“Hello, Claire Ellis,” he’d said when he reached her. His voice was deep, croaky. He handed her the flowers—black-eyed Susans (what guy brought black-eyed Susans?), eased the backpack off his shoulder, and pulled out a bottle of wine, a hunk of cheese, a floury baguette, two small juice glasses. “I didn’t know what to bring, so I brought all this. Hope you’re up for a picnic.”
For a long time Claire thought that maybe she could live inside Ben’s love, that it would keep her sane. She often wondered, in fact, if Ben, with his erudite good sense, was all that stood between her and a life of manic unpredictability. Sometimes she suspected that Ben was living through her—he didn’t have to be impulsive because she was; she enabled him to be the nurturing presence in the background. It was a safe role for him, a comfortable one. But was it good for her? Was he helping her by keeping her from her demons, her own unmanageable feelings? At times she felt like an exotic plant, a bonsai tree, perhaps; he was the custodian who kept her healthy but also tightly pruned.
“I CAN’T DO it. I can’t go out there.”
“Why not?” Claire’s therapist, Dina Bronstein, peered at her over her reading glasses.
Claire pushed her forefinger into the leather seat cushion of the couch, making doughy indentations and watching them disappear.
“What’s keeping you from going?” Dina pressed her.
“For one thing, I’m flying to Birmingham tonight.”
Dina wrote something on the pad of paper she always had in her lap. “Uh-huh.”
“It’s my tour. It’s important.”
“It is.” Dina nodded.
“I could have canceled this session, I guess. I could’ve gone this morning. But I needed to see you. I just—I can’t face her like this.”
“Like what, Claire?” Dina asked gently.
Claire looked at the oil painting above Dina’s head of the Maine coast, a picture so familiar to her that she was sure she could identify every rock. She had asked, once, where it was from, and Dina told her it was Spruce Harbor, the village she disappeared to for four weeks every summer. Beginning in May, it changed, in Claire’s mind, from a soothing seascape to a provocation, a reminder that Dina had a life outside the office, far away from here.
“The whole thing is so—ironic.”
“In what way?”
“Alison is the most cautious person I know. In high school she was always the designated driver. I was the one who did stupid things.”
“Like what?”
“Drinking and driving.” Tucking her legs under her, Claire sat back in the deep couch. She took a breath and let it out slowly. “Sleeping with someone else’s husband.”
“Ah.”
“Ah.”
Dina placed the notebook on the small round table beside her. “And not just anyone else’s husband.”
Claire nodded.
“So when you say that you can’t face her—”
“It’s really awful, isn’t it?”
Dina just cocked her head.
Claire looked at the thick slabs of blue and gray in the painting, the bold strokes of green. Orange, red, ochre: how did the artist see all those colors in the rocks? “I guess I feel that, deep down, Alison has to know about Charlie and me, whether it’s conscious or not. I introduced them to each other, you know. I set them up. I think she knew that there was kind of a—flirtation between us.”
“Were you jealous when she and Charlie got together?”
“No, I don’t think so. I saw myself as having given her a gift—the gift of his love.”
“So how do you see it now?”
“Uhh.” Claire sighed through her nose. “I don’t know. Maybe the truth is I wanted to keep him around—and giving him to Alison was the only way I could imagine holding on to him.”
Dina shifted in her chair. “That’s quite an admission.”
“You must think I’m an awful person.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I would, if I were you.”
“Why?”
Claire took a deep breath. “Well, for one thing, this accident.”
“Do you feel responsible for this accident, Claire?”
“No. I don’t know. I mean, maybe partially. Charlie was supposed to meet her at the party and drive home, but he didn’t come because—because of the awkwardness of it, I guess. And she had those martinis—and then I wouldn’t even let her come to dinner. Ben invited her, but I didn’t want her to come.”
“And you feel badly about that.”
“Yeah. It’s just all so—complicated.”
“It is,” Dina agreed.
The windows rattled, and though the shades were drawn, Claire knew a city bus was going by; she could feel it rumbling under her legs. “I can’t stop thinking about this time in high school with Alison, when I was driving drunk.”
Dina nodded, picking up the pen again.
“We were at someone’s house, and I had a few beers. We decided to go to this swimming hole called Grover’s Gulch. I remember Alison asking me if I was okay to drive, and I said, Sure, of course. I did think I was. I was driving a bunch of people, and she was in the car behind me. It was just getting dark. The road went up and down”—Claire demonstrated, gliding her flat hand over imaginary ripples—“with these slow, steep inclines and long, coasting descents. Halfway down a hill I could see these blurry white shapes, stretching across the road. I slowed down, but I was going too fast. I felt this thump under the wheels. Thump thump. It was sickening. Nobody in my car even noticed; they were all laughing about something. But when we got there, I pulled Alison aside and told her I thought I might’ve hit something. Something white.
“I remember she put her arm around me and said, ‘Well, it ain’t white anymore.’ Then she whispered, ‘I won’t tell if you won’t.’ ” Claire laughed a little. “‘I won’t tell if you won’t.’” She shook her head. “Alison had this way of making the things I did seem okay, even when we both knew they weren’t.”
“She was a good friend,” Dina said.
“She was.”
“And now … ”
“And now,” Claire said.
Going through her dresser drawers later that afternoon and pulling out clothes to pack, watching the neon bars on the digital clock change configuration as the minutes clicked by—4:19, 4:20, 4:21—Claire realized that she couldn’t leave without calling Alison. She picked up the phone and held it in both hands. Pressing talk with her thumb, she watched the small electronic window light up. Then she clicked it off. She pressed it again, the window lit up again, and she dialed Alison and Charlie’s number.
No one picked up. The call went straight to voice mail. Prickling with relief, Claire forced herself to leave a message. “Hi, Alison,” she said. “I just want you to know that I’ve been thinking about you constantly and feel terrible about what happened. I’m flying out tonight, but please call me if you want to. I know Ben is coming out there, and I”—she stumbled over the lie—“I really wish I could come, too. Well. I’m sorry I missed you. I’m … I’m really sorry.”
Now this was true. She was really sorry. But even as she said it, she was pushing Alison out of her mind. Because if she really let herself feel for Alison, she would have to feel all of it: the immensity of her own betrayal, the terrible cruelty of what she and Charlie were doing. And she couldn’t do that. Not now. Not yet.
Chapter Seven
October 2008
When Claire lost the baby, on a windy Monday morning in October, Ben had just arrived at his office. “I’m bleeding,” she told him when he picked up the phone.
“Holy shit, what do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Jesus, I don’t know,” she said, sobbing into the phone.
“Call the doctor. Do you want me to call the doctor?”
“Just come home,” she said.
He left work without telling anyone, left his sketches scattered on the floor. Took the elevator down forty-seven fl
ights, hailed a cab, got stuck in crosstown traffic, climbed out and found a subway, changed at Forty-second Street and sat on the local watching the stops go by in slow motion: Fifty-ninth, Sixty-sixth, Seventy-second, Eighty-sixth. As he ran up the sidewalk, trash skittered across the street in front of their West Eighty-seventh Street building.
When Ben got to their apartment, Claire was in the bedroom. She wasn’t crying. She lay on the bed, facing the wall, wrapped in a blanket. “It’s gone,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
She didn’t answer. Ben went over and sat beside her and touched her shoulder, and she curled toward him, put her head in his lap. Silently he stroked her hair, cresting the waves with the tips of his fingers. After a few moments she said, “I wish we hadn’t told anyone.”
“I’ll take care of it,” he said.
She was silent again. Then she said, “Do you think God is punishing us because we weren’t sure?”
He looked down at her, lying there in his lap. He couldn’t see her eyes. “I was sure,” he said.
After a while Ben went to the window. The sky was the same soft white with gray undertones that they’d chosen for the living room from the Benjamin Moore sample chart several months earlier, when they’d moved into this family-friendly building. China White. He looked out the window and glanced back inside. It was as if he could open a window and step into another room, and for a moment he wondered what it would feel like to do it. He looked down at the street, the dirty yellow cabs, their downstairs neighbor in a striped fur coat like a human-size raccoon tapping her foot impatiently as her leashed Pomeranian sniffed the front tire of a parked car, and he closed the window.
He turned back toward Claire, but she seemed to have fallen asleep. Suddenly thirsty, Ben turned and made his way to the kitchen, a narrow alley at the back of the apartment, as streamlined as a ship’s galley. Opening the stainless fridge, he found a jar of sun-dried tomatoes, a deli container of Fairway olives, various ludicrous condiments like almond paste and truffle mustard, a half-eaten Belgian chocolate bar, and an expired quart of fresh-squeezed orange juice. He opened the cabinet above the sink and found a pack of organic brown coffee filters, but no coffee. Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t remember the last time they’d made coffee at home.
He shut the door and slid down the smooth stainless cabinet until he was crouching on the floor, staring out the large window at the other end of the apartment.
For the next few nights Claire tossed in her sleep. “Where are you?” she cried.
“I’m here.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m here. Right here, Claire.”
She’d shake her head and turn away.
“Don’t you think,” Ben said a few weeks later, “don’t you think”—he traced the blue lines on her forearm—“we should think about trying again?”
She turned away.
“When you’re ready.”
“What if I’m never ready?” she said.
Chapter Eight
“Hey. How is she today?”
“Come in.” Charlie held the door open, and Robin did, in fact, stride right in. Over the past few days he had come to admire her forthrightness; it was refreshing not to have to do the dance of “what-do-you-need,” “oh-nothing-we’re-fine” with people who wrung their hands and offered help but didn’t know how to come through. With Robin there was none of that—she just showed up. She didn’t ask what they wanted; she just brought what she thought they’d need: milk and bread and a warm lasagna. She whisked Annie and Noah over to her house (a pleasure dome, Charlie saw when he picked them up, their eyes wide with wonder at the Disney-like bounty of video games and animated movies on a theater-size flat-screen TV, gaily colored packaged snacks, impossible-to-get toys of the moment tossed carelessly around the family room). He’d practically had to drag the kids away by their heels.
“It’s quiet in here,” Robin said.
“She’s upstairs with the kids.”
“You want to tell her I’m here?”
“Yeah. Just a sec.” He bounded up the stairs and rounded the corner to the master bedroom. The door was slightly ajar, and he pushed it open all the way to reveal Alison, in sweatpants and a blue UNC sweatshirt (purchased at her fifteenth reunion last summer), her hair in a stringy ponytail, sitting cross-legged with Annie on the floor playing Sorry. Charlie peered into the dimness; the shades were drawn. Noah was sprawled on the floor with two small Thomas trains, conducting a conversation between them in a high-pitched voice.
“Hey. Robin’s downstairs,” Charlie said with forced cheer, opening a shade. He felt like a nurse, bustling in to wake up a patient.
Alison looked up, squinting into the cold daylight. “What time is it?”
Charlie gestured with his free hand to the alarm clock, then said, gratuitously, “Four-ten.”
“Your turn, Mommy,” Annie said.
Alison picked up a card and turned it over.
“Move forward ten or back one,” Annie read. “Forward ten is better.”
“Should I send ’er up?” Charlie asked.
“I’m disgusting,” Alison murmured. “I haven’t showered in three days.”
“You need a bath,” Annie said. “A bubble bath. Go, Mommy.”
Dutifully Alison picked up a green plastic Hershey’s kiss–shaped pawn and pushed it ten spaces with her index finger.
“You’re fine. She doesn’t care,” Charlie said.
Alison glanced up sharply, and he could tell she’d caught the impatience in his voice. Easy, he thought. He hadn’t known how much he wanted Robin to stay until that moment. He was, he suddenly realized, desperate for it.
“Hah! Sorry!” Annie squealed triumphantly, holding up a card. “Sorry, Mommy. You have to go back to start.”
Downstairs in the foyer with Robin, Charlie said, “You can go up.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. She’s—it’s tough.”
Robin nodded. “I can only imagine.”
“It means a lot that you stop by. I think—people don’t really know what to do. Hell, I don’t know what to do.”
“Is there any news?”
Charlie wasn’t sure whether Alison had told her about the DWI, so he didn’t mention it. He said, “The boy’s funeral is tomorrow. Alison wants to go.”
Robin grimaced. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“No. But her mind is made up. She said she’ll take a bus if I don’t drive her.”
“A bus?”
Oh shit. So Robin didn’t know. “She doesn’t feel comfortable driving yet,” he said.
“Sure, of course. Where is it?”
“Patterson.”
“I could take her,” Robin said.
For a moment Charlie was tempted to accept. The last thing in the world he wanted was to go to the funeral—it seemed to him intrusive and inappropriate. What right did they have to share in that family’s private grief? And he feared that Alison’s presence could be seen as worse than inappropriate—it might come across as callous. The fact was that if Alison hadn’t been at that intersection—and perhaps, too, if she hadn’t drunk those martinis—the boy would still be alive.
But Charlie knew he couldn’t let Robin take his place. A line from the book he’d read to Annie and Noah the night before, The Bear Went over the Mountain, came to mind: Can’t go over it. Can’t go under it. We have to go through it.
He shook his head. “Thanks for offering.”
“I’ll watch the kids.”
Charlie smiled in tacit acceptance.
After Robin went upstairs, he unloaded and loaded the dishwasher with breakfast bowls, wiped the counter, picked toys off the kitchen floor. Then he stood in the hall and cocked his head, listening. He could hear the quiet murmur of voices. He took his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed Claire’s cell.
“Hey,” he whispered. “Where are you?”
“God. I’ve been waiting for yo
u to call.”
“I couldn’t.”
“I know. I wasn’t expecting it. I just—hoped. I did leave a message for Alison a while ago.”
“I know. She mentioned it. That was—good of you. So where are you?”
“On the way to LaGuardia. Book tour, remember?”
“Oh yeah. Real life,” he said.
“Doesn’t feel like it.”
“Well, this sure doesn’t.”
She grunted. “What you’re going through is as real as it gets, right?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Surreal, I’d say.” He suddenly felt very tired. He didn’t have the energy to say another word. He wanted to crawl into a hole and go to sleep for a very long time.
“I’m so sorry, Charlie,” Claire said.
For the first time since the accident, Charlie felt his throat constrict, his eyes blur with tears. He swallowed hard.
“It’s okay,” she said softly.
“It’s really not.” He choked, biting down on the words to keep his voice under control.
“I wanted to come out there, but I just—”
“I know. I didn’t—want you here.” He almost took it back, fearing that she would take offense at his bluntness.
But all she said was, “That’s what I figured. I’m sure it’s been hard enough.”
“Yeah.”
“I just—I wish I could see you.”
“I know.” His longing for her was so acute that it felt cancerous, deep in his bones.
“Ben wants to come. He’ll call.”
“Okay.”
“How is she?”
“She’s okay. I mean, what can I say? She’s devastated. She’s okay.”
“I know.”
“Enough about all this. I should be asking about you,” he said.
“No, you shouldn’t. Not now.”
“Later,” he whispered.
“Later,” she said.
CHARLIE DROPPED ALISON at the door of the funeral home and went off to park, then slipped into the maroon-carpeted chapel right before the doors closed. Alison was sitting alone in the back pew. The song “Tears in Heaven” was playing, an instrumental version heavy on the strings that Charlie guessed the funeral home must have had on a mix tape tailored for children. At the front, flanked by two large, heart-shaped flower forms as tidily patterned as frosting on a supermarket cake, was a small baby blue casket.