Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Natalie
The flowers arrive in a box large enough for Owen to hide inside.
He tests this immediately while I cut the tape and lift out a bouquet of lilies, white roses, and so much greenery that I can barely find the vase. The card says, Looking forward to tonight. Love, Adam.
I sneeze before I finish reading it.
“Are you sick?” Lucy asks.
“No. The lilies.”
“Then why did he send them?”
I set the bouquet on the counter. “He forgot.”
She gives me a look I don’t want to examine, then goes to argue with Owen about whether the box is a submarine or a coffin. I move the flowers into the dining room and open a window.
By six-thirty I have changed three times. The black dress feels too much like I have agreed to something. The jeans feel as if I’m making a point. In the end I put on dark trousers and a soft blue sweater, then waste several minutes looking for earrings I haven’t worn since Benji’s christening.
Adam’s mother arrives with a bag of knitting and a serious intention to make the children eat peas. She compliments my hair and says nothing about what the evening means. I am grateful enough to hug her, which seems to surprise us both.
Adam comes ten minutes later. He is wearing a jacket I like, one that makes his shoulders look particularly unfair. He notices me noticing and almost smiles.
“You look nice.”
“Thank you.”
We stand in the hall like people who have been introduced at a party. From the kitchen his mother calls that we should go before somebody changes their mind about peas.
Outside, he opens the car door. I wait until he gets in before saying, “The flowers are beautiful.”
His shoulders loosen.
“I can’t keep the lilies in the house.”
“They make you sneeze.” He closes his eyes briefly. “God. I knew that.”
“You did.”
“I asked the florist for something special. I should have told her.”
“I’ll take them to your mother if she wants them.”
“I’ll sort them out when we get back.” He looks at me. “I’m sorry.”
I nod, then fasten my seat belt. I don’t want to spend the evening punishing him for flowers. I also don’t want to tell him it doesn’t matter, because forgetting what makes me sneeze is precisely the kind of small thing that has started to feel very large.
The restaurant is quiet enough to hear ourselves, as requested. It is also the kind of place where the waiter describes the butter. Adam has booked a table beside a window overlooking the river, and I can see how carefully he chose it. Soft light, comfortable chairs, no television. He has tried.
For the first ten minutes I try just as hard.
We discuss the menu. He asks about the new daycare. I tell him Benji cried at drop-off but settled with Loretta, the teacher in the infant room. Adam asks whether I’ve had another update from Little Acorns. I say the final incident report arrived and I’ve filed it.
Then we stop talking.
The waiter brings bread. Adam reaches for it at the same time I do, and we both withdraw our hands.
“You can have bread, Adam.”
“I know.”
“There’s more than one piece.”
He laughs, but it’s strained. “I’m trying not to do anything wrong.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is, actually.” He looks down at the plate. “How’s work?”
“The catalog?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Hard. I keep remembering things after I’ve done them the long way.”
“I could get you a newer computer.”
“The computer’s fine.”
“Right.”
He tells me about a proposal. I ask a polite question, and he answers for several minutes before noticing my face.
“I’m talking about Tulsa.”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t going to talk about Tulsa.”
I drink some water. Across the room, another couple is sharing something on a phone and laughing. The woman leans against the man without appearing to think about it. I look away.
Our food arrives. It is very good. I can taste almost none of it.
Adam puts down his fork. “Are you having a terrible time?”
“Not terrible.”
“Natalie.”
“I don’t know how to do this.”
He nods slowly. “Neither do I.”
“You keep looking at me as if there’s an answer you need to get right.”
“Because there is.”
“That’s what makes it awful.”
He rubs the back of his neck. For a moment I think he will ask me to tell him what I want, and I prepare to hate that question. Instead he says, “Do you want to go home?”
I consider it honestly. The children will be getting ready for bed. His mother will ask if we had a nice time, and I will have to say something. Tomorrow this will become the evening we tried and found out we couldn’t even eat dinner together.
“Not yet.”
“Do you want to go somewhere else?”
“Where?”
He glances at the carefully arranged fish on his plate. “Somewhere that doesn’t require me to understand foam.”
A laugh escapes before I can stop it.
“There you are,” he says softly, then looks embarrassed at having said it.
We get the rest of the food boxed. The waiter is professionally unsurprised. In the car, Adam asks if I remember the diner off Route 9, and I tell him I drove past it two weeks ago and thought of the gravy.
“You didn’t stop?”
“I had three children with me.”
“Fair.”
The diner still has red vinyl booths and a rotating cake display with a suspiciously permanent-looking slice of lemon pie. The woman who seats us calls us honey without studying our clothes. Adam orders disco fries, then checks with me before ordering a second fork.
“I’m willing to share,” I tell him.
“I remember your claim on fries being much more rigid.”
“My claim is that yours look better.”
“They’re from the same plate.”
“And yet.”
He laughs properly this time. I feel it low in my stomach, an old response I have no intention of discussing.
The fries arrive covered in gravy and melted cheese. Adam gets a streak of gravy on the cuff of his jacket within thirty seconds.
“Your sleeve.”
He looks down. “Good. Now I belong here.”
For a while we eat. He asks about the exhibition, and when I start explaining the difference between the cover I like and the one the director will probably choose, he listens. He asks why I don’t show them only the one I want.
“Because they need to feel they’ve had a choice.”
“So you include one that’s bad on purpose?”
“Never. That’s the one they’ll pick.”
He grins. “Clients are clients.”
“Yes. And mine have opinions about beige.”
“What do they say?”
“That it feels calm.”
“Does it?”
“It feels like they’ve given up.”
He laughs into his napkin. The waitress stops beside us and asks whether she needs to bring more napkins or call somebody. I tell her he has always been difficult to take out, and Adam says he behaved perfectly until I insulted beige.
For a few minutes I forget to be careful.
Then his phone vibrates on the table. We both look at it. His mother’s name is on the screen, and he answers immediately.
“Everything okay?”
She needs to know where Owen’s reading book is. Adam tells her the front pocket of his backpack, then listens, smiling a little, while Owen apparently insists it has vanished. There is a rustle, a muffled complaint, and Adam says, “Tell him I accept his apology in writing.”
When he hangs up, he leaves the phone where we can see it.
“You knew where it was,” I say.
“He showed me yesterday.”
I take another fry. I don’t congratulate him. He doesn’t seem to expect it.
After a while he says, “Are you happier without me there?”
The question changes the air between us. I could answer gently. I could answer cruelly. I try to answer honestly.
“Sometimes.”
He nods, looking at the plate.
“I don’t miss being disappointed,” I say. “I miss you. Those things keep happening at the same time.”
“What do you miss?”
“This.” I gesture between us, then feel foolish. “Talking. You being funny. Having somebody who remembers me before I had everyone’s spare clothes in my bag.”
“I remember.”
“I know. But sometimes I need you to act like it.”
He picks up his fork, then puts it down. “What would you have wanted instead of the flowers?”
I look at him long enough that he adds, “I’m asking because I want to know. Not because I’m going to order it from the bathroom.”
“An hour.”
“An hour?”
“Where nobody needs me and I don’t spend the first forty minutes explaining how to keep everyone alive.”
He takes that quietly.
“And grocery-store flowers,” I add. “The little ranunculus. The ones that look like cabbages.”
“I know the ones.”
“You bought them once when we lived above the bakery. You thought they were roses that hadn’t finished blooming.”
“I was trying to sound knowledgeable.”
“You were twenty-four. You thought every houseplant was a fern.”
“Some of them were.”
“One. One of them was a fern.”
His smile fades a little as he looks at me. “I was happy there.”
“So was I.”
“I keep thinking about that apartment as somewhere I needed to get you out of.”
“The bathroom ceiling was disgusting.”
“It was.”
“But I liked our life.”
He swallows. “I thought you wanted more.”
“I did. I wanted a washing machine. A bedroom door that shut.” I rub a thumb over the edge of my napkin. “I didn’t want to trade you for them.”
He looks away toward the window. I let him have the time. Outside, a truck backs into a space beneath the sign, its lights washing red over the glass.
When Adam speaks again, he doesn’t try to explain. “I miss you too.”
We leave before eleven. In the car outside the house, he asks whether I would let him take the children out in the morning so I can work. I remind him that Lucy has soccer and Owen hates watching.
“I checked. Mom’s having Owen for pancakes. I’ll take Lucy and Benji.”
“What if Benji cries the whole time?”
“Then I’ll walk him. And probably miss some soccer.”
I look at him. “That does happen.”
“I know.” He catches my expression. “I’m beginning to know.”
At the door, his mother puts on her coat while he carries the lilies out to her car. I thank her, then stand on the porch with him after she leaves.
“I had a good time at the second dinner,” I say.
“Me too.”
“The first one was expensive practice.”
“I’ll eat the fish tomorrow. Get my money’s worth.”
He looks at my mouth, briefly enough that I could pretend I imagined it. I don’t move closer. Neither does he.
“Good night, Nat.”
“Good night.”
I close the door and stand with my hand on the lock until his car starts. Then I go upstairs, check each child, and put the earrings carefully in their box instead of dropping them beside the sink.
In the morning, Adam arrives with a travel mug and the diaper bag he packed the night before.
I check it while he helps Lucy find her cleats.
There are wipes, bottles in the insulated pocket, spare clothes, and the pacifier with the blue handle.
I move the clothes aside and put them back exactly where they were.
At the door he says, “I’ll text when we get there.”
“Thank you.”
He does. A picture follows, Lucy on the field and Benji tucked into the carrier against his chest, one small hand gripping his coat. I enlarge the photograph until I can see my son’s face. Then I put the phone beside the keyboard and open my work.
For the first half hour I hear things that aren’t happening: a cry upstairs, somebody calling from the bathroom. I get up once to check the back door. After that, the cover begins to occupy me. I move the title, change the color, undo both changes, and finally see what the painting needs.
When they return, my coffee is cold because I’ve forgotten to drink it.
“Good morning?” Adam asks.
I look at the screen, pleased enough that I don’t bother hiding it. “Yes. It was.”