Chapter 34 #2
A smiling, middle-aged woman stood with Emily’s children in the schoolyard near the fountain.
Emily, who had just entered the yard, didn’t recognize her. She wasn’t another mother. She wasn’t a teacher. As Emily approached, over the musical chatter of children and their parents, she heard the woman say, “…your mommy have any special friends?”
“We went to a museum with one,” Stella said. “And there’s a runner.”
“Does the runner ever sleep over? What’s Gen like?”
“Super fast,” said Connor.
“She’s going to win all the Olympics,” said Stella. “She’s going to smoke the other runners.”
“Really?” said the woman.
“Yeah, they suck.”
“Is that what she said?”
Connor shrugged.
Emily felt nauseated. Natasha Crane’s warning was coming true.
Here was a member of the press, interviewing Emily’s children…
who were innocently turning Gen into a braggart.
It hadn’t occurred to Emily that her children could damage Gen’s career.
She listened with fascinated horror, not quite able to believe this was really happening, that a careless comment could make Gen, the image of honorable athleticism, seem like a cocky fake.
“Mom’s late,” said Connor.
“Mommy’s always late,” said Stella. “She abandoned us. We’re going to have to live in a snow hut with a bear all by ourselves.”
Emily forced calm into her voice: “You’re making things up.”
“Oh, hi, Mommy!”
“Gen never said anything bad about other runners. I’m on time like I always am.”
“Must be hard,” the woman said, condoling, “being a single mom.”
“Connor, take your sister to the gate.”
“She’s not single,” Stella said. “She’s married to our daddy.”
“Connor.”
When the children were out of earshot, Emily said, “Stay away from my kids.”
“Maybe you’d like to answer my questions.”
“Fuck your questions.” Emily turned away, shaking a little. She heard a phone take a photo. The sound locked her body into place.
She turned back. With a plastic smile, she said to the woman, “You know what? It might actually feel good to talk. Sorry I was so rude. This just isn’t the right moment. Let me give you my number and you can call me.”
“Great! I’d love to get to know you, hear about you and Gen Hall.” The woman grew coy. “There is a you and Gen, isn’t there? Does your husband know?”
Emily snatched the phone. It was making an audio recording that had been started long before she had arrived at the school.
She was so angry. She had been all along, but the anger, which had been pouring slowly into her like thick concrete, now became total.
It suffocated her. It made her into a blind statue of herself, cracking at the edges.
She threw the phone into the fountain. The woman shouted at her. Emily shouted back. Parents stared.
When she met the children at the gate, Connor said, “You said the eff word.”
“You never talk to strangers! Do you hear me? You never, ever talk to strangers!”
“Mommy?”
“We won’t, we promise. Mom? It’s okay. Let’s go home. Mom? Mommy?”
Emily was short of breath. She touched the base of her throat.
She felt as though she had been running hard, like she imagined Gen must feel sometimes.
Gen didn’t win every race. She knew how it was to fall behind.
To dwindle, lose. Gen understood failure, but Emily believed that Gen had never been overwhelmed by it. Emily was overwhelmed.
landed!
got an earlier flight. had to come home to see you
that last race didn’t go great
um last few races
actually I’m skipping some
can i take a cab straight to your place?
really need to be in your arms
in cab line now. OK to come? Kids are at jack’s, right?
Emily finally wrote back. Yes, please come.
Gen looked weary when she came through the door but brightened to see Emily, which made Emily feel terrible.
She poured coffee for Gen, grateful for an excuse to look away.
The sight of Gen made her eyes smart. She wanted to press her face against Gen’s shirt, close her stinging eyes, and smell the hours of travel on the cotton.
She was aware that she hadn’t always been affected by Gen’s beauty.
There had been a time when she barely noticed her, but how had that been possible?
She held the mug, letting it warm her hands before offering it.
Emily wanted to stay in this moment forever.
She thought that a lot of people must feel that way right before they say something awful. “I can’t go to London.”
The gladness left Gen’s face. She took a sip, lowering her gaze to the mug. “That’s okay. It makes sense. I know bringing Connor and Stella would be complicated and that you wouldn’t want to come on your own and be away from them for so long.”
“I mean that you and I can’t be together for now.” She hadn’t intended to say this with such remove. She was anxious, and the effort to keep that anxiety at bay made her sound distant and cool.
Gen set down the mug. She was pale. “You’re breaking up with me?”
“No,” Emily said quickly. “I’m asking for a break.”
“Why?”
Despite having rehearsed this, she struggled with words. “It’s too hard.”
“What’s too hard? What are you saying?”
She told her about the woman in the schoolyard.
“But that—that’s amateur hour. Emily, that woman can’t be real press.
They wouldn’t go into a private school’s yard.
They’d get sued. And she used a phone? This isn’t a professional.
This is some independent operator hoping for her big break.
But you destroyed the phone. It’s okay, everything’s okay. ”
“She could still write a bad story about us. About you.”
“My agent can catch and kill it. Pay that woman so the story is never published.”
At the mention of Natasha Crane, Emily felt a cold plunge of embarrassment.
She saw how Gen had needed to define “catch and kill,” how Natasha had been right: Emily didn’t belong in Gen’s world, she didn’t even know its vocabulary.
Look at her: ignorant, apt to flounder. “There will be another story.”
“I already said I’d be your secret. I’ll make sure the press doesn’t connect you to me.”
Emily imagined Natasha Crane’s reaction to this: professional skepticism. “You can’t make that promise. A break would be good for you, too. I don’t want to get in your way.”
“My way? For me? You’re making no sense.”
“You have the Olympics.” She didn’t say, How many races did you skip to be here now?
She didn’t say, You could lose so much because of me .
Emily didn’t say what she believed, which was that she would not be worth it.
She didn’t tell Gen about Natasha’s warning.
Gen would fire her even if it sent her career into a tailspin.
It was exactly the sort of morally pure thing Gen would do. “You have your training.”
“Please do not pretend you’re doing this on my behalf.”
“It’s not just for you.”
“It’s not for me at all!”
“Gen, I’m barely keeping my head above water.
” She didn’t say, I’ll run out of money by the end of the year .
“Connor’s having trouble at school. If my relationship with you goes public, it could jeopardize my custody.
You know this, yet you’re totally blowing past the fact that that woman was interviewing my kids.
You don’t know what it’s like to worry about losing them. ”
“You forget that I know exactly what a custody battle is like.”
“You know how it is one way. You don’t know what it means to be a parent.”
Gen frowned with the quick and severe expression of a person who has tasted something bitter.
She dragged a hand through her hair and covered her mouth, thumb against one cheek, fingers fanned over the other.
She squinted as though she had double vision and couldn’t tell what was the real thing and what was its copy.
She let her hand drop. She spoke very quietly: “How much time?”
“We can see where we are after the Olympics.”
“Do you realize the Olympics is when I most need you? I’m not trying to be a dick.
I’m not trying to guilt you. But I needed you.
And after this summer? You’ll probably still be in divorce proceedings.
That’s just how it is. There’s money and kids, so it’s going to take forever.
I’m not an idiot. I know that. I’m not asking you to choose me over your kids.
I wouldn’t. But you could be choosing us , all four of us.
You could be there for me and let me be there for you and go through the shit together and I keep telling you I’m right here and you keep not believing me or you’re ignoring me.
I don’t know what you’re doing. All I know is that if you wanted it to be us, it would be us. ”
This wasn’t how Emily had hoped the conversation would go, but she now saw no way that it could have gone otherwise.
It struck her as so stupid as to be almost funny, that even the smallest part of her had hoped that it might be possible to put Gen on hold, to dismiss her and call her back later, as though Emily’s power could be that great.
Gen said, “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“No,” she lied.
Gen leaned against the wall like she’d been pushed. Her shoulder blades and the base of her head made a short, dull sound as they lightly struck the wall’s surface. She closed her eyes. “Choose.”
“Choose?”
Gen held her gaze. She looked a little wild, almost afraid. “Yeah, choose. Are you with me or not? I’m not doing a break. I’m not doing some half-assed thing with you. We’ve got problems, okay. We can deal with them together. But you have got to choose. Yes or no?”
Emily felt a sticky kind of grief, a glue that made words clog in her throat.
She thought please, but wasn’t sure what she wanted to plead.
Please give me time ? It had already been fifteen years.
Please trust me ? She was a liar. She had just lied to Gen’s face.
She kept secrets when Gen valued honesty.
“Is it because you don’t like that you’re queer?” Gen said. “If it’s that, I don’t think this would ever work. I’m not okay with a future where you make me stay home from parent-teacher conferences.”
The image of this—Gen sitting by her side in a classroom—floated before her with all the luster of a painting. She loved it. She wanted it badly. It was the kind of painting you put behind bulletproof glass so that no one can touch it.
“Say something.” Gen’s voice cracked. “I deserve better than this.”
“You’re right,” Emily finally said. “You do. You deserve better. I can’t.”
“You can’t.”
“No.”
“Your answer is no. You are breaking up with me.”
“It’s not because I don’t want to be with you, or I’m embarrassed of you.”
Gen’s mouth twisted.
“I need to put my children first.” Emily did, she always would, there was no version of this world where she wouldn’t.
Gen’s vision— all four of us —was just that: a vision.
A fantasy. Emily had had that fantasy, too.
If you wish hard enough, you can delude yourself into believing anything.
But reality always comes back. Her life was two conflicting realities.
It was a camera’s flash, petitions for custody, interviews, bank accounts, skipped races, the principal’s office, a pulled muscle, school pickup, the Olympic Village, Stella’s costume, Gen’s agent, Connor’s guilt, a chance to win, hounding texts, Nella’s toast, her father’s toast, lemonade, a lease, old letters, sold diamonds, gin and tonic, lost notebooks, milk cartons, wedding shoes, running shoes, oranges, toothbrushes, a birth, a miscarriage, a birth.
You cannot live more than one life. Sometimes, you must choose.
Gen shook her head. She stared at the duffel bag, which hadn’t been unzipped, where it waited near the door. “Well. I understand. Will you look away? Please don’t look at me. I want to leave without—” Gen didn’t finish her words.
Emily didn’t look. Her vision was thick with tears. She heard the door open and expected to hear it close. When she didn’t, she almost looked, and later she wished she had, so that Gen might not have said what she did.
“I think you never stopped being ashamed of me,” Gen said.
The door shut.
Emily,
I’m sorry to write this in an email. It seems cold. I don’t mean it to be. I went back to the airport. I’m flying to Oregon early. My team will meet me, and I have some friends I’d like to see. Being there will help me focus for the trials.
I don’t want to be in touch with you for a while. I don’t think I can bear friendly check-ins. The truth is, we were never really friends. Never just that.
Gen