Plus One

by Christopher Noxon

  Alex brushed the crumbs off his shirt and stared up at the house. A face appeared in the façade, tufty bangs of rhododendron framing two top-floor windows, the patio doors below a crooked grimace. They’d lived here almost six months, and it still didn’t feel like home. Would it ever? Regarding it from a distance like this, he felt a familiar mix of awe and discomfort. He might never shake the sense that this place, this whole life, wasn’t his—this was Figgy’s prize, her dream realized, her reward for a job that only got more punishing the better she did. He could enjoy the house, luxuriate in it even, but whatever pleasure he felt would forever be fogged by guilt… over what? His dependence? Her stress? The fact that he’d given up his livelihood to enjoy the spoils of her success? The fundamental fact that he was now a man who didn’t provide, married to a woman who did?

  And what the hell was that? The guilt, the anxiety, the teeth gnashing—was all that just symptomatic of some knuckle-dragging, hunter-gatherer, prideful manliness lodged in a deep cavity of his soft, gushy selfhood? No, never. That wasn’t him. Marrying Figgy, having Sam and Sylvie—these were the most important things he’d ever done or would do. He was a caretaker, a householder. He was a new man. Making a life for his family didn’t make him a mooch. And whether or not he ever felt like he deserved this life, he was here, in it. Somehow, whether through an accumulation of decisions or the inextricable pull of fate, he’d moved into the very house he’d peered into twenty years before, imagining an ideal imaginary future. The revolution had come. He’d landed in this life. It was time to stop agonizing over it and make some actual use of it.

  He looked back up at the house. The face was gone, the thin light of evening turning the garish pink of the house dusty and mild, all the bright colors muted in shadows. If he had any chance of repairing the damage he’d done, he had to start here, with the house. And in this moment anyway, in this half-light, he imagined the house becoming theirs, stripped of its power to impose and intimidate. If he could just find a way to disinfect it, to dis-empower it. Then they could all just relax and fill it with their messy, rowdy, twitchy, totally unfit selves and call it home once and for all.

  Alex got up and headed inside, Albert trotting along beside him. The bag of mezuzahs was right where he’d left it, on the upper shelf of a broom closet right next to the hemp fabric bag his mom had left the day she’d come to visit. He brought both bags into the kitchen and spilled the contents onto the kitchen island, picking up a booklet and flipping to a page on “declaring your spiritual intentions.” This was just the sort of language he normally dismissed as New Age twaddle. Now it was clear: The twaddlier the better.

  Sam and Sylvie poked up their heads from the couch. “What’s that?” Sylvie said.

  “Magic stuff.”

  Sam wandered over and picked up a bundle of dried sage. “Stinky,” he said, giving it a dubious whiff. “What’re you supposed do with it?”

  Alex flipped through the booklet. “The sage we burn. The water we drizzle. The mezuzahs go on the doorposts.”

  Sylvie gave a vial of holy water a shake. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. But before we do any of that—we all go outside and pee on the wall.”

  Sam and Sylvie looked at each other.

  “You in?” Alex said.

  “Absolutely,” said Sylvie, already halfway out the door.

  • • •

  Alex had a week before Figgy returned home from Baltimore, time enough to get some portion of his shit together. He gave Rosa the week off and started packing lunches, catching up on house repairs, doing drop-off and pickup, and coordinating the ridiculous array of the kids’ extracurriculars (Sam: weaving, improv, potpourri; Sylvie: soccer, ballet, glassblowing). He emailed Helen Bamper and offered to help with the school fundraising gala, which this year was being staged on the New York Street set of the Warners backlot. He made it a policy to say yes to everything, the volunteering and the schlepping and all the daily business of the domestic first responder. Days were spent doing errands and chasing the kids from class to appointment, after which he’d come home and prepare elaborate meals for three—paella, cumin-rubbed yakitori, five-spice fried chicken. Keeping busy with food and the kids meant not dealing with Figgy’s pregnancy or Clive’s production or the humiliation with Miranda or any of the rest of it. He ignored, for instance, the delinquent-payment notice that had recently arrived from the bank about the home equity line of credit. That was immediately stuffed deep into the pile, face down to hide the red band across the letterhead.

  The kids, for their part, seemed only dimly aware of Daddy’s domestic reengagement; Sylvie made no mention of her special bento-box lunches and managed only a confused thanks when he presented her with a crushed-velvet skating outfit he ordered off Amazon. And Sam just seemed embarrassed when Alex picked him up early from school one day for a trip to LACMA to see the Estée Lauder exhibit.

  Communications with Figgy, meanwhile, were icy—he couldn’t tell during their catch-up calls how she was doing beyond feeling nauseous and overworked. Their conversations were entirely focused on the kids, Alex hearing in her tone a tacit agreement that they should be face-to-face for the big talk. A few nights before she was set to come home, he tried to warm things up, telling her about the cleansing ritual and how they’d stunk up the house with sage smoke and how they’d made up special incantations for every room. (Alex was most proud of his blessing for the bathroom: “May this be a place of… release.”)

  “What a fun dad,” she said, her voice plangent and impossibly far away. “Couldn’t you have waited for me?”

  Her plane was due to arrive in Burbank at noon on Saturday. The whole morning Alex was a wreck, skittering around the kitchen preparing a big shabu-shabu spread. As her arrival drew close, he grew more and more anxious, checking his phone over and over to see if her plane had landed and if she’d met the driver at baggage claim. Now that she was coming home, the avoidance, he knew, was over. The time had come to deal.

  She finally came in the door just after two o’clock, keys clanging against the counter and bags thumping on the floor. She tumbled onto the couch and gathered up the kids in a big groaning hug. “Mama!” they cried, pawing and nuzzling. She looked great, her hair full and her cheeks soft and peachy.

  He leaned into the squirming pile and landed a kiss on her cheek. She untangled herself from the kids, got up from the couch, and walked past Alex on her way to the fridge. Sam trailed behind her, one hand locked on the end of her shirt.

  “Souvenirs?” Sam said, beaming up at her. “What’d you bring us?”

  “Hold on, kiddo. We have any tea?” She smiled as the light from the inside of the fridge flooded over her face. “Oh God—all my food! My own kitchen! My own children!”

  Alex got up behind her and draped an arm over her shoulder. “And your husband, too.”

  She looked over and gave him the briefest of smiles. “Yes—that too.”

  “So Mom Mom Mom,” Sylvie said, joining them at the fridge, the three of them clustered around her in a tight knot. “Did you? Bring souvenirs?”

  “Hang on, monkey,” she said, pouring herself a glass of iced tea and lowering onto a stool at the kitchen island. “Just let me get settled. I’m all cramped from the plane. I think there’s a yoga class at four—Alex, where’s your phone? Mine’s dead.”

  Sylvie rolled her eyes and made a beeline for Figgy’s backpack, ripping open the top and reaching inside. “Where?”

  “It’s nothing, guys. Baltimore ain’t exactly a retail bonanza. Little box is for Sylvie. Long one is Sam’s.” She took a long draw on her straw and cocked an eyebrow at Alex. “There’s something in there for you too, Alex. Manila folder, near the top. But maybe not now. Open it later.”

  The kids tore off the wrapping on their presents—a charm bracelet for Sylvie and a silk necktie for Sam. “Pretty!” Sylvie said, motioning with her wrist up like a hand model. “Chic,” Sam said, extending his chin as he double-looped a perfect
Windsor knot.

  As the kids began parading back and forth with their new accessories, Figgy picked up Alex’s phone from the counter. “I need to check the class schedule,” she said.

  Alex took a few steps toward the backpack, suddenly overcome with a need to know the contents of the folder. “Can I?” he called over the heads of the kids. Figgy didn’t respond. He opened the flap of the backpack and poked inside. Wedged between a pair of Natashas scripts was a manila folder with “ALEX” written in Sharpie on the tab. The folder was legal size. He could see documents spilling out from the edges. His heart stuttered.

  “You want to do this now?” she asked. She was standing across the kitchen island, eyes cast down, fingers fiddling madly on the screen of his phone. “It’s not really a present-present.”

  He swallowed hard, the packet trembling in his hands. He looked back up at Figgy, her attention locked on the screen. She wasn’t nosing around his text messages, was she? He’d switched out his SIM card the week before, hadn’t he? Or had he forgotten? The last text exchange he’d had with Miranda before the awfulness in her apartment had been a suggestive, not terribly clever riff on a story online about a restaurant in Shanghai that served fox vagina—she wouldn’t stumble upon that, would she?

  “Go on then,” she said, not looking up. “Ten’s a big one. We have to start planning.”

  Shit. Shit shit shit. Huck had been right all along. Figgy was no dummy. This was the official notification, just three months shy of the big anniversary. She’d spent her downtime in Baltimore meeting with lawyers, stashing money, and strategizing a clean split. And she was a few swipes away from discovering all the justification she’d ever need. His mouth went dry.

  “Go on,” she said.

  He did. The type swam around his vision, smaller than it should be, with times and confirmation numbers. It was an itinerary. Five days in Napa Valley. A reservation at the French Laundry. Some kind of class at the Culinary Arts Institute.

  “I know it doesn’t make up for me being gone,” she said. “But it’ll be fun, right? We’ll get my mom to stay with the kids? Take an early tenth-anniversary trip?”

  Alex dropped the folder to the counter, his mouth dry.

  “Look—I’m sorry I was so checked out while I was away,” she said. “Things were so bad when I left. I want them to be better now.”

  “Me, too.”

  She gave him a sidelong look. “Are you crying?”

  He coughed and swiped his cheek. “Maybe a little.”

  • • •

  Figgy was still upstairs getting ready for yoga class when Alex’s phone buzzed. Fuck—in his frantic preparation for Figgy’s return, he’d forgotten to switch out his SIM card, and Miranda had chosen this precise moment to check in. He hadn’t heard from her since that day in her apartment. “Hey stranger—How U?”

  He deleted the message, stuffed the phone in his pocket, and went to check on lunch. He’d just assumed that he and Miranda would never speak again—what else was there to say? A minute later, his phone buzzed again. After a solid fifteen seconds of resisting, he checked it.

  “Just following up re script. Don’t mean to pest, but I hear Figgy’s back today and DYING to know. Has she read it? Super excited!”

  Alex pursed his lips and blew out a long, toneless whistle. Was she serious? She was still working the connection, still trying to get her pilot read. He took a deep breath and thumbed out a response: “Hi. Figgy read your script. Told me to tell you: It’s a pass. Sorry!”

  That closed the loop, didn’t it? He made a mental note to circle back with Anne-Marie, find some natural way to confirm that Gerald & Geraldine was indeed just where he thought it was: deep in a pile of unread submissions that had about as much a chance of getting made as Alex did of finishing his punk rock novel. He headed up the stairs, through the bedroom, and down the hall toward Figgy’s closet. He stopped at the closed door.

  “Hon?” He shouldn’t let this drag out. “We have to talk.”

  “Hang on a sec.” Her voice was muffled by the floor-to-ceiling racks of clothes. “I can’t find my good stretchy pants—”

  “No, seriously—we need to talk.”

  “Can it wait? I’m kind of—”

  Alex rested his head against the door. “I need to catch you up on some stuff.”

  “Stuff?” He could hear a drawer close, then another. “What stuff?”

  “The trip you planned? That’s so nice, so great—and a big surprise. A really big surprise. It’s just… when I saw that packet—I thought it was something different.”

  “Did you want a new barbecue? Because we can still—”

  “No. Not a barbecue. I thought you were serving me. Like, with papers. With our anniversary coming up, I thought you were going to end it. I thought maybe you and that guy Franklin Sykes, or maybe Zev the DP—”

  “Franklin Sykes? Please. The guy barely bathes, and I’m pretty sure he’s got TB. And Zev? He’s dating a twenty-four-year-old from Anaheim.”

  “I was afraid you were trading up. For a newer model. Because of the ten-year thing. You know that, right?”

  Alex waited for a response from inside the closet. None came.

  He plowed on. “I’m really glad that envelope wasn’t what I thought it was, but look—I need you to know. While you were away—I did a bad thing. You were gone. I just got into this really fucked-up place. I felt like, how come she gets to go off and make her show while I deal with the house and kids and everything—which is crazy, I know. I mean, you’ve got a job and so do I, right? I run the business of the family, and you run an actual business. But you actually make something, you’re out in the actual world, and what do I have to complain about? Anyway, I haven’t been able to tell you because I’ve been afraid what you’ll say.”

  It was quiet behind the closet door. Then Figgy said, “What did you do?”

  “I’m just warning you—it’s bad,” he said.

  “How bad?”

  “Bad bad.”

  Silence. He took a big breath. “I got involved… in a reality show. Clive’s reality show. I started working on it.”

  There was a beat, then: “The dog show?”

  “Yes, the dog show.” Alex paused. “But really it’s a show about people—”

  “Oh, don’t start. He’s been shopping that around forever. You know he hit me up a year ago. Why? What did you do?”

  Alex’s heart pounded. “It was at your party—Clive approached me about coming aboard as EP. I thought it sounded nuts, but then I wrote him a check and before I knew it, I was all in.” He leaned his head against the closed door and waited a beat. “So what I’m saying is, I’ve been so crazy and I’ve had all these secrets and I totally understand if… if you do want to file papers… before the anniversary. If you want out, I won’t fight or try to take the money you made—it’s yours.”

  The closet door swung open. Figgy was standing still in the center of the closet, one hand on her stomach. Her face was white.

  Alex grimaced and took a step forward, bracing himself for her response. “So—what do you think?”

  “Call Dr. Hudson,” she said. “I’m bleeding.”

  • • •

  By the time they got across town, Alex was dizzy. He’d managed to get from the east side to Beverly Hills in twenty-five minutes, which he knew must count as some sort of record but which involved two illegal left turns and a maybe-yellow-probably-red light on San Vicente that would undoubtedly result in a $550 fine stapled to an official notice with one of those grainy automated pictures of himself silently mouthing the word “shit.” He kept his eyes forward the whole way, unable to look beside him, where he knew Figgy was hemorrhaging their unborn baby all over the minivan passenger seat.

  As he pulled into the underground garage, he worked up the courage to face her. She was calm, her hand resting serenely on her stomach. Okay, so maybe she wasn’t bleeding out. She put a hand on his thigh. “Calm down,” she said. “I
t’s all going to be okay. You know all about spotting, don’t you Mr. Bloody Jock Strap? It’s nothing. This is just a precaution.”

  “Just sit tight,” he said, jumping out of the minivan and hurrying around to help her. By the time he got around to her door, she was already sashaying across the parking lot as if heading in for a routine checkup.

  “Slow down—no jostling!” he called, chasing her toward the elevators.

  Dr. Hudson’s office was crowded, the overstuffed shabby-chic sofas in the waiting room occupied by women in various stages of pregnancy, a few couples, and new moms with their infants swaddled tight against their engorged new-mom bosoms. Alex summoned a nurse, who thankfully ushered them straight into an exam room. After a brief wait, which Figgy passed flipping through a copy of Us Weekly, Dr. Hudson glided through the door, her clogs making a pleasant wooden thonk on the linoleum. Her strawberry blonde hair was tied back in a complicated bun, framing her soft features. “How you doing, Fig honey?” she said. “Why don’t you just hop up on the table here and let’s see what we got.”

  “Hi, Janie,” Figgy said, an easy familiarity instantly taking over, Dr. Hudson having delivered both of their babies, in each case maintaining a cheerful calm during what Alex could only describe as a violent assault. She snapped on a pair of rubber gloves and wheeled over an ultrasound machine. Alex stayed in the corner, arms crossed tightly across his chest, as Dr. Hudson fitted Figgy’s feet into the stirrups and ducked between her knees, a concert harpist approaching her instrument. She was simultaneously elegant and professional, Alex thought, the sort of doctor who’d never even think of interrupting a pelvic exam to, say, chat about a Comedy Central roast.

  “I see some blood—it looks dark,” she said.

  Dark blood? A chill rolled through Alex’s chest. The baby was dead inside her. And it was his fault—he’d tried to prevent the pregnancy, then betrayed her in more ways than he could even process right now. If he’d just been more supportive, kept Figgy home, forced her to rest. He flashed on the dewy face of Helen Bamper, that night in Hawaii: “I just want things to be easy for him.” He hadn’t made anything easy.