When she opened the door of the bathroom, she could hear Tom’s footsteps in the hall, the creak of one bedroom door, then another, as Tom checked on the kids. Piper didn’t think. She walked in the direction of the room’s large, bare window, but a few feet from it, she stopped and simply stood there, poised between two rectangles, the window with its moon and the open door behind her. She felt pale and brushed with light, front and back. She felt pliant and slender, a white birch tree, a filament at the center of a lily. She waited.
Behind her, Tom said, “Piper?”
Without turning around, she said, “Hey. What’s that moon called, the one that’s almost full?”
His hand was on her waist, his mouth on the curve of her shoulder. She closed her eyes at the feel of his unshaven chin; she tilted back her head, pressed her back into his chest. He slid his other hand under her breast, the place where a shadow would fall if her breast was bare, and then the nightgown strap dropped down her arm, and her breast was bare except for his fingers moving lightly over it. Piper turned around in Tom’s arms and kissed him as though it were the very last time, her last chance to kiss anyone, their mouths tasting like mint, and all the while Tom’s hand was tugging the nightgown higher, up the side of her body, the air cool on her legs, and a voice said, “We can’t,” and, goddamn it if it wasn’t her voice, and everything stopped.
They stood against each other, panting. Piper slid the strap back into place; then, Tom took her hand and led her to the edge of the bed, where they sat, shoulder to shoulder.
“It’s you,” he said, “specifically. It’s not just because I’m lonely. In case you were wondering.”
“Thanks. It’s you, too.”
“Would it make any difference if I told you that she was planning to divorce me, before she got sick?”
“I knew about that,” said Piper, noticing how even now it was easy to talk to him, “and it does make some difference, but I guess not enough.” She let go of his hand and pushed her hands through her hair. “You were right about her being an iconoclast. She would have been all for me moving in here with my kids. Anything for the kids. But no woman would be okay with her best friend and her husband…”
Tom didn’t say anything. She listened to his breathing and thought how even this was pretty good, just sitting here with him.
“I don’t feel like her husband now. I feel like I used to be her husband. I loved her, but I don’t belong to her anymore.”
“Maybe I still do. I’m sorry.”
Tom looked past Piper, out the window. “Gibbons,” he said, “gibbous.”
“That’s right,” said Piper, turning to look. “Waxing gibbous, waning gibbous. I’m not sure if it’s waxing or waning.”
“Well, it was definitely waxing there for a while,” said Tom with a grin in his voice.
Piper batted his shoulder and laughed.
“So what do we do now?” she asked.
“I don’t think we should pretend it never happened.”
“I don’t either.”
“And I sure as hell don’t want you and the kids to stop staying here.”
Piper’s eyes burned. Quietly, she said, “Well. Thank God for that.”
“Why don’t we try just, you know, acknowledging this, and keep on like we were?”
No way, she thought, will it be that easy. Aloud, she agreed, “The way we were was good.”
“Yeah,” said Tom. “Not quite as good as that.” He gestured to the spot in the room where they’d stood together.
Piper smiled.
“What if I,” began Tom slowly, “tested the waters. Now and then.”
The word no wouldn’t come. Finally, Piper said, “Fair enough.”
Alone in bed, Piper felt purely awake, tingly, alert to all the parts of her body at once. She felt as though she should be glowing under the silken cotton of the sheet, emitting a blurred halo of radiance, like a streetlamp in mist. Alive, she thought. I feel alive.
She remembered the day that Elizabeth had told her about Mike, the yoga guy, about the hot hand-holding and four kisses. Piper hadn’t fully understood why Elizabeth had wanted her to have this information, something about keeping it in storage in case Tom needed to know that Elizabeth hadn’t been faithful. But what if Elizabeth hadn’t meant the information to be for Tom at all? What if it was her way of giving Piper permission to be with him after Elizabeth was gone?
It was a tantalizing notion, and for a few beautiful seconds, Piper allowed herself to believe it, but then, quick and vicious, like a person stomping on a bug, Piper crushed the thought. Ha. Dream on, idiot. There could be no wriggling out, no whitewashing, or turning a blind eye. For Elizabeth, Tom and Piper together would be betrayal, pure and simple. Unforgivable.
But the night pulsed vibrantly on and the alive, radiant sensation persisted, and, eventually, a tiny, frail, parachute seed of an idea drifted into Piper’s head. She dismissed the idea before it could take root, but it would be borne back to her again and again: that perhaps one of the disadvantages of the dead is that, no matter who they were or how much anyone had loved them, they do not get the last word.
TWENTY
You are brave and good. —CLARE HOBBES
For two days and two nights, Dev’s brain went on vacation, a thing that his brain had not, to his knowledge, done before (and if his brain didn’t know about something his brain had done, could it actually be said to have done it?—this was as weighty a question as Dev’s vacationing brain deigned to consider), and what Dev discovered was that, while he knew it couldn’t last forever, he liked it. He could see how you could get used to the not-thinking, the haphazard floating through days, your brain lounging around like a tourist in a loud shirt, grasping nothing heavier than a magazine and a drink (umbrellaed, water beaded, pineapple hanging off its rim like an elephant ear), lulled by the sound of seagulls and ocean waves.
As soon as Dev had run out of his house, away from the assortment of dazed and freaked-out people that was too collectively unwieldy to be anybody’s family, after his dazzling sheen of rage had dimmed and he felt deflated and lost, Dev found that thinking about what had happened was a very bad idea, like climbing up a mountain in an avalanche. Even thinking about thinking about it was dangerous and ill-advised, so he channeled all the energy he usually spent on pondering, untangling, and sorting into the total refusal to ponder, untangle, and sort.
He shot baskets with Aidan without thinking about shooting baskets with Teo. He worked in Mrs. Finney’s yard without thinking about kissing Clare. He ate everything Mrs. Weeks put in front of him—barbecued chicken and buttered corn and bright, fat slices of tomato—without recalling the way his own mother’s face settled unconsciously into something like bliss whenever she watched Dev eat what she’d cooked.
Even picking up Lyssa at the inpatient facility was okay, a welcome distraction. It was not so much good to see her (because she really was at least ten different varieties of annoying; that hadn’t changed) as it was good to see her looking good, to see her wagging her head to the music in the car, earrings swinging, ponytail tossing like a pompom at a pep rally. Even though Mr. Sorenson had been careful to warn them that OCD was a disorder from which few sufferers (he actually used the word “sufferers,” which on top of being almost impossible to pronounce, also seemed like one of the last labels you’d want to slap on your kid) ever recover completely, Lyssa seemed more relaxed to Dev. Her face had lost some of that tightrope-walker look, and when the Sorensons dropped Dev and Aidan off in front of Aidan’s house, and Lyssa leaned out the window to say, “Thanks, guys,” there was something quiet and real behind her eyes, so that when she followed up with, “How ’bout if I come by tomorrow?” neither boy had the heart to say no.
But if the days were easy for Dev, one unscrutinized moment gliding into the next, the nights were hard. At night, he didn’t exactly think, but it was as if all the unthought thoughts and unfelt feelings morphed into a dense, jellyfishlike creature tha
t beached itself on his chest. On the second night at Aidan’s house, in an effort to prevent the creature from smothering him, Dev propped himself up with pillows and read one of Aidan’s books, a thriller about a forensic scientist, until he fell asleep.
The next morning, at what Dev could have sworn was five A.M., although it turned out to be nine, he awoke to the sound of Aidan entering the room, clearing his throat extravagantly, and remarking, “Thomas Jefferson slept sitting up.”
Dev didn’t open his eyes. “Good for him,” he grumbled.
“I learned that during one of the Weeks family’s famous edifying vacations. That’s why his bed was so short.”
“Fascinating.”
“Most people see those old-school beds in those old-school historic homes and assume that they’re short because the people were smaller back then. But at six two and a half, TJ ranks as our third-tallest president. James Madison, on the other hand, was a whole different story.”
Dev raised his eyelids a couple of millimeters. “Are you right on the verge of shutting up?”
Aidan took a hit from his towering glass of orange juice, then scratched his head in a way that meant he was about to spring something on Dev.
“Listen up. I realize that you’re currently not dealing with the maternity/paternity/shocking revelation issues in your life right now.”
Dev groaned. “Yeah. And?”
“Not ‘and.’ ‘But.’”
“That’s just great.”
“But your mom just called. She’s on her way over to drop off your bike and some clothes and whatever. My mom wondered if you might want to talk to her.”
“No thanks. I’m still on vacation from her.”
“Got it.”
But the truth was that the vacation had had its legs kicked out from under it the second Aidan had mentioned Lake, and even though Dev proceeded to go casually about his normal morning business, he knew that he was moving as slowly as he could (brushing his teeth for so long that Aidan had knocked on the bathroom door with predictions about irreparable dental damage) so that he would still be upstairs when she arrived.
The harder he pretended not to wait, the harder he waited, his ears straining for the sound of the Honda pulling into the big circular driveway, and when she finally got there, no way was he setting foot downstairs, but he heard her talking. He couldn’t make out any words, and didn’t want to, but he recognized the pitch and frequency, the particular way her voice rearranged the air in the house, the way he would recognize his own face in a mirror, and when he heard the front door slam, he positioned himself, in spite of himself, near the upstairs hall window and watched Lake walk to the car. Her walk, her hair, her green T-shirt, the outline of her were so familiar to Dev, matched up so completely with the mother he had carried around in his mind, conscious and unconscious, since forever, that for a moment, pure recognition crowded out everything else, and Dev began to make a beeline for the stairs so that he could run out and catch her before she left.
He stopped himself, of course, but the sight of her had rocked everything loose inside Dev so that a few minutes later, just before Lyssa was scheduled to arrive, Dev asked Aidan if he would mind meeting her outside and bringing her up to speed before she came in.
“We could, like, maybe talk about it or something?” Dev felt his face turning red. “But giving Lyssa a play-by-play sounds like about as much fun as…” He was at a loss.
“Scrubbing the enamel off your teeth?” suggested Aidan. “No problem, man. Meet you out back in a few.”
Dev made himself two bagel-and-peanut-butter sandwiches, took them outside, and sat down to enjoy the elaborate tapestry of blooming, buzzing, birdsong, turquoise water, and pristine grass that was the Weeks backyard. Whenever Dev sat back there, he could totally see the point of becoming a millionaire. Even the dragonflies seemed better than your typical dragonflies, stitching through the air on their miniature stained-glass-window wings. He bit into his sandwich and let himself relax into the ease and abundance around him, become part of the picture. But as soon as Dev saw Aidan and Lyssa walking toward him, the easefulness was replaced by a queasy embarrassment at the part freak show, part pity party his life had become, until Lyssa struck a melodramatic pose and intoned, “Dev Tremain, international man of mystery,” in a dopey voice that instantly made Dev feel normal.
“Hey, Lyssa.”
Lyssa plopped into a chair next to Dev, lifted her black movie-star sunglasses, and surveyed her surroundings.
“This is so InStyle magazine it’s not even funny.” She dropped the glasses back onto her nose and turned her attention to Dev. “So how cool is it that your dad’s not gay?”
“I’ll assume that’s a rhetorical question,” said Dev.
“Actually, according to Aidan here, the guy’s a total hetero hottie.”
“Well, maybe I can fix you up with him,” said Dev, then he gave Aidan a quizzical look. “You said that?”
“Lyssa, no offense, but do you think you might have missed the general thrust of our conversation?” Aidan rolled his eyes. “I said in passing that you even kind of look like the guy, if you, you know, subtract the extreme handsomeness.”
“Thanks, Aidan,” said Dev.
“So, what, you’re, like, camping out in the ‘Kennedy compound.’” Lyssa wobbled her head from side to side and made fluttery quotation marks in the air with her fingers. “In a state of total decision avoidance?” With one index finger, she began twisting her ponytail like a crazy person dialing a rotary phone over and over and over.
“Great,” growled Dev. “Therapy speak. Just what was missing.”
Lyssa smirked and twirled her hair faster. Her legs were crossed and she began to vibrate her dangling foot so fast that the table shook.
“Would you cool it with the constant motion?” said Dev. “It’s like hanging out with a flock of freaking hummingbirds.”
Lyssa didn’t change a thing, just said, coolly, “Inaction inertia is no way to live, my friend.”
“It’s temporary,” said Dev. “Just until I figure out how to exist in the same house as my pathologically lying mom.”
“She’s still your mom,” said Aidan, abruptly.
Dev shot him a look.
Aidan shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Not that you shouldn’t be mad. You should. Definitely. But until this stuff came up, your mom was cool, right? She inspired serious mom envy in, like, everyone.”
“So?”
“So I’m just saying that, yeah, she messed up big-time, but that doesn’t X out all the cool stuff she’s done.”
“Whose side are you on?” As soon as Dev asked this, he wished he hadn’t.
“Yours, man. All the way.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Lyssa slid her glasses on top of her head and leaned toward him. “You want some words of wisdom?”
The incompatibility of wisdom and Lyssa was so complete that Dev studiously avoided Aidan’s eyes so that he wouldn’t burst out laughing. With his peripheral vision, Dev could see Aidan studiously avoiding Dev’s eyes as well.
“Okay,” said Dev, “shoot.”
“We think our parents are in charge, right? Like they know what they’re doing? But the truth is, they’re making it up as they go along, just like we are. Just like everyone. If we judge them by their worst mistakes, they’re all, like, gargantuan failures. Maybe you should try judging your mom by her intentions, by whether she, like, loves you and is doing her best.”
Dev just sat there. Then he looked at Aidan, who shrugged and raised his eyebrows in a “Who knew?” expression.
“Lyssa,” said Dev, “that really was pretty wise.”
Lyssa shrugged, picked up Dev’s bagel, and took a bite. With her mouth full, she said, “So go home already.”
He wasn’t sure what he had expected. That she would be brisk and sure of herself, probably. (“Have a seat, Deveroux. Time to clear the air.”) Or affectionate and wry. (“This mess your old mom�
�s gotten you into makes string theory look like a piece of cake, huh, Devvy?”) Or cool and unemotional, methodically laying out her acts and motives like a defense attorney. But what he had never expected was that she would be broken. Hollow-eyed and slow-moving. Uncertain and as droopy as an unwatered plant, perpetually on the verge of tears. The opposite of herself.
Belong to Me: A Novel Page 38