“I’m just here for that card. Remember? The one with the name.” I pointed at Jack and she blinked, seeming to notice him for the first time.
“Do you mean a business card?” She gestured to Dr. Broyard’s cards in their Lucite display, right beside her own.
“No, the card I asked you to keep. You put it in there.” I pointed to the middle desk drawer.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you, but you’re more than welcome to take several business cards.”
Her big-boned androgyny was gone. She had carefully tipped a million tiny details in the girlish direction. The long hair was pulled back by a tartan headband. Her tight-fitting blouse was designed to minimize her broad shoulders and it did. Her whole body appeared shrunken. Sitting down, she actually seemed to be petite, a delicate woman.
Dr. Broyard popped out holding a file folder. As she looked up at him her whole bearing shifted; she became luminous. Not with the light of life, but like a husk lit electrically from within. She reached for the folder and he let it go—just shy of her fingers. It floated to the ground. Ruth-Anne hesitated and then awkwardly bent over to pick it up. When her face reappeared it was smiling with the hope that he had enjoyed the rear view, but he turned and went back into his office. Her smile widened with pain, and seeing her teeth I could also see the jawbone that held them, and her skull with its empty sockets and the whole of her clickety-clack skeleton. I could see right into her brain; it was shaking with fixation.
Just his name on a piece of paper could set her off. Even a word like Broyard—barnyard, backyard—sent her into an exhausted loop of fantasies. Everything else in her life, including her own therapy practice, was faked. The spell consumed 95 percent of her energy but she was surprised to see that no one noticed; the wafer-thin 5 percent version of her sufficed. She kept a list on her desk of all the things that used to make her happy:
Zydeco music
Dogs
My work
Rainy days
Thai food
Body surfing
My friends
But she couldn’t generate enough sadness and regret to free herself. She lived for the three days a year he replaced her in her office and she worked beneath him. Through sheer force of will she became what he once said he wished his wife was: small, feminine, with a slightly conservative elegance. Being this woman, this receptionist, was her one joy. Joy is the wrong word: it fueled the spell and so the spell could continue, which is the only thing a spell wants to do.
Ruth-Anne filed the folder. Looking at her expansive back it was easier to remember my therapist who was so daring and so helpful, even at 5 percent. I owed her.
It took a while to get it going, but after a few seconds of rocking on my heels I began to sway to the twangy rhythm. Ruth-Anne raised her eyebrows, hoping I was just stretching my legs. I began hoarsely, unmelodically but with great force.
“Will you stay in our Lovers’ Story
“If you stay you won’t be sorry”
She looked up, or rather the spell looked up, slowly, with revulsion. The spell, in its tartan headband, was fuming. It looked from me to Dr. Broyard’s door to its own monstrous hands and back to me as I raised my voice in volume:
“’Cause weeeee believe in youuuu”
Jack liked this; he bounced up and down in his sling.
“Soon you’ll grow so take a chance
“With a couple of Kooks
“Hung up on romaaancing”
I only knew the chorus, so I immediately began again,
“Will you stay in our Lovers’ Story”
Something strange was happening with Ruth-Anne. It didn’t seem good. She was sweating; big damp rings were rapidly expanding from the sides of her blouse. She was dissolving. If this was the wrong thing to do, then it was very wrong. I shut my eyes, wrapped my arms around Jack, and chanted,
“If you stay you won’t be sorry
“’Cause weeeee believe in youuuu”
The “in you” part sounded stronger than the rest, full-voiced and resonant. I cracked my eyes. Sweat was streaming down her face and her mouth was pointed heavenward, as if she were singing to the gods, begging them to intercede on this matter, to release her from her spell. We crooned together:
“Soon you’ll grow so take a chance
“With a couple of Kooks
“Hung up on romaaancing”
But they do not exist, the gods. The only way to break the spell is to break the spell. So now she hooked her thumbs under her soggy armpits, trying to ride the twang, embody it. We came around the bend and headed back into the start of the chorus:
“Will you stay in our Lovers’ Story
“If you stay you won’t be sorry”
Her shoulders were broadening, almost ripping her blouse. Makeup melted into the wrinkles around her eyes and her jaw galloped as she sang. Dr. Broyard opened his door, adjusting his spectacles and watching us with a bemused smile—Kirsten peeked out behind him. Too late, doctor! Too late! The spell has been shattered into ten million pieces, too dispersed to flock together.
But I was wrong. Seeing my triumphant face, Ruth-Anne realized who was watching; her croon immediately withered to nothing. For a split second she looked devastated, her eyes wild with disappointment. Then the spell descended and she cozily tucked herself back in, almost relieved, it seemed. She sat down and rolled forward to her computer. I stood before her, my arms hanging, chest heaving, but her eyes stayed locked on the screen. As she repositioned her headband I turned to leave.
“Your card, miss.”
“What?”
“Your appointment card.”
Without a blink she handed me a card for an appointment I didn’t have.
I put it in the glove compartment. Now that I had it I didn’t want to look. Of course it was Darren. Why break a promise to learn something I already knew? This feeling carried me all the way home. I calmly gave Jack his bottle and put him down for his one o’clock nap. But the moment I shut the nursery door the equanimity ended and I could not get to the glove compartment quickly enough. I carried it inside in my fist and sat on the couch. I opened my fingers, smoothed the card and turned it over.
It wasn’t Darren.
I ripped the card to shreds before remembering, too late, the old trick for getting someone to call by tearing their name up.
The phone rang almost immediately.
“You look the same,” he said. “Kirsten looks much older but you look the same. And the little guy in front—what’s his name?”
“Jack,” I whispered. I sank to my knees, keeling over a throw pillow.
“Jack. He’s a sweetheart—how old is he?”
“Ten months.”
He coughed—he already knew that, he had done the math. My forehead had a fever, I was burning up. Oxygen. With the pillow under one arm I crawled to an open window and pointed my mouth at the screen.
“It’s great to hear your voice, Cheryl. It’s been a long time.”
Phillip and Clee.
How had they met? How was it even possible? But why not? If one young woman, why not another?
“I think I owe you an apology,” he continued. “I was in a difficult place when we last spoke.”
“No need,” I choked out. I couldn’t remember what we were talking about.
“No,” he said, “I want to apologize. I should have called when I heard she was . . . but of course I didn’t know for sure. And then when I saw his picture—” His voice cracked. I inhaled wetly and he gasped a sob of relief, as if my tears allowed his tears. This wasn’t the time for one of his long cries; I hoped he knew that. I blew my nose sharply on a sock. It was quiet for a minute. The curtain blew against my face.
“Here’s an idea,” he said finally. “I come over.”
AT THE DOOR WE JUST star
ed at each other. He looked much older; there were heavy bags under his eyes. I felt like a wife who had waited in vain for her husband to return from war, and now, twenty years later, here he was. Ancient, but home. He stepped inside and looked around.
“Where is he?”
“Napping. He should be up soon, though.”
I offered him something to drink. Lemonade? Water?
“Could I just have some hot water?” He pulled a packet of tea bags out of his back pocket. “I’d offer you one but this is a special formulation, made by my acupuncturist. For my lungs.”
We sat on the couch holding our mugs, waiting. He kept glancing at me, trying to weigh my mood or show me how receptive he was. As if I would want to talk about it.
“Why did you step down from the board?” I said finally.
He leapt on this, launching into a lengthy description of his poor health and a recent trip to Thailand, how it really took him out of himself. Each word he said was boring, but collectively the melody of them lulled me. I tried to resist, but just the weight of him, in pounds and ounces, was a relief. Always being the heaviest person in the house had been exhausting. I sipped my tea and leaned back into the couch. When he left I would have to shift the weight back onto my own shoulders again, but that was a problem for later.
“I feel strangely at home here,” Phillip said. He peered at my bookshelf and the coasters on the coffee table as if each thing contained a memory. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jack beginning to wiggle on the baby monitor. I had a sudden wish to prolong this moment, or delay the next one, but a high and certain squawk echoed out.
“I’ll go get him,” I said.
“I’ll come.”
He followed me to the nursery, his breath on my neck. Would there be an unmistakable resemblance?
“Rise and shine, sweet potato,” I said. They had no single feature in common but the likeness could be felt; it was waiting in the wings. I laid Jack on the changing table. He had a messy poop, many wipes were needed. Phillip watched from the corner.
“You have a special connection to him, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“It’s beautiful to watch. Age just kind of slips away, doesn’t it?”
His anus was red. I dabbed it with diaper cream.
“You’re just a man and a woman,” Phillip mused, “like any other couple.”
I seemed to be putting the diaper on in slow motion; I couldn’t get the tabs to stick, it kept opening.
“I’m more like his mother.”
“Okay.” He shrugged agreeably. “I wasn’t sure how you were approaching it.”
The pants weren’t going on easily; two legs slipped into one hole. Phillip peered over my shoulder, watching the struggle.
“I heard there were some . . . complications. Right? A rough start?”
“It was nothing. He’s fine.”
“Oh good, that’s good to hear. So he’ll be able to run, play sports, all that?” He was nodding yes, so I nodded with him.
The moment I pulled up Jack’s elastic band, Phillip swept him off the changing table, right out from under my hand and up toward the ceiling with an airplane noise. Jack squealed, not with glee. Phillip coughed and quickly brought him down again.
“Heavier than he looks.” When he was safely on my hip Jack stared at the bearded old man.
“That’s Phillip,” I said.
Phillip reached out and shook Jack’s soft hand, waggling his noodley arm.
“Hi, little man. I’m an old friend of your grandparents.”
It took me a moment to understand who he meant.
“I’m not sure they think of themselves that way.”
“Understandably. Last thing I heard she was giving it up for adoption. And no one knew who the father was.”
There was a question hidden in his voice—he was 98 percent sure but he wasn’t certain. She might have slept around.
“That was the plan initially,” I said.
“Sounds like she had lots of partners.”
I didn’t answer that.
WE SAT IN THE BACKYARD while Jack ate a mashed-up banana. Phillip lay on his back in the grass and inhaled the warm air, saying, Ah, ah. Jack experimentally put a rock in his mouth; I pulled it out. We moved into the shade; I described my plans for a pergola to block the sun.
“I have a great person for that,” said Phillip. “I’ll have him come next week. Monday?”
I laughed and he said, “She laughs! I made her laugh!”
I tried to frown.
“If you don’t like him, just tell him, ‘I don’t know why you’re here, Phillip is crazy.’ ”
“Phillip is crazy.”
“That’s it.”
I KEPT THINKING HE WAS about to leave, but he kept staying. He played with Jack in the living room while I made dinner. I moved quietly, trying to hear them, but they made no noise. When I poked my head out Jack was gnawing on a rubber hamburger with Phillip sitting on the floor a few feet away, his stiff knees awkwardly angled. He gave me a thumbs-up.
“Dinner’s ready, but I have to put Jack down.”
I gave Jack his puree, bath, bottle.
Phillip watched me as I sang the night-night song and settled Jack in his crib. We smiled down on the baby and then at each other until I looked away.
I apologized for the dinner. “It’s just leftovers.”
“That’s what I love about it. How ordinary it is. This is how people eat! And why not?”
After dinner we watched 60 Minutes on the new flat-screen TV.
“This is the only real show left,” he said, putting his arm around the back of the couch, grazing my shoulders. I tried to relax and get into the program. It was about how counterinsurgency tactics could be used against gangs. When the commercials came Phillip muted it. We watched a woman wash her hair in silence.
“Look at us,” he said. “We’re like an old married couple.” He patted my shoulder. “I was thinking about that on the drive over here, about all our lifetimes together.” He glanced at me sideways. “You still think that?”
“I guess I do,” I said. But I was thinking about Clee. I’d been her enemy, then her mother, then her girlfriend. That was three lifetimes right there. He unmuted the TV. We watched police officers going door-to-door to embed themselves in the community. At the next commercial break he went into detail about his lungs; they were hardening. It was called pulmonary fibrosis. “When your health goes, this kind of stuff really matters.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“This.” He waved his hand across me and the living room. “Security. Friends you can trust who are in it for the long haul.” I didn’t say anything and he looked at me nervously. “I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?”
I looked at my thighs; it was impossible to think with him right next to me, waiting.
“Of course I’m here for you,” I said. It was a relief; being angry at him was hard work. He took my hand, clasping it quickly in three different ways, like a gang member. We had just watched two men on TV do this.
“I knew you would be. I don’t want to point fingers or name names, but let’s just say young people don’t have the same values as people of our generation.”
My mouth opened to remind him I was only forty-three but then I remembered I was forty-four now. Nearly forty-five. Too old to be making a point out of it.
After 60 Minutes he went to his car and got his electric toothbrush. “It’s the one I keep in my car.” He didn’t have night blindness per se, but he was less and less comfortable driving at night.
“It’s not an imposition?” he asked from the porch, taking off his shoes.
“No, no, not at all.”
We brushed our teeth side by side. He spit, then I spit, then he spit. He plugged the charger into the sock
et above the counter; it had brownish gunk calcified in all its grooves and ridges.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “we’ll get you one.” I took a long time to dry my hands while he peed loudly, sitting down.
Was it okay if he slept in his boxer shorts? Of course. I put my nightgown on in the closet, wondering which one of us should sleep on the couch. When I came out he was in my bed. He patted the place next to him. For a moment I felt butterflies, then I remembered about our being an old married couple. We were past all that, and his lungs were hardening. I got us each a glass of water from the kitchen and set them on the bedside tables.
“Should we get sex out of the way?” he said.
“What?”
“A man and a woman . . . sleeping together. I don’t want it to be an issue.”
My heart hammered. This wasn’t at all the way I had once pictured it, but maybe there was something very beautiful about it. Or honest. Or, in any case, we were going to have sex.
“Okay,” I said.
“You don’t sound very enthusiastic.”
“I am!”
“Terrific. Hold on.”
He jogged to the living room and came back with his cell phone and a tiny tube of pink lotion; he propped the phone up against my vitamin bottles. I was having trouble regulating my breath and my jaw was shaking with nervous energy. Phillip stared at my floral nightgown and scratched his beard a few times. Then he slapped his hands together.
“So. The deal is if you want to watch me, you can, but you don’t have to—it doesn’t do anything for me. I just need for you to be on your back and ready when I say now.” He handed me one of my pillows. “If you could put that under your hips that’d be great.” He filled his cheeks with air and released it. “Okay?”
“Okay!” I said brightly. I felt terrible for him except he didn’t seem embarrassed. He tapped the phone. Shrieks and grunts jumped out before he quickly muted the sound and hunched over himself. The bed shook, all was quiet. This is what Kirsten meant when she said he had to look at his phone for a long time. How long was long? I quietly rolled up my nightgown over my hips. I got the pillow ready under me in case he said now. I thought about caressing his back. It had many tiny pits in it, a sprinkling of gray hair and freckles and red dots. I laid my palm between his shoulder blades; it shook with his body. I took it off. After a few minutes he picked up the phone, did some scrolling and tapping, and got set up again. I looked at the baby monitor; Jack was sweetly splayed with his arms over his head. Would it be easy or hard to sleep after this? Maybe I would have to secretly take some of my homeopathic sleeping pills. I shut my eyes to test how near sleep was.