Chapter 17 – June
JUNE
There are five Thursdays before Christmas and he comes to all of them, including the one that's Thanksgiving, when the Greek place is closed and we eat turkey at a diner on Sixth Avenue with a waitress who calls us both hon.
He doesn't bring anything. He said he wouldn't and he doesn't, not flowers, not a card, not a bag from the store with the ribbon, and on the second Thursday, when I'm five minutes late because Wren cried in my classroom about a thing that wasn't Steinbeck and I sat with her, he's at the corner table with his water and his hands on the cloth and he stands up when I come in and says, "Everything okay?
" and I say, "A fourteen-year-old's parents are getting divorced," and he says, "Oh," and then, "Do you want to talk about it or do you want the octopus," and I say the octopus, and he orders it, and we don't talk about it.
On the third Thursday he knows Laurence’s name without being told. I've said it once, at the first dinner. He asks if the boy's given the book back, and I say no, and he says good, and I look at him across the table and he doesn't look away.
On the fourth Thursday it's raining and he's there with two umbrellas, one of them the one from the hall closet with the broken rib that I like because it's small, and he hands it to me at the door as we leave and doesn't say anything about having gone into the closet for it.
Tanya finds me on the ninth of December.
Not at the apartment. He hasn't told her where that is.
She's on the sidewalk outside the school at three-fifteen with a three-wheeled stroller and a coat that doesn't close over the middle yet, and Wren sees her first from the door and says, "Mrs. T, there's a lady," and I look, and it's her, and I stand on the top step with my bag on my shoulder for a full three seconds before I go down.
"Priya's school is on Facebook," Tanya says. "I'm not a detective. I just have a phone and no job."
"Hi, Tanya."
"Hi." She looks at me, and then at the stroller, and then at the door behind me with the kids coming out of it, and she doesn't hug me.
In seventeen years she's always hugged me.
"She's asleep. She's been asleep since Fifty-Ninth Street, which is a record, so I'm going to stand here and not move and you can look at her or not. I didn't come to make you look at her."
I look at her. Rose is under a white blanket with her fists up by her ears and her mouth open, and she's got more hair than the photographs, dark, and one of the fists opens and closes and she doesn't wake up.
"She's got Carla's nose," I say.
"Everyone says that. Carla says it the most." Tanya puts both hands on the stroller bar. "I'm not going to stay long. I've got the nurse until six and then it's me and Carla, and Carla goes home in January, and I'm bad at it. That's not why I'm here either."
"Why are you here?"
"Because he wouldn't tell me where you live, and I wanted to say a thing to your face, and it turns out you can find a teacher in this city in about four minutes if you know which principal to Google.
" She looks down at the baby. "I knew what I was doing.
Not all of it. I'm not that smart. But enough of it.
The store, and the class, and the folder with the tabs.
I knew you didn't want the folder. I gave it to you anyway because you'd take it and he'd think it was sweet, and I liked that he thought it was sweet, and I liked that you had to stand there. "
The kids are still coming out behind me. Laurence goes past with the book under his arm and looks at the stroller and looks at me and keeps walking.
"I'm not asking you to forgive me," Tanya says.
"I don't think you should. I think you should be exactly as done with me as you are.
I just didn't want to be a person who did that to somebody for seventeen years and never said so out loud, because that's what Rob did to me, and I've been thinking a lot about how much of it I did to you, slower. "
I don't say anything for a while. A bus goes by on Eighty-Ninth Street.
"Do you want to hold her?" Tanya says.
"She's asleep."
"She'll stay asleep. She sleeps until six and then she screams until nine. Hold her, June. You planned her party. You should get to hold her once before I take her to Portland."
I look up.
"Carla found a house," Tanya says. "Four blocks from hers.
There's a yard. Her husband's firm needs a person to do a thing with spreadsheets and I was good at spreadsheets, before, in my twenties.
I'm going in March, when the nurse contract's up.
" She takes the blanket off the baby and lifts her, and Rose makes a noise and doesn't wake, and Tanya holds her out.
"I haven't told him. I'm telling you first.”
I take the baby.
She's heavy. Warm through the sleeper, and she settles against my coat and her fist finds my collar and holds on, and I stand on a school sidewalk in the noise with Tanya Curtis's daughter asleep on my shoulder, and Tanya stands with her empty hands on the stroller bar and watches me, and neither of us says anything at all, and it's the longest we've ever been quiet in the same place.
"Aunt June," Tanya says, after a minute. "I meant that. On the list. Obviously."
"I know you did."
"That was the problem, wasn't it. I meant all of it. Both halves."
"Yes," I say. "That was the problem."
I give the baby back. Tanya puts her in the stroller and the blanket over her and the fist goes up by the ear again, and Tanya looks at me one more time and says, "Are you going to take him back?"
“I haven’t decided yet,” I say, but we both know that’s a lie. I am going to take him back, I think, because I want to. But for the first time in my life, it’s not because I have to. Because it’s what’s expected of me.
She nods. “Good. You two are good together. I think you’ll be better without me in the picture.”
That surprises me. I don’t know what to say, and what surprises me more is she doesn’t seem to expect me to say anything, so I think she means it.
She goes. I watch her to the corner, the coat that doesn't close, the three wheels, and she doesn't look back, and I stand on the sidewalk until Harold comes out in his cardigan and says, "Friend of yours?
" and I say, "No," and then, "Sort of," and he says, "Those are the worst kind," and holds the door for me so I can go back up and get the essays I left on the desk.
He’s right, or he used to be. I don’t think Tanya is the worst, but I think she’s right about one thing. If my marriage has a chance, it can’t have three people in it, no matter who the third person happens to be. If it wasn’t her, it would have been someone else and three is a crowd.
I go to Oregon for Christmas. My sister has three kids and a husband who deep-fries a turkey in the driveway, and I sleep in the guest room with a quilt my mother made and I don't tell my sister the whole story until the twenty-sixth, at her kitchen table, after the kids are down, and she listens to all of it and then says, "Four million dollars.”
Then she pours me another glass and I drink it.
He texts once on Christmas Day and I text back.
The second Thursday in January it's cold enough that the saganaki steams in the window, and we're halfway through the octopus when his phone rings.
It's on the table. He's kept it in his pocket for five Thursdays and tonight it's on the table, face up, because he took it out to show me a photograph of the shoes that finally look right, and he set it down to eat, and now it's ringing, and the name on the screen is Tanya.
We both look at it.
He picks it up. He looks at it for one second, two, and he presses the side button, and the screen goes dark, and he turns it face down on the cloth and puts his hand flat on top of it.
"She's moving,” he says simply. “Probably about sending off the night nurse.”
"Go if you need to."
"I don't need to."
"Matt."
"June." He doesn't move his hand. “I’m not her person anymore. Regardless of whether or not I ever get to be yours again.”
I look at him. He looks back. The phone buzzes once more and stops.
I take the octopus.
I tell him the Thursday after that, at my table, on West Eleventh, in front of the fire, because I've decided that if I'm going to say it I'm going to say it in a room that's mine.
He's never been up. He's walked me to the corner six times and never asked, and tonight at the corner I said, "Felix will let you in," and he said, "Who's Felix," and I said, "The doorman, Matt, keep up," and he came up and stood in the middle of somebody else's living room with his coat on, looking at the teaching books on either side of the fireplace, and said, "There they are," and nothing else.
I give him wine. I sit on the floor by the fire because that's where I sit, and after a minute he takes his coat off and sits on the floor too, in his good trousers, with his back against the sofa, and we don't talk for a while.
"Here's what I've decided," I say.
He puts his glass down.
"I'm going to finish the year. Through June.
Harold's asked me to stay on after, full-time, with a contract, and I'm going to say yes, and that's not a thing I'm asking your opinion about, I'm telling you so you know.
I've got three sections and a reading program in fourth period that somebody's funding, and I'm going to be at that school at seven-thirty every morning until I'm sixty, and the money's a joke, and I'm going to keep it in a separate account and spend it on stupid things, and you're never going to ask me about it. "
"Okay."
"This lease runs through April. I'm not going to break it. I'm going to let it run, and I'm going to keep the key until it does, and I'm not going to pretend that's not what I'm doing, because it is. I'm keeping a place to go. For three months. If you can't live with that, say so now."
"I can live with it."
"I'm going to come home at the end of the month.
Mark's going to move the books back. I'm going to put them on the right side of the shelves where they were, and I'm going to grade at the dining table, and if Tanya calls at one in the morning you'll answer it if it's Carla and you won't if it isn't, and I'm never going to say her name in that tone again, because I'm done being the person who says it in that tone. That's yours now. You keep it."
"Okay."
"And the last one." I look at the fire. "I'm not going to remind you of anything.
Ever. Not a birthday, not a school play if I'm ever in one.
Denise isn't going to either. If it goes back to how it was, Matt, I'm not going to pack a bag and go to a hotel and make you find me at a Greek restaurant.
I'll just be gone, and you'll find out from the shelves.
I'm telling you that now so it's not a threat later.
It's a fact. It's the only one I've got. "
He's quiet. The fire does what fires do.
"Can I say a thing," he says.
"You keep asking that."
"I keep meaning it." He turns to face me on the floor.
"I'm not going to say I'll never get it wrong again, because you'd grade it, and it'd get a C.
I'm going to get it wrong. I'm going to forget a Thursday, some year, and I'm going to say a stupid sentence at a table.
But I'm not going to make you ask twice.
I heard you in the car in October and I did it wrong, and I heard you at the door on the twenty-second, and I heard you tonight.
Three times. I'd like to get it down to one.
" He stops. "And I'd like to carry a box.
On the day. One box. Mark can have the rest."
I look at him on the floor of an apartment with someone else's art on the walls.
"You can carry one box," I say.
He doesn't reach for me. He sits there with his hand on his knee and his glass on the floor and he lets it be what it is, which is a woman on a rug saying yes to a man in his good trousers, without anyone crying, and after a minute I move over, and I put my head on his shoulder, and his arm comes around me, and I've missed it, and I don't say so, and he doesn't ask.
Mark comes with the good boxes.
He wraps the teaching texts in my dish towels, which I brought down with me and am bringing back up, and his crew takes the fireplace side of the living room apart in forty minutes, and at the end there's one box left on the floor by the door, and Mark looks at it and looks at Matt, who's been standing in the hall in a sweater for the whole forty minutes trying not to be in anyone's path, and says, "That one's yours, I'm told. "
"That one's mine."
Matt picks it up. It's the heavy one. I made sure.
He carries it down four flights because the elevator's got the crew in it, and he puts it in the truck himself, and Mark writes BOOKS.
STUDY. Mrs. T. on the tape and says, "Welcome back, Mrs. Tierney," and I say, "You didn't ask," and he says, "I never do. "
Forty floors up, the right side of the shelves has been dusted. He did it himself; there's a rag in the study bin. I put the books back by subject.
"Dinner," he says once we’re finished. "I'll make the pasta."
"The garlic's always burnt."
He turns and looks at me.
"You never said that.”
"I'm saying it now," I tell him. "Burn it anyway."