At that moment Chrissy walked in, saving the conversation from the precipice it had come to the brink of.
“Asleep,” Chrissy said, sinking into one of the cozy-looking armchairs under the window. “Thank the Lord.”
A palpable sense of warmth and good humor entered the room with her. She was immensely likable. Neil had felt this at once. Elise had certainly done right.
“They like to put up a fight,” Elise explained, holding a section of orange out to her partner, who shook her head, rolling her eyes.
“This,” Chrissy said to Neil, “is what Elise considers a satisfying dessert.” She stood up and opened the freezer, pulling out a carton of ice cream and two bowls. “For you?” She lifted her eyebrows, and Neil nodded. When was the last time he had even thought of having ice cream?
“Why is it that children are so afraid of sleeping?” Chrissy asked, scooping a hefty portion into each bowl. “There must be something evolutionary to it. I mean, we spend all this time emphasizing needing endless hours of uninterrupted sleep a night, but maybe you’re not really supposed to go to sleep until exhaustion just completely overwhelms you. And you’re not really supposed to sleep in such a long chunk. I mean, back in the cave days it certainly wasn’t what you were going for—a comatose, eight-hour opening for some woolly mammoth to come and turn you into a midnight snack.”
“Mammoths were vegetarians,” Elise said mildly.
“It’s unnatural.” Chrissy put the bowl of ice cream—chocolate with some sort of butterscotchy-looking swirls—in front of Neil. “Convenient—don’t get me wrong: I’m all for bedtime—but unnatural.”
“Maybe it’s the new natural,” he offered. “We don’t run around chasing woolly mammoths over rugged plains and wrestling them with our bare hands all day…and so we need more sleep.”
“Exactly!” Chrissy beamed. “It makes no sense!”
“Except our brains, though.” Neil was enjoying himself. “We have so much to process, right? Cars, trains, cities, TV…I mean, we think more, we act less. Nobody sleeps well anymore. Our brains need it, our bodies don’t. Bring on the Ambien.”
“Mmmmm-hmmm.” Chrissy nodded in exaggerated agreement.
“What is this, Chocolate Pot Brownie flavor?” Elise said.
“We have created a fundamental imbalance,” Chrissy announced.
Neil struck his fist on the table.
“Well,” Elise said. “I think you might be on to something.”
“Can we start a website?” Chrissy batted her lashes.
And as they washed their bowls, bade their goodnights, and separated—on tiptoe—at the top of the stairs, Neil felt a hundred miles, a hundred days, from where he had been when he woke up: that anonymous luxury building and barren litter-strewn street, crazy Romanian sleeping above. He had come home. It was not his, but it was pleasant—more than pleasant. It was a sort of city on the hill.
10
ELISE STOOD AT THE THRESHOLD of the guest room surveying the scene. Neil had tried to make his bed—the thin quilt was pulled lumpily over the pillows and the sheet hung down like an unraveling hem. But he had tried. There was something sweet about this. In the corner, his duffel bag sat spewing boxer shorts and blue jeans, several hardback tomes: Gottling’s Directory of Nineteenth Century Explorers; Locating the Inalienable: The World’s First Human Rights Movement; The Immoralist by André Gide. It gave her an uneasy feeling. He was a lost soul, Neil Banks. But this was no surprise. She had seen that coming since they were twenty-one, crouched at the edge of her dorm-room cot, getting high. Poor Neil, her fellow refugee from the narrow constraints of their college social life. He was connected to her life as another person, it seemed, only he was still the person he had been then. Maybe if he had found the right woman to help him evolve into a grown-up self—but no, this was a silly, sexist answer. That was not a universal solution.
It was Saturday morning—Elise’s morning to sleep late. On the weekends they took turns getting up with the boys at whatever ungodly hour they awoke and when Chrissy was on duty she got them out of the house early and off to the park or the river or the grocery store. Usually Elise came out and met them wherever they were. She didn’t like the feeling of being left out, lounging around in bed while they were out having fun. This morning, however, Chrissy had left her cell phone lying here on the bedside table so there was no way of contacting her, finding out where they were.
Neil had apparently exited early too.
Elise would have to content herself with some alone time—read the paper or do something constructive in the garden, or begin to organize the Ula notes she had brought home from work. The little goat’s milk had still not come in. The whole project was turning into a great disappointment. Elise was tired of thinking about this. She wanted to be with her family right now! She wanted to see Chrissy!
Downstairs she began tidying up the remnants of breakfast—Cheerios spread like stars across the table, half-eaten bowls of applesauce, and crumbled egg yolk residue. The matching high chairs looked like Jackson Pollock paintings, encrusted with a week’s worth of food experiments. She was scraping at these when the doorbell rang, and thinking maybe it was Chrissy and the boys, she leapt to answer it. But instead, it was Angela Noyes, Chrissy’s mother.
In the five seconds it took Elise to get to the door Angela had already cupped her hands around her face and was pressing it against the glass panel beside the door, peering in. She waved brightly as Elise opened the door.
“Good morning!” she chirped, peeking around Elise’s shoulder. “I hope I’m not too early. Where are my little bunnies?”
Angela Noyes was a bundle of energy. Always cheerful, always chatty, always ready to get down on her hands and knees and push toy cars around the floor or roll up her sleeves and chop onions. She was never still. It seemed miraculous that calm, deliberate Chrissy could be her daughter—her mental and physical presence were so diametrically opposite from this.
“Out on the town,” Elise said. “I’m not sure where. I just got up.”
“Oh-ho! Your morning to sleep in? You girls are so funny.” Angela shook her head at what, apparently, never seemed less than a miracle of nature to her, this ability to sleep late.
“Mm-hm.” Elise nodded, trying not to feel irritation.
Angela was such a good woman. Such a well-meaning, industriously helpful grandmother. And unlike Elise’s own mother, she was unguileful. She was never passive-aggressive or judgmental or indirect. And as a grandmother, she was ever-competent and straightforwardly doting. She understood how to enter a room without overwhelming the boys, how to play on the floor without bossing and directing, how to distract Nigel out of his tantrums, and most of all, how to be helpful. It was not fair to be irritated by her.
“Well, I just thought I’d stop by and see if I could take them out for a walk—give you girls a break for a few hours,” Angela said. “I’m not due at Maryellen’s until lunchtime.” She glanced at her watch and then clapped her hands to her sides in her habitual, nervous what’s-next gesture.
“Oh, that’s so nice of you, Angela,” Elise said. “I’d love to take you up on that if they were around.” Although, as she said it, Elise realized that in fact she wouldn’t. She had been so distracted from family life for the last week or so, and things had been so oddly, subtly tense between her and Chrissy—she wanted the chance to make it right, sink her teeth back in. Just tell her, Chrissy would say—had, in fact, been saying for years. It won’t hurt her feelings—she’s not like that. But that was just the sort of thing Elise’s own stark and proper, Germanic upbringing would not let her do. “Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee?” she asked instead.
“Oh, that’s all right, dear. You enjoy your quiet moments—I know how it is,” Angela said cheerily. “I’ll just drop by Sarah’s and see if I can take the baby out.” Sarah was Chrissy’s older sister who lived in nearby Watertown.
“Are you sure?” Elise asked. But Angela was already
turning on her sensible sneaker-clad heel and starting toward the street.
“Oh”—Angela turned—“and tell Chrissy that I’m just so excited about this picnic. I want to come too.”
“Okay,” Elise said automatically, smile fading from her face. She had not heard about any picnic. Immediately she knew it was something related to Claire Markowitz and the donor siblings. It sounded like a doo-wop band. Under other circumstances the thought might have made her laugh.
“See you soon, sweetie.” Angela waved, climbing into her compact white Toyota Corolla, oblivious to the wet blanket she had just thrown over Elise.
Chrissy and the boys were still not back half an hour later, and Elise began to worry that they were off somewhere with Claire Markowitz. That this picnic, whatever it was, was actually happening at this moment, without her. An illogical feeling of panic gripped her. She had lost them. Chrissy had fallen out of love with her, would move out, take the boys, and life would never be the same.
She tried to eat an egg and toast, but had no appetite, and finally she called Laura.
Laura was not quite her usual reassuring self. She sounded distracted. Her knee-jerk dismissal of Elise’s worry (“She’s not at some crazy picnic, Lisey, its ten o’clock in the morning!”) made Elise feel silly.
But as she was about to get off the phone she remembered Neil.
“You didn’t tell me Neil was here,” she chided, and Laura sprang suddenly to attention.
“How did you—did he call you? I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know if Jenny should—”
“He’s staying with me.”
“What?” Laura practically shouted.
“What’s so crazy? His pipes burst or something.”
“His pipes burst? You mean in the apartment he’s staying in?”
“Of course in his apartment. Where else?”
“Oh, God. How awful.”
“He doesn’t seem too worried about it,” Elise said mildly.
“I wonder why he didn’t call me,” Laura mused almost petulantly.
Elise was silent. There wasn’t really anything to say to this.
“But he’s okay,” Laura said as if testing it out.
“He’s fine! He’s just…you know, Neil. I thought you said you’d seen him.”
“I did. I mean, briefly. I just meant, he wasn’t injured or anything.”
“Good grief! You sound like a mother hen. How many people get injured when their pipes burst? Senior citizens, maybe. Very, very senior.”
Laura did not laugh.
“Why are you so worried about him?” Elise asked.
“I’m not,” Laura bristled.
Outside the window a blue jay began squawking.
“All right.”
Elise hung up feeling worse than she had to begin with.
“What is it?” Chrissy asked the moment she arrived home. “You look upset.” And her face was a picture of such genuine concern, and such sympathetic worry, that in an instant Elise softened.
“Ta tatata!” Nigel stammered enthusiastically, practically bucking out of the stroller in his excitement to see her.
Elise took the bag of snacks and sippy cups and diapers from Chrissy’s hand and unbuckled Nigel’s shoulder straps, hiding both her fretfulness and her relief in the act of liberating him, scooping him up, and bouncing him up the stairs.
“Of course I was going to tell you about the picnic,” Chrissy protested later, when the boys were napping. “You have to stop acting like this is some sort of secret mission I’m conducting. Or some kind of…betrayal. Why do I have to feel defensive about wanting the boys to know their siblings, for Christ’s sake?” She pushed her thick blond hair up off her forehead and looked at Elise.
Her exasperation gave Elise a guilty, cowed feeling. She was being unfair, maybe.
“It’s just…” she began. “It’s just that you’re doing it all alone, I guess. I mean, without me.” Saying it aloud made her feel even stupider.
“Agh!” Chrissy pulled her own hair straight up from the top of her head. “Because you don’t like it! You aren’t into it! That’s not my fault.”
Elise sat down on the bed. “Okay.” She sighed. “Whatever.”
And they were silent for a moment, Elise sitting and Chrissy standing at the dresser. Why had they ever had children? The question reared up in Elise’s mind with shocking vigor. They were a lesbian couple, for Christ’s sake. It was not what nature had intended. An incredible guilt washed over her on the heels of the thought. Sweet James and Nigel, their little chubby cheeks and dimpled limbs, their innocent, unwitting minds. What was she thinking?
From downstairs there was the sound of a key turning in the lock.
“Hello?” Neil’s voice drifted tentatively up.
Chrissy jerked around and stuck her head over the banister beside their door. “Shhhhh, the boys are napping,” she said in a stage whisper.
“Shit! Sorry.”
Neil started up the stairs. Elise could hear the groan of the worn floorboards under his feet.
“Hi,” he said, poking his head into the doorway. “Just picking a couple of things up and I’ll be out of your hair.”
“Don’t be silly!” Chrissy said warmly. Elise, on the other hand, could only continue sitting on the bed wearing a tight smile. “You don’t need to get out of our hair.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” Neil began somewhat sheepishly, looking like the twenty-one-year-old Elise had known him best as—or younger, actually. Like a teenager. They were all getting older except for Neil, it occurred to her fleetingly. He was traveling backward through time, toward a state of greater and greater confusion.
“No, no,” Chrissy said. “I was just about to head out actually. Groceries.” She looked over at Elise impassively. “I’ll be back by the time the boys wake up, okay?”
Elise stared at her.
Neil looked from one to the other of them uneasily. “No, really—I’ll just—”
“Stay and talk to Elise,” Chrissy said firmly. “She’s been alone all morning.”
That’s it? Elise wanted to say. You’re just ending this conversation? And if she were Chrissy she would have just said it. But she was too polite to say it in front of Neil. (Again her mother’s cold, appearance-driven propriety reared its inhibiting head.) So she just sat and watched Chrissy disappear out the bedroom door.
“Shit,” Neil said. “I came at a bad time. I’ll just—”
Downstairs there was the sound of the front door opening and shutting behind Chrissy.
“Shit,” Elise echoed, and sank back on the bed with a loud sigh.
“You okay?” Neil asked hesitantly. “Do you want—can I bring you anything?”
“A new start to the day?”
“Damn,” Neil said forcefully, and there was real empathy in his voice. “I wish I knew how.”
Elise hoisted herself up on her elbows and looked at him. It was actually kind of nice, the sight of Neil Banks, scroungy as ever, lurking in her doorway. “What have you been up to anyway?”
“Oh, just fucking things up. As usual.”
It made her smile. And in response, Neil smiled too…sheepish, a little apologetic, and—what was it? wistful?—but a smile.
“How about a smoke?” he said, pulling a plastic baggie out of his breast pocket. In it was a fat, carefully rolled joint. “For old times,” he said.
“Man!” Elise said, sitting up, incredulous. “That’s a bad idea.” But somehow she knew, already, that within five minutes she’d be out on the back porch with him, doing something she hadn’t done for almost fifteen years.
11
JENNY STOOD IN FRONT OF HER HOUSE taking in the newly painted exterior. It was a pale, professional-looking gray with white trim and a handsome dark red door. And it was perfect—the L shape created by the kitchen and attached garage with the TV room and guest quarters above, the smooth, newly paved driveway with its little island in the middle, the perky dogwood
sapling finally in place and promising to create an elegant, artful shade in due time. Victor, the house painter, had helped her choose the particular shade of gray to paint the house, and it made all the difference: it was neither too stern nor too bright, and unlike the garish colors Jenny had grown up with in DeSoto it called absolutely no attention to itself, reflecting instead the impressive size and newness of the house. It had the effect of professional gift-wrapping: neat, crisp, and promising, an important part of the overall effect.
Beside her, Victor stood looking up at the trim along the farthest west-facing window.
“I’ll have them do that one again,” he said, pointing, brows knit. “It needs another coat.”
Jenny followed his gaze.
“You see?” Victor continued. “Where the sill meets the clapboard? It’s not so bright as the others.”
Once he said it, she could see—it was a slightly yellower shade than the sill next to it. She felt a swell of appreciation for Victor’s skill and precision. She felt, actually, a general swell of appreciation for Victor, who seemed, of late, to be the most hardworking, responsible, and intelligent person she knew. Unlike the contractor, Phil, whom she had come to regard as a lazy, fast-talking slob, or the architect, who had come so highly recommended but proved to be too idealistic (and frustratingly slow), or the landscaper, who could not be trusted to mow the lawn without accident, Victor was shrewd, effective, and driven. He was a firm and demanding manager—she had seen him directing the crew of Mexican workers in his employ and you could tell they were a little bit afraid of him. He was a direct, to-the-point communicator.
Personally she knew little about him: he was Cuban, had four children, and could have been anywhere from forty to sixty. He lived in Malden. Beyond this she had no idea. But weirdly, she felt almost closer to him than to anyone else in her life lately. There was a happy comfortableness to their interactions, and a recognition of shared sensibility. In the last month, talking to him had frequently become the high point of her day.
Perfect Life Page 14