This Is a Love Story

Chapter 19

19

Max

Max promised himself he’d never get married. He believes that motion is a virtue, the world could do with less compassion, and monogamy is for the witless. At twenty-three, he had all his shirts embroidered with AYCGAW (Anything You Can Get Away With) on the cuffs. He threw them out at thirty when he became obsessed with not trying too hard, but the notion stuck. He had sex for the first time at fourteen in his parents’ bed not because he wanted to mess with them but because his bed was just too small. He sold his first Picasso his first year out of college. A Magritte sculpture the next year. Both to the wives of billionaires: a Russian oligarch, a Texan Jew in oil, respectively. Both good in bed.

Max likes to say, I run this city (Manhattan), wink, smirk, and then pretend he’s joking. But there is a lot that he is offered, given, can dispose of, because of who he is. He didn’t inherit any of it. His father is a professor and a writer; his mother is an artist. With success, to a degree, in his opinion, but not the kind you can sail away on. They have been together for nearly five decades—an unshakable unit, double helix, a hot-air balloon, up, up, and away. Max has feelings about that, too, that you can probably surmise.

Max has been with a lot of women. To count them would be to throw darts at a moving target. Would be gauche. There have been dancers, Romanians, preschool teachers, baristas, lawyers, plastic surgeons, landscapers, cleaning staff, and one politician who would probably surprise you. Has he ever been stopped in his tracks? No. In love? He did say I love you once. He was broken up with a week later for good reason. It was a last-ditch effort. Sometimes, Max convinces himself to do traditional, everyday things. It never works.

The only woman he’s ever known worth giving up gluten or caviar for, not that anyone asked, is his father’s mother, his grandmother, Bubbe. She’s been gone almost ten years now and it’s not that it still hurts exactly—no tears—but often, Max has to snuff out the urge to call her and tell her something of note. Max, she often said in response, be good. Be good, Max! He was so often not good: scheming, philandering, not calling his parents. Still, Bubbe adored him, made him apricot-and-raspberry rugelach every week until the end. It must have been all that caring she did for him as a child, Max thinks. He heard somewhere that it is affection and not biology that bonds, though they had both. Max and Bubbe. Bubbe and Max.

Max’s own mother, beloved, industrious, never not steeped in all-consuming creative thought, had major postpartum depression after Max was born, and then was knee-deep in her art—a jerked response. And then she got hit with cancer so big, so deep, that Max mostly remembers her ushered from the front door to the bed, the bed to the front door, coated and hatted, by his father. Come, honey. Let’s get you comfortable. Let’s get you into a cab. Max is okay. Bubbe is here.

They were never a family per se. They were a triangle broken into lines. The one from him to his mother especially dashed. The one to his father intact, but faint.

A really nice thing Max can say about his mother is that she would die for her art. A really nice thing he can say about his father is how much he loves her.

Be good. Be good, Max!

The first time Max sees Jaclyn, they are at an art opening on Twenty-Second Street and Jaclyn is wearing a silk dress with a black sweater around her shoulders, drinking sparkling water in the middle of the room. She is taking in a painting of a blue pig, looking genuinely interested. Max asks around—who is she?—and only then does he go up to her, prepped. He introduces himself, kisses her on both cheeks, then steps back as if suddenly stunned by the shock of being close to her. As if she’s an ember, an October rose. He asks her if she is a model. Typically, a woman this attractive who isn’t a model will be offended. Jaclyn’s face doesn’t flinch or crumble like a sandcastle at noon. Instead, she answers him with four words and excuses herself politely.

Something about her self-sufficiency reminds him of his grandmother, whom he’d like to tell as much.

For weeks, for Max, Jaclyn is a curiosity or perhaps a bar, raised. He sleeps with other women. Some he just takes to dinner and then he goes, alone, for ice cream and a film. But the more time that goes by, the more he finds himself genuinely wondering about Jaclyn: what she thought about the blue pig, her feet, her ice-cream order, favorite film.

In the meantime, Max’s mother is very sick. Max should go out to Orient to see her, but the effort feels daunting. In healthy times, he’d go every couple of months, stay for an hour or two. Abstractly, they’d talk about art, a new way to brew coffee, a silly amount he’d made on a deal. Some relationship of his had always just ended—if you could call them that. Max is never looking for feedback and his mother never offers it. Max can’t remember a time when he took her advice. There was a precedent set up when he was very young. Her with kid gloves. Him with arms crossed.

Max’s father calls as Max is getting in the shower. Max sends it to voicemail. It is not that he does not love his mother. It is that when he thinks of her, really thinks of her, he sees her nightgowned back in bed, curtains drawn, a slightly sweaty, sweet smell emanating, and it coaxes in him a feeling of dread more than nostalgia. They have had their moments, but mostly when they least expected it. When his mother mistakenly spilled flour on the floor and they made shapes—a pirate, a duck, a lamppost—until his father walked in, primed for damage control.

Everything okay? he’d said, arms out.

Her current sickness leaves him with an exhausted feeling that he cannot shake. When he thinks of her, he longs to fold into himself like a cot. And sleep.

Max is busy. People expect a certain energy from him, a certain vim.

Soon, Max sees Jaclyn at his local coffee shop. He steps in and pays for her matcha. She is reading the label of a bag of nuts and looks up only to thank him. Max knows that he is at the end of a long line of people who have bought her drinks. Still. There is a draw to her, the strength of her stance, the subtle moves of her mouth. Sit with me, he says, putting a hand to the small of her back. Jaclyn picks up her matcha and protests his offer without words. It is then he realizes that there is not a lick of makeup on her face though it looks somehow lit from behind. Her eyes are tidepools. It occurs to him that she looks healthy. As if illness were a baseline, a dead giveaway.

Let me walk you wherever you’re going, Max says. They walk five blocks south. Never once—in language or physical movement—does Jaclyn scurry to appease him. She speaks so softly that he nearly trips over her feet to hear. Her words are like putting down bills to pay. The intention of it. All this: Max likes.

Hey, Bubbe. Guess what.

In the meantime, Max is getting serious about hot yoga. There is a particular studio on Kenmare where no one bothers him. He turns off his phone, closes his eyes, grunts as he moves his body into positions he’s only witnessed in bed. And on-screen. It is where he does his best thinking, at yoga, the sweat purging information inaccessible to him otherwise. Lately, he thinks of Jaclyn. He imagines walking through a small white gallery with her, biking behind her on a windy autumn road. Is it the thrill of the chase that’s digging its claws into him? he wonders. Or is it her? He’s never been clear on that with any woman. He’s only ever been disappointed when he’s caught up in the race.

He remembers to call his father back but doesn’t. The day gets busy. Then he forgets.

Max sees Jaclyn at Gutai, Frieze, PPOW. He sees her at a mini Christo retrospective in the Park. He’s at the Met Gala after-party with a woman who owns a vegan ice-cream cone company and used to be in Cirque du Soleil when he spots Jaclyn in a fern-green gown. Her hair is shiny, cascading down her back, the color of patent leather, in a bow. He follows her into the bathroom. She laughs, pushes him out. After that, he cannot find her again. But she’s stuck into him like burrs.

In the meantime, Max’s father calls again. His mother is really very sick, for crying out loud. First, when Max was small—just after the postpartum lifted—then again five years ago, but that wasn’t the worst time. Sick and then sicker and then less sick and then really sick again. They are out in Orient full time now, God knows why. Why they ever sold their place in Manhattan, Max has no idea. It makes it impossible to see them. The trip is lengthy, to the literal end of the world. Max apologizes to his father. It’s the time of year. He asks him if he has everything he needs. His father just says Max’s name once—Max—as if he’s driving a heavy shovel into frozen ground. Max’s relationship with his father is friendly, finite. They can play cards or browse a used bookstore like the best of them. But they rarely do. Years ago, everyone had to take sides. Including Bubbe. Who took his.

One day, during yoga, Max has to shut his eyes against an image. It is his mother’s body, as if photographed, floating in a tub of water, all sinew and length. Her mouth is loose but with residual shape, like a ribbon untied. There is something dead about her but she is not. Her eyes blink against him. Max stands up quickly, the floor creaking, the yogic silence of the room breaking wide open. There is a queasiness in his throat and it feels like having walked in on his parents, naked.

Cut it out, he whispers to no one. The whole class goes, Shush.

Be good. Be good, Max!

Max goes to Singapore, Rome, and Nashville. He sees Jaclyn at the Union Square Greenmarket eating a pretzel. He sees her walking out of Brunello on Madison with two bags, heading toward the Park. Once, he stops. The other time, she is too fast. There is no progress made. He continues to move through his life like an arrow, shot. Lingering is for the indolent. He gets lymphatic drainage massages, drinks celery juice, has suits custom fit to his body. He is studying Buddhism and his guru tells him to get a dog. He gets a money plant instead.

His father calls. His mother’s new medication isn’t doing what they’d hoped.

I’ll come when I can, he says.

He is not trying to be mean; he just knows they have it taken care of. They always have. Her cancer is an intimacy between his parents, a sacred pact.

Max invests in a new building in Tribeca, and a juice bar on Little West Twelfth. He goes for acupuncture, the kind where they stimulate the needles. He nearly flies off the table. He grits his teeth. He works late and drinks a bottle of Rothschild 1937 with a woman he’s slept with a few times. She has a young child. You can tell from her hips and the way she checks her phone.

Max sees Jaclyn getting her hair done in the window on East Sixty-Seventh. There is a brush rolled up in the front part of her head that makes her look royal. Max isn’t above groveling. With him, it is more sport, less desperation. He gives her a calla lily he plucks from the arrangement in front, and Jaclyn acquiesces to a date with him only when he offers to talk to a Miami client about Lili Reynaud-Dewar: the multidisciplinary French artist, focused on intimacy and, also, the female body. Jaclyn’s been championing her work on Instagram. Max has noticed.

A few nights later, Max takes Jaclyn to Keens. When her filet arrives, barely cooked, Max flags down the waiter to send it back. No, she says. She eats the entire thing, pooling blood, with a fork and knife as if she had been trained by the queen of England. His mother has eschewed red meat since her first cancer diagnosis. He is not making a connection here, or even an opposition. It is just that he isn’t used to being surprised.

After dinner, Max and Jaclyn walk through the Park. The moon has everything lit up like candle wax and she leans into him, whispers something about how beautiful. It reminds her of a painting. It occurs to Max to say something about his mother, who has often painted the night—not for a reaction but out of genuine impulse—but he holds his tongue. He knows how romance works and, for him, that is not it.

Max sells two Reynaud-Dewars. Jaclyn doesn’t call to thank him, but she does let him take her to the orchid show at the Brooklyn Botanical. Does it sometimes feel like she is humoring him? It does. Does he care? Not exactly. The humidity, the pressing heat of the greenhouse, brings out the smell of her hair: rose, desert. Being up close to her feels like being near an owl. Max is suddenly tired. He hasn’t been sleeping well. There is a loose feeling in his chest as if a knot has been snipped from its sides. He leans into Jaclyn, to her sacred smell. She leans too.

Bubbe. I just wanted to tell you.

His father emails. They are going to be at Sloan Kettering later in the week for his mother’s treatment if he’d like to offer some support. His father gets terse and clipped when he’s an intermediary between Max and his mother. It’s habit from Max’s childhood, when Max was always on the other side of impatience and his mother just couldn’t.

Max can’t remember a time when they felt like a team. Which came first, Max wonders: cracking a mirror, spilling glue, screaming, or passing through his parents like wind through a chime? For how long was she sick the first time? A decade? Two years. It was a house littered with eggshells.

For a moment, Max considers meeting them at the hospital. It is always hours in the waiting room—his father pacing, his mother dozing on and off. People look at Max with pity. The devoted son. Then he starts with the phone calls. They look at him with disdain. Come on, Max.

Max emails back that he has a meeting, which isn’t untrue. He signs the email: xx.

Does he think it will be harder to bed Jaclyn than it is? He does.

They’ve just been to a tulle show at the Frick. There they are, in his apartment, drinking Japanese whiskey. She’s taken off her jacket. Her shoulders glisten like sugar, cooked. She is leaning against his kitchen counter and the strap of her dress falls to her elbow. He doesn’t go for it. He lets things simmer. The scorch of her gaze when they are out is replaced by near glassiness with trust here. That was easy. Never not, in a way. Jaclyn is a white leopard in a crocheted dress until the dress pools on the floor like spilled milk. Her breath reminds him of summers, sun on sand. She makes not a sound, eyes closed tight to keep it all out. She is focused on something inside herself rather than out. He is competing with a world otherworldly, he thinks, which is nothing he can’t handle.

Max has an inkling. He will not shut his eyes.

Weeks go by. Max believes devotedly in not putting all his eggs in one basket. Still, he is reminded of Jaclyn especially at dusk, and when he hears the horn in the Park played by a guy with no legs, and at the beginning of yoga when he is meant to set an intention. Sometimes, a thought of her devolves into a thought of his mother, and so Max reaches out to a married woman named Caroline with kids not much younger than Max. Her husband is always away. He owns two airlines and a soccer team. He bought a Hockney from Max last month.

His mother’s oldest friend, Bea, calls. She makes kooky bottlecap art, unprestigious.

Would you like me to go with you? she asks.

I’ve been busy, he says.

With what? Bea says, and Max pretends it’s hard to hear her.

Once, when Max was eight, Bea smacked him on the chest. He had said something about all the other mothers at school being at pickup or maybe a soccer game.

Your mother isn’t like all the other mothers, she said. You’ll be glad one day.

Which?

Jaclyn goes to London for a month.

While she’s gone, Max has a recurring dream. He and Jaclyn are on a motorcycle, doing hairpin turns along some cliffs in Big Sur or maybe Greece. She’s on the back and when he turns around—he’s heard a sound—he discovers she’s fallen off. He can’t find her anywhere. He searches in the rocks, along the road, but then gets distracted by a hotel bar with a tall cracked mirror. But it is actually Tavern on the Green. His mother is in the reflection, young, focused. And then she’s not. When Max wakes, there’s a hollow feeling in his throat that makes him cough.

When Jaclyn comes back, Max does not tell her the dream, but he feels it in every interaction they have like a third wheel or a storm, looming.

On a busy Monday, his father calls the office, passes the phone. There is a loud bang and then some crinkling. Hi, his mother says. Her voice is cracked down the middle. The radiation does this. After the niceties, Max tells her that he’ll come out to Orient in a week. She hasn’t asked.

For a moment, Max almost hangs up. Then it occurs to him that he should give her something.

I’m seeing someone, he says.

The line is silent.

Jane? Max says again to his mother.

Oh, she says, clearing her throat. I thought you were talking to someone else.

Max takes Jaclyn to the opera. Sometimes, he wants to parade her around like a pet peacock. Other times, he wants to shrink her into a corner or a velvet box so that he can look at her. Just him. Just her. Are his feelings for her bigger than they’ve been for other women? They are softer. Or he is. She does not cry at the opera as other women do, but she closes her eyes to feel it. He has done this, too, himself, at times. He keeps wondering when she’ll splinter into storm—and what he’ll do. His capacity for hysteria has always been nil.

On a Saturday afternoon, Jaclyn suggests they meet at the Reservoir. She is in a leather jacket and jeans, a gray scarf. They walk along the Bridle Path. Her legs are long and she doesn’t struggle to keep up. At first, she asks him about his parents, but she already knows who they are. She loves his mother’s work, his father’s two trilogies, and the miniseries they made of Dahlia Diane . She asks him about his childhood and he says what he always says, I was an impossible kid. I nearly killed off my mother. Usually, it feels light and airy. And true. Today, it does not. Jaclyn looks shocked, hurt even. I can’t imagine anything being too much for your mother, she says. Max almost takes it to heart.

I think she might be on her last legs, he says as if to rectify things, ingratiate himself. It is so unlike him to be this vulnerable. Immediately, he wants to take it back. Jaclyn has stopped walking. She faces him, goes for his hand.

I’m so sorry, she says.

No, Max says.

What he wouldn’t give for a do-over. His right nipple. Twenty-six years of his life.

Jaclyn bobs her head down. Max takes a deep breath. He brushes some hair out of her face and kisses her on the mouth. The kiss goes on long enough for Max to recalibrate, for the moment to reabsorb. In the meantime, he allows Jaclyn to confuse passion with passion. He can do this for her. For him.

When they back up, Jaclyn’s eyes are slick. Her face is softened. He takes her hand and they fall back into stride again.

Let’s talk about you, he says, and imagines patting himself on his own back.

Jaclyn tells Max that she is one of four girls, grew up on the Jersey shore. Her father has two restaurants and a bar. She got married young to the son of a Russian tycoon whom you’ve probably heard of. That explains it, Max says. He is impressed when she’s not offended. Maybe he wants to offend her. It is his nature to trigger. It is what he knows how to do.

When they part at the Central Park South exit: If you ever want to talk about her, she says.

Max is flushed with sudden warmth. Disarming and sort of sickening too. It shoots from his belly to his throat, nearly knocks him back.

That is kind, Max hears himself saying. They are not words he would actually say. And yet. There they are. And there she is. Jaclyn, her face a dumpling of concern. Max nearly reaches for it. He nearly holds her cheek, and thanks her. Thank you.

I’m okay, he says instead, trying to feel his feet. I’m fine.

Max bumps into his old friend Todd at Holiday Bar. They don’t see each other often but they go back. Todd is a banker, happily-ish married, two little girls, West Village town house. He likes to get the dirt on bachelor life, and Max likes to dish it. This time, Max mentions Jaclyn. You like her, Todd says. Max shrugs. Is there dignity in your loneliness? Todd asks. Am I lonely? Max says. Love, he feels, should be about adding to a whole. Not adding to a hole, you know? He’s not trying to be funny. So you’re a hole, Todd says. How is your mom?

Max doesn’t invite Jaclyn to the Biennial—which, this year, is elaborately relocated to Sheep Meadow due to museum renovations. He is sure she’ll be there anyway and he hates redundancy. His mother has a piece in it and has made the nonsensical decision to go with his father. The two of them. They hire a driver in and out. Max shows up late. The sun is setting, orange glow, and there is an intricate lighting system set up, as well as white cranes draped in fabric to designate the space. It is art in itself but it doesn’t matter. Max isn’t paying attention. Instead, he is searching for Jaclyn. He does a loop. After a while, a cocktail, lots of handshaking and air-kisses—where is she?—he finds his parents, perched on a pair of wooden chairs with white ribbon wrapped around the back, leaning into each other. As they do.

Hello, parents, Max says, four kisses. There is a security guard posted next to them and Max’s first thought is they’re making sure someone can carry her out, if need be. They are in brown and black, their boots and scarves and belts nearly identical. His mother looks all right—though too much lipstick. Max slings an arm around each of them. He is briefly alarmed by how small they seem, short, bony—squirrels—but what can he do? He flags down a waiter, another cocktail down the hatch. Still no Jaclyn. Max looks at the crowd, the place crawling with people who have given him money.

And because he doesn’t know what else to say: Let’s do this, he says.

His parents look at him with confusion. Oh, Max, his mother says.

Well, his father says and claps once. But he doesn’t finish his thought.

Where is Jaclyn? Max thinks. He yearns.

Sometimes, Max wonders if it is because of who Jaclyn is or because Max can’t be sure of who she is that he keeps on with her. She is so much shadow, or maybe so much light, that he’s unsure of the actual thing of her. And what is the connection, really? Some people are bound by mind, body, or heart. Never Max. For Max, with any relationship, even with this one, it feels like eating glazy fruit tarts and forgetting to wash his hands. The whole thing sticky, if not truly connected. Is that enough? Is that this?

The next night, Max and Jaclyn are at dinner at il Buco outside in wool coats. It is late. The moon is passing over and under the clouds like cards, shuffling. The streetlights are out for whatever reason and it feels like a different city with light only from apartments. A couple walks by with a baby in a stroller, covered in blankets. Max watches Jaclyn’s face for clues. Jaclyn smiles at the mother but doesn’t peer into the carriage.

Yes? Max says when they pass. Yes what? Jaclyn says. You want one, he says.

Doesn’t matter, she says. I can’t. Her face shuts like an elevator door. Max doesn’t ask anything else. He is flooded with relief. For some ungodly reason, the image of his mother’s funeral occurs. There are thousands of people, bleary with grief, a gospel choir, a female rabbi, candles flickering in the wind. And there is Jaclyn. He is with her. She holds his hand and nothing else.

Can Max imagine Jaclyn as a mother? He can. Does he feel like he’s getting away with something? He does.

Be good, Max. Be good!

The next week, Max is meant to pick up Todd for dinner and off they go, but when he gets there, the babysitter has canceled. Todd’s wife is already at girls’ night and cannot be bothered. Todd asks if it’s all right if they just hang out at home. Max likes Todd’s two girls—can never remember whether or not they’re twins. But they’re good, curtsy when he comes in and then watch their iPads with silent, animal intensity. He and Todd drink beer at the counter, eat hummus, order pizza. After dinner, the girls beg Max to read them a book on the couch. They pick it. It’s about speaking of the things you fear so they don’t overtake you.

And you’re afraid of what? Max asks them, one, then the other.

One says the hiccups. The other says boobs.

Boobs? Max says. She nods.

Yes, he says. Better to be a man. Less boobs.

You’re demented, Todd yells from the kitchen, cleaning up.

Max bows. Thank you! he yells back.

When Jaclyn orgasms, it’s slow. She meanders down an ice floe. Then, a sudden exhale, eyes open, brows furrowed. She sits up, stands up, quickly. It always feels to Max like she’s a tiny bit disappointed. Like she didn’t mean to do it. It makes Max want to try again. With her, it feels constantly like he’s underperforming. It has never been like this with anyone. She is a drawer that won’t open. A bird that won’t fly. He is clapping his head off.

She stays over. First thing the next morning, before toothpaste, sex, or coffee, Jaclyn turns to him, pulls the sheets to her chin.

I was in a car crash when I was married, she says. It damaged my uterus.

That’s awful, he says, meaning it. For the last twelve hours, he would have done anything to please her. Now it feels as if he’s sweating in wool pants.

His mother. Cervical cancer, hysterectomy, IIA2, IIIC2, IVB, leaking, lining, tubes.

Sometimes, he feels like the only one who’s whole.

Max goes to hot yoga once a day, sometimes twice. His twists have gotten deeper. He can bind behind his back now, rest his hands on the ground behind his head in standing forward fold. The sweat pours off him. Memories stream as if he’s being turned upside down and shaken. The bags under the eyes of his chemistry teacher, a painting of a broken chair that hung in his father’s office, a woman he used to date who sent her sheets to be dry-cleaned in France, Jaume Plensa, banana cream pie, his mother’s paint-splattered jeans—out of nowhere, she is running to a sink to retch—a water tower on West Seventy-First. Jaclyn occurs to him, too, but mostly just her face. Thank God.

Max remembers the sound of his mother throwing up in his youth, clear as day. The walls were thick but it didn’t matter. Sometimes, he’d put a pillow over his head and hum “You Are My Sunshine” at the top of his lungs.

Jaclyn’s boss, Margaux, takes Jaclyn to Vietnam for a month. Jaclyn often talks about Margaux’s amazing marriage with Marc. He’s an architect. They’re so aligned. Seek art in everything et cetera. Okkkkkayyyyyy. The night before, Jaclyn and Max sleep together. She has to leave before sunrise for the airport. Max thinks she’ll email. She doesn’t. Or text. Finally, he calls her. Margaux picks up and promises to relay the message.

The famous Max, she says. I know your father. Friend of a friend.

Either Margaux doesn’t relay the message or the message doesn’t matter. Max doesn’t think to tell his father about what she said.

As Max is searching for a particular set of cuff links, he finds an old birthday note—Happy 15th!—from Bubbe with a check for one hundred dollars, uncashed, and a red glitter car on the front. Inside, among birthday wishes, in her old-lady Jewish scrawl: Kindness begets kindness. Love, Bubbe. Max doesn’t know why he saved this one in particular—it feels atypical—though he did many others. He never cashed any of her checks—knowing he would one day be rich.

For years, Max all but moved in with Bubbe. He would do his homework at her kitchen table, eat all her crackers and cheeses. Already then, his grandfather was on the decline, in the front room with all his things. A nurse came most days. They were never close, Max and his grandfather. He wasn’t a man people were close to, not even his own sons. He was a man who took everything too seriously. Himself and everyone around him.

Alone in his closet, Max apologizes to Bubbe. I’m not not being kind, he says. And then, though no one is listening, and Bubbe’s been gone long enough that he cannot hear her back, he whispers, Sorry, to no one. Maybe.

Finally, on an unusually warm day, Max sees Jaclyn. It is a surprise. At first, he walks right by her, doesn’t even notice her. He’s thinking about something else, a deal, an endless negotiation. Jaclyn is outside Mah-Ze-Dahr on a bench, cross-legged, eating a croissant. Is that a cinnamon roll? Is she in sweatpants? This is so unlike her, Max thinks. He’s never seen her dressed down. He should stop. He should touch her and make sure it is, in fact, her. He should ask her: What the hell? Where has she been? Instead, he puts his head down, speeds. Her complete obliviousness of herself, of him, her focus on the pastry. It makes his forearms itchy, and his back. He jogs to his meeting and tries to shake the memory off his mind like flies.

Max goes to yoga. He buys expensive rare books and a pair of handmade brown suede boots with fine laces from the place he loves in Portugal. He bumps into Margaux at Gramercy Tavern. She’s at a meeting too. All leather and cashmere and silver.

Were you in publishing before art? Max asks her, but what he means is, Where the fuck is Jaclyn?

No, she says. I knew your father when I was studying art. Through a friend.

Days later, he is meeting a client at Buvette. There is Jaclyn on a different bench, same sweatpants. Max stands in the crosswalk, watching her talk to herself. He watches her lips move. Her face looks chalked over. She puts her hand on her belly and only then does he realize who she is talking to. His heart falls out from between his legs.

And he wonders, has she ever talked this much? It looks as if she is telling a story.

It is not a day for a down coat, but she is in one. Max will call her. He will call his mother too. The cars are beeping. He texts his client to meet at a bar down the street instead. There, he drinks and drinks and drinks.

A particular memory recurs during yoga. A few years ago, when his mother had relapsed, though Max didn’t know it at the time, Max walked into their town house. He found her there, eating soup and crying over it. She’d spoon some to her mouth and it would bubble out, thin and wobbly. She was a child, an invalid. Some was on her apron, orange-stained like vomit. Her shoulders were shaking as though someone was moving them from behind. Max backed out, shut the door without being seen. The responsibility of approaching her, dealing, was oppressive to him—and outside their scope. Max cannot remember his mother feeding him soup as though landing an airplane in his mouth. It never happened. At a certain point, his mother must have just given up.

He wonders if it got easier after that.