“What’s wrong, Ema?”
“I can’t talk now.”
“You mean my father’s home.”
A pause. “Yes.” A longer pause. “He’s been very sick. A stroke.”
“Oh, my God. Ema, is he okay?”
Zoë remembered Pete and tried to imagine her stern father loosened, weakened, possibly softened.
“He’s recovering. Slowly. But it was touch and go for a couple of weeks.”
“And nobody called me?”
“Zehava, what do you expect,” her mother said in a furious whisper. “We should aggravate your father when he’s at death’s door?”
“You don’t think he might want to make his peace with me before he dies?”
“I don’t want to send him to an early grave.”
“And now that he’s recovering?”
An uncomfortable silence. “You know I’ve tried to talk to him. And maybe in the future, your sister and I can try again to convince him…”
“Is Aviva there now? Is she visiting from Israel?”
“Yes, she came right away when she heard what happened.”
Zoë hesitated, then hung up the phone. It didn’t matter. Nothing had changed, not really. Except that it was finally, conclusively clear to her that the estrangement from her family was not going to be resolved with some melodramatic deathbed reversal. She was never going to see her father again, or sit with him at the Passover table. He had abandoned her, and to some extent, her mother had, too. And her sister, who hadn’t called to tell her any of this was going on.
It really didn’t change anything. She’d already accepted that Maya was her only family now. She’d known for years that the city was the only home she had to go back to.
But it still hurt.
The train trip to Manhattan took exactly one hour and fifty-eight minutes, which wasn’t long for a journey that seemed to span worlds. At one end, there was Mack and trees suddenly bare of leaves, stubbled fields and tractors chugging deliberately down the road, slowing their car down and making Zoë frantic that they’d miss the train.
At the other end, there was the city, so dear that even the vacant buildings and knots of barbed wire they passed on the way to the station looked like art to her. When they reached 125th Street, Zoë emerged grinning onto the platform, inhaling the fragrance of exhaust and rain-dampened concrete, and absorbing the delicious stimulus of noise and bustle and variety and people. Everywhere she looked, little dramas were being played out as Chinese tourists debated their next move and helmeted construction workers shouted at each other to mind the winch and raucous teenage girls informed their friends exactly what they had told their other friends.
“I don’t remember it being so busy,” said Maya, sounding a little worried as Zoë led her down the stairs from the elevated platform.
“I know, isn’t it wonderful?” Zoë was wearing her good black leather jacket and heeled boots, which she had begun to think of as city clothes. “I feel like Persephone, out from the underworld and back in the land of the living.”
As they reached the street, Zoë heard a Connecticut matron in a navy blazer turn to her dreadlocked son and say, “But isn’t this Harlem? Are you sure it’s safe at this time in the evening?” It was six o’clock.
Zoë maneuvered in front of them and hailed a gypsy cab. “We’re going to a Hundred and Tenth and Riverside,” she told the driver. “So, bubby,” she said to Maya, “what do you want to do tomorrow? I figure this first trip back is really for you, and as long as I get an hour to shop for food at Zabar’s, you set the schedule. Feel like the Museum of Natural History? We could call one of your old friends, if you like. Or would you rather go to a playground? Just walk around?”
“That all sounds nice,” said Maya.
“You sound a little preoccupied. Something wrong?”
“Oh, I was just thinking about horseback riding,” said Maya, fingering a rip in the cab’s fake leather upholstery. “You did speak to my teacher, right? I am allowed to continue?”
“I already agreed that you were, so long as you took it very slowly and wore the special safety vest I bought.”
“But no one else is wearing the vest, Mom.”
“Maya, I’ve agreed to the riding. You should be happy. And we’re in the city this weekend. Can we try to focus on enjoying that?”
“Oh, absolutely,” said Maya, with a gambler’s instinct for when to fold. “I’m very glad to be back,” she added. “I missed the city, too.”
Zoë tried not to frown, recognizing that tone of voice. It was the one her daughter used when she assured Zoë that she did, in fact, like books.
“So, how is it, being back?” Bronwyn was bringing down clean sheets from the top of the linen closet, which, like the rest of the apartment, was organized to take maximum advantage of every square inch of space. Bronwyn and her husband had bought their apartment at the peak of the market, and had unwisely chosen to value light and charm and a quiet residential block over square footage. As a result, they had to devise ingenious arrangements of built-in shelves and oddly shaped hampers to fit their family of four into an apartment better suited for a young couple.
“Well, you know all those movies where the big-city girl moves out to the sticks and she starts out hating it but winds up discovering the real allure of small-town life?”
“Uh-huh.” Bronwyn handed down the sheets, causing the step stool to wobble.
“Not happening to me,” said Zoë, steadying the stool. “I mean, I’m not as abjectly miserable as I was the first couple of weeks, I have a story idea and this flirtation with the driving instructor is certainly diverting, but when I stepped off the train, my first thought was, I’m home.”
“Flirtation? Hang on.” Bronwyn passed a towel to Zoë and stepped off the stool. “As I recall, after the big make-out session that went nowhere, you said you were a big girl and could accept it if a man didn’t find you as attractive as you found him. As I recall, you told me this at least four or five times, and each time you sounded a little more pissed off. So what’s going on now?”
“Well, I’m not completely certain.” Zoë peered into her friend’s bedroom, where Maya was happily engrossed in some Animal Planet program about hedgehogs. “I told you about Mack driving me to Maya’s parents’ weekend last week.”
“Uh-huh.” Bronwyn folded the stool and carried it to the kitchen. “You said that you two had come to some sort of understanding. He was going to drive you again, you were going to take lessons. Which I think is great, by the way.”
“Well, there’s a little more to it than that.” Zoë followed Bronwyn as she placed the stool against the wall in the service stairway, where it lived illegally alongside the twins’ stroller, Brian’s racing bicycle, and a shopping cart.
“What kind of more? More as in unlawful carnal knowledge more?”
“That’s the weird thing. He keeps flirting with me, and I keep flirting back, but so far, he hasn’t made a move.”
“What do you think’s going on? Another woman? An STD? A deep-seated psychological problem?”
“Actually, I think he’s stringing me along until I get my learner’s permit. That, or he’s terrified of the way he feels when he touches me, which is so much more intense than what he’s felt for any other woman.”
Bronwyn looked almost hungry at this description. “You think?”
Zoë rolled her eyes. “Please, Bronwyn, what are we, fourteen? I was being sarcastic.”
“Well, all I can say is, at least you still have some libido. I can’t remember the last time I wanted any. Which is convenient, since my husband seems to want me no more than I do him.” Bronwyn took a deep breath, as if preparing herself for battle. “Let’s go into the living room and get your bed ready before I keel over.”
“I can do it myself.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Bronwyn, bending over to remove one of the heavy cushions from the convertible couch.
“I’m not being
silly, you’re being compulsive,” said Zoë, grabbing for the second cushion. “Sit down and let someone else work for a change.”
“You know me, I can’t just sit around.”
“Which is why you look shattered.” The two women tussled over the third cushion for a moment, and then moved it together. Even though they were both laughing, Zoë was worried. Bronwyn was not looking well, had not, in fact, looked well since the birth of the twins. Her face had the drawn, slightly haggard look she’d acquired in the last month of pregnancy, her dark auburn hair, once lit by red highlights, had become a muddy brown, and there was something a little spongy about the look of her pale, freckled skin.
“Stop a moment,” said Zoë, as Bronwyn reached for the handle to pull the bottom of the couch out into a bed. “Wait, Bron, let me do that with you.”
“I’d rather finish everything and then relax.” Bronwyn pulled again, and the bed sprang out, hitting her in the shin. “Son of a bitch,” she shouted, and from the other room, one of the twins gave a feeble cry, followed by a second, stronger, squall.
“You’re not a bitch,” said Zoë.
Bronwyn didn’t laugh. “I’ve been up since six this morning and neither one of them napped. I can’t take it, Zoë.”
Zoë put her arms around her friend. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Bronwyn leaned back against Zoë’s embrace, trying to break free. “What do you mean, what’s going on? The twins have taken to biting each other, I had to fire the last babysitter after she yelled at me for not giving her two weeks’ paid vacation one month after I hired her, and the church preschool is saying that they think the boys might have a speech delay. Oh, and my husband is working twelve-hour days.” Bronwyn shrugged. “The usual.”
In the background, the toddler’s howls were growing stronger.
“I have to get up,” said Bronwyn, not moving.
“No, you don’t.” Zoë stood up. “You sit, and let someone else take charge.”
Bronwyn cocked her head to one side, listening. “Shit, Zoë. Now both boys are crying.” With an enormous sigh, Bronwyn pulled herself upright. “We might as well both go, you can’t handle two at once.”
The twins’ crying had kicked into a new, angrier rhythm, like a heavy metal rock song hitting its bridge. Zoë picked up the closest screaming child as Bronwyn reached for his brother. “What happened, huh? Dirty diaper? Hungry? Difficulty making transitions?” The boy stopped yelling and blinked his bright blue eyes at her, clearly nonplussed. “Never mind, little boy, Aunt Zoë’s going to fix you up.”
She checked his diaper as Bronwyn wearily tended to her second son, then they switched places so she could change the other boy’s diaper. Maya came into the room and watched, fascinated, as the second twin urinated straight up in the air the moment his diaper was removed. Twenty minutes later, when peace had been momentarily restored, Zoë picked up the phone and dialed Brian at work. “Brian? Zoë. Whatever you’re doing, drop it. Come home immediately, you’re watching the boys, and Maya and your wife and I are going out.” She paused, very aware of Bronwyn and Maya watching her. “No, Brian, I don’t know what’s on your to-do list, but I do know that your wife is about to go under. She needs a break, and she needs it now. And it’s seven o’clock on a Friday, so you are absolutely allowed to close up your computer and come home.”
She hung up before he could reply.
“He won’t do it,” said Bronwyn.
“I think he will.”
She shook her head. “He won’t.”
An hour later, they bundled the boys up and took them out to the diner, along with Maya and enough plastic toys to start a nursery.
That night, she heard furious whispering. “You don’t.” “Not fair.” “Realistic sense of things.” At one point, it sounded almost like the hissing of cats, and at another, Zoë thought Bronwyn was going to start shouting.
When she woke up the next morning, Brian was already gone.
Zoë took one of the twins out of his high chair. “But where is he? He can’t be at work, it’s eight o’clock on a Saturday.”
Bronwyn handed one of the boys a plastic bowl of oatmeal, which he instantly dashed against the opposite wall. “No, Brian’s gone to the gym. Then he’s off to Home Depot, to get a bookcase, which he will spend the rest of the day assembling.”
“But he can’t keep running away like this. It’s like you’re a single mother of twins. You need help.”
“He has to work, doesn’t he? And when can he do chores, if not on the weekend? And can I really be begrudging him an hour at the gym twice a week?” Bronwyn’s voice was dull, as if she were reciting an old lesson. “He loves his kids and spends as much time as he can with them. He’s not good with small children, but this phase won’t last forever. Why don’t I get a babysitter to spell me?”
“Why don’t you?”
“The teenagers can’t handle it and the full-time nannies want to work full time. Brian says I don’t know how to delegate. He complains that whenever he does try to help with the boys, I criticize him.”
Zoë came up behind her friend and put her arms around her. “Listen, everything seems hopeless when you’re depressed. Let’s concentrate on cheering you up right now. I’ll finish giving the boys breakfast, you go get showered and put on your game face. We’re going out on the town.”
“I don’t have the energy.”
“Then go nap. And then we’ll go.”
It was not the weekend that Zoë had planned on having in the city, as she wound up enlisting Maya’s help with the twins and spending two hours in a playground and four in the Children’s Museum, where the boys took turns sliding down a six-foot tongue and crawling through a bright-red artery. On Sunday morning, while Maya still slept beside her, Zoë tried not to listen as Brian and Bronwyn argued again. She feigned sleep herself as Brian slipped out the door a few minutes later.
“Since I have you here, he figured he might as well go into the office to catch up on work,” Bronwyn explained later in a flat voice.
“I see. And is he different when I’m not around?”
“Not really. Well, he usually waits till noon on Sunday to head into the office.” Bronwyn knelt down on the rug and started picking up brightly colored Duplo blocks and tossing them into a big plastic bucket. “You know what’s funny? When Brian and I first got together, I loved how responsible he was. All my boyfriends before him had still been focused on sports and vacations and the bar scene. But Brian seemed really ready to settle down.”
One of the twins woke up with a fever and it was raining outside, so Zoë brought back bagels and lox from around the corner and they spent the rest of the day at home reading the Sunday Times while Maya watched cartoons on TV. Making sure that Maya wasn’t in earshot, Zoë finally told her friend about her father’s stroke and her mother’s decision to keep her in the dark. Bronwyn’s indignant anger on her behalf had made Zoë feel a bit better. And then it was time to leave.
“I’m sorry it wasn’t more fun,” Bronwyn apologized as Zoë finished packing her bag. “You didn’t get to go shopping, or see a foreign film, or eat anywhere ethnic.”
“I loved it,” she said. “For me, the wonderful thing is just being back in the city, walking around, feeling all the possibility. I don’t need to do special things like a tourist.” In a way, it was true. It was also true, however, that it had been stressful and difficult being a guest in Bronwyn’s house. Zoë almost wondered if it would have been better to rent a hotel room, although the thought of spending over $200 a night for a view of an alleyway was depressing. She suspected that paying for a hotel room would make it official—she no longer really belonged in Manhattan. And yet it had not been easy to be right there, in her city, with her best friend, without really feeling connected to either.
Bronwyn must have sensed some of what Zoë was thinking. “You’ll come back soon, won’t you? I haven’t put you off with all my problems?”
“As if.” She hugged
her friend, and whispered in her ear, “Don’t let him get away with this, Bron.” It struck her that her friend, who lived in the midst of the most vital city in the world, was just as trapped and isolated as she was.
When Mack picked her up at the train station, she was surprised to see how young and scruffy he looked in his flannel shirt and work boots. He didn’t seem like anyone who belonged in her life, and she was both relieved and regretful that he no longer struck her as particularly attractive. Mack smiled, holding eye contact a fraction too long, and Zoë thought, I’m going to have to let him down easily.
Which was why, when Mack asked her how her trip had been, Zoë said, “I’m actually kind of glad to be back.”
“That so?” Mack took Maya’s bag and loaded it into the trunk. Maya, engrossed in a new handheld electronic game, said thanks without looking up and got into the back of the car. “So what’s changed your mind?” Mack reached out for Zoë’s overnight case. Up close, his flannel shirt smelled pleasantly of hay, and there was a growth of dark blond stubble on his chin.
“After a weekend spent wedged between toddler toys in a too-small Manhattan apartment, I need some space.” Zoë slid into the front passenger seat.
“That’s too bad.”
“Why?”
Mack’s eyes met hers. “Because I was thinking about crowding you.”
Just then, Maya’s game gave a little electronic burble from the backseat, reminding Zoë that her daughter could hear every flirtatious word Mack had said. She must have looked slightly perturbed, because Mack took her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze before starting the car. As the engine kicked on, so did the radio. Garrison Keillor’s sonorous voice filled the car, concluding the day’s writer’s almanac with the words “…and do good work.”
“Shoot, I missed it,” said Mack. Then, after a moment, he glanced at her sideways. “Okay, what are you looking at?”
“I’m just surprised that you listen to National Public Radio.”
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