Chapter Fourteen
Fourteen
After work on Tuesday, I finally nail the bean lasagna recipe. (Hint, there’s an inhuman amount of garlic. Garlic covers almost every cooking sin.) I’ve been cooking with unusually fierce verve and when I come to, I’ve got twice the food Vin and I could possibly eat in a week.
“Damn.”
I get an idea, text Lauro, and then text the number he sends me. My phone almost immediately rings in my hand with a callback.
“Esther!” I answer.
“Bean lasagna? Sounds awful. Bring it over. How’d you get my number?”
I’m laughing. “I swear it’s not awful. Lauro has everyone’s number. He’s Mr. Social Skills, apparently.”
“Did he try to kiss you after the art show?”
“What? No.” (I don’t mention the cherry in my drink or the subsequent accidental elbow to his face.) “Why?”
“I’ve known him a long time. He had that I’m-gonna-kiss-somebody-tonight glint in his eye.”
“Well, if he used the glint on somebody, it wasn’t me.”
“Good. You’re married. Or so you say.”
I laugh again. She’s funny over the phone. “Right. And even if I didn’t say, I still would be.”
She hums. “I’m at 103 and Lex. Don’t get excited, it’s not fancy.”
“What time should I come?”
“Before dinner, obviously.”
And so I’m just strapping the extra lasagna into a wide-bottomed tote when Vin gets home from work.
His Mauricio Electrics T-shirt is dusty with drywall, his Yankees cap pushed up loosely—which he does when he’s driving the work van—so it doesn’t block his view.
He stands in the open door and it must have been a hell of a workday because I can smell sweat from here.
Which, ladies, let me tell you, is not actually a bad thing.
“Hi.” He closes the door behind him.
“Food’s warming in the oven, if you’re hungry.”
He glances at the bag over my shoulder. “Headed back to work?”
“No. I made too much by accident, so I’m gonna drop some at my friend’s house. She’s at 103 and Lex.”
He frowns. “Trains are terrible today because of all that rain this morning. I guess there’s flooding in the system.”
I quickly take out my phone and check the recommended route. “Yeesh. You’re right. It says I should take the B and then walk across the park. Maybe I’ll drive—Never mind, traffic is horrific. Dang.”
So I’m looking at a twenty-minute train ride and then a twenty-five-minute walk. With a five-pound lasagna.
“You got a sec for me to shower? I’ll go with you. Carry the food.”
“Oh.” Maybe it’s because he’s standing there, big and bearded and dusty, but the offer makes my stomach flip. “Not much of a relaxing night for you…”
He shrugs.
“Okay. Sure, then. If you’re sure.”
He nods and then crouches down to take off his boots.
The laces make little snappy noises as he slides them out of the worn-shiny divots across the tongues.
I make note of his shoulder placement, his knee bent like that, I’d never get the hands right, even if I were to get him to freeze exactly like that for an hour.
Once I hear him kick the shower on, I grab my drawing pad and try to draw that pose from memory. It’s a bird’s nest of lines, as I search and search for the right ratios and proportions. It’s discouraging. So instead, I turn my eye to the boots he’s left on the front mat.
They’re high-quality and a million years old.
He’s had them re-soled twice. The leather loyally retains the shape of his foot no matter how long he’s been gone.
They’re set on the ground in the exact footprint of his, well, footprints, and even if they sit there overnight, or two weeks, they always give the impression of Vin having just been there.
I choose my smoothest lead and the pencil curves on the page the way the heel curves away from me, into nothingness.
I pool the laces, tip up the toes toward the ceiling.
The shower shuts off and I jump. This is a decent drawing.
Vin Home from Work I title it.
“Ready?” He’s damp and tugging a T-shirt over his head. I catch a glimpse of his stomach. It occurs to me that people probably see him on the street and have daydreams about his sexual competence.
It’s slightly cool out—one of those sweet summer days, like a drink of cold water in the warm sun—and as we get off the train at Central Park, he points across the street to a little café with gigantic bunches of eucalyptus in baskets out front.
“You want a cup of tea for the walk?” he asks.
I’m still slightly ill over the wasted seventy-five dollars this weekend, so I shake my head no.
He reads my mind with a laugh. “Roz, it’s a buck fifty.”
He hands me the lasagna and comes back across the street three minutes later with a steaming paper cup and a scowl on his face. “Apparently it’s three-fifty now. For hot water and a bag of grass clippings.”
“Thank you for my grass clippings.” I’m absurdly happy to get a cup of herbal tea from the hands of my husband.
Vin’s phone rings as he takes back the lasagna. “It’s Raff.”
“Go ahead.”
He answers and I listen as they catch up. His brow is furrowed when they hang up.
“Everything all right?” I ask.
He nods as we enter the park, green and blooming, just starting to dim with sunset. There are little kids in giant backpacks, teenagers on motorized scooters screaming with laughter, a pack of elderly women tiptoe-jogging at a clip. “Yeah.” He glances at me. “I think he’s lonely.”
“He was having fun at his party.” I supply this, but it feels a little thin.
“Okay, so maybe not lonely…But searching? I get the feeling he’s been looking for something he can’t find.”
Perfectly said.
Maybe he should move back in, something in me tries to say. I practically have to clap my hand over my mouth to keep from saying it.
“He keeps talking about Marine…” Vin says, like he’s finishing a thought.
“Yeah, he’s mentioned her to me too. Why…” I glance up at him. “Why now, do you think he’s suddenly missing her?”
“She used to take care of him. Then we took care of him. Now he’s on his own. He’s missing having somebody.”
Oh! That…is…shockingly insightful.
“It’s interesting that you bring that up…I…actually was just talking about this the other day. With Deb and Cherise.”
He nods to show he’s all ears.
“Cherise mentioned that…” There’s no direct route through the park, so we meander along some smaller tributary paths on our way to a bigger one.
His T-shirt sleeve is brushing my shoulder.
My heart is definitely still galloping. “She…wondered if maybe taking care of Raff the way we did…made things harder for us, as a couple.”
His eyebrows dip up toward the brim of his hat. He’s as protective of Raffi as I am, so at first I think he’s going to reject that statement out of hand. But then, “Actually, I’ve had a similar thought.”
“Wait. Really?”
He clears his throat and reaches around my shoulder, guiding me across his path and to his other side while a biker blaring Panic! At the Disco blasts past us. “Well, we didn’t have sex once the entire time he lived with us, so…”
I stop walking and stare at his back. He takes a few steps, his back to me. I watch his body expand with a deep breath and then, only then, does he finally turn and look me in my face. There’s a mixture of vulnerability and resignation there.
I feel oddly…zippy. A chemical rush, no doubt. “You’ve never said anything like that before.”
He gestures with his chin for me to walk alongside him again. I do, but he doesn’t say anything else.
“You never mention our sex life,” I prod. “Or lack thereof.”
“Well.” He scratches the back of his neck. “Seemed…like…it was okay to mention it?”
“Yes! Of course. I…would actually love to hear your take on it.”
We walk in silence for thirty feet and I can tell by the way he’s watching his feet that he’s gathering his thoughts.
“At first…at first it was the accident, you know? Of course we weren’t gonna have a lot of sex right after something like that.
But then, you know, six, seven, eight months later…
I think…” He clears his throat. “I think because those rooms…well, you can hear everything in that apartment. I think we just stopped while he was there because it felt…”
“Rude? Or embarrassing or something?”
“Right. Yeah. Even though Raffi would not have given a shit. Still…”
“Yeah. Still.”
“But because we weren’t having sex…I think all the things that weren’t working with us…got really obvious.”
All the things that weren’t working.
“But Raff was just always there,” he continues. “So there wasn’t a lot of space or time to figure any of that out and we just had to keep on going and going.”
“And we found this different rhythm. One that had more to do with taking care of Raff than with us.”
“Right. Yeah. And…” He glances at me and snaps his mouth shut. He’s physically stopping himself from saying something. But I’ve just mainlined his thoughts and feelings and I’m greedy for more. I need more.
“No, come on,” I say. “Finish your thought. I don’t care if it hurts.”
“Look. Roz. The first thing I ever loved about you was how you were with Raffi. I…rested easy knowing that if I ever screwed something up with him, you’d be there to pick up the slack. And I…I still feel that way. Even if…you and me…whatever. I know that no matter what, you’ll be there for him.”
My heart fell out of my chest twenty steps ago when the words first thing I ever loved about you came out of my husband’s mouth. But I can’t be deterred. He hasn’t finished this thought, I can feel it. “But…”
“But.” His face is constricted. He looks like he really doesn’t want to say this next part. Or maybe, that he wishes it weren’t true. “But after the accident, we were both so focused on him being okay…we didn’t really check in with each other. And there were times—”
He cuts off, or rather, emotion cuts him off and he looks, fiercely, away from me. I don’t need him to finish that sentence out loud. I can finish it myself and it makes me sick to my stomach: there were times that Vin needed me but I was helping Raff.