Chapter 11 #2
“Yeah, but not on top of me.”
“I’m not on top of you, Em.”
“You’re close to on top of me.”
I adjust myself slightly, trying to take up less space, which is impossible given that I’m six-three and this fort was designed by a child.
I look over and there’s maybe a foot of space left next to me for another person. Maybe. If Annie’s very small and doesn’t mind being extremely uncomfortable for the next hour and a half.
Annie’s still standing there, arms crossed, looking at the gap.
“Scared?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.
“Of what, exactly?”
“Tight spaces? Collapsing blanket structures?”
“I’m not scared.”
“Then get in here.”
“Annie, please?” Emma’s leaning forward now, giving her the full puppy-dog-eyes treatment.
Annie sighs, muttering something under her breath that sounds like “the puppy dog face won’t work on me forever,” but she’s already lowering herself to the floor, already crawling toward the opening in the fort.
She shimmies in on the other side of me, moving carefully like she’s trying very hard not to touch me.
Which is impossible in this space, but she’s giving it an admirable effort.
She’s on her side, knees bent, one arm tucked under her head because there’s nowhere else for it to go, and she’s pressed against my shoulder and my hip and basically my entire left side because there is simply not enough room.
She smells like roses. Very faintly, like it’s not perfume but maybe her shampoo or lotion or something.
And this close I can see that her bangs brush just below her eyebrows.
Usually I think bangs like that on grown women look juvenile, like they’re trying to hold onto being younger than they are.
But on Annie it works. It makes her look sophisticated somehow.
Elegant. She’d probably look like that no matter what, just by the way she carries herself—that straight posture, the careful way she moves.
Which doesn’t exactly align with the drunk woman I met outside Lucky’s who physically fought me for a taxi cab, but apparently people contain multitudes.
“This is cozy,” Annie says, and her tone is so dry I almost laugh.
“Isn’t it?” Emma says, oblivious to sarcasm. “Now give me my pizza, please!”
I hand Emma her plate and she immediately takes the biggest bite possible, sauce getting on her chin, and then I pass Annie hers and take my own, and we’re all just sitting here—well, lying here—in this ridiculous blanket fort, about to watch a movie about a mouse, and I genuinely don’t know what my life has become.
Emma’s entranced by the movie from the opening scene.
She’s completely still, which never happens, her pizza forgotten on her plate after the first few bites.
When “Somewhere Out There” starts playing, she actually tries to sing along even though she’s never heard it before, just humming the melody and throwing in random words she thinks might fit.
About halfway through, she leans over to Annie, her voice a loud whisper that defeats the entire purpose of whispering. “I still like Ariel better, but I’m glad we picked this one.”
“Yeah?” Annie whispers back. “Why’s that?”
“Because Ariel I already know everything about. This is new. And new is good sometimes, right?”
“Exactly, Em. It’s good to get outside your comfort zone sometimes.”
Emma tilts her head. “What’s a comfort zone?”
“It’s like…the place where everything feels safe and familiar. Like how you always want to watch The Little Mermaid because you know you love it. But sometimes if you try something new, you might find out you love that, too.”
Emma nods very seriously. “So if I tried broccoli again, that would be getting outside my comfort zone?”
“Technically, yes.”
“But I already know I hate broccoli. I tried it before and it was disgusting.”
“That’s fair.”
“So I think my comfort zone is fine where it is. With no broccoli in it.”
“That’s very logical reasoning.”
“Thank you.” Emma turns her attention back to the screen like that settles it.
By the time the credits roll, Emma’s slumped against my side. She’s finally passed out, her breathing heavy and even, her thumb a permanent fixture in her mouth. The pizza on her plate is half-eaten and one of her hands is still clutching a piece of crust.
Annie notices around the same time I do. She looks down at Emma, then up at me, and there’s something soft in her expression.
“So,” she says quietly, keeping her voice low. “What’s your professional opinion on the movie?”
I tilt my head back and forth, like I’m considering this very seriously.
“From a neuroscientific perspective, the depiction of emotional attachment and separation anxiety in rodents is surprisingly accurate. The limbic system response to maternal absence would indeed present similarly to what we observed in the protagonist.”
Annie snorts, clapping a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing too loud. “You’re so ridiculous.”
“I’m thorough.”
“You seem like the type of person who could be a good movie critic, actually.”
I arch an eyebrow. “Yeah? Why’s that?”
“Because you take everything way too seriously. That’s basically what pretentious movie critics do for a living.”
“Are you saying I’m pretentious?”
“I’m saying you could be, professionally.”
“That’s possibly the worst career advice I’ve ever received.”
“You asked.”
We’re both still whispering, neither of us wanting to wake Emma, and I realize we’re closer than we were at the start of the movie. Annie’s shifted slightly toward me at some point, or maybe I shifted toward her, and now her shoulder is pressed against mine and I can feel her breathing.
I swallow and lower my voice even more. “Did Emma really do okay the last couple days? No big breakdowns about her mom or anything?”
Annie tilts her head side to side, like she’s weighing how to answer. “There were a couple moments. But it wasn’t nothing I couldn’t handle. Yet.”
“Yet?”
“I think the camera thing helped keep her distracted. Gave her something to focus on that was fun and new.” She pauses. “But she won’t go into your office. Like, actively avoids it. I tried to grab some construction paper from there yesterday and she wouldn’t even come near the door.”
I sigh, running my hand through my hair, my fingers snagging on a few rampant curls that have gotten out of control. “It’s because Rebecca’s piano is in there.”
Annie doesn’t say anything. She just waits to see if I’ll keep going, so I do.
“Rebecca was a music teacher,” I continue, keeping my eyes on Emma’s sleeping face because it’s easier than looking at Annie.
“Middle school music. She played piano, mostly. Used to play with Emma all the time, even when Emma was a baby. She’d sit Emma on her lap and let her bang on the keys, and then as Emma got older she started teaching her actual songs.
Nothing complicated, just ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ and stuff like that. ”
The apartment is so quiet without her music now. I hadn’t realized how much of the background noise of our life was Rebecca playing—in the morning while making breakfast, in the evening while Emma played with her toys, late at night when she couldn’t sleep. Now there’s just silence.
Annie nods like she understands. “That has to be really hard for her.”
There’s a pause, and then she asks, “So Rebecca just…left? She just packed up and left one day?” Then immediately she shakes her head. “Sorry. Never mind, you don’t have to answer that.”
“It’s okay,” I say, and I’m surprised to find I mean it. “If you’re going to be working here, you might as well know all of it. It might help you understand Emma a bit better.”
I take a deep breath. “Our relationship had been in trouble before she left. We’d been arguing constantly—about money, about my work schedule, about her wanting to move back to Boston where her family is, about whether Emma should go to public or private school.
Stupid stuff and big stuff all mixed together until we couldn’t have a conversation that didn’t turn into a fight. ”
Annie’s quiet, but listening.
“But the real issue was that we were never supposed to get engaged in the first place.” I’m not sure why I’m telling her this, but now that I’ve started it feels impossible to stop, so I back up and give her a little context.
“I met Rebecca at the Met. It was almost Christmas, six years ago. I was supposed to meet a date there—a girl that had been in one of my classes in college, we’d been talking for a few weeks.
I bought two hot chocolates from the cart outside and waited for her, but she never showed. ”
“She bailed on you?” Annie’s mouth drops open slightly.
I run my hand through my hair again. “Yep. Totally bailed. Didn’t even call. So I was standing there with two hot chocolates, feeling like an idiot, about to throw one away because I definitely didn’t need two—”
“Obviously not, the caffeine and sugar would be excessive—”
“Exactly, thank you. But then I saw Rebecca. She was standing in front of this painting—I don’t even remember which one now—and was just completely absorbed in it.
And I remember thinking she was beautiful.
Genuinely beautiful. Blonde hair, blue eyes, this quality of attention that made it seem as as though nothing existed except her and whatever she was looking at. ”
“So you gave her the hot chocolate?”
“I gave her the hot chocolate.” I smile despite myself.
“Walked up and said something stupid like ‘you look like you could use this’ and she looked at me like I was insane because I was a total stranger but she took it anyway. We ended up talking for three hours and went through the whole museum together.”
“That’s actually sort of romantic,” Annie says.
“It was.” And it had been, at the time. “We dated for about nine months, and then we moved in together. And then four months after that, she got pregnant with Emma.”
Annie’s eyes widen slightly but she doesn’t say anything.