The Love Book

by Nina Solomon

  She was about to respond, but ordered a double scotch instead. Twenty minutes passed and still no Malcolm. What could be keeping him? She hoped Freddy hadn’t taken a turn for the worse. She went to see if he was waiting for her in the lobby.

  A woman with wavy red hair was at the concierge desk. “I’d like the key to Freddy McBride’s room.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t do that,” the concierge said.

  “You can’t give me the key to my husband’s room?”

  “Both keys are out, ma’am. And I’m afraid we’re completely booked.”

  Malcolm entered, and was crossing the carpeted lobby. The moment he saw the woman at the desk, he rushed over. “Muriel!”

  They embraced. “Oh Malcolm! I was so worried. How is he?”

  “He’s going to be fine, no need to worry.”

  “Malcolm, this woman says I can’t get the key to Freddy’s room.”

  “That’s our room,” he said.

  “Our?”

  He waved Beatrice over. “Come, Beatrice, don’t be shy. Let me introduce you.” She reluctantly obliged. She had never been a shrinking violet, but this seemed beyond awkward. Malcolm put his arm around her. “Muriel, this is my paramour, Beatrice. We came for homecoming.”

  Muriel smiled. She had a pretty smile. Under different circumstances, they probably would have been friends. She looked a little worn after the cross-country journey and was about fifteen pounds overweight, but her avoirdupois did not diminish her attractiveness, perhaps even enhanced it.

  “Malcolm could use a woman in his life,” she said. “I can vouch for the McBride brothers, except they’re as stubborn as mules. The doctor’s been telling Freddy to go on statin drugs for years and now look!” She hid her face in her hands. “Sorry, it’s been a long day. I’ve been worried sick. I just need to lie down. But there’re no rooms.”

  “We have a suite, Muriel,” Malcolm said. “With a very comfortable pullout couch. Come, let me carry your bags.”

  Beatrice went back to the bar and downed her double scotch, fortification for another sleepless night in Hanover.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  FERTILE GROUND

  EMILY AND DUNCAN WERE SPENDING the weekend at his agent’s country house in New Hope. It was the first time since the divorce that the thought of an entire weekend without Zach didn’t seem like a bottomless pit. She knew she was way ahead of herself but she tried to imagine where Duncan’s rolltop desk would fit in her apartment, or hers in his. It wasn’t logical. Charles was logical, methodical, systematic, and it had driven her crazy. He read manuals cover to cover. But logic wasn’t always applicable in matters of love.

  That morning, she’d just finished her daily blog when the phone rang. She had a moment of panic, thinking it was Duncan calling to cancel.

  “Mrs. Andrews? This is Apthorp Pharmacy.”

  Her doctor had called in a prescription for birth control. The automated system probably hadn’t recorded her payment information.

  “Yes, just a minute,” she said. “I’ll go get my credit card.”

  “No need. I’m calling to say your infertility treatments have been approved by your health insurance.”

  “Infertility treatments? My doctor called in birth control.”

  “This is Clarissa Andrews, isn’t it?”

  “No, Emily Andrews.”

  “I’m sorry,” the pharmacist said. “Your number is still listed under Mr. Andrews’s account.”

  Clarissa Andrews? Since when had Clarissa started using Charles’s name? Had they gotten married? Zach would have said something, wouldn’t he? Suddenly Charles’s snit about her not packing Zach’s blazer a few weeks ago made sense.

  She’d already hung up before she could ask if her own prescription was ready.

  * * *

  Duncan’s agent lived in a stone house built before the Revolutionary War with small paned windows, shutters, and wide plank floors. The walls were painted authentic colonial colors in keeping with historical records—Meeting House blue, Yarmouth Oyster, Shaker red. And lots and lots of pewter. It reminded her of a trip she and Charles had taken to Colonial Williamsburg except for the stacks of manuscripts and books written by Estelle’s clients, most of whom, as in Duncan’s case, were like family to her. Emily’s heart felt full as though a new world were opening up to her. For the first time, she felt she was standing beyond the velvet ropes.

  Estelle and her husband Claude made Emily feel so welcome, kissing her on both cheeks and expressing their approbation to Duncan. They sat in the summer kitchen at a long pine table. Claude poured the wine. The meal was lavish, and definitely not period: choucroute, bouillabaisse, cheese puffs (gougères, Duncan corrected her), and a perfect tarte Tatin which Duncan consumed with uncharacteristic gusto, never once asking for the list of ingredients in the crust.

  Then began Emily’s very polite interrogation. Where did she do her doctoral work? Had she read Julian Barnes’s novel? Oh, she hadn’t? But wasn’t she writing about Flaubert? When she answered that she didn’t have a doctorate but that she’d seen both of Flaubert’s “real” parrots in Rouen, they tried another tack. What was she reading? When she told them she was rereading Pride and Prejudice, they looked at her as if she was a precocious little child allowed to sit with the grownups for the first time. Duncan’s last girlfriend, a Swedish professor of semiotics who had just received a Guggenheim and was living with a baroness in Italy, was mentioned as often as the wine glasses were refilled. Say, how is the beautiful Petra? Did her agent sell the foreign rights at Frankfurt? I heard she was planning on completing her novel at Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. Tell her she either has to come back for Christmas or divulge her secret recipe for vörtbröd.

  Ordinarily, it would have made Emily shrink into less-than-ness, barely holding onto her sense of self, especially when she found out that Petra had not only been Duncan’s live-in girlfriend, she’d been his student. But his fingers tracing the inside of her wrist made it all disappear, the way little things, like a pink toothbrush on the vanity in his cluttered bathroom, or eyeliner in the medicine cabinet, could be easily edited out like a stray comma.

  “Emily has a book,” he said, taking her hand. “Mark my word, it will be a stunning debut.”

  Estelle smiled too sweetly as she passed a plate of petits fours. “Do you have representation?”

  “No, I’ll just be happy if anyone wants it,” Emily said.

  Duncan leaned forward, elbows on the table. “What Emily means is that it will be making the rounds soon.”

  While Estelle and her husband were in the kitchen making espressos, Duncan chided her. “Don’t ever do that again.”

  “Do what?”

  “Act like a beggar. You’ll just be happy if anyone wants it? No true professional would say something like that.”

  “I was just being honest,” she said.

  “In this business you have to promote yourself. You have to make them beg for a chance to see your book, not the other way around.”

  “But I’ve only written one chapter.”

  He shook his head. “Sometimes you make me feel like I’m wasting my time. It’s like pissing into a violin.”

  After dinner they sat in the living room, the oldest part of the house, a former tavern. Emily’s cell phone began blaring: “Pick up the phone, pick up the phone, pick up the phone.” Zach had personalized her ringtone again without telling her. Estelle and Claude smiled politely while she fumbled in her bag, then excused herself and found a quiet spot to take the call.

  “Zach, is something wrong?” she asked.

  “Daddy wants you to pick me up at ten on Sunday. He has a meeting.”

  “I thought he was taking you to the game.”

  “He says he can’t.”

  Emily looked over at Duncan, who was standing by the fireplace talking to Claude, his elbow on the mantel. She was disappointed that they’d have to cut their weekend short, Duncan would be too, but he would unders
tand. It was her son. And there would be many more weekends like this together.

  “Well, can you, Mom?”

  “Yes, sweetie, tell Daddy it’s fine.”

  “He says don’t be late. Gotta go. We just ordered Chinese.”

  When she told Duncan she had to be back early, he didn’t take it quite the way she’d thought he would.

  “Why the sudden change of plans?”

  “My ex-husband has a meeting.”

  “Oh, I see. And you’re the good little ex-wife who’s supposed to jump when he says jump?” He began pacing. “Who’s in charge here? You or your ex-husband? I won’t be held hostage to some corporate dweeb’s whims.”

  Her first instinct was to defend Charles, but she knew it wouldn’t go over too well. “I didn’t think this would upset you,” she said.

  “You didn’t think? Unbelievable! Don’t you realize you’re teaching people to disrespect you? If you don’t stand up to bullies they’ll walk all over you. And I don’t want to be with a doormat.”

  Estelle and Claude were doing their best to pretend not to listen.

  “What can I do to fix things?” she asked.

  “Nothing. You made your choice. You have your priorities.”

  * * *

  The next day they went to the farmers’ market for fresh eggs and kayaked on the Delaware River, a perfect Saturday afternoon, but the mood was cool to say the least. Emily made a Dutch baby with caramelized apples, hoping it would be a palliative, but Duncan, who devoured Estelle’s crêpes, wouldn’t even take a bite.

  In bed that night, however, he seemed in a much more conciliatory mood. “I think I know what can fix things,” he said.

  After an hour of acrobatics in the creaky canopy bed, she was more than ready for the final act, without which it would be akin to sitting through fifteen hours of Wagner’s Ring Cycle without Brünnhilde’s final immolation. It almost made her nostalgic for Charles’s drive-through quickies. But Duncan was passionate and intuitive, the most generous lover she’d ever known. And a brilliant man. He blamed his inability to climax on the condom she’d insisted he use. Despite this, Emily was sure everything with Duncan would sort itself out, given enough time and patience, and she had both in abundance. They were connected on so many levels, she was certain they could overcome any obstacle.

  Emily made arrangements for Zach to spend the day at a friend’s house so she and Duncan didn’t have to cut their weekend short after all, her way of repairing things. But Duncan spent the entire ride on his cell phone anyway, so she wondered why she’d even bothered.

  * * *

  She picked Zach up around five and they walked down a leaf-strewn Riverside Drive. At a red light, she tried to engage him in conversation but he only gave one-word replies. She didn’t want to press him about Charles and Clarissa getting married, but it worried her that he kept so much inside. It had been the same with the divorce.

  “Are you excited that basketball season is starting soon?” she asked.

  “Mom,” he said, as if she were the dumbest person in the world, “there’s a lockout.”

  “I guess I haven’t been keeping up with sports lately. So, what are you going to be for Halloween?”

  “Halloween’s for babies,” he replied, then raced ahead on his silver scooter as soon as the light changed. He waited for her to catch up. “Can we go into the park? Jake taught me a cool trick.”

  It was getting dark, but he looked at her with that pleading expression she could never resist, the one that kept her reading him book after book when he was little despite it being way past his bedtime.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Cool. You’re not going to believe it!”

  The park was practically empty, just a few dog walkers and runners. Zach led the way down the cobblestoned path to the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument.

  “Stand over there. You’ll have the best view,” he said.

  “Where’s the hill?” she asked.

  “No hill. I’m going to stair bash.”

  “Oh no you’re not.”

  “I did it with Jake. I’m wearing a helmet.”

  It felt like yesterday when he’d toppled head first from the top of a slide. She’d cried more than he had as she’d rushed him to the doctor. Charles said she was overprotective. She was one of the few parents who still dropped off and picked up their kids. She knew she had to let him grow up sometime. Was sometime now?

  “Please, Mom? I’ll be careful.”

  She hesitated. “Okay, but promise you’ll go slow.”

  Zach was perched at the top of the curved stone steps waiting for a slow-moving golden retriever and its corpulent owner to pass, when her heart began to race. She must be out of her mind to let him do this.

  “Zach, stop.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “You said I could.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  Zach threw his helmet to the ground, reminding her of the time Charles flung his briefcase into the street during an argument. She had a sudden flash of awareness: if she didn’t do something, Zach might grow up to be a suit-wearing, briefcase-throwing man just like his father. But he wasn’t Charles and she wouldn’t let him pretend to be.

  “That may work with your father,” she said, “but not with me. Now pick up your helmet and let’s go.”

  They walked the rest of the way home in silence.

  Kalman was helping an elderly tenant out of a taxi as they approached the building. “Mr. Andrews is waiting for you,” he said.

  “Mr. Andrews?”

  At the far end of the lobby Charles was sitting on a long wooden bench beside a large duffel bag.

  “Dad?” Zach said. “Am I going to your house tonight?”

  “No, Zachary, I was just walking by and thought I’d bring you a treat.” He held out a small white bag.

  “Watermelon gumballs! Awesome!”

  Emily knew there was more to this impromptu visit than gumballs. “Zach, will you check the mailbox for me?” She waited until he’d scooted off then turned to Charles. “Is something wrong? Is it your mother?”

  Charles wasn’t one to show his emotions—he hadn’t even cried at his father’s funeral—and this was the closest she’d ever seen him come to losing it.

  “What is it?” she asked again.

  “Clarissa threw me out.”

  Emily waited for the inevitable onslaught of blame. Somehow this, like everything, would be construed as her fault—she’d phoned one too many times, or Clarissa had found out about the mix-up with the pharmacy, or Charles had accidentally called her Emily (that scenario, she even found slightly amusing), but he just stood there silently, his arms heavy at his sides, staring at the floor.

  Zach returned with a bundle of letters under his arm. “Speedy delivery! There’s something for you, Dad.” Emily had been hoping another red envelope would be among the letters, but just more bills. Zach scooted over to the elevator and pressed the button. “Mom, is it okay if Dad comes up? I want to show him my new Madden game.”

  Emily hadn’t seen Charles unshaven since the summer after he graduated law school when they spent six months in Israel. After they returned to the States, he asked her to marry him. It was hard to see the old Charles—the adventurous, socially conscious, slightly dangerous one she knew when she was in grad school—in the man standing before her now.

  “Can he, Mom?” Zach asked again.

  Charles’s eyes were ringed with shadows, his mouth tight. He’d had the same expression four years ago under the bare wisteria arbor when they told Zach they were separating. At the time she’d interpreted it as a lack of emotion, but now she wondered if it wasn’t the opposite. He had too much emotion and was trying to contain it like a pressure cooker, the only way he knew how. If she couldn’t extend herself for Charles, the father of her child, at least she could do it for Zach.

  “Okay,” she said. “And if he wants,
he can even stay for dinner.”

  Like the flicker of a lightning bug, Charles’s eyes brightened, unguarded, hopeful, relieved.

  As they rode the elevator, Zach was talking a mile a minute. “Hey, Dad, can you help me with my math homework? And after dinner can we play catch?”

  “Sure, Zach.”

  “And then watch the game?”

  “I don’t know, you have to ask your mom.”

  “Mom?”

  “It’s a school night, Zach. You know the rules.”

  Emily prepared herself for the jawohl, but instead Charles said, “Mommy’s right. Don’t you have a big game tomorrow?”

  “With our archenemy. Can you come?”

  Emily waited for Zach’s crestfallen face. Charles hadn’t made a single game this year or last, giving the usual excuses about work, an important meeting. She was always left to pick up the pieces. He loves you, Zach. He’d be there if he could.

  But Charles surprised them both by putting his arm around his son and pulling him close. “I’ll be there,” he said as the elevator opened at their floor. “Tomorrow and every single game from now on.”

  * * *

  Zach fell asleep before halftime. Charles carried him to bed then went to the front hall and put on his coat. Emily was in her pajamas and had pulled her hair up into a ponytail. She was wearing her glasses. She’d tried Duncan’s cell at least a dozen times. Each time her call went to voice mail, her anxiety ratcheted up another notch. She felt like she was sinking with nothing to hold onto.

  “Five thirty on Wednesday, right?” she asked, as if reading from a script.

  He shrugged. “If I have a place for him to sleep.”

  Charles’s first apartment after they separated had been a furnished studio with a Murphy bed, a small cot for Zach, an efficiency kitchen, and a huge spa-like marble bathroom. The first night Zach slept there, he’d cried and wanted to come home.