by Orly Konig
“You’re incorrigible.” I shake my head and, as Sam’s posture improves, mine sinks into the padding of the booth.
“The hottest of the two has eyes for you. Good thing he can’t smell you from way over there. And he obviously needs to have his eyes checked.”
I throw her a look. “Funny.”
“I know, right?” She smirks and flops back into her seat. “Good thing we’re not interested.”
My eyebrows jump to attention. Since when is Sam not interested? In all our years as friends, she’s never lasted more than three months with one guy. “We’re not interested?”
Her shoulders curl, looking un-Sam like shy.
“Something you’d like to share? Did you meet someone in New York? And you didn’t tell me? You’re not moving?” I bolt upright.
“It’s not someone in New York. I’m not moving.” She shreds the paper napkin.
“But there is someone?”
For one blink I think my best friend is about to confess that she’s finally settling down. And in that blink, I see a year that’s passed; a year that I was so absorbed in my own world, I barely noticed what was happening around me.
She pulls herself together and, after a quick glance toward the front of the restaurant—probably assessing whether she can make a run for it or not—responds, “Nah, you know me.” But the words lack the usual Sam sass.
Before I can question her further, she tilts her head in the direction of the bar. “The hot guys are leaving. You’re the worst wingman ever. Wait, one of them is looking this way. I think he’s going to come over after all.”
I look at the guy and our eyes meet. He stops midstep, then changes direction and follows his friend to the door.
Sam kicks me under the table. “You scared him with that evil death stare. What the hell was that about?”
“That was Simon.”
“Who?”
“Simon.”
“Simon?” Her eyebrows collide in confusion.
I nod.
“Simon.” She exhales the word, as the name and the myth collide in her memory.
“By the look on your face, I’d say you and Simon finally ran into each other.”
I nod again, one very slow up and down. “Twice in two days. Don’t see him in the year he’s been back, and suddenly he’s everywhere.”
“Back this pony up. Twice in two days?” Sam leans forward, elbows spread and hands tented, little-kid excitement coloring her cheeks.
“He’s one of Hank’s doctors at the retirement home. Then I ran into him on the beach.”
“On the beach? Was he wearing a shirt? You never said he was that gorgeous.”
“Seriously, Sam?”
“Okay, okay. Sorry. Distracted.” She fans herself with a coaster and blinks innocently at me. “Who’s Hank and why were you at the retirement home?”
“I haven’t told you?”
“Told me what? You’re moonlighting as a candy striper in an old-folks’ home? Can they even eat candy?”
“Be serious.” But I can’t help laughing. Serious and Sam are not words usually linked together. “Hank built the carousel. And it appears that he and my grandma were friends.” I air quote “friends,” which makes Sam’s eyes bulge.
“Oh juiciness. Tell me more.” She bounces several times on the squeaky bench.
I lean into the table. “Someone carved the words For Meera. Forever along the girth of the horse I’m restoring right now. No name or initial. Nothing. Then I found a letter on Grandma’s grave. It was addressed to ‘my dearest Meera,’ and said that not a day goes by he doesn’t miss her. That they’ll be together soon, this time forever. And it was signed H. Oh, and it was on Tower Oaks stationery.”
Sam quirks her mouth in thought. “But if your grandma was friends with him and he’s local, why didn’t she tell you? I mean, hell, you’ve been working on that carousel for years.”
“Yeah, I asked her the same question.” I don’t mask the snark.
Sam leans forward until the zebra ears are distorted by the edge of the table and whispers, “What did she say?”
I roll my eyes.
She laughs, sits back. “And he’s one of Hank’s doctors. Small world.”
“Too small. Anyway, I talked to Hank. He’s amazing. Oh god, Sam, he’s exactly as I imagined he would be.” I am suddenly sober, remembering our first meeting.
“Helloooooo.” She waves a hand in front of my face. “What’s that about?”
“He thought I was her the first time I met him.” The air leaks from my lungs, and I slouch back into the hard vinyl of the booth.
“Whoa.”
“I’m sorry for interrupting, but I have to ask where you got that T-shirt. I absolutely have to have one.” A tall brunette in short-shorts and a teeny tank bounces up to our table. She’s ogling Sam’s chest while a table of men next to us ogle her back end. Sam shoots me a we’re-not-done look before turning her most radiant I-can-sell-you-this-and-matching-boxers smile at the perky intruder. I half-listen while they discuss the other shirt designs and accessories Sam has been unpacking. The brunette promises to stop by the store the following day, then bounces back to the table where her friends are more interested in a basket of friend clams than zebra tees.
Sam turns back to me and pulls the cardboard coaster out of my hands. While they’d been talking, I’d been shredding the ears off the owl-shaped coaster. “There are laws against what you’ve done to this poor guy. Wait till Taylor finds out.”
Despite myself, I smile. The waitress clears our plates and the shredded cardboard ears, and after inquiring about another round of drinks, which Sam waves away, leaves the bill, assuring us there’s no rush.
Except that I’m suddenly feeling claustrophobic.
“I have to go, Sam.” I slip money into the black plastic sleeve and stand.
“Hey, what just happened?” She grabs my hand.
“Nothing, I’m fine. Just suddenly tired.”
“Bull. Two seconds ago, okay four, you were animated about the horse and your grandmother and her illicit affair.” I glare at her. “Okay, her friendship. Then that bimbo shows up and you freak out.”
“Really, Sam, I’m okay. It’s been an emotional day and it all just caught up to me.”
She sighs and pushes out of the booth. “Fine, let’s go.”
I lead the way through the restaurant and into the crowded lobby. We wave good-bye to Taylor and let the crowd spit us out the front door.
We walk home in silence, the unfinished discussion and the news I didn’t divulge hanging between us in the uneven shadows of the streetlights.
When we get to my house, she envelops me into a bear hug. For someone so slight, she’s surprisingly strong. “Come by the store tomorrow. I’ll spruce you up.” She makes me pinky promise I’ll come, then gets in her car. She waves out the window as she pulls away.
There’s a light in the kitchen and another in the bedroom, but the pull from my dark studio is stronger. I open the door and step into the mixture of past, present, and future.
Fourteen
“Hey.” His voice startles me. The overhead light in the living room was off, and in the stillness of the house, I’d assumed Vale had gone to bed. I glance at my watch. It’s well after midnight.
“Hey back. I wasn’t expecting you to be up.” I toe off my shoes and walk into the room, conscious that I’m on the balls of my feet, like the times I came home past curfew and was afraid of getting caught.
“I heard Sam’s car leave a couple of hours ago.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I wanted to jot down some notes on the horse before I forgot.”
“Like you’d ever forget anything about the carousel.” I can’t decipher the thickness in his tone.
“Sorry.”
“Sorry?” The light from a passing car flashes through the living room window, sending shards of light glittering from the highball in his hand.
“Sam says hi.” I fold onto the
couch, close enough that my knee almost touches his thigh but with a finger width between us.
“Thanks.”
“How was the meeting? Where did you go?” I hope I sound less suspicious on the outside than the question sounded in my head.
“Good. Sushi.”
“Yoshi’s?”
“You know it.”
An awkward heaviness settles in the crack between us. Yoshi was the first restaurant we went to when we moved back here, and we used to go at least twice a week. Then when I got pregnant, we stopped going. I’d told Vale it didn’t bother me, that I was just as happy eating the cooked rolls or udon bowls. But we were in this together, he’d said, and so, together, we stopped eating sushi. After … well, after I couldn’t stomach the idea.
“Listen…”
“I wanted…”
The awkwardness pushes me an inch deeper on the couch, an inch more distance between us, a chasm of emotional barriers.
“You first,” Vale says. He takes a draw from his drink, the movement releases the sweet smell of the alcohol. Armagnac. My stomach flops, and I have to force my breath through my mouth.
I hate Armagnac. Hated it since I was thirteen and found a glass unattended on the coffee table. It was my father’s aperitif of choice, the drink I always associated with him and Mom, elegant and sophisticated. I longed to hold the crystal glass, smell the golden liquid, murmur about its warmth. So when it was there, in front of me, I had to do it. I cradled the glass, I smelled the liquid, I took a sip. First one, then two. Tiny, tentative sips. The drink warmed my throat. I was sophisticated.
Then I heard a door slam upstairs, footsteps, a glass shatter. The footsteps came down the stairs, loud and mad. Another slam upstairs.
I downed the rest of the liquid expecting warmth. My eyes stung and my throat burned. What had seemed sophisticated a moment ago was pure misery.
I’d hidden in the powder room, swallowing bile and tears. My father had cursed at finding the empty glass but, no doubt, assumed he’d finished it and forgot. He hadn’t heard me come home.
When he went to the kitchen, I snuck up to my room. Mom knocked a few hours later, calling me to dinner. I didn’t answer. She came up later, another knock. I still didn’t answer. She left the pizza by the door. It was the first time she’d allowed that. It wasn’t the last. It had also been the first time I’d found my dad sleeping on the couch. It wasn’t the last.
With the wisdom of my teenage years, I started picking at the hairline cracks I’d never noticed in our glossy life. Mom and Dad were the picture-perfect power couple. She was always polished, easily elegant in her designer clothes and weekly styled hair. She seemed to wake polished. Dad was tall, athletic, at ease in his slightly askew perfection. Together they were striking.
When he wasn’t at the office and she wasn’t at one committee meeting or another, they were playing tennis at the club, or entertaining, or attending gallery openings. Mom loved the arts.
Which is probably where I got my passion. Well, not exactly. She preferred modern art; I went for antiquities.
Vale takes another sip from his drink. The crystal glass was a wedding gift from my parents. Because everyone needs fancy crystal glasses that need to be hand washed and carefully protected.
“I hate those glasses.”
I watch Vale turn the glass in his hand. The Armagnac releases its toxic bouquet.
“How can you drink that stuff?” I cover my mouth and nose.
“It’s an acquired taste.”
“That’s one taste I wouldn’t complain about you unacquiring.”
“It’s my thing with your dad and brother. You should appreciate that.”
“How about picking up golf instead?”
“They don’t play golf.”
“Tennis then.”
“I hate tennis.” He twists to look at me in the dark room. A car inches past, its light illuminating his expression long enough to unsettle me. “I owe Ed an answer about the job.” It’s not a question or invitation for a discussion.
“And?” I don’t think I want to know the “and,” but I have to.
“It’s a huge opportunity. He wants to develop a modern, old-world-charm community. And he’s looking to me to take the lead.”
I nod, but I don’t understand any of this. “How did you not tell me you were interviewing for a new job? Especially one across the country?”
“I wasn’t interviewing. Ed was in town for meetings, and we met for lunch. He wanted to bounce a few ideas off of me.”
“Looks like one landed right in your lap. And you didn’t think it was important to tell me?” The darkness takes on an edge. I want to soften it but I don’t know how.
“I tried.”
“You tried?”
“We’ve had this discussion.” He looks out the window as the porch light on the house across the road comes on. “We don’t talk, Maya. You don’t want to hear anything that contradicts the reality you’ve spun for yourself.”
Anger punches to the surface. “The reality I’ve spun for myself?” I inhale through my nose, fortifying for the next strike. Except nothing comes. He’s right. I have spun a reality made from guilt and shame and defeat, and made myself a cozy nest in the middle. And from that cozy nest, I’ve avoided talking. I’ve hidden from hard discussions and uneasy topics. I’ve even hidden from the easy ones.
“You couldn’t have tried that hard.” Why can’t I reach out to him? Why can’t I forgive myself enough to forgive him?
We square off on the couch, neither one of us ready to dive into the deep end of the argument, but not willing to waddle to safety, either.
“Okay, Maya, let’s talk. Ed has offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I didn’t approach him, I wasn’t sniffing around, it just happened. One minute we’re brainstorming ideas, the next he’s asking if I’ll run with those ideas.”
“Why Seattle?”
“Because that’s where the property is.”
“You hate Seattle.”
“I don’t hate Seattle. I hate rain.” As if on cue, the sky opens with a crack of thunder and a deluge that muffles all other sound. “You’d probably like it there though. It’s artsy.”
“It’s artsy here, too. And I don’t want to leave.”
“Why? What’s here that we can’t build somewhere else? Somewhere without the baggage? What’s wrong with a fresh start?”
“You can’t just move and pretend like the past didn’t happen. The ‘baggage’ isn’t an old couch that you leave by the side of the road for the trash guys to pick up. There’s a lot here we can’t take with us.”
“What about us, though?”
“We’re here.”
“We’re not. You are.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No, it’s not.” He deflates into the couch. “None of this is fair. None of this was supposed to happen this way. But we can’t continue like this. I can’t continue like this.”
A tremor starts from somewhere inside and builds until I shove my hands under my thighs to keep them still. “You’ve made a decision then.” It’s a statement. A statement doesn’t require an answer, and I don’t think I would want the answer if that had been a question.
He nods.
Shit.
“I’m not accepting the job, but I’m not turning it down either.”
I look at my husband, the man I used to be able to read, used to know better than I knew myself. But sitting next to me is a stranger. “What does that mean?”
“It means that in two weeks I’m giving Ed an answer.”
“Two weeks?”
“That’s enough time for me to finish the bathroom and for you to get close to finishing the horse. And it forces us to address our situation. No more hiding, Maya.”
The clock in the kitchen ticks in the darkness, taking Vale’s side.
Two weeks.
“I don’t think I can move from here.” I whisper into the night.
Val
e releases a slow, sad exhale. “And I don’t think I can stay.”
Fifteen
He had stayed, was staying. For now. At least for the next two weeks.
I wrap my hands around the mug. Vale is still asleep, or at least still in bed. He hadn’t moved when I got up an hour ago. He usually rolls over and grabs my pillow, then pulls the blanket tighter around him. This morning, though, he was perfectly still. Too still.
“Good morning,” Vale says around a yawn as he enters the kitchen. He stretches and I can’t help but admire the taut stomach that peeks from between his T-shirt and the band of his shorts. When was the last time I noticed my husband as anything more than the person sharing space in my life?
“Good morning.” I curl the coffee closer and rest my chin on the lip of the mug. It’s no longer hot enough to send warming fingers to soothe my nerves. “What’s on your schedule for today?” Such an innocent, everyday question, one I’ve asked so many times, and yet this morning it feels raw and insecure, prying and explosive.
“Bathroom.” He pours himself coffee and drinks it looking out the kitchen window, his back to me. He turns, and my entire body hums with jittery energy, a live wire in a breeze. “You?”
“I was planning on visiting Hank before work.”
Vale sets his mug down and crosses his arms, eyes locked on me. I feel the winds picking up, tossing my live wire nerves about.
“What will talking to the old man help?”
Everything. Nothing.
“He brings the carousel to life.”
Vale’s mouth pulls into a line. The winds are about to turn ugly. “Is this really about the carousel?”
“What else would it be about?” I keep my voice and my gaze steady.
His eyebrow quirks.
I bristle. He has a right to ask, I’ve given him reason to question. “If that were the case, why would I have waited over a year?”
“You were pregnant when he moved back. We were happy.”
Were.
I wince, but Vale doesn’t back down. “The timing feels less than coincidental.”