“Perfect. We’ll get him back on course, Mrs. M., don’t you worry,” Ray said with such a twinkle of confidence that Claire had the feeling she’d just sat on Santa’s knee.
“And I should probably explain”—Claire lowered her voice—“our situation here at the house. It’s a little . . . unconventional at the moment.” She imagined questioning Michael when he got home about just how unconventional things had really become.
“Look,” Ray said, walking her toward her car, “my job is to help Nick with his daily living skills. We’re gonna work on household chores and we’re gonna do fun things, maybe some driving, and definitely some art. My goal is to give him opportunities to succeed here so he can take that confidence and apply it outside.” He raised his eyebrows, as if to say that he had a firm grip on the less-than-solid situation he’d walked into. “I’ll keep him moving forward, Mrs. M, and you can get the situation to wherever it needs to be.”
“Thank you, Ray.” She placed her hand on his arm, thinking less Santa Claus and more angel.
Nicholas got into the backseat of the Jeep with Jackie, and Claire drove them to the neighborhood park where Nick had played soccer through middle school. They walked along the bike path, Nicholas between them, a head taller and a nearly shoulder’s width broader than both of them. From behind, someone might have guessed he was a man in his twenties who’d suffered a bad ski injury and was still trying to work off his limp. It was that soothing magic hour before sundown, and a quiet had settled on the park after a throng of kids had climbed into their mothers’ SUVs and headed for violin lessons and homework and dinners.
“Allie and Miranda can’t wait to see you, Nick,” Jackie said as they rounded the bend near the playground. “We’d love to have you over for pizza this weekend.”
Nicholas stopped, then broke from them and walked over to a nearby bench, turning his head away.
“Are you okay?” Claire asked him. “Is this too much on your ankle?
He pretended to shield his eyes from the glare, avoiding both of their gazes. “It’s always too much. But I just have to . . . deal it—deal with all of it. Don’t I?” His words oozed with the naked emotion he’d been holding back since he’d gotten home. Three teenage boys dodged out onto the field in front of them and began tossing around a Frisbee. Nicholas leaned forward and watched them. “I want to get better, Aunt Jax,” he said quietly. “Before I see the girls.” He stayed focused on the boys’ rapid-fire movements. “I don’t want to see anyone until I’m . . . better.”
Jackie looked to her sister, and Claire signaled for compliance, completely appreciating the idea of hiding from the world until things were looking up.
“We can wait a couple weeks then for dinner, okay? But I plan to see you again before that,” Jackie said, sitting down and wrapping her arm around his waist.
They watched the game for a while as the sun started to dip. The boys looked to be a couple years younger than Nicholas, and were swift and athletic as he once had been. One of them launched the Frisbee toward his friend near the playground, but it glided south with the wind and landed a few yards away from where they sat. Unexpectedly, Nicholas pushed himself up from the bench and made to run for the disc. Claire stopped herself from trying to steady him before he might fall—not wanting to be one of those helicopters who, out of their fear of recurring bad luck, hover and suck the adventure out of their children’s lives.
Nick rolled on his ankle and tumbled to the gravel at the edge of the grass, his hip and palm catching most of the fall. Claire gripped Jackie’s wrist, but remained glued to the bench, as she had during hundreds of hockey and lacrosse games, waiting for her son to right himself. He reached out for the Frisbee and got to his knees. One of the boys approached, and Nick tossed it feebly toward him.
“You need some help, dude?” the boy asked, holding out a hand.
Nick pressed himself onto his feet and, once balanced, unfolded to standing. “No,” he snapped. The boy shrugged and jogged back to his buddies.
Nick wiped his upper lip with the arm of the new hoodie. A light dusting of gravel fell to the ground. “Let’s go home,” he said, starting back down the path to the car without turning around.
When they arrived back at the house Michael was working in the study. Nick lowered himself onto the chaise opposite the desk and elevated his leg on one of the pillows, saying nothing to his dad. Michael greeted Claire and Jackie with a distracted hello, and tousled Nick’s hair before returning to his chair.
“We had a long walk at the park,” Claire said, filling the silence that ensued, and ignoring the same discomfiting nausea she’d felt the last time she’d been in the house. She scanned the room, seeing herself still there in the pictures with Nicholas on the bookshelves and piano, in the fabrics and furniture and artwork she’d chosen—and the stasis somehow surprised her. She would start out gently, she decided.
They discussed the program for Nick’s first day at Craig and the schedule with Ray for the week, and all the other appointments and moving pieces that would be the new routine. Nick responded to everything with a series of nods and whatevers, the park mishap clearly still bothering him. Michael was only slightly more engaged. And when Berna poked her head in to announce that Nick’s dinner was ready anytime he wanted it, he seemed only too happy for an opportunity to escape. Jackie followed him into the kitchen.
“Nick was kind of up and down this afternoon,” Claire said, apprising Michael. “This is not an easy adjustment, you know. Even if he doesn’t complain.”
Michael was simultaneously sending a text and checking something on the computer screen. “Yeah,” he said, focusing on the computer. “But everyone’s doing fine here,” he emphasized with a brief glance. “And Ray seems very capable.”
“I picked up some new clothes for Nicky today at Neiman’s,” she said evenly.
His attention had returned to the screen.
“And when I went to pay, they told me the card was no longer valid.” She cocked her head and smiled, waiting.
He looked up. “What?”
“My Neiman’s card, you’ve had it . . . closed?”
He typed for a few seconds, clicked the mouse, and came around to her side of the partners’ desk. “I don’t know. Maybe Dana did.” The shadow of his beard and his bloodshot eyes said all-nighter, or tanking deal.
“Hmm.”
“I think it had been inactive for a while so she probably just shut it down. She’s been streamlining things.” He leaned onto the edge of the desk and shrugged.
Okay, Claire thought. Not totally unreasonable.
“So you used the Amex, then?”
She nodded.
“Fine, crisis averted.” He walked toward the door, loosening his tie with one hand and monitoring his cell with the other. “Nicky’s got a big day tomorrow, and I’m sure Jackie needs to get back to Boulder. Let’s call it a night?”
“Sure,” she said, while commending herself for not having launched the original nuclear attack she’d composed. And despite her desire to grill him about the exact nature of his intentions and his non-recollection of Taylor, and to find out how many lawyers he’d consulted and how he envisioned the endgame, Claire repeated her new mantra of Sara Lee Clinton and kept her smile plastered in place. Which, as she thought about it, she’d been doing for a very long time. She cut past him and went to the kitchen.
“I’ve got to get your aunt back to her car,” she said to Nick in her ongoing imitation of cheerful. She wasn’t sure she’d ever get comfortable with these exits. And she didn’t believe that Nick had. “I’ll see you in the morning, honey.”
“Cool.” He flipped through TV channels, barely registering her departure.
“Cool? Are you kidding me?” Claire said to Richard’s jovial voice later that evening.
“Aw, he’s just being stoic. What else is a teenaged boy supposed to do in the face of everything he’s dealing with? It’s the ‘whatever’ approach, and he’d probably
be slinging it with passionate indifference regardless of the injury.”
She had called Richard for a little distraction from all that her mind was spinning, and for a dose of the encouragement he’d always been able to supply. And because she was, at long last, resigned enough to answer his inevitable “how’s your marriage?” question. Which came within the first three minutes of the call.
“I think the clarity has come,” she responded. “You were right.”
“Well, that’s one in a row.”
“It’s finally, sadly, circling the drain. And I’m going to see a lawyer this week.”
Loud barking echoed in the background, followed by the sound of some sort of scratching. “Bring it here,” Richard said. “No, here, buddy. Come! Jagger!”
“Trouble with the help?” Claire asked in her best imitation of her mother-in-law.
“That,” he said between a string of new and clearly unanswered, commands, “was the second biggest mistake of my adult life.”
“But no less unpredictable than everything else. Right?”
“When you pick out a Lab at the shelter, the only quality you’re pretty much guaranteed of is that he’ll be dying to play fetch with you, right? But we got Jagger, the Labrador non-retriever. And now I have said mutant all to myself.”
Claire chuckled, relaxing into her sheets and imagining how perfect it would be to snuggle up to a warm, uncomplicated cyclone of fur. “I see now that there’s no going back for us,” she said, wanting for some unexpected reason to steer their conversation back to her marriage. “Which seems so strange. This resignation I’m starting to feel, I mean.”
“Okay, Smitty. Answer me this. Who’s your best friend?”
She could hear Jagger barking. “Curious minds?”
“Humor me.”
Without further hesitation she told him that it was Jackie. And Gail and Carolyn, to a lesser degree.
“Your biggest cheerleader, the person who’s always got your back, and vice versa?”
“Definitely Jackie,” she repeated.
“Well, then I’d say that there’s nothing unusual about your resignation.”
“Huh?”
“You’re not going to lose your best friend, are you?”
She propped herself up against two pillows, contemplating the significance of his question, and her response. “I was thinking more in terms of, you know, friends, but—”
“Look, when I realized that Judy wasn’t the answer to that question for me,” he continued, “I was finally able to see that she was right about ending things. Because, really, shouldn’t we hold our best friends closest and not do anything to screw them over? Shouldn’t we care most about them? I just read somewhere that infidelity doesn’t kill a relationship. Indifference does.”
“Mm-hmm.” Claire knew instinctively that she never could have hurt or been indifferent to her sister. She also knew—or at least wanted to believe—that Michael had once been the answer to that question for her. She recollected how enthusiastically he would trumpet her achievements at Sotheby’s and her early fundraising projects, how he once actually looked forward to being her “plus one” at those events, and how he used to seek her impressions of potential investors he’d introduced her to. And how with every decision she weighed, Michael had been her first consideration. But those days were ancient history. She drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them tightly. The foggy nightmare of the last seven months, while no less heartrending, was starting to seem a little less illogical in terms of the whys and wherefores of her actions.
“Okay, I can hear your eyes rolling back into your head, Smitty. But sometimes a mulligan isn’t the right thing. You know?”
“I guess I do now,” she sighed, considering all the things she didn’t know or innately feel about her husband, and the probable laundry list of things she didn’t know that she didn’t know. So much had fallen away when it came to the man she should get better than anyone. She closed her eyes and tried to visualize a Michael Top 10 list. Squeezing them tighter and trying to push his Best Ofs into sight, she landed on Happiest Day, which she assumed was Nick’s birth. But like too many other things, she was no longer certain. She swallowed slowly, acknowledging the strange truth that her husband, with whom she had shared a hundred magic moments, had become a mystery to her.
“You okay?”
“What’s your favorite song, Richard?” she asked.
“Easy. Stones, ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want.’ ”
Of course it was. She would have guessed that, if pressed. She also knew that Richard preferred peanut butter to chocolate chip, Mexican to sushi, ellipses to dashes. Inconsequential details, but they made her wonder when she and Michael had stopped noticing their details. “I suppose that should be mine, too,” she said, looking out the bedroom window. A full white moon lit the sky, and Claire experienced a fleeting swell of melancholy. “We’d have these moon moments when he was traveling, Michael and I,” she said, talking more to the memory than to Richard. “He’d call me from Hong Kong, or wherever he happened to be, and we’d describe the moon. It was . . . reassuring.”
“I know it’s hard to let go of all that, Smitty. But when your roof seems to be crumbling around you—and I don’t mean to sound cheesy—sometimes, for the first time, you can really see the stars.”
Though Richard had said the words solemnly and with the insight and candor she had come to admire about him, Claire burst out laughing at the absurdity that yet another greeting card adage could be apropos of her circumstances. She truly had become a cliché. “Well, I hope I can at some point,” she said, stifling a snicker.
“As long as I’m entertaining you, let me add this gem to the cheese platter: Falling in love is like falling off a building. It doesn’t hurt till the end.”
“Thank you, oh, Great Cheese Whiz. You are truly wise and witty, and I’m sorry for acting like a five-year-old.”
“You know,” he said, not sounding the least bit offended, “I’ve been thinking that I could use a little time on the slopes. Maybe I’ll head out to Vail next week, and swing through Denver. Can you spare an afternoon for lunch?” Jagger howled mournfully over his words.
“I think your friend will miss you.”
“No, he just needs a W-A-L-K.”
“And I need sleep,” Claire said, feeling relaxed and comforted by their easy rapport. “Call me when you’re coming, and I’ll take you to my favorite Mexican joint.”
CHAPTER 35
“Let’s go,” Nicholas said to Claire as he and Ray greeted her at the house the next morning. His voice was ebullient, his energy buzzing, and he was fully dressed with the hood of the new hoodie pulled up around his head and framing his eager smile.
“We talked about some of the folks he’ll be meeting at Craig today, and he’s pretty psyched about getting started on his new program,” Ray told her with a hesitant look.
“I need to catch up on classes . . . senior classes,” Nick said. “And then maybe my Stanford application. And APs.”
“Hold up there, Flash. Remember, you’ll be doing evaluations today so they can set up your training program,” Ray said in a calming voice. “The tutor and schoolwork will come a little later.”
“I want to start now. Dad mentioned getting a . . . college coach.”
“We can talk to your patient counselor about all of your goals,” Claire said.
Nick shuffled past them out the front door toward Claire’s car. “College. That’s my goal.”
Before the accident, Nicholas had been on track to have excellent chances for admission to most any school, with his high ACT scores, strong grades, and distinctions in varsity sports and art. But now that an entire semester had passed, along with college deadlines, never mind the study skills he’d have to relearn and all the deficits he still faced, it wasn’t likely he could make up five months of school work, much less get any applications in, Claire knew. Then again, she didn’t know what his team could help h
im accomplish now. Maybe the fervency of his desire to get up to speed academically would get him through all the sessions with the speech and occupational therapists. If college was his new motivation—and not just her own secret desire for him to have a normal future—then why not do everything in her power to help him play catch up?
“I think he sees academic improvement as a more manageable goal than overcoming some of his physical limitations,” Ray said softly. “Focusing on the cognitive stuff for a while is fine, but college next fall is pushing it.”
“But it’s possible, isn’t it?”
“Ingrained academic skills are already in the memory bank. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
The morning was still cold, and Nicholas cranked up the heat inside the car. “Chazz applied early . . . decision at Penn and got in, and Brice is going to Co . . . lumbia,” he said with undisguised envy as they pulled out of the driveway.
Claire was surprised to hear Nick bring up the friends he’d been doing his very best to avoid. “Did you talk to them?” she asked.
“Facebook.”
“Good for them.” She looked over to see him biting his lip. “Did you respond?”
“I will. Soon.” He pressed his hooded cheek against the window and stared at the oncoming traffic.
Claire understood that no amount of art or speech therapy would make Nick’s lack of relatable, “post-able” accomplishments any less agonizing. In the world of competitive teenagers with type-A parents, it was hard to compare graduation from inpatient to outpatient therapy, to an acceptance to the Ivy League in a Facebook posting. And no amount of arnica would make that psychic bruise heal any faster.
“You’ll get there, Nicky, and—”
“I know. I just want to get . . . moving forward.”
Sherry, the new social worker, greeted them inside Craig’s skylit waiting area and it was off to the races. They chatted about Nick’s desire to focus on a school reentry plan, with the aim of finishing out his senior year locally. There were meetings with recreational, speech, and physical therapists, and in the afternoon, Nick underwent the various functional evaluations that would provide “real life” assessments of his strengths and limitations. And as he pushed through them all, his silent resolve impressed everyone. By the end of the day, with a “nothing’s going to stop me” expression of intensity, Nick had established his own new approach. Sherry, who brimmed with all the confidence-building enthusiasm Claire had hoped for, reminded Claire that, like an adrenaline filled come-from-behind victory, today’s show wasn’t a sustainable high for Nick. There would still be down days, a need to temper expectations. Claire didn’t need reminding, but she saw no reason not to celebrate his commitment.
Surface Page 27