Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
NAOMI
He slept in the guest room Thursday, and again on Friday.
We moved around each other in the house like two people sharing a rental. He made the coffee and I drank it. We both went to work. At night the guest room door closed with that same small click, and I lay awake in our bed listening to him turn over on the other side of the wall.
On Saturday morning he knocked on the frame of our bedroom door, even though it was open. He was dressed, in jeans and a gray sweater, freshly shaved. He had a mug in each hand.
"Can I come in?"
I was sitting up in bed with my laptop, and I closed it. "It's your room."
He put one mug on my nightstand. Instead of sitting on the bed, he sat on the upholstered bench at the foot of it, turned sideways to face me, holding his own mug between his knees with both hands.
"I want to talk about next Saturday," he said.
My birthday. I'd almost forgotten, except that wasn't true. I'd thought about it every day. I just hadn't let myself think about it in words.
"Okay."
"I know things are bad. I know I did that." He looked down into his coffee. "I'm not asking you to forgive anything. I just want to do your birthday. I want to do it right. Please let me do that."
"You've always done it."
"I know. I want to do it bigger this year."
"I don't want bigger."
"I know you don't think so." He turned the mug in his hands. "I thought maybe we'd have people. Your mom. Tess. Lila."
I set the laptop down on the comforter.
"It's always been us," I said.
"I know."
"Every year. It's the one thing that's just us."
"I know, Nay. I just thought—" He stopped and rubbed the back of his neck. "After this last month. I thought you might want other people there. Not just me."
He meant it kindly. It still landed like a door closing.
Not just me.
"You invited Lila," I said.
"She's your sister."
"She's the reason you're sleeping down the hall."
"She's not the reason," he said. Then, quieter, "I'm the reason."
The coffee steamed on my nightstand. Sunlight came through the curtains in a thin gold line across the floor.
He was trying. He was sitting at the foot of our bed holding his mug like a man holding his hat in a hospital waiting room.
I'd loved him for twelve years. I wanted so badly for this to be the thing that fixed it.
I wanted him in our kitchen with the onions and the Gruyère, the house smelling like every October of my adult life.
"Fine," I said. "Invite who you want."
"Thank you." His shoulders came down an inch. "It's going to be good. I promise."
After he went downstairs, I picked up the mug. It was the white one with the gold rim, from a set my mother had given us, and he'd put the milk in right away. I drank it anyway. It tasted like the cabinet.
On Sunday I came down at eight while Graham was out running. His iPad was propped against the fruit bowl on the island, charging, the way he left it every weekend so he could read the news over breakfast.
I was reaching past it for a banana when it lit up.
His messages synced to it. I'd known that for years without ever once looking at them. A banner slid down from the top of the screen, then another, then a third, stacking up on the lock screen in gray bubbles with the newest on top.
L: She'll love it.
L: Trust me.
Below them was a message he'd sent from his phone at 6:52 that morning.
Graham: What does she want?
I stood there with my hand out, not touching anything, until the screen lit again.
L: Come by Tues after work, I'll write it all down for you. Don't overthink it.
L: You're doing a good thing.
Then it went dark.
I stood in my kitchen in my socks and read it all again in my head, because it was already printed on the backs of my eyes.
What does she want?
I didn't know who she was. It could have been me, and I thought it probably was. I pictured the two of them talking about me the way you talk about a difficult client. What does she want? How do we handle her? What'll make her go quiet?
Or she could be someone else entirely. A lawyer. A landlord. A judge.
She'll love it. Trust me. I'll write it all down for you.
I thought about the manila folder under his hand in the café. Then I thought about Tuesday night, the two of them in an apartment on Pine Street with no curtains, my sister writing something down for my husband while he leaned over her shoulder to read it.
You're doing a good thing.
The front door opened, and Graham came in breathing hard, his T-shirt dark with sweat down the middle, his cheeks red from the cold. He saw me standing by the island.
"Morning," he said.
"Morning."
I watched him glance at the iPad. He picked it up and woke the screen with his thumb, his face giving away nothing, then put it back against the fruit bowl, face down this time.
"Good run?" I asked.
"Cold." He wiped his forehead with his forearm. "I'm going to shower."
I waited for him to ask me something.
Every year, sometime in the week before my birthday, he'd ask me one small question.
Never about the menu, since the menu never changed.
Just something little that he already knew the answer to, so he could hear me say it.
Still the Cabernet, or are you over red this year?
Still want the lemon, or should I finally make you chocolate?
He went upstairs without asking me anything.
On Tuesday he texted at five that he'd be home late. Errands for Saturday. Don't peek.
He came in at 9:30 with a canvas grocery bag and a folded sheet of paper sticking out of his jacket pocket. When he saw me notice it, he put his hand over the pocket and smiled, a real smile, the first one I'd seen from him in a week.
"No peeking," he said. "It's a surprise."
"It's never a surprise."
"This year it is."
He took the bag down to the second fridge in the garage. When he came back up, the paper wasn't in his pocket anymore.
On Wednesday Tess and I ate lunch at our drafting tables, both of us picking at salads. She'd been watching me all week without saying a word, which for Tess was a feat of physical restraint.
"So," she said finally. "Saturday."
"He invited you."
"He did. He called me himself. He sounded like a hostage." She stabbed a cherry tomato. "Do you want me there?"
"I don't know."
"Do you want to go?"
"It's my house."
"That's not what I asked."
I looked down at my salad. Somebody had put beets in it. I pushed them to the side one by one, little dark red coins bleeding into the lettuce.
"I want to get through Saturday," I said.
"And then?"
"And then I'll know."
Tess put her fork down. "Know what?"
I didn't have an answer I could say out loud in an office with glass walls.
That night I came down for water at eleven. Graham was at the island writing on a legal pad in his block capitals, and when he heard me, he put his forearm down over the page like a kid covering a test.
"Go away," he said, almost laughing. "You can't see this."
"I'm getting water."
"Get it with your eyes closed."
I didn't close my eyes, but I didn't look either. I stood at the sink with my back to him and let the tap run until the water came out cold.
When I turned around, he was still sitting with his arm over the page, watching me.
"It's going to be good, Nay," he said. "I promise."
He was saying that word so easily now.
"Good night," I said.