Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
GRAHAM
On Monday after work I stopped at the Trader Joe's on Market Street, the way I'd been doing twice a week since September.
I was standing in the refrigerated aisle with a carton of oat milk in my hand before I realized what I was doing. Oat milk, rice crackers, the ginger chews that settled Lila's stomach. My hand had put them in the basket on its own.
A woman with a toddler in her cart said "Excuse me" and reached around me for the yogurt. I just stood there holding the carton.
I put it all back on the shelves, the oat milk, the crackers, the ginger chews, and left the empty basket at the end of the aisle. Then I walked to Pine Street with nothing in my hands.
When I buzzed, the intercom crackled.
"It's me," I said.
The vestibule door clicked, and I climbed the three flights. The fourth stair from the top on the last landing creaked.
Lila opened the door on the chain, shut it again, slid the chain off, turned the deadbolt. I heard the security bar scrape across the floor as she dragged it out of the way. Four sounds. I'd installed three of them.
She looked like she hadn't slept, in sweatpants and a Temple hoodie with the sleeves pulled down over her hands. The apartment behind her was warm and smelled like the fig candle she kept burning all the time now, since it was the one thing in there that smelled like her.
"Hi," she said. "Did you talk to her?"
"No."
"Did she call you back?"
"No."
She stepped back to let me in. I didn't take off my coat.
There was a couch in the living room now.
I'd put it together two weeks earlier with an Allen wrench, on a Sunday afternoon when I'd told Naomi I was catching up at the office.
There was a floor lamp I'd carried up the stairs, a rug I'd picked out because Lila had stood in the store crying over price tags and couldn't choose.
"Do you want tea?" she said. "I have that ginger one."
"No. Thanks."
"You can sit down."
"I'm okay standing."
She looked at my coat, then at my empty hands. Her face went careful, like someone who's stepped out onto a frozen pond and just heard it tick.
"Okay," she said slowly. "What's going on?"
I'd been rehearsing this all day, in meetings, in the car, and it didn't come out anything like I'd rehearsed it.
"I should never have agreed to keep this from Naomi," I said.
"Graham."
"I should've said no in July. In my office. I should've said, I'll help you, but I'm not lying to my wife. I didn't. That's on me, not you. But I'm done."
"I'm not out yet." Her voice went high. "The hearing's not finished. They continued it. You know they continued it. Daniel's lawyer?—"
"I know."
"Two more weeks. That's all. Just until the order's final."
"No."
"She'll tell Mom."
"She won't. And if she does, we'll deal with it without lying to her."
Lila sat down hard on the arm of the couch and stared at me.
"I'm going to tell Naomi everything," I said.
"What I did. What it cost. Where I was every night I lied to her.
I'll tell her what I know about Daniel, because there's no other way to explain the rest. I'm not going to tell her the parts that are yours.
Those you tell her, or you don't. But I'm not carrying them for you anymore. "
"Graham, please."
"And I'm not going to be in the middle. Not with her. I'm not carrying messages back and forth between you two. I'm not explaining her to you or you to her. If you want your sister, you call your sister."
"She won't pick up."
"Then you keep calling. That's how it works."
Her face was going red. She pulled her sleeves farther down over her hands.
"Renata's your first call now," I said. "For anything legal, anything with Daniel. Denise at the advocacy center is your second. She's been doing this twenty years, and she's better at it than I am. If Daniel ever shows up here again, you call 911 first. Not me."
"You're dumping me."
"I'm not dumping you."
"You're dumping me. You're handing me off to strangers." Her voice broke. "Because Naomi threw a tantrum over some beets."
"Don't," I said.
It came out harder than I meant, and she flinched. I made myself bring my voice down.
"Don't do that. Don't make this about beets. You know it's not about beets."
She wiped her face with the sleeve of her hoodie.
"She never understands me," Lila said. "Ever.
She's been perfect her whole life. Perfect grades, perfect job, perfect husband.
I'm the mess. I've always been the mess.
And now she gets to be the wronged wife on top of it.
She's going to make this all about her. She always makes her hurt the bigger one. You'll see."
I stood there listening to it. I'd heard it before. I'd been hearing it for three months, not all at once but in pieces, on this couch, in my car at red lights, on the phone at midnight.
Naomi will take over.
She'll look at me like she always knew.
She'd come with a spreadsheet.
She doesn't need anybody.
She'd make it about her.
I'd heard every one of those and nodded. Some of them had even sounded true. Naomi was organized. Naomi was calm. Naomi didn't ask for things. I'd stood across our kitchen island from my wife and heard Lila's voice saying them. I'd said it right to Naomi's face: She said you'd do this.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
Lila sniffed. "What?"
"At Christmas. When Naomi said she was tired of the birthday dinner. What did she actually say?"
Lila went still.
"I told you what she said."
"Tell me again. The actual words."
She looked down at the floor, at the rug I'd picked out.
"She said it's the same every year," Lila said.
"Those words?"
"Something like that."
"Lila."
It was quiet for a long time. Down on Pine Street a bus went by, and the windows buzzed in their frames.
"We were in Mom's kitchen," Lila said at last, very low. "Doing the dishes. I asked what you were doing for her birthday, and she said, He makes the exact same thing every year. Twelve years."
"And?"
Lila pulled her knees up onto the couch and wrapped her arms around them.
"And she said, I hope he never stops."
I sat down on the other end of the couch I'd built with an Allen wrench, still in my coat. I hadn't meant to.
"I thought she was bragging," Lila said.
She was crying again, quietly, into her knees.
"Okay? That's what it sounded like. Daniel had just made me return a sweater I bought myself, and there she is in Mom's kitchen with her perfect husband who makes her the same perfect dinner every year, saying she hopes he never stops.
I thought, must be nice. That's all I thought. Must be nice."
"So you told me she wanted something new."
"I wanted her to have something new." She lifted her head, her face a mess. "No. That's not true. I don't know what I wanted. I think I wanted you to make my dinner. Once. I think I wanted to sit at that table and have it be mine."
I didn't say anything. There wasn't anything I could've said that would have helped either of us.
After a while I got up and buttoned my coat.
"Denise's number is on the fridge," I said. "Renata's in your phone. Call them tomorrow. Tell them I'm stepping back and that you'll be the one calling from now on."
"Are you still going to be my guarantor?" she whispered.
"The lease is signed. I'm not going to pull it out from under you. But I'm telling Naomi about it, and if she wants it handled differently, we'll figure out how. Together. Her and me."
Lila nodded without looking at me.
At the door, my hand went to the deadbolt to turn it for her, the way it had every other night. I stopped and took my hand back.
"You lock it," I said. "After I go."
I went out on the landing, pulled the door shut behind me, and stood on the fourth stair from the top.
It took her a long time, almost a full minute. Then I heard it: the deadbolt turning, the chain sliding into its track, the bar scraping across the floor.
I went down the stairs.