On Second Thought

by C. Spencer

  And I’m hoping to explain so much to Rae when I catch her gaze from across the table. “It’s just a kids’ party,” I say, shrugging it off. “You know, the piñata, the Smarties, the snappy cone hats?” Next, I lose her to an awfully friendly seagull who’s making its clumsy way toward the legs of her chair. “You won’t enjoy this,” I say. “She’s invited ten friends, and they’ll be up all night. It’s not as if you and I would have any time together. I’ll be cleaning up and losing my mind.” I say, sucking the last bit of water through my straw. But she’s watching whatever that is now taking place over my shoulder—a small gathering of lunchtime suits, the boisterous kind. “Besides,” I add, “she’s really not a bad person.”

  And that’s when she looks me straight on with, “I wasn’t thinking about Aline.”

  “I don’t think I’m being unreasonable,” I say.

  “You’re not being upfront with me, either. Are you? Why can’t you be like everyone else and hate your ex?”

  Because, because. “We have a daughter,” I say. “It’s different. I can’t exactly forbid her from coming to her daughter’s birthday party.”

  “Have I asked you to?”

  “I’m just trying to make sure everyone is comfortable.”

  “I’m comfortable,” she says.

  “I’m not,” I say.

  “Why?” she says.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “And why do you keep looking at me that way?”

  “Because you’re not looking at me,” she says. “I’m trying to have a conversation here.”

  “But don’t you find that more than distracting?” I say, gesturing at that boisterous table.

  “Can I ask you something?” she says in the most incredulous way as our waiter rounds the corner with cake, candles. They’re singing. And the crowd’s getting rowdier. Then she says, “Are you over her?” And it’s as if, in that moment, the sun shifts and hits me dead on, and it’s got to be 110 degrees out here and I’m not even exaggerating. “You’re confusing me. I’m starting to feel like some girl you’re just killing time with until the two of you figure it all out. And I don’t want to be next in line after everything’s happened, everything you wanted.”

  So what am I supposed to do, just shut her out? I can’t, and if holding on means that I somehow have feelings, it’s not the same. It’s not this right here. But I can’t tell her that. “Why couldn’t I find you before all of that,” I say. “It would’ve been easier. It’s just complicated. And I don’t want any of this to be complicated.”

  “It’s not complicated,” she says.

  “It really is,” I say, but it feels as if we’re both waiting for the other to say something better, to make it right. But I’m shifting again, fidgeting, fretting instead.

  “Seriously, why won’t you look at me?” Rae says. “You really haven’t all day, have you?”

  “It’s hard,” I say. “It’s hard for me.”

  “What’s hard?”

  “Choosing,” I say.

  “What are you choosing?” she says.

  “I’m choosing to be a parent,” I say, “over a girlfriend.”

  “So is this what we’ll always be up against?” she says. “You choosing, because…what? Because Aline is complicated and you’re too afraid to make waves—is that what you’re saying? To make her feel uncomfortable?”

  “This has nothing to do with Aline,” I say. “Do you really think I’d be here, that I’d string you along, if I haven’t moved on?”

  “But has she?” Rae says. “And what if she hasn’t? Have you thought about that? What if she called you up right now and wanted you back?”

  “Why would that matter?” I say.

  “Why would it not matter?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say.

  “It does,” she says. “So here, I’ll ask you straight up. Do you…love her still?” Love her still. Do I love her still? But it doesn’t matter. “God, why did you have to be everything I’ve ever wanted?”

  “It’s a birthday party,” I say.

  “It’s not a birthday party,” she’s saying, reaching back for her wallet—so what, is she leaving? “You have a child together.”

  “Please don’t. Because what are you saying?”

  “I’m not about to make this decision for you.”

  “What decision?” I say.

  “I think maybe you need to figure this out on your own,” Rae says, “before bringing me into it, because I’m pretty involved here.”

  But it’s not until she actually gets up that it hits, what she’s been trying to tell me. What I couldn’t hear or maybe I didn’t want to face. What I knew would happen. So maybe I make a scene and maybe somewhere in the middle of that scene I say, “You’re making a huge mistake.” And I’m fuming, so much that it all comes out like some sort of threat, which I didn’t even mean. But I don’t have the strength to explain, and besides she’s leaving, isn’t she?

  “If it is,” she says sliding a twenty under a plate, “we’ll see, right?”

  When you’re ready, the waiter says.

  I bury myself in work for the rest of the day. Deadlines and decisions. I snap a few times then apologize. I close my door. I let every call drop to voicemail and, even then, wish the phone would ring again. But when it does, I’m disappointed. It’s never her.

  It’s just hopeless, that’s all, and I’m far from inspired—creatively or analytically or at all.

  So the day goes on and on and then it ends. I get home, skip dinner, sob in the shower, go to bed, check my phone, second-guess myself to sleep until it all drains me well into Saturday as I’m stringing a bunch of crepe paper. As Jordan wakes. As I vacuum, set the table. As Jordan fries her eggs. And by the time Aline shows up, grinning, clueless, at my foyer, I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m grateful and oddly comforted by this, by her ease and how natural it is to be around her. Even now at my worst.

  And maybe that’s all I need to get through the next three and a half hours of drop-offs and cake slicing, giggling and gift giving.

  That and ducking into the kitchen, scooping drink mix into a punch bowl, which is what I’m focused on when I feel a breeze along the small of my back. And here I am, preoccupied, startled, expecting Jordan as I turn to give her a Hey, kid.

  When it’s Aline instead, her hair parted in that classic way as she settles beside me, too close and for such a long stretch that I’m starting to feel nervous all over again. As I stir. Or maybe it’s not even nerves. Maybe I’m just upset. Maybe I’m blaming her. But then again, maybe it’s fine.

  “I didn’t know they made organic fruit juice in hot pink,” she’s saying.

  “It’s Kool-Aid,” I say, then turn and smile after she does.

  “How’d you make it fizzy like that?”

  “It’s seltzer.”

  “How sophisticated,” she says.

  “Sparkling Kool-Aid,” I say, “as sophisticated as it gets.”

  “She’s ready for her piñata.”

  “I haven’t filled it yet,” I say.

  “Is that it,” she says, “over there?”

  “Feel free,” I say, gesturing.

  She begins to rip a bag open. “You must’ve really wanted that weekend off if you’re taking this on.”

  “Look, I appreciate what you did.”

  “Anything to witness this total one-eighty. You’ve gone from no artificial flavors,” she’s saying, “to Kool-Aid?”

  “You pick your battles,” I say. “I’m not the one hooking her up with Hostess.”

  “Like I’ve said, your rules are fine,” she says, “but they’re meant to be broken.”

  “Rules and vows apparently,” I say. But then it feels petty.

  “It’s fine,” she says. “I was only teasing. I guess I deserve that.” And when I glance up, she’s checking her phone. “Your in-laws are running a little late.”

  “That’s good,” I say. “So am I.”

  “I was en
tertaining your mom out there,” she tells me. “She’s being unusually polite.”

  “Give her time,” I say.

  “She thought we looked good together,” she says.

  “Leave it to her to be inappropriate.”

  “I’m sure she meant well.”

  “What else did she say?”

  “The usual,” she says. “Like This is bad for the kid and how we should Think hard on that.”

  “Think hard,” I say, then glance over. “And that’s what she told you?”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you,” she says.

  “Why would she say that?”

  “The implication didn’t go unnoticed,” she says, in that shirt now dipping well enough to evoke curves I hadn’t even noticed a moment ago.

  “She’s so dismissive,” I say. “Did you empty those bags?”

  As she steps over. “I did,” she says.

  “I’m looking forward to this,” I say, incapable of masking any sarcasm.

  “Then why would you sugar them up?”

  “Because it’s her day,” I say.

  “I can stay,” she says.

  “Of course you can’t.”

  “As if I meant that,” she says. “Look, just forget it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I just thought—”

  “What, I can’t apologize?” she says. “Because this is about the other day, isn’t it? And yet you were so unconvincing.”

  And saying she’s in my personal space is an understatement. Which is to say, how long can I pretend to stir? I can’t. “You and I, we have these things,” I say, and next I’m filling my lungs. I look away. Maybe she should stay. Maybe I’m wondering. Maybe I’m about to say…something. Do something.

  But a few seconds in and she’s back on her phone, that knee bent, barefoot. “Ten minutes away,” she says.

  Ten minutes, I think. And then boom!

  “What the fuck?”

  “I think someone might’ve popped a balloon out there,” she says, calm, brushing my arm in passing and I follow. “Girls!”

  Into the living room where I’m thinking, she’s so beautiful, just look at her. And I admit to having not always noticed, not this way. Because isn’t that how it is when you lose someone? You start to appreciate them. Since here I am, in retrospect. Though I couldn’t outright say. It’s just that, she is. And I guess there are times like this when I might almost sort of, but still not quite, begin to trust how she could feel about me. Or maybe it crosses my mind, reminiscing…How it was, how we were, how she did. It’s all still somewhere beneath the words we shouldn’t have said.

  And even as I brush that all aside, it’s still between us as we sink to our knees to calm Jordan.

  As I glance up and she’s doing that thing she always did, to catch my eye, which it does, and yeah. It catches me. Or maybe it just sinks me.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The Truth Comes Out

  Rae

  Me, walk? I enjoy the drive. But I didn’t this morning because autumn, New England, vibrant (unlike my mood) and glowing with that different-colored sky you only get this time of year—as if you’ve just upgraded from pixilated CRT right into this brilliant LCD big screen. And pretty soon it’ll feel so brittle that I’ll wonder why I squandered so many days away with the window shut and the radio turned on.

  So if you head downhill, what, two, three blocks past an old warehouse turned posh apartments, you eventually reach what’s called old downtown, which is small but lined with mom-and-pops behind their high hazy windows with mossy grass lawns half paved over in broken cobblestone. Paint chipped to the snow line. A tight pet store, a health food co-op, a gentleman’s barber, and a creemee stand with take-out window, where I bought a waffle cone mashed with double scoops and ate that three blocks until I hit the city park, which I really never see by car. Not the fountain. Not the clay-tinted path where joggers abut raging roadway with their hair tied back, swaying, shadowless, bouncing in spandex, music pounding through wireless earbuds.

  Then, as opposed to taking a bench, shaded yet littered in droppings, I became one more figure reclining on the vast green of people watchers beside those reading Jennifer Weiner or Terry McMillan or a Kindle book with Girl in its title as they kept a watchful eye on their offspring, who were dizzying with spins twisted in swings before hobbling off.

  Still I can’t say what I was expecting to find.

  Madisen dropping by, lolling beneath a shade tree? Instead she’s stringing a piñata and not spiking punch. So whatever I had hoped to find, I didn’t. Not there, at least.

  I’m not finding it here, either. And regardless of how much I do or don’t do or think about doing or wish I’d done or distract myself from doing, my mind feels like a boomerang. I lean idly against the windowsill, listening in on deep voices through the screen, their random laughter, heavy in amusement as if this was high noon beating down on their grungy baseball caps, as they grip cold cans of Bud Light around some engine or manly grill pit, Barbasol and Old Spice, fist bumps and This one’s on me—that sort. Until I’m seeing her again, entertaining the crew, that warped shadow and the subtle way she hunches when she laughs. When I make her laugh, which was all the time. And I’m back on that again.

  Over and over. It never seems to end.

  So I dial Elizabeth, who knows intrinsically what’s up. “I’m coming over,” she says.

  “You’re really not,” I tell her, as I flick a thumb over the spark wheel on my Zippo. “I’m fine,” I say and then dive its flame into the hollow pit of another candle. But even I don’t believe myself this time, blaming exhaustion following another night of not enough sleep. And after that doesn’t work, I blame this drink, which might be the reason I nearly hit send after typing that missing you text and why I’m really on the phone with Elizabeth—for more thumb control, which as per usual, at least when it comes to Madisen, I sadly lack.

  And I can hear Elizabeth sigh right into the phone. “Why do this, Rae?”

  “What am I doing?” I say.

  “Pushing everyone out of your life. You shut down. You always have,” she says, and why does everyone say this to me? I don’t push people out. They leave on their own accord.

  “Just stop,” I say. “You’re accusing me of something you know little about. And when have I ever questioned your motives?” As I lie on the bed sidelong, a shoulder sloped near the edge. Then tossing a pillow. And when that lands at the foot of the bed, I nudge it off.

  “It sounds like you’ve been sobbing all day,” she says.

  “It’s allergies,” I lie, “ragweed.”

  “I’m watching this show,” she tells me, “on party crashers. Why haven’t I tried this?”

  “Because you’re always invited,” I say.

  “Because I’m always invited,” she says. “You’re absolutely right. But this might be more…I don’t know, interesting, if you ask me. Finding some ritz of a gala. Getting glossed up as if you know some important someone. I could so manage that.”

  “I won’t be joining you,” I say.

  “And what if we crashed your little princess’s party?”

  “You can’t be referring to Jordan,” I say, gradually making my way up to a slouched yet sitting position, my chest heavy. “Just, no.”

  “It’s not exactly party crashing in that case,” I hear. “Because…it would be so romantic. It’s gallant, don’t you think? In a win-her-over sort of way,” she says.

  “When did I say I wanted to win her over, or back, or anything like that?”

  “I thought you were adventurous,” she says as if provoking might convince me otherwise.

  “And besides,” I say, “you’re to gift something pink when you come.”

  “Well isn’t that gender-conforming,” she says. “But think about it, Rae. The world is burning up. Those polar bears. Please take a moment to consider the polar bears.”

  “What on earth do polar bears have to do with any of this?”r />
  “I’m talking climate change. We’re all going down with the ship. And what do we have left in the meantime?”

  “What kind of question is this?” I say. “We have life, weekends in P-town. Chocolate martinis. Cate Blanchett—not to mention Polo, Ralph Lauren for you.”

  “Don’t be so capitalist,” she says. “Love. Love is all we have. And you found that. How lucky you are.”

  “Right. I found the one and only lesbian on earth making child support payments to her ex-wife,” I tell her, as my heart sinks again.

  “So the truth comes out,” she says.

  “This has nothing to do with her kid,” I say. “It has everything to do with someone who’s still highly interested to the point of infringing on our everything. Really, how long have you known me?”

  “I’ve known you long enough,” she says.

  “Well let me put it this way, how long have you known Madisen?” I say. “Oh yeah, that’s right. You don’t. Do you? And whatever happened to that thing called loyalty? To me not having to explain myself?” I add, scribbling on an envelope turned hope-to-do list, given all this time I now have, squeezing haircut and 45,000-mile checkup at the end. “It’s not a breakup. I told you. It’s space.”

  “Space,” I hear.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “And she knows this?”

  I don’t know. Look, I’m not contacting her to clarify the particulars as to why I stormed out, since what kind of a lame excuse is that? So I say, “Yes. She knows this.”

  “Well, that’s good. Because I’d take it as a green light to hook up with my ex,” she says. “You never get angry when someone’s trying to steal your girl. You get sentimental, sweet. Then they come back. God, girls are so easy.”

  “You know what?” I say. “They can have at it. Why would I care? Really. If she’s that weak-willed and persuadable, it was never meant to be in the first place.”