Chapter 28
APRIL
“LET’S GO OUT.”
I’m helping with late-afternoon dishes when Josie makes this proposition, leaning on the counter and looking at me with pretty please eyes.
And she’s not the only one looking at me.
Cameron glances up from his laptop, and Mom looks up as she kneads some dough.
It’s impossible to escape an audience in this house.
Leo is the only one who doesn’t make eye contact, as he buckles Otto into the high chair.
“Out?”
“Dinner, me and you! Come on.”
Jo’s first Dallas show isn’t until tomorrow, and she’s not one to sit still.
I’ll admit that the reprieve is tempting. But Josie seems oblivious to the facts and responsibilities of my life. I can’t just drop everything and go out.
“I don’t know.”
Mom chimes in, flour on her fingers. “You girls go. I’ll make pizza for the kids.”
I look at Leo, but he’s pretending not to hear. So if he doesn’t care, then neither do I.
“Okay,” I say. “Sure.”
This elicits a squeal from my sister, who starts naming restaurant options.
She hasn’t lived here in years, yet she knows more about the Dallas food scene than I ever have.
When she suggests Nobu, I feel my cheeks warm.
I look again at Leo, still pretending not to hear, and I mumble, “Nothing extravagant. Plus, we don’t have a reservation. ”
Fully ignoring me, she says, “Or there’s a new steakhouse on—”
“Let’s just do pho or something.”
It’s embarrassing how my family spends money in contrast to Leo’s childhood.
Leo from little, April from much. Money has been an underlying crack in our marriage.
But Leo’s refusal to even look at me right now, his total lack of interest in what I do or where I go, follows me all the way into the car with Josie, where we still haven’t decided where to go eat.
I’m worried about leaving the kids and whether Mom should be focused on Dad and—
“April.” Josie touches my arm. “Take a breath, it’s just dinner. I didn’t suggest it because I’m unaware of everything you’re dealing with—I suggested it because I am aware. You need a break, and everyone’s fine at the house. Just enjoy.”
Her unexpectedly insightful gesture brings the last few years to the boiling surface. She doesn’t even know the half of it. “Okay.” I squeeze her hand. “Thank you.” I’m embarrassed for having judged her frivolity.
Thirty minutes later, we’re being seated at a rooftop table, looking at the Dallas skyline backed by a blushing sunset. Around us, there are twinkling lights, a pool as smooth as glass, and people laughing. I order red wine and listen to my sister talk about Broadway.
She tells me about a recent date during which the guy talked the whole time about his research job and laboratory mice. We laugh, and then she asks, “You and Leo doing okay with your shitstorm summer?”
I take a sip of wine. I should just tell her.
She’ll be mad I didn’t tell her sooner. After my first heartbreak in high school, she screamed, “You taught me how to use a tampon but couldn’t even tell me that jerk-face broke your heart?
” My defense was, “It just happened yesterday.” To which she yelled, “You’ve had since yesterday to tell me? !”
But she’ll also be mad if I don’t give her details, and she’ll be furious if I do give her details, because her sister has cheated on one of her favorite people.
Like a savior, the server appears with my big, beautiful salad with gorgonzola and grilled salmon.
I look at the drizzle of balsamic glaze, and Leo becomes the last thing I want to think about.
Without lying, I offer simply: “We aren’t great, but at least it’s no dinner-long conversation about lab rats.
” Josie laughs, and I order a second glass of red.
Swiftly pivoting the conversation, I ask about her friends from the cast, and she tells story after story.
Somewhere beyond the cityscape, my family is falling apart. My house. But I’m on a rooftop with my sister and her wonderful laugh.
After a bit, she gets her gossip eyes. “How crazy is it about Mom and Dad?”
We haven’t yet talked about this, and she has no idea how much it’s affecting me, though not in the way she would imagine.
The fact that our perfect mother might understand a regrettable sexual encounter, might understand how much a child can weigh a woman down.
It’s surreal that I was said child, but it’s also comforting that Mom might understand me more than I realized.
On the other hand, she and Dad made it through.
So maybe her expectation will be that much higher for Leo and I to do the same.
“Pretty crazy” is all I say to Jo, who goes on to speculate about the dirty details of how it all went down, pointing out the hypocrisy with which Mom preached about abstinence when we were teens.
I find myself surprisingly defensive of Mom.
I think she believed in what she advised, that she didn’t want us to repeat her mistakes, even if I was one of those mistakes.
I can’t imagine how I’ll feel when Sadie is a teenager, and this softens me even more toward Mom.
When was she supposed to casually tell my black-and-white-thinking teen self that my whole existence was the result of a fling which accidentally formed a life?
And…was she even in love with Dad? Or did she look around at other men and think, If not for April… ?
Memories envelop me: when Mom and Dad celebrated anniversaries, when they went out, when they fought after they thought we were asleep. And when Dad would look at Mom and say sincerely, “I’d do it all again.”
Josie leaves the table for the restroom, so I lean back and look around, my wineglass at my lips. A breeze blows through, rippling the pool water and blowing hair off my neck.
“So melancholy.”
I startle and look up at a man in a charcoal suit. He looks down at me with intensity. He has an accent I can’t place, dark windswept hair, and blue eyes that seem to read me.
I set my glass down. “Just lost in thought.”
“Deep thoughts.”
I meet his gaze. “I suppose.”
He gestures to Josie’s chair. “Boyfriend?”
I almost laugh at the word. It’s so cute. So many lifetimes ago. But my left hand is in my lap; he cannot see my ring.
I answer, “No. My sister.”
His sky-blue eyes fill with desire as he sits in Josie’s chair and pulls out his phone.
“Could I call you sometime? Hear about your deep thoughts?” His eyebrows form two question marks.
They’re nice eyebrows; it’s a nice question.
For the briefest of flashes, I picture the two of us with drinks.
Him staring at me, rapt. Me, with sharp heels and soft curls.
But I hold up my left hand. “Sorry.”
He doesn’t flinch. “I don’t mind.”
I redden. Fidelity is a choice that must be made over and over again.
I repeat my apology as though I’m the one in the wrong.
Josie approaches with some kind of look on her face, so he stands to leave, but not before leaning toward my ear and saying low, “With me, you wouldn’t be so sad.
” He reeks of cologne and vodka. His hand is startlingly yet lightly on my forearm, and he waits in case I change my mind.
But I stare at the table in front of me, embarrassed by his forwardness.
And by the fact that some part of me is flattered.
That in the future, I’ll likely be free to say yes, which causes a violent tumble of dread inside me.
Then he’s gone, and Josie is taking her seat, laying her napkin back across her lap. “Gross,” she says. “How can a wedding ring mean so little to some people?” She cuts into her filet.
Gross. I take another sip of wine. And another and another.