Claire took another long sip of her coffee and picked up one of the pink sweetener packets on the table and shook it, settling its contents and wondering why the memories she tried to muster of her family always turned out to be saccharine. So sweet at first, with a bitter aftertaste. She leaned back in her chair and saw a man seated at the table near the door, typing on a laptop. She hadn’t noticed him before, but recognized him from other afternoon coffee breaks, from the gardens and hallways. Another regular. She studied his chiseled features, the gray sprouting from his temples. The tired slope of his shoulders. Even at a distance, there was an acquiescence to whatever had brought him to this place. That much she could tell. Was it his wife, or his mother, maybe? She tried to imagine someone else’s story.
The man glanced up, catching her eye and smiling, and Claire reached too quickly for her phone, checking for a phantom message. She considered what Cora would think of her appearance—the circles under her eyes she no longer bothered to conceal, her untended hair now wavy and past her shoulders, her uniform of white jeans and whatever shirt wasn’t dirty—but just as quickly dismissed all thoughts of clothing and makeup. It wasn’t the kind of place where people cared. She stirred her near-empty cup with determination, and returned to her view of the courtyard gardens.
Several minutes later she heard the groan of a table leg, and turned to see that the man had abandoned his computer and was approaching her. He wore jeans and a faded Oxford shirt, and carried a plate. Claire looked around, but there was no one else behind her in the cafeteria.
“Cookie?” He stood across the table from her, smiling.
“Pardon me?”
“Would you care for a cookie?” He set a plateful of cookies in front of her, and stepped back. “I bought every one they had, hoping at least one wouldn’t be stale.”
Claire looked at the crumbling mound, laughing to herself at the threat of cookies. “Well that’s very nice. Thank you.” At close range his face whispered at the same fatigue she imagined hers shouted.
“I thought we might as well introduce ourselves officially since we seem to be leading parallel lives here. Name’s Richard Elliot.” He remained standing, waiting tentatively.
Parallel lives. Claire felt the sharp bite of the phrase, felt the hair on her neck stand on end, thinking of Andrew and where that phrase had taken her.
“I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?” he asked after too long a silence.
She shook her head slowly, squeezing the metal edging of the table, wanting to be anywhere but there, yet not wanting to appear rude. “I’m Claire,” she replied. “It’s nice to meet you. Officially.”
“Do you mind if I sit?”
“All right.” She forced a smile and took a bite of an oatmeal raison cookie, finding it difficult to swallow.
“What’s the verdict?”
“I’m sorry?”
“What’s the verdict on the cookie?”
“Oh.” She wiped a crumb from the corner of her mouth. “Crunchy, I guess.”
“Well, that’s a good sign.” He broke off a piece of a peanut butter cookie. “Now here’s the real test,” he said, holding it up between them. “If they can’t get peanut butter right, then they need a new pastry chef in this joint.” He put the cookie into his mouth, considering it like a rare cheese.
She watched his eyes. Large and brown, and flecked with amber. They didn’t smolder or incite, but seemed direct. Safe. “And?”
“And it tastes like old socks.”
Her guard eased and she allowed herself to laugh the warming-up laugh of strangers. As they small-talked in the drab light of the cafeteria, it dawned on her that she hadn’t had a discussion that was tragedy-free in months. So even if it was only a short reprieve—a conversation about nothing with someone who knew nothing about her—Richard with his plate of cookies was a welcome distraction. She broke off chunks of chocolate chip and finished another oatmeal raisin over his reports on the farmer’s market and the Getty Museum. And for just a few minutes, she forgot to worry.
“So, I’m visiting my sister,” he finally said. “You?”
“My son.”
“How old is he?”
“Seventeen.” She hoped that would be enough. “And your sister, how is she doing?”
“Better.” His eyebrows drew together. “We were in a car accident. She didn’t fare as well as I did.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. I didn’t mean to bring things—”
“I know.” She knew exactly. “My son’s improving, too.”
Richard glanced at the clock on the wall, and then pushed his chair back and stood. “Well, it was very nice to meet you, Claire. I need to stop by the pool. But maybe we could share a meal here sometime?”
“I’m married,” she blurted out, feeling broadsided and then immediately embarrassed.
“Then in that case, we could wear hair shirts and sit at separate tables.”
“God, I’m sorry.” She lowered her eyes, shaking her head. “You weren’t asking me on a date.”
“No.”
“It’s just that everything is so, I don’t know—” She sank back in her chair and plastered her hands over her face.
“Fraught?”
She slid her fingers down. “Fraught. And far too complicated to understand. But I apologize for being an idiot.”
Richard looked deliberately around the cafeteria, and out onto the courtyard where two patients in wheelchairs sat next to one another staring in opposite directions. “I’d say I’m uniquely qualified to understand.”
She smiled without effort, lost in thought. There was another long silence between them. “Have you ever just veered away from your path, but didn’t really know you were veering?” she suddenly asked, without really meaning to.
He contemplated her hands for a moment. “Unanticipated choices aren’t the worst thing a person can make.”
“Thank you for the cookies,” she said after a few seconds. “A meal might be lovely sometime. Soup, maybe.”
“The sky’s the limit.”
Claire watched him walk to his table. His hair was flattened against the back of his scalp, as if he had slept sitting up in a chair. His jeans hung loosely on his frame, though she could tell they had once fit more snuggly, and there was just the slightest limp in his gait. “Richard,” she called out to him as he was closing his computer, “what are you writing?”
“It’s sort of my Tuesdays with Morrie.” He slid the computer into his bag. “I’m a journalist most hours, but I’m also working on a book. About all this.” He flared his palms outward toward the inpatient and therapy buildings, the cafeteria, her.
She finished the last cookie on the plate, and went to wait for Michael in the lobby.
CHAPTER 19
The conversation happened at a hot dog stand a block from Rancho. They walked there after their two hours together watching Nicholas perform his Wednesday best. Michael had been pleased with Nick’s crisis-free accomplishments in the therapy gym after he’d arrived. Nicholas was talkative and happy after his gait class, the improvements in his strength and attitude on full display. The doctors were encouraging as they gave the go-ahead for a complete dismissal of his walker, and spoke to Claire and Michael of discharging Nicholas for outpatient therapy back home. It was a very good morning, Michael had said. Everything was looking so strangely positive and upbeat, so unlike their last meeting. When it was time for Nick to go to his art workshop, Michael had suggested a late lunch to Claire.
They sat in white plastic chairs near a small patch of grass behind the Gingham Dog. A few pillowy clouds drifted overhead as if just passing through on holiday as they set out their chili specials and sodas and reviewed Nick’s performance. Michael looked almost relaxed in his button-down shirt and jeans, and Claire felt almost hopeful. They would be returning to Denver soon, to a life at home they would somehow finally have to navigate. It was such a welcome and long-awaited moment, this urban picn
ic on such a seductively sunny afternoon. The fuchsia-haired girl behind the order window turned on an ancient radio and spun the dial until it landed on the Violent Femmes. Claire whistled along to the angsty reminder of the eighties, and for a while they just sat listening to the music and tossing crumbs to the gathering pigeons, while diners of all stripes—businessmen, halter-topped skater chicks, and orderlies in scrubs—came and ate their hot dogs and went.
When the last of the lunch crowd had finally gone, Michael set his Pepsi can on the cement between them. The straw spun a couple revolutions with the breeze until its bent tip stopped and pointed in his direction, like the spinner on a board game. Michael’s cheeks had reddened with the heat, Claire noticed, and perspiration had started to form at his sideburns. She could see he was about to speak, and she placed a hand on his knee, preempting him. “I think I’ll talk to Amy about having a going-away party for Nick when we get back to the hospital. Just a little something with all of his specialists and docs to celebrate his progress and to thank them for all they’ve helped him—”
“We can’t do this anymore, Claire,” Michael said, cutting her off. There was a hint of remorse in his voice, the hint of some long-buried sadness, but only just. “This can’t go on.”
And just like that, amid the gravel and rush of a suburban LA hot dog stand, Claire’s reedy hope blistered in the sun. She stared speechless as her head began its own slow spin.
“I’ve talked with the director,” he continued. “They’ll be sending Nick’s chart out to Craig Hospital, and I’ll bring him back to Denver next week. You can have your party and then fly out ahead of us. And then you should make some arrangements, get yourself set up somewhere near the house,” he’d said, averting his eyes. “We just can’t live there together now and pretend nothing happened. Not with Nick coming home. And obviously he needs to be in the house.”
“What?” she gasped, still fighting to catch her breath from the sucker punch. “You’re serious? You want me to move out of our house? But how do you expect—”
“Face it, we haven’t been happy for a long time.”
“But that’s crazy.” She grabbed both of his hands, his pale smooth knuckles, holding on for their life together. “Until last year, we were fine. I mean, things weren’t perfect, and I know there’s a lot to work through, but—” Bile inched up her throat. “You can’t possibly mean this. Let’s use this time to . . . to work on our issues. We need to make that choice.”
He pulled away from her grip. “You already made a choice, Claire. Were you really happy and fine when you chose him? And did it feel fine to trash me in the process? No,” he said, shaking his head, “there’s just too much—”
“Michael, people do make stupid, reckless decisions. Mea culpa, a thousand times! But this one had nothing to do with trashing you. Please.”
He seemed to bristle at her words as he was regrouping. “Then maybe you should take a little time to think about what it did have to do with. We need to be apart now, Claire. This”—he made a back-and-forth motion with his hand between their two hearts—“this won’t be good for Nick. You know that. He needs calm, and the two of us together under one roof will not make for a healthy environment. I don’t want to put him under any more stress than he’s already under.”
Claire’s head bobbed mechanically, her guilt over everything she had done to bring them to this cliff subduing the anger and shock. All she could think of was how not to push Michael away any further, of not giving him any more reasons to blow it all up and run for good. She couldn’t believe he was asking this of her. And yet, he was hurt, maybe in his own version of shock, and not at all himself. The possibility of life as a divorced, single parent washed over her with frightful potency. And it was a life she could not fathom, even if her husband was acting like an irrational ass. They were a family, and if there was to be any shot at mending their relationship, maybe a temporary separation was their only hope. A searing ache started to unfold across her brain as she weighed the untenability of her options. If Michael moved out, he might never return. But if she were to go, as he was telling her she should, for some short, temporary trial period where she could further demonstrate her contrition and he could feel like he’d doled out the appropriate penalty . . . She couldn’t find any other trapdoor to the argument. And she had to stop moving her head, had to circumvent the pain before it could take over. She placed pressure on the nerve just below her eyebrow and fished in her bag for some aspirin.
“I can have Dana look into a nice rental for you at Park Gardens if you want,” he’d said as she watched him crush the empty soda can and straw in his palm. His expression was one of numbness and detachment, a stranger’s. The sun flashed overhead, klieg lights, it seemed, on their increasingly surreal tableau.
CHAPTER 20
Claire requested a table for one near the bar. The restaurant was the only decent spot within walking distance of the hospital. Its walls were painted a deep red and covered with small oil paintings of Parisian nightlife, the crowd noisy. She ordered a dirty martini with extra olives. When it arrived, milky with chill, she drank half of it in one big gulp and stared into the ruby candlelight, the inconceivable events of the afternoon only just beginning to penetrate.
She stabbed at an olive at the bottom of her glass with the plastic cocktail sword. The damage was done, Michael had said, even if Nick did make a complete recovery. They’d both done too much damage. She pictured Michael’s eyes as he’d uttered those words, how his expression had gone from tortured to practically somnolent. The olive rolled around the glass, eluding capture. Her husband had finally pulled his head out of the sand, and she felt as if the man who had spoken those unfeeling words to her and then refused to engage any further was someone she’d never met. Claire emptied her glass.
“Waiter, another martini, please. Extra dirty.”
She didn’t know what to make of their history anymore. The candle flame glowed pink, and under it, rivulets of wax dribbled honey-like down its sides. Her eyes burned, and she hated that Michael had brought her to this again. How absurd to doubt the validity of eighteen years of one’s life. And how nearsighted to disregard so much goodness for one failure, massive though it was.
In the background Edith Piaf’s tragic voice soared over the static of an ancient record. Quand il me prend dans ses bras, il me parle tout bas, Je vois la vie en rose. She mouthed the words and wondered how they could not have been happy when she had tried to make everything so beautiful. She had gladly given up her job and devoted herself to creating the kind of warm family life and home Michael had never had. La vie en rose.
The second drink went down more smoothly. As Claire chewed on an olive, it occurred to her that maybe she didn’t really know her husband at all. When they should have been plowing the depths of their souls and working through their difficulties together, he drifts deeper into his own murky world. She thought of his eyes again, the remoteness in them, the absence of light. She remembered seeing the look before. There was some important truth buried there, Claire was certain, something he was keeping from her.
She ran a finger around the moist rim of the glass, thinking about her own secrets and failures. Had she been happy the night she met Andrew? Did it matter anymore? She signaled to the waiter for another.
“Claire?”
She turned around, wondering how he had found her. But she couldn’t see him. There was a blur and a voice, but no Michael. Maybe he’d realized his mistake. She heard her name again and looked expectantly past the banquette. There, sitting at the bar, was Richard. She attempted to stand, and possibly run, but her head was too heavy and her knees missed the message. He came to her instead and sat down.
The waiter returned with her drink as Richard sat. “What, no cookies?” she asked.
“How about some peanuts? It looks like you could use something to eat.”
She held on to the base of the glass, making a triangle with her hands. “I’m drunk.”
“I can see that. But you don’t strike me as the type of woman who gets drunk in restaurants by herself.”
She took a long sip, swirling the thick saltiness around in her mouth. “It’s been a day.”
“I guess so.”
Claire leaned in over the table, barely registering the heat of the candle beneath her chin. “But I’ll tell you who I am, Richard. I’m go-with-the-flow Claire. I’m the gal whom roommates loved and boyfriends wanted back. Because I’m the perennial goodwill ambassador who never, God forbid, wants to ruffle feathers, and always makes nice, always smiles and fixes.” Richard pushed a glass of water across the tablecloth to her hand. She traced a line in the condensation with her finger, feeling her head wobble on her neck. “I told myself this was the strength of my character.” She stared at Richard, seeing a hazy kaleidoscope of faces. “But it didn’t make me strong. It just got me lost. Good and goddamned lost.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. Red tears, she imagined, like the candle wax. “Lost me my marriage.”
He tore off a piece of bread from the loaf in the basket and offered it up to her.
Hammered on Stoli and sinking deeper into her despair, she pushed away the bread and told him that she wanted to go home to her house, that she just wanted her life and family back. The words tasted tart, like cheerless Starbursts of regret. He drove her to her apartment and made sure she got safely to the door.
CHAPTER 21
The incessant pounding could not have been in her head. Or maybe it was. In her head. The noise grew louder and she began to decipher a sort of rhythm to it, a tune. Sinatra? Snippets of “Fly Me to the Moon” rushed in. A convertible, stars tumbling across the sky, the night breeze on her face. She slowly got out of bed and heard her name muffled through the front door. She checked the peephole.
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