Chapter 19
Are you still alive? I text Joel.
He doesn’t respond.
Maybe he isn’t.
Or maybe he’s slowing down, maybe he’s declining.
“When are we going to see Mr. Button and Joel?” Ella whines, being psychic at me in the kitchen. No, not really, she’s already asked about fifty times. But I startle anyway.
“Sorry, baby. He’s pretty busy these days.”
It’s good to be home, making my veggie quesadillas, which Ella likes, even though typically she considers avocado “too slimy.”
“He told you that?”
Why is she so suspicious? Are little kids supposed to be this naturally distrustful? Once Joel is dead, I need to read another parenting book, maybe that one everyone is talking about called Tribal Baby. Who has time to read about parenting while parenting?
“Yes,” I lie.
Once Joel is dead.
I think of his hand on the table in the restaurant, the way he bent reflexively toward me. We would’ve kissed. How desperately I wanted that kiss.
And I’d gotten it.
No. I’d gotten something very different. A corrupted, corrosive thing.
But still—his face in my hair, at the end, his breath in my ear, the confused, delirious moment when neither of us moved. There had been an echo in it, a tint of our former connection. Or maybe not.
“Why is he so busy?” Ella asks.
“I guess he has a lot of doctor work,” I say, sounding like the bad actor I am, someone who got cast as a tree in the only play I ever auditioned for. (Second grade, but even so.)
She squints. “Too busy for us?”
Luckily, Mom comes in then. Which is unlike her. It turns out she’s here to check on me. She has a box of chocolates from Thomas Sweet. Which is, well, sweet of her.
“Do you need anything?” she asks.
I’ve told her I did the deed. I’ve refused to give her any details. What a strange thing for us to bond over. Are we finally bonding?
“Can you play that unicorn card game with Ella for a bit?” I ask. “I could use a minute.” I always use tiny words like “bit” and “minute” with Mom, because I know I can’t make it sound like it’ll take a real amount of time if I want her to agree.
“I’m actually a little down, Tempest,” Mom says, like she’s giving me information I’m supposed to already have.
“You know I ended things with Barry.” And before I can respond: “His energy wasn’t right for me.
He had a black-hole aura; there was a darkness at his center.
Madame Samantha agreed completely, just from my descriptions of him.
I’m taking some time for myself. Self-care. I think I’ve been overdoing it.”
“I’m sorry about Barry,” I say, trying to wrangle my voice into the sympathetic range.
“Well, I’m not.” She pops a chocolate into her mouth.
They now strike me less as considerate and more of a breakup stereotype from a bad rom-com.
Ella is already eating one, too, glancing at me quickly like a nervous chipmunk, waiting for me to swoop in and snatch the precious, forbidden sugar out of her paws.
Mom sighs. “I need a man who invigorates me. A man who understands me on a spiritual level.”
I mumble something. So much for bonding.
“I’m not sure how much I have to give Ella right now. It’s not the best time. But let me take a shower, and then I can play her game with her for a little.” She sounds self-sacrificing.
“Thanks, Mom!”
“Do you think I should do that yoga retreat in the Poconos? I was thinking of signing up. A little cleanse.” She hardly hesitates before declaring, “I think I’ll do it!” She disappears upstairs.
Ella turns to me instantly. “Joel is too busy to see us?”
I let out my breath in a frustrated rush. “Yes, Ella. Right now. Maybe for a while. Maybe longer term. . . .”
“What?” Her face tightens, focuses.
“Nothing. Did you want to get a banana whip today?” Bribing her with dessert (the healthiest option at the ice cream place, at least!). Pretty sure the tribal aunts don’t do that to the tribal babies.
“I miss Mr. Button,” Ella says, her voice tiny.
“Chocolate sauce on the banana whip?” I counter.
* * *
It’s 1:13 am.
I’m walking down the street, and I’m the only person awake in the world.
The moon is a crisp crescent and the night is cool and mystical.
The houses are ghost houses, the trees loom gently, the town feels abandoned except for a hint of woodsmoke in the air.
It isn’t misty, but it may as well be. Pumpkins line a stoop.
In someone’s front yard, a small tree is wreathed in dangling fairy lanterns, little dandelion puffs of soft light.
I’ve walked this way many times, but this is the first time I’ve noticed them.
A fox, silent and storybook, with a black snout and fluffed tail, pads across the street close to the crosswalk. I nod his way. We are one, the fox and I. Creatures of the night. Except that I am almost certainly hornier. He, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be in any particular hurry.
I’m aware of the insanity of this.
I was aware of it when I eased down the stairs to the main floor, listening for sounds of my family stirring.
I was aware of it when I stepped into my knockoff Ugg slippers and carefully tugged the reliably squeaky front door open, my sweaty fingers sliding on the old brass knob.
I observed myself sneaking out of the house. I observed myself tripping over a ceramic fairy Ella recently added to our crowded front garden. I observed myself flinching when my shoe smacked the flagstone as I caught my balance.
But none of these observations caused me to stop and reconsider, or even pause.
I pass the white wooden house next to Joel’s with the feathery dawn redwood in front that has recently turned burnt orange and chartreuse like a ’70s shag rug. By night the tree is gray and graceful.
A porch light glows golden.
The windows of the small gray house are dark, but his car is in the driveway. I slip up the mossy brick front walk, up the two low steps. I knock softly on the door.