“Oh, April,” Marc said. “Of course. How’d you know April?”
Bill’s grin grew. “Just a friend of a friend,” he said. And then quickly, “Don’t they have the best cupcakes, there, though?”
Marc laughed. “They do, indeed.” Marc pointed a finger at one of the boys in the picture, a small boy with a thatch of hair, who was swimming out of his uniform. “See that kid there?”
Bill glanced over. A scrawny little boy with way too much hair. He felt a stab of pity. Must be Marc’s son. “That’s your boy? Fantastic,” he said quickly.
“No, no. My boy is over here—there, that’s Roger,” he pointed to a tall, sandy-haired kid holding a soccer ball. “That one over there is April’s son.”
The clock on Marc’s desk grew louder. Bill tried to speak. “That’s April Nash’s kid?” He swallowed. “You sure? She doesn’t have a son, does she?”
“Sure she does,” Marc said. “Ever meet him? Nice kid. He has such terrible asthma, he never plays, but they let him put on the uniform and be in the team. Sort of a nice community thing they do there.”
Marc snapped his fingers. “Sam. That’s his name. Sam. Too bad about his being so sickly, though. Terrible thing, asthma.” He looked back at Bill. “So,” he said. “Have a seat. Let’s talk about what you can bring to Thoroughbred.”
Bill couldn’t concentrate on the rest of the interview. Marc had to repeat questions twice because Bill wasn’t listening. Bill couldn’t remember the clients he had worked for, the jobs he had done. He felt his palms, damp and sticky. “Sorry, I’m fighting a cold,” he lied and Marc nodded. By the end of the interview, Marc’s disinterest was palpable, and Bill knew that he hadn’t gotten the job. “We’ll be in touch,” Marc said, and dismissed him.
Outside on the sidewalk, the fog was thicker. He glanced at his watch. In a few more hours, he would meet April. She had lied to him.
She had a kid, and for Bill, that changed everything. It wasn’t just the lying, though that certainly put a crimp in things. It was having a child. Bill thought it was one thing leaving a spouse you had stopped loving, but how could you leave a child? Especially one who was sick? What kind of a person could do that? He felt as if he didn’t know her at all, as if everything about them had been some kind of lie.
His hands were shaking. He remembered suddenly all her talk about a guest room. Was she planning on bringing the kid, springing it on him like an unwelcome surprise? Did she just want the kid to visit? And if she wanted the kid there so much, did that mean that she’d soon want him to have a kid with her, too? He felt a flash of anger. He hunched his shoulders and kept moving through the crowd. What else about her had been a lie? Did she love him or did she just want to leave and he seemed like an easy meal ticket? And if she could leave her kid, would she leave him, too?
He went to a diner to get coffee, sitting by the window, which was almost opaque with fog, and he was listening to this couple fighting. “What color are my eyes?” the woman kept shouting, and when the man said, “Brown,” she wept. “Blue,” he said, and she cried harder. And it struck him because he couldn’t remember what color April’s eyes were. What did he really know about her? He had never called her house, had never seen a photograph of her husband, or really ever known what kind of woman she was. He had only known her from their time in Boston. Suddenly, things didn’t seem so simple anymore.
He was supposed to catch a shuttle to New York, where April was waiting for him. He thought of how lovely she was, how she liked to pull her body around his after they had made love. He thought of all the promises they had made to each other.
Abruptly, he changed his mind. When he got to the airport, he bought a ticket for home. He didn’t look at his watch until he was back in Pittsburgh, and then he saw it was past three. Two hours after he was supposed to meet April, he noticed his wedding band, how he had never taken it off. He began crying so hard, he had to fumble for his sunglasses and slip them onto his face.
He took a cab home and went into the house and there was Ellen lying on the couch in her robe, blooms of tissue scattered around her. He looked past her and saw the note he had left her, fallen by the bookshelf, unopened. He bent and scooped it up, crumpling it deep into his pocket. “I got a cold!” she said, and pointed to the stack of DVDs near her. She patted the couch. “I had them deliver all these old film noirs. Come cuddle up and watch them with me,” she said.
He walked to her and as soon as he touched her, he felt his eyes welling up again. He thought of April. She might cry, but she also might buy herself a ticket and get on the plane without him and go and disappear into another life and never look back. He felt his cheeks growing damp, his eyes pooling with tears.
“Oh Jesus, what?” Ellen said, alarmed. She sat up, drawing her robe around her. “You’re scaring me. What’s going on?”
“I lost my job,” he blurted, because it was the only thing he could tell her, because he didn’t want any more lies in his life, and she moved closer to him. She smelled like cough drops and Vicks and maple sugar. He told her how hard he had been looking, how he hadn’t told her because he didn’t want her to worry. A thousand tiny cracks earthquaked across his heart.
“What a mess,” she said quietly. She stroked the back of his neck. “Fuck them,” she said. “You were too good for that place anyway. You’ll find something good now, you’ll see. Something you love.” She bent and kissed him and he looked up at her, at her soft little nose that was all pink with her cold.
“Yeah,” he whispered. “Who cares,” and then he glanced up, and there was the big clock pointing to five, just the time when he and April imagined they’d be on a plane soaring away from the New York skyline. He turned back to Ellen, took her hand, and held on tight.
After that, things had gotten better. Not right away, but in a few months he finally found a new job, one with a growing company. He looked at Ellen with fresh eyes, appreciating all the things he’d forgotten about her. He half expected April to call him or write, and he had to admit, every time the phone rang, he felt unnerved. But when she didn’t, he gradually started to relax, until she had faded into mirage. A dream he had made up and then awakened from.
WHEN BILL FINISHED SPEAKING, he couldn’t look at Charlie. He stared at his hands.
“She planned it,” Charlie said, amazed. “She planned out a whole new life.”
“We both did.”
“You wrote her a letter,” Charlie said.
“Everyone has relapses,” he said. “And I thought if I knew what had happened to her, well then, I could finally forget her once and for all.” He put the tips of both hands together, like a church steeple. “Sometimes, believe it or not, you get a second chance in life and you do whatever you can not to mess it up.”
“You said you loved her.”
Bill took another swig of coffee and looked at Charlie.
“What are you going to do,” Bill said. “We’re all fucked.”
CHARLIE SAT IN the airplane, staring out the window. Beside him, a young woman with a blond Afro was tapping on her laptop, occasionally glancing at him. Charlie looked at the sky, black and sprigged with stars. Sam was young enough to still think there was Heaven—that living among the clouds was a God who made sense of the things that you could not. Now the sky was dark with night, and try as he might, the only thing Charlie sensed was the ghost of his family.
April had left him and maybe that was his fault somehow, maybe he could have changed if she had let him, if he had seen the signs brewing. He thought of the night before the accident, how she had wanted him to wake up. “Let’s talk,” she had said. That was her last night with them, and April, his impulsive April, had known it, had planned it all out for months. Who knew what she would have said to him? Maybe she had wanted to say good-bye, or maybe she had started to have cold feet about leaving. That had been his moment to change everything and he hadn’t.
He couldn’t forgive her for unraveling their family. She had cal
culated her departure, had orchestrated a whole future with Bill, too, insisting on a guest room, but how could she imagine Sam could only be a guest in her life? Or had she thought she could have more? Had she changed her mind that day in the car and planned on bringing Sam with her? He’d never know what to believe.
All that time with Isabelle, Charlie had felt he was being unfaithful to April. He hadn’t been able to let April go, but now he knew that April had been the one who was unfaithful. His loyalty to her had kept him from letting Isabelle in, and now he knew how rare it was, what they had. Now that was gone, too.
Well, he didn’t blame himself anymore for April’s leaving. All you had of a person was what they showed you. He thought of the way she was always playing with Sam, giving him this wild adventure of a life, making sure he knew he was someone special. Then he thought of Isabelle, quietly helping Sam with his photography. “Look inside,” she’d say to him. “Go deeper. See what’s right there in a new way. Find the magic of the real moment.”
There was no real moment with April.
April had left abruptly, without even a letter, but Isabelle had refused to leave without a good-bye. Isabelle had left Sam an expensive lens, and she’d made sure he knew how much she loved him.
People had always told Charlie to follow the road signs in life, not to get lost. Was meeting Bill a sign? Was he about to be lost in his life again? Or could he find the magic of the real moment again? Could he find Isabelle?
He thought of the smell of Isabelle’s hair, the feel of her skin. He suddenly ached to hear her voice. He wanted to tell her all about Bill and April and what had happened, and then he wanted to talk to her about movies and books and what they were having for dinner, all those little moments that made up a life.
The night, after seeing his parents off and having dinner with Sam, Charlie made a decision. He let Sam watch a movie after dinner, and then when it was dark enough, when the stars were bright enough, he went to the closet and took down the box of April’s ashes. He beckoned Sam to the front door. “Come on,” he whispered, as if there were someone else in the house. They went out to the backyard, and it wasn’t until they were right by the garden that Charlie opened the box and showed Sam what was inside.
“What’s that?” Sam asked.
“Your mom was cremated,” he told Sam. “She never wanted her body to be buried in the ground. These are her ashes.”
Sam bit down on his lower lip.
“It’s okay,” Charlie told him gently. “We can scatter her ashes here in the garden, and then she’ll be a part of the whole world.”
Sam stepped back. “Will you do it?”
Charlie nodded. He sifted some of the ashes out, strewing them among the tiger lillies, and did the one thing he had been so sure he would never be able to do:
He let her go.
TWENTY-ONE
CHARLIE SAT AT the midtown café, on a sunny May day, waiting for Isabelle. It all felt so strange, so upside down. His parents were at the Cape with Sam, and he was here. She hadn’t been hard to find. As soon as he heard her voice, he realized how stupid he had been, how much he missed her.
“Charlie!”
He had forgotten how beautiful she was. Even though she was just wearing a simple, loose summery dress, Isabelle looked exotic to him. There was something different and familiar about her, something he couldn’t quite pinpoint that unsettled him. She was beaming, but didn’t touch him. “Charlie,” she said happily. “Oh, Charlie.”
A waiter hustled over and they both ordered omelets, though Charlie wasn’t hungry.
“Is Sam here?” she asked, and when he said no, that Sam was with his parents at the Cape, she looked deflated.
“But he’s good, he’s good.” Charlie leaned forward. “His asthma is gone.”
Isabelle started. “How can that be?”
“I don’t know. The doctor said sometimes kids grow out of it.” The waiter set down two glasses of water.
“Is he still taking pictures?”
“Not so much anymore.”
“Oh, no! I’m so sorry to hear he stopped. He was good, wasn’t he?” she asked.
“Yeah. He took these great shots of the road.” As soon as he saw Isabelle flinch, he regretted saying it. “He took dogs, the neighborhood. He had a great eye but a lot of the shots were blurry.”
“He could have learned to fix that,” Isabelle said. She took a sip of water and then looked at Charlie. “Do you have pictures of him?”
He took a school picture out of his wallet. Sam had long hair now, like a Beatle boy. Charlie handed the photo to Isabelle and when she didn’t give it back, he didn’t ask for it. It passed through their hands like an understanding. She nodded, some of the shine gone from her. “Well, it’s been a long time,” she said.
They talked about their lives and then, slowly, he told her about April, about how he had found out she was planning to run away with her lover, how she was going to have a guest room, which made it seem as though she were planning to get Sam, at least for visits. He told Isabelle about going to see Bill and that Bill hadn’t known about Sam. “He didn’t want her because of Sam,” Charlie said.
“Then he’s a fool,” Isabelle said. “And so was April. What they both lost. What they both gave up.” She put her fork down. “Does she still haunt you?”
“I can’t forgive what she did, and I can’t understand it.”
“Neither can I,” Isabelle said quietly.
“She doesn’t haunt me anymore.” He reached across the table and took Isabelle’s hand, making her drop her fork. “But you do.”
Isabelle slid her hand away from his. “For months I waited for you to call,” Isabelle said slowly. “I kept expecting you to visit, and I kept seeing you in the city. Once, in a supermarket, I ran after a man with long, dark hair like yours and grabbed his arm. Of course, it wasn’t you. It never was you. Every time I saw a boy, I felt something coming undone inside me. You told me not to call Sam anymore because he was getting sicker, and I didn’t. It just felt like every time I came into your lives, I was creating another accident.”
“I know, I know—forgive me. Forgive us.”
“You found your answers, Charlie, and I’m glad. I’m really glad. Now you can move on and put it behind you. And I’m so happy Sam’s asthma is gone. But Charlie, I moved on, too.”
“You told me to come see you when I called. You said you wanted to see me.”
“I did want to see you.” She swallowed. “I’m seeing someone. Frank. He’s a chef.”
Something clipped at Charlie’s heart. “Serious?” he asked.
She was quiet for a moment. “I want you to be happy, too,” she said. “Are you seeing anyone?”
He shook his head. Frank. A name like a bite out of an apple. He tried to imagine it, a chef cooking for her, a man who wooed her with fresh pasta and fine wine. “My timing is terrible, isn’t it,” Charlie said. “I never should have let you leave, but I thought it was the right thing to do at the time. Now, seeing you …” he swallowed. A piece of bacon was stuck in his throat, and he took a gulp of water. “Right now, it just feels as if the whole nightmare is over,” he said. He put his fork down. “Maybe we should try again.”
She was so silent that he began to be a little scared.
“You don’t still love me,” he said.
Isabelle drew her hands from the table. “I’m getting married,” she said quietly.
Charlie felt suddenly dizzy.
She reached across and took his hand, and again, he felt that same, strange heat.
“How could you marry this guy?” Charlie said. “How long have you even known him?”
“Since January.”
He looked at her. “You’re not crazy in love. I can tell by looking at you.”
“How do you know? And what does what I feel or want have to do with anything? He’s good to me. He doesn’t obsess. He’s steady and there aren’t any other women in his life. This isn’t the m
ovies. Everything doesn’t turn out all tied up in a neat bow the way you want.”
His heart rushed against his ribs. “Why can’t it turn out the way we want?” he said.
“Because I’m pregnant,” she said.
That was why he recognized that look. He had seen it in April when she was pregnant with Sam, the way she had seemed as if she were carrying another secret self around that she wasn’t quite ready to reveal yet. That was when Isabelle’s loose dress began to make sense to him, the glow of her.
“Five months,” she said. She smoothed the dress against her and he saw, suddenly, the swell of her stomach.
“I thought you couldn’t …” Charlie said.
“I thought so, too,” she said. “Every doctor, every specialist I’ve ever seen has told me I couldn’t. I gave up trying a long time ago. I knew it was something I couldn’t even dare to hope for. And right away, it just happened. I was a basket case at first, just waiting to miscarry, plus it was a brand-new relationship, but everything has been good. It’s almost like it’s meant to be.” She folded her napkin, motioned for the waitress, and then turned to Charlie. “I’m having a little girl,” she said.
After lunch, they started walking to Hell’s Kitchen where she lived with Frank now. She pointed out her favorite shops and restaurants. Charlie tried to concentrate, but all he could think about was that he was here with the woman he most wanted, and she was pregnant by someone else.
“The city has a buzz, doesn’t it?” she said. “Look at that.” She pointed to a man walking down the street with a tree branch tied around his back with purple ribbons, but the only thing Charlie could pay attention to was her. The air seemed charged around her. Colors seemed brighter. “My parents always thought I belonged here,” Charlie said.
“Do you think you do?”
The buzz Isabelle loved sounded like tinnitus to him, but he didn’t want to hurt her feelings by saying so.
“Come to dinner. Meet him,” she said, and he shook his head.
“I don’t think I can meet Frank,” Charlie said.
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