Chapter 22 #4
Anger thick—like jam boiled down to the bottom of the pot, shining and sticky, a coagulate of Emily’s embarrassment about the night at the bar and her resentment of Jack’s endless manipulation—Emily lied. She told Gen that she had plans.
She shouldn’t have encouraged Connor to be a zombie.
She worried about it all the way uptown.
Her subway car was crowded with people in costume: some sexy witches, a Santa, a Van Gogh with a missing ear, a vending machine.
She wanted Connor to learn to resist his father when it mattered, and she believed that it mattered this time, that it was petty and despotic to force a child, on a day when he could be anything, to be a servant to his father’s needs.
But Jack would react to defiance. He usually did.
When she had called the children yesterday to say good night, Connor had been quieter than usual.
She could feel the throb of Jack’s displeasure. It was like the magic trick Stella and Connor were supposed to be: a sleight of hand that made something invisible only to bring it bodily forth later, solid and twitching.
Emily got off at her stop. She passed a man dressed as a spaceship walking with two little green aliens who ate candy out of their pumpkins.
Sudden realization ground Emily to a halt.
A together costume. It wasn’t just that Stella was the rabbit and Connor was supposed to be the hat.
Jack was the magician. He had never cared about Halloween before but he must care now.
When the door to her former home opened, he would be wearing a bowtie. A red-lined cape. He would have a wand.
Emily forced herself to keep walking. Just because she had imagined Jack as a magician didn’t mean that he would be one.
It wasn’t true. Just an idea that she had.
But it felt true. The truth of it crept over her.
She felt a little crazy. She stared at the front door and couldn’t knock.
A final realization arrived: if Stella was the rabbit, and Connor the hat, and Jack the magician, then she was meant to be the magician’s assistant.
The together costume Jack had planned was a family costume.
When he opened the door, he would offer hers. He would tell her to put it on.
The door flung open. Stella must have seen Emily on the security camera. Stella was soft and furry and white. She had a black-painted nose. “Mommy, come in!” Emily remained frozen on the stoop.
“Hi,” said the zombie who appeared behind Stella. Emily was so relieved to see that Connor wasn’t a hat that it took her a moment to think that maybe Jack, as a punishment, had decided that everyone else would wear the family costume without Connor.
“Is that Mommy?” called Jack from inside, farther down the hall. She heard his footsteps. She knew what she was about to see.
But when he emerged from the shadows, he wasn’t anything at all. “Just in time,” he said. “They’re chomping at the bit.” He wore jeans and his favorite fall sweater. He shrugged on a camel hair coat. “You okay, Em?”
“Yes,” she managed. “I’m fine.”
After she had taken pictures on the stoop, the other three went in the direction of the town houses where they gave out big candy bars.
Emily walked back to the subway. Three years ago, in 2008, when Jack’s hedge fund had made a killing by betting against the housing market, which then crashed, he had been motivated by a fat bonus and low housing prices to purchase their property upstate.
Connor had been afraid of the house. He had come with them on the broker’s tour, clinging to Emily while Jack held Stella.
“This place is too old,” Connor whispered to Emily.
“We’re going to renovate it,” she told him.
“I don’t like it. It has ghosts.”
Jack overheard. Emily worried that he would tease Connor, but instead Jack said that all homes had to be inspected before they were purchased, to check the roof and boiler and that sort of thing. If he paid extra, the house could be inspected for ghosts, too. Would Connor like that?
Jack hired a graphic designer to make a certificate that declared the house to be a ghost-free zone.
The lettering was gothic and embossed, the paper creamy and thick.
There was a gold-foil seal. They framed the certificate and hung it in Connor’s new bedroom.
Connor never mentioned ghosts again. This, too, was a kind of magic.
Emily swiped her subway card. She thought about how she had misunderstood her and Gen’s breakup.
She had misunderstood Gen’s invitation to drinks.
She had been so sure about the family costume and she had been wrong.
She thought about the ghost inspection certificate.
She had loved Jack that day. Maybe she misunderstood everything.
Emily examined Connor and Stella’s candy after school on Monday, looking for anything unwrapped.
Her mother had done this every year, citing bad people who put poison in candies and razors in apples.
Emily passed a bag of gourmet jelly beans to Stella, who opened it and began eating.
Stella offered a yellow jelly bean. “This one’s buttered popcorn,” Stella said. “Try it.”
It had a synthetic, vaguely buttery taste. Emily reached for the bag and read it. Toasted marshmallow, sour cherry, pomegranate. The jelly beans made a lot of promises. All it took was a hint of halfway-right flavor for people to taste what the jelly bean pretended to be.
“Mommy!”
“What?”
“You’re staring.”
“I was thinking.”
“Stop it. You always go away.”
“What were you thinking?” said Connor.
“I was thinking about the jelly beans. I was thinking that it’s easy to fool people into believing that a sort-of-real thing is the real thing. This jelly bean doesn’t really taste like a Granny Smith.”
“He llo !” said Stella. When had she learned that funny, rude tone?
“No one thinks the jelly bean tastes like an apple,” said Connor.
“You like it because it’s candy!” said Stella.
“Duh,” said Connor, emboldened by Stella. For a moment, he looked frightened by what he had said, which made Emily pull him onto her lap. “Kids still say duh ?” she said, arms around him.
“You’re so old, Mommy!” Stella pushed herself onto Emily’s lap, too.
“Yeah,” said Connor. The children, full of sugar, giggled and squirmed. Her phone rang. It was Gen. Emily ignored it.
Rain flecked the windows and the children were at school when Gen sent a text: I’m going to call. Please pick up? It would mean a lot to me if we could talk
Emily remembered calling Gen from the lobby of her dad’s church. How loud the dial tone had sounded. How much she had wanted Gen to answer.
Gen called.
“Hi,” said Emily.
“Hey.” Gen’s end of the line was full of space and echoes.
“Where are you? It sounds like you’re in an empty pool.”
“Indoor track. I’m taking a break. I want to say something.
I didn’t mean for the night at the bar to be like that.
Us not talking. Me being rude. Ambushing you with a bunch of strangers, even though I love them.
I should have let you know they’d be there or I shouldn’t have invited them.
I didn’t invite them, at first, but I got nervous. ”
“Why? It’s just me.”
“Yeah, exactly. I guess I’m not over everything that happened between us. But I want to be. I want us to be friends. I want to make that work. I want you in my life.”
What was real? Some things Emily knew to be true. “I missed you.”
“Emily. I missed you so fucking much.”