On Second Thought Page 7

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she says.

  “Don’t be afraid.”

  “It’s just easier to stay with you,” she says.

  But her phone breaks in again and she excuses herself, stepping away, covering an ear. And just beyond that, Don’t Walk blinks to the negligence of a woman texting up the curb past a guy who just stepped out of the Apple Store, now drawing up a cigarette, then dropping a match, smothering it.

  And by the time she gets back, I’m still working over what I want to say. Or where to even go with this. So I ask without asking…

  “Mother,” she says in this matter-of-fact way before hiding her phone. “I’m sorry. I knew I shouldn’t have called her in the first place.”

  Me, squeezing palms: “Sounds important.”

  “If driving to hang out in my old room is what you’d call important,” she tells me.

  “I can’t imagine that would be a good time,” I say.

  “Just tell me you agree,” she says.

  “And what am I agreeing to?”

  “That sometimes you ask for advice without actually needing it. Just hoping to have a polite enough conversation, to find some common ground—to flatter, maybe. As opposed to needing this lecture. As opposed to hearing that you’re inept at all that you do. But yeah, if I don’t get down there soon, she’ll likely find me.”

  “And you don’t want that?”

  “Would you?” she says. “I’m sorry. I’ve tried—I have. It’s just that, it’s hard to explain. She’s critical. I am her competition, or that’s how she sees me. She really always has. So the only way to win with her, I know, is to fail…and I can’t do that,” she says as lunch arrives. Then silence again.

  “I’m heading out in a few,” I say if only to cut this tension. “Boston, I’m told. We’ll see. But this wouldn’t be until next week if it even happens,” I say, and she gives me such a look. “I’ll miss this.”

  “Is this work?” she says.

  “Yes.”

  “So will I,” she says, “miss this.”

  And I’m not sure why this feels so heavy. Why she feels heavy. She always does. And by heavy I mean, what is this? And why can’t I figure it out? But instead I shake salt, watching her, wondering when have I ever anguished over having to leave…over this, work.

  “What’d you tell them,” she says, “you know, about me?”

  “I said you don’t hike. That’s all.”

  “So the obvious?”

  “And that you love white chocolate, the worst kind.”

  She laughs.

  “And that we do this,” I say, “but other than that, you’re just a grand mystery.”

  “Why is that?” she says.

  “I’m not really sure.”

  “Because I’ve never had you over,” she says.

  “Because you’ve never had me over,” I say.

  “And because I take it too slow,” she says half mocking herself. And even she can’t stifle a grin.

  “Slow,” I say. “Right.” And this look she’s giving me.

  As she takes a drink. And so do I.

  “What else did you say?”

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “And why do I worry about what others think of me?”

  “Why do you?” I say. And she smiles and so do I. “Because they loved you. They think you’re gorgeous.”

  “Gorgeous,” she says, scoffing, taking a bite, peering up.

  “Gorgeous,” I say.

  And again there’s her ankle brushing mine as a flurry of petals breeze down from that messy magnolia. Still wondering, as they settle, how an ankle, how a look so simple, can feel this euphoric.

  Chapter Nine

  Campbell’s Soup

  Madisen

  Where should I be right now? Likely idling near the water cooler waiting for my Lean Cuisine to bing while humoring our CAD guy as he deludes himself into believing he’s the only one with enough machismo to flip a five-gallon water jug. Or assuring my colleague, albeit unenthusiastically, that it only happens once as she carries on about her nuptials and a gown she says won’t fit after too many rum balls she’s quote-unquote taste-testing for their red barn reception.

  All varieties of which I won’t be sampling. Instead I’ll be slipping back into work after the longer than usual lunch I’m about to have with Rae.

  Since when do I, ever? And because, after their five o’clock commutes, after they’ve prepped real meals and shared anecdotes around familiar kitchen tables, I’ll still be at the office plugging away.

  Which leads me here to our table on the patio at Archipelago tucked beneath a tree that provides more privacy than it does shade as she brushes petals off the edge and asks about Andi, who’s currently home sick with the flu.

  “She was hoping to land something stronger than the bottle of Robitussin I dropped off this morning,” I say. “My care package of Campbell’s soup, two packs of Kleenex, Lysol, Zyrtec—since I told her it was just allergies, and those mmm-flavored cherry lozenges. Her voice, though, you know what I mean? I think I’m in love. I said so, and she laughed into a cough.”

  “Allergies?” Rae says. “I’m glad to never get those.”

  “They’re really bad this year,” I say, “with the rain and all.”

  And where am I going with this?

  As she’s bending across the table, taking my hand. And these nerves, God. “And so we meet again,” she says. It’s all she has to say to set them off.

  And I’m back in a whirl. “And so we do,” I say.

  “How long do I have you?” she says.

  “However long you want.”

  If only that was true. In reality, work has piled so high thanks to my being unusually unproductive all morning, as I run over this in my mind, what I’ll say and how, convincing myself it’s time, that I should, that I’m going to bring up Jordan.

  To the point that I don’t even realize this whole dialogue I’m having with myself.

  But apparently, she has. “What could you possibly be thinking?” she says.

  “That it’s hard to break away,” I say.

  And that knot of tension builds as they argue at the next table over some op-ed published in The New York Times. And I’m listening in.

  Asking her, “Have you read it?”

  But what I wish I could say is Would it matter? Because it doesn’t even feel as if she knows me right now.

  Then I say, “You seem…I don’t know.”

  “Overwhelmed,” she says, kicking back.

  “Definitely not that,” I say.

  “Nervous.”

  “As if you’re ever nervous,” I say.

  “I’m always nervous around you,” she says, and my heart skips a beat.

  So before I’m able to regret it, I blurt out, “There’s something I’ve been meaning to say.”

  “I can tell,” she says.

  As I stumble. “It’s just that…”

  “It’s just that what?” she says.

  “It’s just that we met in a weird sort of way,” I say.

  “What way would that be?” she says, but she’s slipping a hand up my thigh, which does things.

  “You’re sidetracking me,” I say.

  “Am I?”

  “I don’t even know where this is going,” I say.

  “Neither do I,” she says.

  “And it doesn’t need to, I mean, go anywhere.”

  “I like where we are,” she says.

  “Well I’m concerned you might feel obligated,” I say before I realize what she just said, that she likes where we are. So I say, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just that the more you stall,” she says—and that look in her eye. That wonderfully agonizing look when I’m hoping to play serious here. Thinking, why does this have to be such a hard thing? Any of it. All of it. Because she wants me to be this: a girl who cappuccinos. The girl who lunches. Not charades, not Kidz Bop, not TeenNick.

  So now what, I
’m backing down?

  “Let’s see,” she says. “I’ll take a wild guess. You’re either going to say we’ve gone too fast or there’s someone else.”

  “Someone else?” I say. “That’s not what you think.”

  “I’m not sure what to think,” she says.

  “Well there was somebody else,” I say in this flippant sort of way. “But there’s not.”

  “There was?”

  “We’re divorced.”

  “You were married?”

  “I was. But it’s over. It has been.” As one confession spirals into the next until it dawns on me that I’ve said way too much. But not nearly enough. Not the right stuff. Not the planned stuff. But why does it matter? Since I’m waffling again, doubting, second-guessing, wondering if there might be a less apocalyptic time to finish this out.

  And as I do, she’s off on another topic.

  “Will I see you tonight?” she says.

  And with that, it just seems as if my moment is gone. “Would you like to?” I say.

  “You should stop by,” she says.

  But it’s close to nine when I do, and we’re beat and she’s cooked this meal and starts telling me about her day—in an unusually long and arduous way. And though I do flip back a couple of times, I never quite know what to say. Or how. And she doesn’t bring it up, either.

  But it’s not as if that ends my preoccupation.

  Which builds well into the morning when she slips out of bed and brews coffee as I wrap myself up in her robe. As we caffeinate half dressed. As the day sprawls out.

  As my calendar fills in. And as my week flies by. Before it all wraps up.

  And the subject is so far buried under good-byes by the time she heads out of town.

  So by Friday, I’m sharing my version of our confessions over cappuccinos en route to Aline’s with Andi before our night of Chianti meets charades.

  “And that’s it—that’s your big reveal?” Andi says, sucking so hard on that bottle of water that the side sinks in. “A little anticlimactic, don’t you think?”

  “So it didn’t go according to plan,” I say.

  “And therein lies your problem,” she says. “You don’t need a plan. You just slip it in, you know, like casual conversation.”

  “And how would you suggest I do that?”

  “My kid’s totally into that,” she says. “My kid asks for that all the time.”

  “Why are you so much better than me, at parenting, at everything. And how do you come up with this stuff off the top of your head? And why didn’t I think of that?” I say. “After I’ve agonized and planned. Still it comes right down to timing, which I never get right.”

  “Much like me with breakups,” she says.

  “There’s never a good time for a breakup,” I say.

  “But for ten dragging minutes at least, she sat there sulking. Or watching the game. I guess it depends on how you look at it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I had a game. I couldn’t hang out and explain why our two-week relationship wouldn’t go where she wanted it to go. And she wouldn’t leave.”

  “Well I, for one, am grateful it didn’t work out,” I say. “Since I can’t have you hooking up with someone my girlfriend used to date.”

  “Eons ago,” she says.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say, dumbfounded that I just referred to Rae as my girlfriend.

  “Anyway,” she adds, “we have plans to see a show.”

  “But I thought you just ended it,” I say.

  “I did.”

  “Then why are you seeing a show?” I say.

  “Why?” she says. “Because she invited me, that’s why.”

  “Shouldn’t you draw a line?”

  “I did,” she says. “It’s over. I just wish it wasn’t so hard. God, it’s no wonder half the nation does this by text.”

  “You’re giving me ideas,” I joke.

  “And yeah,” she says, “don’t.”

  “You know I’m not serious,” I say.

  “But you are. And you would. And it’s wrong,” she says. But I didn’t mean a text text. I thought more along the lines of an email. An email wouldn’t feel so utterly terrifying.

  Still, why does it matter? She’ll leave regardless, the minute she finds out. I’m like the worst ball and chain ever. At least it feels that way. But why should I apologize? I won’t.

  “That’s fine, Andi, but this is not easy. So don’t expect me to pull out violins for you if you can’t for me,” I say. “You’re acting as if this girl was any different than any other. You do this all the time.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do,” I say. “I mean, really, what are you even looking for? And how is this any different than all the rest? And why are you still hanging out with her?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says.

  “It does matter. You who always tells me to move on, get over it,” I say. “You weren’t in love with her.”

  “Like I said, it doesn’t matter.”

  “It was two weeks!” I say.

  And, again, this is not your typical Andi who honestly couldn’t care less about what I thought, especially when it comes to this—to moving on, to getting over it. “Look, maybe I just wish I could find someone I click with,” she says, “half as well as I click with you.” And here, it all shifts. It changes, her posture, mine. “God, how do you get me to say this stuff?” But what is she saying? And what’s changing? I’m not sure. All I know is that it feels somehow…wonderful. If anything could feel wonderful and tragic at the same time. “Look, can we not get into this?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that, look, timing is an artificial concept. It’s right up there with closure, that stuff that never happens. Besides, the girl’s totally into you. How could you not see that? And how could that possibly change because of this, because of Jordan?”

  As we pull up to Aline’s, which is the answer in and of itself. Proof positive that I could do or say the wrong thing and turn her off. And as much as I’d like to continue this conversation, we’re here, and I’m not exactly sure if she really meant it that way. And besides, she’s in this mood.

  Aline’s landed one of those downtown Victorians they’ve split into condos. With that sunny-side addition, scarcely in line with its whole multicolored Easter egg aesthetic, its asymmetry. And here I am, realizing that my wishing Aline had good taste and wishing she hadn’t come upon it can be felt simultaneously.

  It’s usually back there behind that glass where Jordan waits, where she bolts out from to see me only to trip us up as soon as we near the front door.

  And that’s exactly what we get.

  The kid dragging Andi inside. As I stay out here, understandably so, basking in a glint of sun after an awfully long week of fluorescent. Tense but trying not to be. Her peonies and poppies, her stone retainer wall. That thick-painted porch with its glossed-up ceiling, reflective even now.

  As I catch, out of the corner of my eye, Aline, those leather flip-flops settled on high-cut grass.

  But how long has she been there?

  And why is she coming over?

  Then with a voice so soft, so capable of stirring up a whole mess of possible replies, none of which I actually intend to use, she says, “You look nice.”

  Simple.

  But not.

  Wishing I could feel angry, not taken by her. Not flattered. But I am. Where is my Fuck you when I actually need it? When she’s right here in front of me, spilling up nerves, while I wait for our usual, I don’t know, See you Sunday or Plans this weekend? When I’m waiting to hear her say anything but that.

  “You’re welcome to come inside,” she says.

  “And why would you say that?”

  “Because your daughter’s in there,” she says.

  “Not that.”

  “Are compliments now out of bounds?” she says.

  As I ta
ke a step back. “How is she?”

  “She’s great,” I hear. “And you?”

  But I am, I’m hoping she’ll say it again, aren’t I? “I’m fine.”

  “And I never did thank you for covering,” she says.

  A remark I’m quick to brush off with, “Sure.”

  “And have you been to the lake?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “What am I doing?”

  “Yes, Aline, what are you doing?”

  “Maybe I thought we could have a conversation, that’s all.”

  “I see. Converse away.”

  “Please,” she says.

  “Converse, Aline.”

  “Why do you have to make this into a scene?” she says. “Consider Jordan.”

  “Who’s nowhere in sight,” I say.

  And her ease, this way she settles on me as if I was hers.

  But I’m always forgetting. I’m always flowering her up, holding her in my pocket no matter how inconsolably I lost her.

  “I don’t hate you,” she says.

  “Keep reminding me.”

  “And I’m not angry.”

  “I’m not either,” I say.

  Wishing I could find the agony and panic and rage she left me with. When it seems nowhere to be found.

  As the kid comes dashing out and startles me.

  With Andi seconds behind, and she’s giving me that What the hell are you doing? glare.

  “So. I’ll see you Sunday,” I say.

  Wondering, as I do, if I’m always going to feel this.

  Sometimes I do. Usually I don’t.

  Wondering, too, if there’s any truth to that story I made up in my mind—the one that began soon after our real story came to an end.

  And the look she gives as I turn away, it’s hard to say.

  Chapter Ten

  Chopin

  Rae

  I’m working on my umpteenth bottle of VitaminWater Zero while flipping through this complimentary copy of USA Today that I found in my hotel room when I see Madisen’s name flash across my screen. I pick up. “I forgot my umbrella,” she says with this beautiful sort of sadness to her voice.

  “At my place?” I say.

  “That would be where I left it. With this eighty percent chance of rain today,” she says. “How very me of me.”