He’s avoiding me. Or maybe he’s avoiding talking about babies—but then again, I am, too. Because if we talk about the elephant in the room, we’ll be forced to decide what to do with it.
A woman appears in the doorway, jolting me from my thoughts. “Come in, come in.” I wave to her. “We’re just getting started.”
“Sorry,” she says, her eyes taking in the row of easels. “I’m looking for Astronomy in the Suburbs.”
“Room 215,” the construction-booted man says.
The lost woman holds up her hand as a thank-you, and when she turns, I look back at my four students, who are all watching me expectantly, probably wondering what jackass thing I’m going to say next.
“OK,” I say, clapping my hands. “So, this is Novice Acrylic Painting—not watercolor as one of you rightfully pointed out. It is the follow-up to Beginner Acrylic Painting, which I assume you all have taken?” A few heads bob in response. “While you’re getting your supplies out, maybe someone can give me a rundown of what you covered in the last class.”
Rebecca starts talking about mixing colors and mentions a few different application techniques that create texture.
“And what all did you paint?”
“A still life,” she says. “Of fruit.”
I try to resist rolling my eyes. Of course they did.
“OK, well, we can do a still life again, of course, if you all want—but we could also try something different, maybe like a self-portrait, or a landscape, this time?”
“Ooh,” a woman whose name I do not yet know says. “Like Bob Ross?”
“Mm-hm,” I say, wondering what on earth I am doing in this classroom. “What’s your name?”
“Marjorie,” she says. I contemplate telling Marjorie that art is about cultivating your imagination, your own style, seeing a tree and painting it the way you see it. Not copying the way someone else sees it. That what Bob Ross teaches isn’t art, it’s imitation. But Marjorie looks so happy, and I just feel so tired.
“Yes, Marjorie,” I say. “Just like Bob Ross. OK—does everyone’s phone have Internet access?” They all nod at me. “Why don’t you scroll through some images and look for landscapes that inspire you? And then we’ll talk about how to get started.”
As they do that, I walk over to the stack of my own canvases that I brought and I start sorting through them to find landscape paintings that I could use as examples. There are only two that could be considered landscape-ish—a snow-covered street in Philadelphia and the huge panorama of the amusement park. It’s so big I almost didn’t bring it—I had to fold down the backseat so I could slide it into the trunk—but now I’m glad I did. I set them up on two empty easels in front of the classroom.
“Ooh,” Marjorie says, when I turn back to the class.
“Did you find something good?” I ask her.
She points at the amusement park. “That’s beautiful,” she says. “I want to paint that.” The other three look up from their phones.
“Well, I really only brought it as an example. It’s just something I’ve been working on. You guys should choose something that speaks to you.”
“It’s happy,” Rebecca says. The others murmur, nodding their heads. I thought it was dark and a little eerie—or maybe that was just how I felt when I was standing in it.
“I’d like to paint it, too,” the construction-booted man says.
“Well, um, it’s a rather large painting and a little detailed for what we’ll have time to cover. And I was hoping you’d each have your own original artwork at the end of this class.” They all stare back at me expectantly, obviously not swayed by my reasoning. “I suppose we could just take one section of it—perhaps the carousel bit—and work on that?”
The next two hours fly by as I bumble through trying to explain sketching and underpainting to form the basic structure of their work, and I learn that there’s a world of difference between understanding these skills myself and trying to teach them. But then, finally, time is up, and we’re cleaning up and everyone slowly drips out of the classroom.
Rebecca is the last to leave. We walk out to the warm humid air of the parking lot together.
“You’re very talented,” she says.
“Oh,” I say, caught off guard by the compliment. I’ve never been able to take one well when it comes to my work. But I’m even worse with the critiques. “Thank you.”
She stops when we get to my car and turns to me, concern suddenly crinkling her forehead. “How’s Harrison doing?”
I tilt my head at her, momentarily confused—and then I realize she must know about the miscarriage. Maybe she knows about all of them. “Oh, he’s . . . you know, we’re fine. Just one day at a time.”
“Yeah, that’s all you can do.” She offers a kind smile. “Well, see you next week.” I agree that I will see her next week and then slide into my car, and before I crank the engine, I have a weird feeling in my gut that I’ve missed something. Something vital. And then it’s gone.
* * *
It’s just before ten when I walk in the front door and my phone starts ringing. Oliver’s name fills the screen. My face flushes.
I had it all planned out, what I was going to say to him after the Rodin, after Isak’s absurd and preposterous announcement: He give you baby. That I couldn’t do it any longer. That I was married, for Christ’s sake. That I didn’t know why we were dreaming about each other, but it was just going to have to be one of life’s little mysteries.
But I didn’t hear from him for days, and when he finally texted, it was just a picture of Krynchenko’s book that came in the mail, and my conjured responses suddenly seemed a little overreactionary, and a lot presumptuous. It’s not like he was hitting on me. He’d never once crossed a line, and honestly didn’t seem the type to do so. I responded with a thumbs-up (friendly, casual) and haven’t heard from him in the week since. Until now.
Finished Krynchenko’s book.
And?
It’s interesting. Meet for coffee?
I stare at the words, momentarily confused. When? In Philly?
Now. Hope Springs. I’m here—just finished putting a crib together for Caroline.
Oh. I look up, around the living room, at the painting of the chicken, as if it will suddenly come to life and tell me what to do. But it’s silent, as silent as the house is since Harrison’s not home yet and probably won’t be for hours. My mouth goes slightly dry, but I only hesitate for one more second before responding: OK.
* * *
The Coffee Bean occupies prime real estate on Waterloo, the only road downtown fronting the Delaware River. The water is calm tonight, the streetlights reflecting off it. Oliver is sitting at an iron two-top on the patio and half stands when he sees me. I take in his striped tank top that reveals his tanned arms, the Reef sandals cutting a thick fabric V over each foot, his half-sticking-up hair, and I know his hands have just been in it. I try to ignore the now-familiar electric buzz in my stomach at seeing him.
“Hey.” He grins.
“Hi yourself,” I say.
“They’re closing in twenty minutes.” He nods to the table next to us that a waitress is wiping down, and I can see through the glass door that she’s already stacked chairs on the tabletops inside.
“Oh.”
“If you want to grab something, we could take it to go.”
So I do. I order a latte from the disgruntled teenager behind the counter, who clearly already cashed out the register. Back outside, Oliver and I start walking slowly along the river, clutching the cardboard rings hugging our paper cups.
“So. Are you keeping me in suspense on purpose?” I keep my voice light to break the tension that seems to have cropped up between us. Maybe it’s the darkness of the night, the quiet of the streets or just the naturally romantic setting of the river, but the air feels more intense som
ehow, less buoyant.
He chuckles and gestures with his cup toward a water-facing bench beneath a bright streetlight. I sit and he digs in his back pocket with his free hand, producing a curved paperback. “Here,” he says, sitting beside me.
I take it from him, rereading the title. Psychic Psychology: The Science Behind the Supernatural. He clasps his hands together. “Do you want me to start with the far-out stuff or the really far-out stuff?”
I grin. “Ease me in. Basic far-out.”
“’K,” he says. “Turn to page eighty, I think? Eighty-one, something like that.”
I do. He leans closer, his shoulder touching mine. I try not to notice the solid granite feel of it, the warmth emanating from his bare skin. He draws his index finger down the page and then stops midway. “OK, this paragraph. Start here.”
Recurring dreams containing historic details—horses and carriages, rotary phones, suits of armor or even people you’ve never met before—could be indicative of past lives. Some people who’ve experienced these dreams believe they’re learning about important events that were formative in a former life, or people that were meaningful to them.
One of the most famous cases of this is Salvador Dalí, who believed he was St. John of the Cross, a reformer from the sixteenth century, reincarnated. Not only did Dalí claim to recall the dark nights in a prison cell and beatings St. John was subjected to in his life, he also experienced a vivid dream—a living image of Christ on the cross. Interestingly, it was the same vision that appeared to St. John at his monastery in Ávila. Dalí translated this dream into a painting, Christ of Saint John of the Cross.
I look up at Oliver. “This is the least far-out stuff?”
He grins.
“So you think we’re dreaming of a past life in which we knew each other. And went to a carnival.”
He laughs. “For the record, I did not say that. Krynchenko did.”
“Noted,” I say, and then pause. “But what do you think?”
“That it’s weird. But this whole thing is weird, so what do I know?” He looks at me. “What about you? You asked me, but you never said—do you believe in all that psychic stuff?”
“Heh.” My breath catches, thinking of Isak. “I actually went to see one. Recently.”
I didn’t plan to say it, it just came tumbling out, and I’m nearly as surprised as he looks when he says, “You did?”
I shift uncomfortably on the bench. “Yeah.”
“About this?”
“Kind of. I mean, I really went more for fun, I think? But then he brought it up. Said I’d been dreaming about a man, and he described you. Well, he described a man with brown eyes and brown hair, which really could have been anybody.”
Oliver sits back. “Huh.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, what else did he say?”
I swallow. Look at the ground, cursing myself for bringing it up in the first place. I mumble a response.
“What?” Oliver leans closer.
I clear my throat. “He said you were going to give me a baby.”
“What?” He jerks his head back and chuckles nervously. And though I’m too embarrassed to look at him head-on, I can see him out of the corner of my eye stuffing his fingers through his hair. He’s flustered, his patina of confidence momentarily shattered. It occurs to me he rarely is. Rattled. Embarrassed. Vulnerable. If I were a bad wife, I would find it ridiculously attractive.
I’m a bad wife.
He recovers quickly. “The plot thickens,” he quips.
“Indeed.”
He half chuckles again, this time bent over, elbows resting on his knees, staring intently at the sidewalk that he’s casually scuffing with his sandaled foot. “Suppose Harrison might have something to say about that.”
I tense at the mention of my husband’s name. Both at the shaming reminder that I have a husband as I sit here with another man, and at the thought that Harrison has had something to say: He doesn’t want a baby. But Oliver doesn’t need to know any of that. I exhale long and slow.
“Yeah. Suppose he might.”
And suddenly, I’m aware more than ever of Oliver’s proximity. I shift my body slightly to the left on the bench, so our shoulders are no longer touching. And I search for something else to talk about. A subject change. I find it on the side of his face, at his hairline. “Hey—how’d you get that scar?”
“Huh?” He lifts his head, reaches up, rubbing it with his index finger, as if he’d forgotten it was there.
“Oh, got in a fight with a China cabinet,” he says. “We had this huge floor-to-ceiling one in the dining room. I was maybe three, four, and I got it in my head that I could scale it. I opened the drawers to climb up them like stairs, and my weight tipped it over. Whole thing completely fell over on top of me. Glass shattered, slicing up my scalp pretty good. Scared my mom something awful.”
“I bet,” I say. “You know, you don’t have it in my dreams. Or if you do, I’ve never noticed it before.”
“You don’t have that tattoo,” he says. I turn my wrist over, and we both stare at the three black characters.
“Do you think that means something?”
“Beats me,” he says. And I know exactly what he means—how each new theory only sounds more far-fetched than the one before, and each new revelation only serves to muddy the water instead of making things clearer.
The muted clanging of a bell rings out into the night—the large clock on the main plaza in town. I count eleven tones. “It’s late. I should probably be getting home.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Me, too. C’mon, I’ll walk you to your car.”
We stand up, and I offer the book to him. “You can keep it,” he says. “It just gets crazier.”
I tuck it in the crook of my elbow and we begin retracing our steps. “I was sorry to hear about your mom,” I say. His mentioning her jogged my memory of Caroline saying she died. He bobs his head. “How old were you?”
“Thirteen.”
“That must have been hard.”
He makes a soft grunting sound. “If there’s a word that encompasses what it was, I have yet to find it in my life.”
I don’t know what to say to that—sorry seems utterly useless, and I’ve already said it, anyway—so I let the words hang in silence. We pass the coffee shop and turn onto Mechanic.
“So what’s your tattoo mean?”
I think of Harrison, and when I got it—and my stomach twists with a mix of guilt and longing. “It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got time,” Oliver says, catching me by the wrist, stopping me in my tracks. It’s the first time he’s touched me on purpose tonight and I know it because of the way it takes my breath, the way I’m fully aware of the pad of his thumb resting on the black characters of my tattoo, on my ulnar artery. I wonder if he can feel the uptick of my pulse. My eyes find his, and the way he’s looking at me is the way I feel—like we’re suddenly the only two people in the world.
“Ollie!”
We both start and he drops my wrist, the connection severed. I turn my head in the direction of the voice and see Caroline walking toward us, her head haloed by the bright streetlight, eyes fixed on her brother. When she sees me, she slows down. “Mia . . . hi.”
“Hi,” I say, my eyes drawn immediately to the bump under her shirt. Anyone else might have thought she just had one too many burritos, but I know. My heart twists.
Her attention’s back on Oliver. “Hey—I figured you’d be back in Philly by now.”
“I thought so, too,” he says. “That hour-long crib project? Took more like seven.”
She crinkles her nose. “Sorry. But thanks for doing it.”
“Are you just now getting off work?”
“Yeah, this holiday parade thing has taken more effort and planning than I anticipated.” She
glances my way again, her eyes betraying a touch of suspicion. “So what are you guys doing?”
I feel Oliver shift slightly beside me. “I stopped to grab a coffee for the drive back. Ran into Mia.”
It’s just a white lie, but it unsettles me. The fact that he feels the need to lie at all. And it brings everything into sharp focus.
“Oh, cool,” she says.
“I was just headed home, actually,” I say, and that’s when something catches my eye, just beyond Caroline. A car. A familiar car, parked at the end of the street. A silver Infiniti. And though it could be anyone’s Infiniti and Harrison is supposed to be at the hospital, something flutters in my gut. “I’m this way.” I point toward the car, even though mine is parked in the complete opposite direction. “It was good seeing you both.”
Without meeting Oliver’s eyes, I wave, leaving them on the sidewalk, and walk to the end of the street, half wondering if I’m being crazy, but when I reach the Infiniti and see the sport coat Harrison had on this morning in the passenger seat, his orange paisley bow tie haphazardly flung across it, I know.
It’s Harrison’s. He’s not at the hospital. The question is, where is he?
The car is parked in front of the Blue-Eyed Macaw, the inside of the store dark, the sign on the door flipped to Closed.
I glance up and down the street. Oliver and Caroline are gone, and though there are a few other cars parallel parked behind Harrison’s, it feels like a ghost town. But then I hear the unmistakable jangle of a door opening in the distance. I turn the corner and spy a bar I’ve never noticed before. The Quay. I hesitate for just a second before marching forward and opening the door. The inside is dim, but there are more people than I anticipated. They’re all involved in their own conversations, their glasses of beer or cocktails, and no one looks up at me. I scan the half-full tables, the soapstone bar at the back of the room, and I spot him—the familiar curve of his back, the straight hairline delineating his buzz cut from his neck. I take a step forward, not to confront him, necessarily. So he stopped for a drink after work without telling me. It’s not the world’s worst crime.
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