Chapter 25 #2
“I mean,” Gen said, “for my post-track career.” In the background, someone said, “Will you get off the damn phone? You’ve been mooning at it for the past half hour and now—” The phone went silent.
Gen must have hit the mute button. Then the line opened again.
Gen said, “I’m shopping with Becca and Ship.
Becca won a tournament and wants to use the winnings to redecorate her apartment so we’re helping out.
She has terrible taste. Look, it’s just true.
” Gen’s voice went distant, presumably because she was now speaking to Becca.
“Your apartment is a junk drawer. You toss everything in at random.”
The line was muffled.
“Why hello,” said Becca. “Emily, right?”
“Give me my phone back,” said a faint Gen. A third person—Shipley—said something inaudible. Gen said, “Come on, this is private.”
“Shopping with them was a bad idea,” Becca said to Emily. “Gen’s going to make me buy fancy furniture in shades of gray and Ship will insist that I get many, many beanbags. Y’all shush ! Sorry, Emily, not you. I just want a comfy sofa. With a nice chaise lounge. I like some cush, you know?”
Gen must have seized her phone from Becca. “Let’s talk later.”
Emily said, “Will you meet me for dinner?”
She was in a taxi to the restaurant when Jack called. Stella had come home from school with a fever. The pediatrician was on her way; Jack had persuaded her to make a house call. “Stella’s doing okay but she’s asking for you.”
“Will you put her on the phone?”
“Come over. Please? It would mean the world to her.”
Emily envisioned Stella’s feverish eyes and felt bad for not realizing earlier that she was coming down with something. She told the driver to change destinations.
Headlights from cars in the next lane caught sparse snow. The flakes lifted and zoomed. They reminded Emily of how she had felt earlier while getting ready to meet Gen. Little, deliciously chilled points of nervousness had floated across a wide space of want inside her chest.
She reluctantly reached for the phone she had set on the seat beside her. hey
Gen’s reply was immediate: hi
I can’t make it, Emily typed slowly. Stella’s sick
!! is she ok?
I think so
Poor kid. There was a pause. I thought your ex had them on the weekends
I’m headed to his place. He asked me to come
After a longer moment, Gen said, He can’t manage on his own?
Emily wrote in hasty frustration. Look my kid is sick and I need to be with her
I think you misunderstand me. Gen sent a rapid series of single-sentence texts. Of course you should be with her. I question his intentions.
Emily was home. Connor ran down the stoop.
Emily stuffed her phone into her coat pocket as he flung open the taxi door.
“You’re supposed to be a surprise,” Connor said.
“Stella doesn’t know.” Excitedly, he pulled her by the hand up the stoop, where Jack was waiting at the top, backlit by the yellow hallway.
He smiled when she reached him. Her coat pocket buzzed but Emily didn’t want to know what Gen had to say, because knowing was useless.
Nothing changed the essential fact of her motherhood.
It didn’t matter how old her children grew.
She would always carry them inside her, the joy of them a brutal tragedy: their devotion, their rejection, their need, their indifference.
Their inevitable departure. What else in life do you love without reason or limit, only to surrender it?
What else, except life itself? Loving your children is like learning how to die.
You don’t learn how to let go. You learn only that you must.
Jack took Emily’s coat and hung it in the closet.
He had chosen the floral wallpaper in the vestibule and she had chosen the herringbone tiles.
The wallpaper had one of those patterns that can appear three-dimensional with a slight unfocusing of the gaze.
Jack rapped his knuckles along it as he walked into the house and called for Stella.
“Mommy’s here!” said Connor. Jack shot him a furious look, then caught Emily’s eye, shrugged, and ruffled the boy’s hair. There was a commotion of footsteps on the walnut stairs. Stella—fuzzy pajamas, sunset hair—burst into view. She was giddy. She jumped up and down.
“I thought she had a fever,” said Emily.
“Low-grade,” said Jack. “The doctor just left. She said it was an ear infection. She prescribed medicine—you know, that pink stuff—”
“Bubblegum medicine!” said Stella.
“The doctor had brought a bottle just in case. That’s what I call professional.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” said Emily.
“You were already on your way.”
“Daddy made alphabet soup.” Stella tugged Emily toward the kitchen.
“Don’t worry,” Jack said to Emily. “I also made grown-up food. Everything’s ready.”
Emily resisted Stella’s pull. “Stella gets ear infections all the time. If I had known—”
“Daddy doesn’t like it when food gets cold,” Connor reminded.
“You two go ahead,” Jack said. “Let me talk with Mommy.”
When they had gone, Emily said, “This is a trap.”
“Look, I’m doing my best. It’s not easy being a single dad. I didn’t know Stella was basically fine until the doctor left, which was five minutes ago, and I’d already told Connor you were coming. If you want to leave, okay, but you’ll have to explain it to the kids.”
For dinner, Jack opened a bottle of Montrachet Grand Cru from the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, a white Burgundy wine that cost thousands of dollars, which Emily knew because Jack had told her when he got the news months ago that, after a long wait, a bottle had become available for purchase.
He filled her glass and said that the wine tasted like white flowers and pear and salt.
She put the children to bed. She walked softly down the hall, stopping before the door of the nursery that had been changed into a writing office that she never used.
She stepped inside. There was no dust on the rosewood desk.
She sat down and switched on the lamp. The drawers were stocked with blank notebooks and pencils and pens.
The view was of the garden, which was too dark to see.
The window held only a reflection of the lamp.
The room was a lot of space for a baby that didn’t exist and a book that hadn’t been written.
Or maybe not enough space. The moment that she wondered how much space those unborn things required, it seemed too large to measure.
She had the impulse to take a notebook. The impulse surprised her. She hadn’t written in years. But she didn’t want Jack to notice that she’d taken a notebook. That would please him. She didn’t want to please him. She closed the drawer.
Downstairs, Jack was waiting. She walked past him to the hallway closet for her coat. “Stay,” he said. “Just for the night.”
“I can’t.”
“Even in the guest room? I’ve missed you so much.”
She shook her head.
“But it’s not fair to the kids,” he said.
“Think of how they’ll feel when they wake up and you’re not here.
” Her emotions toward him had changed throughout the night, from gratitude to anger to pity to an old alliance, a worn-down, habitual love.
Now back again to the sense of entrapment. She put on her coat and left.
Outside, snow came down more thickly than before. It was late. She checked her phone for the time and saw several missed texts from Gen.
I’m going to the restaurant. Don’t mind a solo dinner
but…
if you decide you can, come join me whenever
The texts were hours old. Emily’s white breath rose in the light of her phone. She wrote, Are you still there?
No answer. Nonetheless, Emily hunted for a cab.
The restaurant was nearly empty. The host told her that it was too late for dinner; the kitchen had closed. When she explained she was here to look for a friend, he said, “Ah,” and led her to Gen, who sat with her back to a window swirling with snow. Her table had been cleared. She was reading.
“You waited,” Emily said.
Gen looked up from the book and broke into a huge smile. She reached to touch Emily’s hair and came away with fingertips dusted in snow that immediately melted. Emily shivered. Gen said to the host, “Could we have a hot chocolate?”
“Absolutely, Ms. Hall.”
“I thought you were in a fame gully,” said Emily.
“I thought you weren’t coming! Did you text? I stopped by the bookstore on the way here and I didn’t mean to read this book but between the appetizer and the main course I couldn’t resist. I must have been reading for a while.”
“Why wouldn’t you read a book you bought?”
“It’s a gift.” Gen pushed the book across the table.
“For Stella.” It was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe .
“Being sick when you’re a kid is the worst. My mom would read this to me.
You know, before. It was my favorite. It’s different for me now.
Take Lucy. You’re supposed to love her and I do, I can’t help it, but she’s too good, you know?
She finds a passage to another world in a wardrobe and leaves the door open behind her.
No. Just no. Who remembers to leave a magic door open so that you can go home?
Not me. Fuck Lucy. I mean: fuck her embodiment of sensible good-doing. ”
“You aren’t good?” Emily held up the book Gen had bought for her daughter.
“Terrible. I have all sorts of bad motives.”
The waiter set a mug in front of Emily, who wrapped her freezing hands around it. The rich taste of chocolate coated her tongue. The heat went straight to her belly.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” said Gen.
“I really wanted to be.”
“Did you.” Gen said it like a statement, her gaze roving over Emily’s face.
“All night. Even before I got your last texts.” Emily offered the mug. “Want some?”
“Maybe a sip.” Gen reached, her fingers sliding over Emily’s as she took the mug.
She leaned back to drink and stretched beneath the table, her long legs brushing Emily’s.
“Sorry,” Gen said, but Emily didn’t pull away.
Gen shifted forward to return the mug, her knee pressing more fully against Emily’s inner thigh. Heat flushed Emily’s cheeks.
Gen gave her a slow smile. She had not been sorry. She wasn’t sorry at all.
Gen,
My friends and I decided to take a break from studying for finals and went to a performance at the Adams House Pool Theater.
It’s called that because the dorm once had an actual pool in its basement.
It was drained six years ago, in 1990. These days, rows of seats line the steps of the empty pool all the way from its shallow end to the deep end, where the performances happen.
I had a hard time paying attention, in part because Rory and Elizabeth were whisper-fighting, but also because I felt underwater.
I thought about a question you asked in a letter: whether I had ever done something for the once-ness of it.
Maybe every moment is for once only and nothing repeats itself.
If I attend another performance at the Pool Theater, even if it’s the same play with the same actors, and I’m seated next to the same friends with the same sense of submersion in invisible water, it won’t be the same. I won’t be the same.
I remember our first kiss. There can never be another first kiss.
Or every time is a first time. I think of you inside me, filling me, the taste of you on my mouth.
You are always new to me. I can never get enough.
Emily