Chapter 19
“Oh my God,” Florencia mumbled around her spoon. “What is this?”
“Passion fruit soufflé.” Jack topped off Florencia’s mimosa.
“Is every brunch he makes like this?” Florencia asked Emily.
“Pretty much.” Emily shifted Connor on her lap so that he could better reach his strawberries.
Florencia took another bite. “I never want to go home.”
“Stay as long as you like,” Jack said. “We love having you here.”
“In college, you always talked about living in New York,” Emily said.
“I wish,” Florencia said. “My parents need me, though. They want to convert some of our estancias into hotels and that means hiring architects and staff, drawing up business plans…I’m the oldest child, so it’s up to me to keep the family business going.”
“I get it,” said Jack. “I made that choice. But it’s a lot of pressure. Sometimes I wish that I’d told my parents no.”
“Then you’d have a very different life,” Florencia said. She smiled at Emily and Connor. “Your life seems pretty great.”
“Yeah.” Jack reached for Emily’s hand and kissed it. “It is.”
“Will you come visit me in Buenos Aires?” Florencia asked Emily.
“Girls’ trip, huh?” said Jack.
“I’d love that,” said Emily. “I wanted to before, but Connor was so little.”
“You should go,” said Jack. “I can handle Connor. My mother will jump at the chance to help out, and since we know help won’t include any actual work, I’ll get the nanny to stay full-time.”
“Amazing!” said Florencia. “I’ll plan everything. Can you come for a week or two, Emily? There’s so much I want to show you.”
Emily had missed Florencia. She had Connor for company, of course, and Jack spent as much time at home as he could, avoiding business trips whenever possible, but her life had formed into a narrow triangle nailed down at each corner by herself, Jack, and their son.
There were days when she didn’t leave the apartment building, especially when Jack was home, because he would tell her to rest while he went to run errands, and if she said she’d like to go instead to the store or dry cleaner, he’d remind her that he had just offered to do something nice, and why was it that every time he suggested something, she said no? She glanced at Jack.
He said, “Bring me back some alfajores.” They discussed potential dates and settled on mid-November, which would be spring in Argentina.
Jack insisted on clearing the table, then went to change into running gear.
Sneakers on, Jack put Connor into the jogging stroller, tickled his cheek, and wheeled him out the door.
“I wish you’d stay longer,” Emily said to Florencia after the door had shut.
Her friend’s visit was nearly over. They had driven to a beach where the wild water, barely warmed by the beginning of summer, made Emily’s feet feel like ice cream.
They went to museums and stared at Picasso’s Boy Leading a Horse, though they knew his Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, his Cubist portrait of prostitutes, was considered the better work.
But Emily liked the sympathy between the boy and his horse, the way the animal, with no bridle or saddle or halter, kept close to the boy’s side.
Florencia and Emily walked all over the city.
They met with Violet and Rory, who hugged Emily as though she had returned from a war.
“Are you okay?” Florencia, curled into the couch’s corner, peered at Emily.
“What do you mean?”
“Your life looks nice. Great husband, cute kid, not a financial cloud in the sky. But you don’t seem happy.”
Emily glanced at the front door. Jack was gone, but it felt as though he were still in the room, listening. “I’m not sure why you’d think that.”
“Remember when we went to the Met and saw the mummies? They were so small. Yes, I know that people thousands of years ago were smaller than us, because of evolution and our healthier diet and bigger caloric intake, and I know that those bodies are basically bones and skin and linen wrappings, but still . They looked shrunken. The mummified cats and falcons, too. They were smaller than I’d expect.
You’re like that. I’m not talking about your literal size. I mean you. As a person.”
“You’re comparing me to a mummified cat?”
“Yes.”
“Like someone removed my internal organs and put them in jars and closed me up in a sarcophagus?”
“You said it, not me.”
“You’re being silly.”
“Good, tell me I’m wrong. I want to be wrong. I don’t want to think you’ve shrunk into a former version of yourself.”
Emily laughed. She told Florencia that she was wrong.
That night at dinner, Jack was jovial. The weather had been gorgeous on his run, he said, with a salty breeze wafting off the Hudson River.
He asked Florencia if she wanted seconds.
She said yes, that everything was incredible.
There were only a few days left in Florencia’s visit.
Emily allowed herself to believe that nothing would go wrong. Things would be just as she’d hoped.
But the day before her departure, Florencia ate a nectarine.
Emily and Florencia were in the living room playing with Connor, who was tired from their time earlier in the park, yet in a too-excited way.
He wanted to show Florencia what he could build with magnetic blocks.
He pulled off his socks and draped them over the houses he made.
It was Florencia’s last night in New York.
Emily had booked her ticket for November in Argentina and Florencia was describing how the jacaranda trees would be slathered in purple blossoms. It would be hot enough to go to the beach in Uruguay, but in the south, in Patagonia, they could see penguins.
Connor, listening, gripped his bare feet with both hands.
Jack was out of sight but Emily could hear him in the kitchen preparing dinner.
The refrigerator door slammed. A bowl was set onto the countertop with a hollow thud.
The pantry door opened and closed. The sounds grew more agitated until Jack called for her.
She passed a block to Connor and went to the kitchen.
“Where’s the nectarine?” Jack demanded.
“Which nectarine?”
“The only one we have.”
“Did you check the fruit bowl?”
“Yes, obviously, I checked the fruit bowl. That’s where I put it. I have looked everywhere.”
“I’ll go to the grocery store and get another one.”
“I don’t want a grocery store nectarine.
I want my nectarine, from the farmer’s market, that I was saving, that is exactly ripe.
” Jack was flushed, his hands opening and closing.
His agitation, for Emily, was glazed with the surreal.
Was this possible? Or was this satire: Jack pretending to be someone enraged by a piece of fruit?
Was Emily living in a William Carlos Williams poem?
She laughed, not because the situation was funny but because it was absurd: a jolting somersault of the rules of reality.
Her laughter was thin and wild. It was a mistake to laugh and worse to keep laughing, but she couldn’t help it.
“Hello!” Florencia said brightly, standing by the open kitchen door. “Did I hear something about a nectarine? I ate one earlier and it was great.”
Jack was speechless.
“This is just like that William Carlos Williams poem,” Florencia said. “The one about the plums. ‘I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox.’?”
“?‘They were delicious.’?” Emily’s belly hurt with laughter. “?‘So sweet and so cold.’?”
“It’s his best-known poem because people relate. It happens to everyone. Everyone’s always eating someone else’s plums.”
“I was saving it,” Jack said in a harsh whisper.
“That’s what we’re saying!”
“For you .” Jack pointed at Florencia.
Emily stopped laughing. Florencia had a dangerous edge to her smile. “Then there’s no problem,” Florencia said.
“Yes, there is a fucking problem. I was saving it for the ceviche I planned to make for you .”
“Use a mango. Don’t make it at all. I really don’t care.”
He continued as if he hadn’t heard. “Our guest . It’s not enough, apparently, for us to wait on you hand and foot, no, everything needs to be yours, you think you can just take whatever you want.”
“Me estás jodiendo?”
“Apologize,” Emily told him.
He dropped the fruit bowl to the floor. It shattered. Grapes rolled.
“What a mess,” said Florencia coolly. “Some asshole is going to have to clean that up.”
Emily saw Connor, standing barefoot at the entry to the kitchen with its glittering floor. “Connor, no!”
Jack rushed to sweep Connor into his arms before the child stepped on broken glass. He exhaled in relief. “That was close. The bowl slipped from my hand.”
“Really,” said Florencia.
“I owe you an apology,” he told her. “You know, you’re right about the mango. Great idea. Here, honey.” He passed Connor to Emily. “I got some glass in my socks, I think, but no harm no foul. Let me clean up and I’ll get dinner underway.”
“I’m not hungry,” said Emily.
“Or we can do delivery. Why don’t you choose, Florencia?”
Florencia looked between Jack and Emily, expression slack in disbelief.
“Again, I’m really sorry,” Jack said. “I was out of line. Delivery’s best, I think. Faster.”
“Nothing for me,” Florencia said. “I’m going to my room.”
Morning sun washed into the building’s art deco lobby.
Emily waited with Florencia for the car to arrive.
Florencia pulled up the handle of her suitcase, then collapsed it.
“That was unacceptable,” she said. “Not just for me. For you, too. I didn’t know what to do.
I have never seen anyone behave like that.
The only reason I didn’t leave and check in to a hotel was that I was afraid he’d take it out on you. ”
“He has a temper, but he’s always sorry. You saw how sorry he was.”
“You’re making excuses for him, either because this sort of thing happens all the time and it’s become normal or because confronting the truth is too painful and scary. There is something wrong with him.”
“He means well. He has a good heart.”