping over my leggings. Walking across the room, my dress in a Vons bag, I felt ridiculous. A persimmon pudding sat in the middle of our table. I took a bite. It was possibly the best thing I’d ever tasted.
“You really won’t do a slow jog?” Jeff asked Paul.
“She’s been trying to turn me into a runner for years.”
Helen studied the map, using her spoon to dig around the bottom edges of the dish.
Floodlights changed the ordinary street so trees assumed fantastical shapes. Sawhorses blocked off traffic and people ran in clusters. A boy at a corner passed out cheap masks. The fine elastic cut into the back of my head and my mouth wetted the molded expression. In this buoyant herd, Jeff loped beside me. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep up, but his arm kept bumping mine. What was that? Halfway
through the Palisades on the stilled boulevard, he pulled up his mask and grinned.
“Am I slowing you down?” I shouted.
“Nah. It’s good, isn’t it?” He tapped my shoulder.
I’d waited so many years for this, whatever it was. Why now? Was I more attractive with a kid, inside a parenthesis of not meaning it? The clomp of running sounded on all sides of us. Around the next corner, I saw Helen—her face bagging, unguarded, next to Paul, whose arms moved, probably telling a joke.
“Wish I could get her running,” Jeff said.
“I’ll work on Helen. You convert Paul.” Next year, I thought, I’d make a farro risotto, with smoky mushrooms and pecorino, before a midnight run. Paul would do it, if Jeff kept at him. A guy at the show had gotten him into that upside-down yoga position.
“Why, when I ask you to do yoga, you refuse?”
“Well, I didn’t like it. You’re my wife. With you I don’t feel social embarrassment.”
We turned down Chautauqua. I could see the finish line on the beach. Huge lights shone from truck beds, and people danced on the sand. We heard the boom and echo of waves. Paul and I had taken dancing lessons. Before our wedding, he’d booked us into a class, even though he already knew how. Harv had told me that Beethoven never learned to dance in time to music. He wasn’t the only one. Musicians can’t dance. I remembered conservatory parties, where one or two people would move around in awkward, jerky, extravagant angles. Dance had patterns of its own that had nothing to do with measures. Jeff led me in a stumbling waltz on the sand. I counted, trying to recall the box step. Then he bent me backward, I felt his hand on my spine, and he leaned over and kissed the lips of my mask.
OhmyGod.
I had a good life. I didn’t want to get swoony.
Home, Jeff lifted their sleeping boy to their car, the blanket dragging sparkles.
“They are no problem,” Lola said. “They right away sleep.”
Brushing my teeth, I poked my face toward the mirror. Helen had said I was as good-looking as Paul. Maybe I was getting better looking. “I’m beginning to like her,” I called. “But I don’t think she gets Will.”