Chapter Seventeen
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
New businesses were opening all the time.
Not just restaurants but supermarkets too, Indian and Japanese and Korean.
Fancy new stores appeared in the malls, and traffic on the freeways seemed to double overnight.
It was what Bill always said would happen in Silicon Valley—he was, after all, in real estate, though he was retired now.
In August, they met Trevor and Dina for dinner. The restaurant, called Seasons, was Vietnamese, one of the slick new breed of Asian restaurants with flattering lighting and a separate menu just for wine.
The server arrived shortly after they were seated.
“We’re waiting for friends,” Bill said, and the server nodded.
He appeared slightly older than Joan, in his early forties maybe, with slicked-back hair, and there passed between him and Joan the silent exchange she always experienced in close proximity with another Asian person.
He looked at her and Bill once more, and for the first time in a long while Joan felt embarrassed.
I’m a serious person, she wanted to say. I’m not what you think!
“Sometimes I wish I had a place like this,” Joan said once the server departed.
The interior had been decorated with care, with sheer drapes and golden panels and artful photographs of the Mekong River.
It was the sort of restaurant where Joan could imagine dining alone with a book, which she never did.
“You do?” Bill looked surprised. “A restaurant? Do you even like cooking?”
“Of course I like cooking,” Joan said, insulted, although in her heart she knew she was not a particularly talented or even interested chef.
What usually spurred Joan to return to restaurants was not the menu or decor but the interactions to be had: Cindy, the head waitress at Olympia Grill in Cupertino, who would sit and chat when dessert came, but only if you had ordered the lemon orzo soup which was her grandmother’s recipe; Big Chan, who owned the tofu shop in San Mateo and would always call out when he saw Joan: Ah, here she comes, it’s my very best customer!
On those afternoons when the chores ran tedious or the children were difficult and Joan felt that boxed-in anxiety creep, she would visit one of her favorite institutions and come home feeling, if not outright happy, then at least reassured.
Could she open a place like this? Joan wondered. Some little spot that brought out that feeling of contentment? What would she serve there? How would it be?
“Restaurants have tight margins,” Bill said. “Didn’t you take that small-business course?”
“Yes,” Joan said, distracted. Her head was still filled with ideas.
“Well.” Bill cleared his throat. “You know I’d be supportive of anything you wish. But something like a restaurant, it’s a total commitment. You’d be gone all the time. You’d hardly see the children.”
“It’s just a silly daydream,” Joan said after a moment, sad that Bill’s feelings were so transparent, especially since they both knew she would never follow through.
For most of their marriage—with two major exceptions—Joan had bent her choices to Bill’s convenience.
But Lee and Jamie had been two major exceptions indeed.
Dina and Trevor arrived. Dina was wearing a burgundy dress that flattered her coloring. “Happy birthday to Jamie,” she said, kissing Joan and then Bill on the cheek. Jamie had turned twelve last week.
“He loved the video games,” Joan said sincerely. Dina always remembered the children’s birthdays and purchased terrific gifts.
Food and drinks were ordered, and soon after Dina and Bill were talking, as they remained great friends. As she often did when left with him, Joan asked Trevor about music. “Do you really like concerts so much?”
“Yes.” Trevor sipped his beer. “Why would you think otherwise?”
“Maybe you changed your mind and can’t stand live music anymore, but people keep asking because it’s all they know about you.”
“Is that all you know about me?”
“It’s a lot of it,” Joan said honestly.
“What do you not know?”
Joan thought about this. Bill and Dina were still talking, but not animatedly; the restaurant was also a quieter sort of place.
“What do you listen to when you want to feel sad?”
“Tom Waits.” He paused. “Now I get to ask you something. Do you like to know the end of movies before you watch them?”
“Never,” Joan said, enjoying both the question and him for asking it. She thought she could smell his cologne: something with neroli, maybe some sandalwood.
Joan and Trevor had never spoken about their conversation in front of his house.
Joan had relived that memory many times over the years—in particularly sad, lonesome moments, she had positively dined on it.
It had taken on a significance in her head that she knew had no basis in reality, yet this didn’t diminish her pleasure.
She wished she had recorded every bit of the interaction: how Trevor had smelled and if he’d really pressed his fingers to the center of her palm.
There was a brief period when Joan had been somewhat obsessed with Trevor himself, surreptitiously asking Bill question after question, scraping information that ultimately proved useless for her fantasies (Trevor had two brothers named Alan and Joe; he liked pinball machines and wasn’t good at golf).
With time, however, Joan had stopped thinking about Trevor. It hadn’t really been about him.
Still, maybe I should have tried something, Joan mused. I could have been worse, given how bad Bill has been. I don’t know what I was holding out for.
It was a nice evening—a fun evening. Bill wasn’t as hungry as he usually was, whereas Joan was the opposite: she ate all of her rice and grilled shrimp and the rest of Bill’s beef.
She also drank too much and was massaging her temples by the time they arrived home.
Joan had said she’d go for a bicycle ride with Bill the next morning—she wished to monitor his road safety, as he had a way of rolling through stop signs that worried her—but now she wasn’t sure she could wake up in time.
“Such a delicate flower,” Bill teased. He poured her a glass of water. “Hydrate, my love.”
Even after years of marriage, Joan had not acclimated to the Lauder routine of very early mornings; it was usually Bill who woke first. She heard him as he got dressed to go on his ride, and then she returned to sleep.
She was embarrassed when she went downstairs an hour later and saw Lee and Jamie at the kitchen counter, Bill already back, spreading apricot jam on croissants.
“I don’t understand how you have so much energy,” she said. Bill only shrugged, a little smug.
The next weekend, when Joan woke, she found Bill asleep next to her.
Aha, she thought. Finally. After Joan finished making breakfast (she did a “fancy” breakfast on Saturdays, a berry French toast), she went upstairs and saw Bill was still sleeping.
When she opened the drapes and he woke, he rubbed the back of his arm over his eyes. “I’m tired,” he said.
“Did you go to sleep late?” Sometimes Bill would stay up and read. The light had bothered her when they were first married, but now Joan could snooze through it.
“No, I went to bed when you did.” He yawned and stretched, making a V with his arms. She could see his stomach when his shirt lifted, and his skin appeared pale yellow in the light. “Is there coffee?”
“I can bring you a cup. And I’ll take the kids today. You relax,” she added. Bill nodded.
Both Lee and Jamie had birthday parties to attend that morning, at a skating rink and an arcade twenty minutes apart.
Unlike in earlier years, Joan could simply drop them off; no more forced socialization, no more inquiries as to her husband’s whereabouts (Bill never came).
After the children were deposited, Joan drove downtown.
There she strolled with no real agenda; she passed the bookshop and on impulse went in and bought a German motorsport magazine for Bill.
Trish wasn’t at the register, though if she had been, Joan would have said hello—it surprised her how often she forgot the history between the store manager and Bill.
When Joan did recall, there was only a ping in her head: oh.
Joan didn’t believe those who cheated were automatically bad people.
If she did, it would have been miserable staying married to Bill.
The florist was next door, and Joan splurged on a bouquet of anemones.
Afterward she visited the bakery, selecting a box of pastries.
While waiting for the pedestrian light to walk back to her car, Joan gazed across the street at a storefront renovation.
The light blinked, and she realized it was the video store.
Joan crossed and went to the shop. She had seen the space only a few times over the years; it was on a side street she rarely visited but was where she had by chance parked.
The place was gutted: the black curtain was gone, and while the shelves which had once exhibited such titles as Wet Crimson Nights and Oriental Schoolgirls still stood, they were empty now and exposed to the world.
Joan had never returned after her altercation with Milton.
After graduation she had not seen Milton again, and rarely thought of him, though at times she still thought of the video store and its owner.
She wished, rather improbably, that she had kept in touch with the man and wondered if she ever crossed his mind.
Well, that’s silly, she thought. I’m sure he doesn’t think of me at all.
She brought her hand to the window. More details were revealed: the cashier’s stand by the left corner, a large storeroom in the back.
Joan recalled how the sun had dappled at the entrance, settling on the carpet (the red carpet, she noted, was still there).
An old childhood feeling rose, of not necessarily liking a thing but mourning its absence once it was gone.
After lingering another few minutes, Joan returned to her car and retrieved Jamie and Lee.
As usual after such excursions, they were tired and sulky (these damned birthday parties, Joan thought again).
When they arrived home, the house was silent.
Joan sliced an apple and a mango into thin crescents and then called Jamie and Lee over to eat and went upstairs to change.
It wasn’t until she was folding her “outside” clothes and changing into the loose linen pieces she wore at home that she saw Bill was still in bed.
Joan froze, her jeans in her hands. Her heart jolted as it did when she came upon one of the children sleeping and they were completely still.
She used to creep up and place her finger under their noses, just enough to confirm they were breathing.
A second later Bill moved and she exhaled; she put a hand on his forehead and felt its coolness.
She wasn’t sure if it was too cool—it was a colder day—so she knelt and pressed her forehead against his.
Bill opened his eyes. “Is it the morning? I’m still tired.”
Her heart began to pound. “No. It’s the afternoon.”
Bill blinked at her. “I’m tired,” he said again.