Chapter 18 #2
Jack took cooking classes and became even more skilled in the kitchen.
On the weekend, Emily woke to the smell of French toast. She would walk sleepily into the kitchen and find Jack giving Connor a bottle of formula.
When Connor was ready for solid foods, Jack prepared the baby food himself, steaming vegetables that he made into purees and froze in ice cube trays for Emily to defrost later.
At night, he was immediately hard for her, but took her slowly.
Emily began to forget the smashed plates and glasses…
or, she remembered, sort of, but in the way that people described remembering a car crash.
She knew the facts but they felt detached from reality, as if that evening had happened to someone else.
The more she thought about it, the less she wanted to think about it, because they were happy again.
What a happy family, people said to them on the street, and they were right.
The day had been hot but there was a breeze right around sunset.
Jack suggested they take Connor to the Central Park Zoo.
Connor, just over a year old, was toddling.
Jack held him high to see sea lions leap out of the water.
Connor gurgled, excited. He wobbled down the zoo path.
He stared at lemurs. He lifted his arms to Jack to be carried and then fell asleep as Jack held him.
Jack asked Emily, “Want to take a boat out onto the lake? I’ve never done it before because it’s so touristy, but look at that sky. ” It was soaked in color.
Connor woke up when they put the life jacket on him, and cried.
Jack soothed him. He pointed to a turtle basking on a log.
He sat Connor between his legs and placed the baby’s hands on the oars.
While Jack rowed, Emily praised Connor for doing such a good job.
Connor’s expression grew serious, intent.
He watched his small hands on the oars rise and fall as Jack rowed.
Then Jack stopped rowing and they floated.
The water was pewter, like the sea lions’ skin.
Connor grew restless and Emily said that maybe he was hot, so Jack took off Connor’s shoes and socks and dipped the baby’s feet in the water.
Connor squealed with joy and grabbed Jack’s face with both hands.
He looked at Jack with pure adoration. Emily memorized the sight of how much her son loved his father.
Jack wanted to buy Emily a diamond bracelet for her birthday.
Each piece of jewelry at Artem’s was one-of-a-kind.
Jack had made the appointment with the designer himself, and Artem presented his work on black velvet boards while assistant jewelers helped other customers.
Emily tried on several bracelets, Jack clasping each one and then shaking his head until one bracelet dripped over Emily’s wrist in a watery streak. “Perfect,” he said.
“What if you didn’t buy me this, but instead gave the money to charity?”
Artem, expert at discretion, kept his expression neutral.
“But, Em,” Jack said, “we do give to charity.”
“This bracelet is too much.”
“It’s yours.” He held her hands in his. “It’s done.
If it makes you feel better, I’ll also write a blank check for whatever charity you want.
” He turned back to the jeweler. “I’d like some earrings, too.
Christmas gift for my mother.” He loved getting his parents expensive gifts.
It was a point of pride. Although he’d been able to access his trust fund since he turned thirty, he didn’t touch it.
They lived on his income from work, and it pleased him to show his parents how well they lived.
The two men drifted to another corner of the shop.
Emily looked down at her wrist. Her suggestion that they donate money to charity wasn’t wholly selfless; she dreaded the responsibility of owning the bracelet.
It was stunning…and a disaster waiting to happen.
What if she lost it? Or damaged it? There was insurance, yes, but that might not make Jack any less upset, especially because a one-of-a-kind bracelet was irreplaceable.
Everything had been going so well between them lately.
Emily could predict, though, how their happiness might sour.
Maybe she wouldn’t wear the bracelet enough.
Or if she wore it every day, he might say that she treated it like an ordinary object.
Didn’t she think it was special enough? What more could she possibly want?
Emily bit her lip. She was being unfair. If she lost the bracelet, Jack was so generous that he would probably say not to worry, that it gave him the opportunity to give her a better one.
“I cut those diamonds.”
Emily glanced up from her wrist to see a woman who looked a little bored, ready for a break in the routine of her job.
Her brown hands were tidy, resting lightly on the wooden frame of the glass case between her and Emily.
She had a friendly expression, wore her short hair in close twists, and her suit fit her well.
Emily guessed that the woman was gay, and guessed that the woman didn’t think that Emily was.
Emily felt something like homesickness, the way a ghost might, drifting unseen into its old life.
She had never looked gay—not in a way that straight people recognized.
Not even, sometimes, when they had seen her with Gen.
But she missed the recognition from queer people.
Sometimes it came in the form of a glance on the street, when she was walking alone, one of mutual acknowledgment.
This had gotten rarer since she married Jack.
“Artem designed the bracelet,” the woman said, “but I cut the stones.”
Emily had never considered what a jeweler’s workshop looked like.
She realized that, as at a restaurant, there probably was a front of the house and back of the house for everything.
Most people only saw a jeweler’s front of the house: the display cases and reverent quiet.
Emily asked, “What kind of tool did you use?”
“Tool s . First, a diamond saw for the cleaving stage. For bruting, I used a laser.”
“Cleaving?”
“When you make the first cuts.”
“And bruting?”
“Second cuts. Sometimes Artem uses an artist called a brillianteer to do the last facets, but I’m good at that, too.”
“Where did you do this? Here?”
“Not here here. In the back there’s a workshop. It’s specially sealed.”
“Why? So no one steals anything?”
The woman smiled. “No, because of the dust.”
“You need to keep dust out?”
“We need to keep it in . Cut diamond dust is valuable. We let it accumulate and then sweep it up and sell it. The dust from the diamonds in your bracelet got mixed with other diamond dust that was probably used to make saws or other high-precision tools.”
“It’s like my bracelet has an alter ego,” Emily said. “Its dust went out into the world to accomplish things.”
The woman’s dark brown eyes reevaluated Emily. “Do you think your bracelet is jealous?”
“Em, we’re ready,” said Jack, his voice tight.
He stood at her side. She hadn’t noticed him approach.
She revisited everything she’d said to the jeweler.
Once, she would have felt reassured, knowing that there had been nothing objectionable in the conversation, but she had learned that he could always find something to blame.
Outside the shop, he said, “Seems like you were more interested in dust than the actual bracelet I gave you.”
“That’s not true.”
“Maybe it was the sweeping. If I sweep the floor when we get home, could you manage to pay attention to me?”
It was rush hour. Yellow cabs inched up the cobbled SoHo street. A driver laid on the horn.
“You can be so selfish.” Jack seized Emily’s wrist. She dragged back against his grip. The streetlight changed from red to green. His grip softened. She tugged free, removed the bracelet, and flung it at him.
Slowly, he bent to retrieve it from the sidewalk. He straightened. In a low voice he said, “I wish you wouldn’t treat me like that.”
She immediately felt terrible. He was looking at the pool of diamonds in his palm, face twisted in sadness.
What had she done? She’d thrown the bracelet at him in a flash of anger—almost in self-defense, as if the bracelet had been a grenade that she needed to get away from her.
But it had been a gift—a thoughtful, generous one. She apologized.
“ I’m sorry,” he said. “I got mad for no reason. I promised I wouldn’t do that anymore. Did I hurt you?”
She was rubbing her wrist. “No.” It was technically true.
“Will you please put it back on?” He offered the bracelet. “Can we forget about this?”
She wanted to forget about it, too. She put on the bracelet. The sidewalk was narrow. People wove around her and Jack, eager to get somewhere else. “I wasn’t attracted to her,” Emily said, though she had been.
He was confused. “The assistant jeweler? Why would you be?”
Emily realized that Jack either had forgotten about Gen or had decided that Emily’s relationship with her didn’t mean anything.
Maybe he thought that it had been practice for Emily’s relationship with him, and that Emily’s queerness had ended once she began dating him.
Was that right? She had married a man. Was she still queer?
If she was, maybe it didn’t matter, even if she wanted it to matter.
Jack said, “I got mad because I called your name and you ignored me.”
“I didn’t hear you.”
“It hurts when you ignore me.”