Back Talk

by Danielle Lazarin

  “Why me?” Foley asks.

  “Why you what?”

  “Why, in the park today, did you pick me?”

  “Is that what happened? I picked you?”

  Foley remembers the last time she ran through that section of the park, up where the bench is at the vista point. She had taken a day off from work for a doctor’s appointment. She went on an early afternoon run. There was a couple on that bench at the top, their bodies pressed against each other, the man’s hands roving up the woman’s skirt, oblivious to hikers and dog walkers. Foley ran past them twice, her feet snapping twigs, and still, they did not separate. It was a lovers’ lookout. Of all the things she had found while running through that park—empty bottles of prescription pills, pine cones covered in moss, clusters of banana slugs, abandoned job applications for coffee shops—this had been the most startling, the white skin of the woman’s thigh, and the peek of her panties that Foley could not help but see. Not the remnants of people’s lives she could imagine happening before and after, but the real thing.

  “The lighter,” she says.

  “You’re a smart girl. You played along.”

  “And why did I seem like the kind of woman you could take home?”

  “Are you coming home with me?”

  “Isn’t that what you want?”

  “Of course,” he says, “if that’s what you want.” The waitress brings the check and lays it in the middle of the table. Neither of them thanks her. Despite everything she’s had to drink, Foley’s throat feels dry. “My flat is just a few blocks from here,” he says.

  “No,” she says. “Why don’t we meet tomorrow, in the park, at the vista point? Is seven thirty too early?”

  “I don’t want to go for a run.”

  “Me neither.” Foley gets up from her chair, folding her sweatshirt over her arm. She kisses Stefan on both cheeks and walks out of the restaurant, leaving him to pay the bill.

  • • •

  In the morning, Foley showers and dresses for work. She wears a soft wool skirt, short boots with a flat sole so she can climb the park steps with ease. She’s been thinking about it since she left Stefan last night. She won’t bother taking off her boots. She wants him to touch her hair, clean and dry, to lift it off her neck with his strong hands. In her ear, he can tell her all the lies he wants, or he can say nothing at all. With Paul, it had been a routine down to when the lights were switched off, tip to toe each piece of clothing a negotiation, as though there was any question how it would end. She and Stefan will lie down on one of their jackets or he will back her up against a fallen tree, and it will be fast, and it will be done. She hasn’t decided if she will ask to see him again.

  It’s foggy again in the park. She’s on time. She waits, on her feet, for ten minutes, half an hour. She has a stack of grants to edit in her work bag, but that’s not what she wants to be doing when Stefan comes. Forty minutes, and a man with three off-leash dogs, around him in a loose circle of togetherness, approaches. He says hello to her. He’s young and handsome and too scruffy to be her type and she smiles at him and as he smiles back she realizes she is the romantic one, and she is the brutal one. Paul was one of those and Stefan is neither. She misread his desire as indecency.

  As she descends the hill toward the bus to work, the same bus on which she had seen Paul four years ago, folding his newspaper into perfect columns, and decided to lay claim to him, she remembers another thing he taught her about Buena Vista Park. During the 1906 earthquake, residents climbed to the top of the park to watch the city burn. For five days the fires spread out before them, and their old city would have to become new again. Foley secures the snaps on her work bag and begins to run, not at a jogger’s pace, but at a wild, inconsistent sprint.

  Dinosaurs

  On Friday night, babysitting night, Claire waited at the end of the driveway, her breath appearing in the air before her. She pulled her wool hat over her damp hair and crossed her arms and watched for the gunmetal gray of Noah Hunt’s sports car to appear around the corner of Trellen Street. Claire didn’t care for cars, but she loved sinking into the low seat of this one, the feel of its cold leather against her back, the hum of talk radio, the smooth stops and starts. Noah, as he had always insisted she call him, lifted his fingers from the steering wheel in a wave as he pulled up.

  Noah smelled like shampoo and toothpaste and wool. Claire noted the freshly pressed pants, the cashmere sweater—not the blue jeans of poker nights or the college sweatshirt of a movie alone. A date, Claire decided as she clicked her seatbelt into place and said hello. If her own father or brother had seemed that hopeful, she would have told him how handsome he looked. But as his kids’ babysitter she could only say, “Thanks for coming to get me.”

  “Of course. This wind has been out of control, huh?” The wind had been snatching the leaves from the trees all week.

  Half a year from a driver’s license, Claire walked over to the house most nights, but Noah picked her up when the weather turned cold or wet. It was the least he could do, he said, since he could never take her home at the end of the night.

  Claire’s mother, who worked in Noah’s office, told her how his wife had died: a brain aneurysm at their local swimming pool two and a half years earlier. Lauren Hunt had slid into the water from the edge of the pool, her book tumbling gently from her hands, as if she were falling asleep under the late August sun. The children, who had been floating in front of her in water wings, were now five and seven.

  As Noah’s hands turned the leather-covered steering wheel, Claire noticed that the tan line from his wedding band was only now, at the onset of winter, beginning to blend in with his skin. She wondered when he’d decided to take the ring off, if he woke up confused some mornings—the way she did in hotel rooms on vacation, or at sleepovers, in the temporary strangeness of the bed—if he still reached for his wife across the mattress.

  When Claire and Noah entered the house, Hadley and Thomas were in their pajamas at the kitchen table, bowls of spaghetti positioned between their elbows. Their hair was clean and damp, their feet in slippers, their glasses full of milk. Their aunt Elizabeth, already changed into her scrubs for the evening’s shift at the hospital, was finishing the last of the dishes.

  Thomas sucked in a noodle with a loud slurp.

  “Claire’s here!” Hadley announced.

  The dog, Mickey, danced at Claire’s legs, offering her his backside to scratch.

  “Well, my presence is clearly not needed anymore.” Elizabeth smiled at Claire, drying her hands on a dish towel. “I’m off, monkeys,” she said, and kissed her niece’s and nephew’s cheeks.

  As she pulled on her coat at the kitchen door, Elizabeth poked Noah’s chest. “You have some fun tonight, will you?”

  “I will certainly try,” he said. When he caught Claire’s eye, he gave her an embarrassed grin before telling her he was going to get an umbrella. So it was a date.

  Claire twirled the ends of Hadley’s hair as she took the seat between the kids at the table. Thomas, the little one, reached out to pat her hand.

  “Hello,” he said, his mouth full of pasta.

  “Hello,” she said back.

  When Claire began sitting for the kids a year earlier, Thomas had climbed into her arms within minutes of the sound of the garage door closing after Noah’s car. He wrapped his arms and legs around her with the force of a python, put his head on her shoulder, and released a breath.

  “Oh,” she had said, to no one in particular.

  “He does that with girls. It’s because he misses Mommy,” Hadley explained, her head cocked in a practiced sympathy.

  “Okay,” Claire said, and almost cried under the weight of Thomas’s grip.

  • • •

  Noah pulled out of the driveway slowly, waiting for the kids to appear at the picture window as they always did when he left for the
night. Claire’s arms were wrapped around Hadley’s shoulders. Thomas grinned, waving with both hands. Noah liked Claire. She wasn’t precocious or flirtatious, as so many other of the babysitters had been, even when—especially when—Lauren was still alive. Claire didn’t ask too many questions; the kids loved her. There had been two babysitters before, both older women, whom he couldn’t keep, who had asked too much about Lauren, about his personal life.

  In the year after Lauren’s death, his friends and family treated him with varying degrees of pity and disapproval, some offering to set him up on dates, others constantly dragging up memories of her—there were nine calls on her birthday. Hadley’s teachers called him in for “check-ins” nearly every month, though there wasn’t any real progress to report, just repeated suggestions that he seek more support. Acquaintances stopped him at the market, pulled him aside at soccer games, said, She should be here, and I still can’t believe it. His face would turn into a sad mirror of theirs, and he would nod, even though it was impossible for him not to believe it: Lauren’s death had been instantly real; she wasn’t there anymore.

  In late spring, he put the house on the market, just to see. When Lauren’s brother drove by the FOR SALE sign on their front lawn, he parked his car across the street and called Noah, asked him to consider the stability of the kids, to think of Lauren’s parents, who lived just a few miles away. But as much as they had been there for him and the kids in the months following Lauren’s death, Noah needed space from them, too. The house sold within weeks, and Noah took this as a sign that they should go. Elizabeth helped him find a new house close to hers, in a suburb much like the one they were moving from, just in the other direction, outside the city. He drove to the new town on the last day in June, the dog in the front seat, Hadley and Thomas in the back, suitcases in the trunk, the moving truck a few hours ahead of them.

  Noah thought of how deceptively simple it had been to inhabit their new life. The kids liked their schools; they found a new favorite ice-cream shop and playground by the end of that first summer. Noah had given away most of Lauren’s personal things, and settling into the new house without them had given him the first feeling of lightness and relief he’d had since her death. He had that feeling now, of possible and inevitable forward motion, as he merged onto the highway toward the first date he’d agreed to in two years. If this dinner was a date; he wasn’t sure. I’m so excited to see you, Sarah had said on the message she’d left on his voice mail. Sarah was in town on business; Noah hadn’t seen her since college. They had belonged to the same loose circle of friends through which he’d met Lauren his junior year, and the three of them would study together sometimes. Then, he was distracted by trying to win Lauren’s affection; she’d told him she didn’t want to date anyone at their small school, that she’d had enough awkward exchanges with exes on campus already. Sarah was even more out of reach; she had perfect glassine skin and soft black curls, and spent her summers as a fitness model. Noah had waited for her face to spring up in one of those health magazines Lauren used to read, but it never did. It was only now, driving to meet Sarah, that he realized that he’d had a crush on her, too—minor and forgettable, but a crush. Her voice, low and self-assured, rang in his head on the drive into Boston.

  • • •

  When she could hear the deep breathing of sleep from their rooms, not the fake snoring Hadley always tried at first, Claire called her boyfriend, Eli. She held the phone to her ear while he talked about the next morning’s swim meet, the first of his senior season. Kelsey said there are supposed to be scouts there. Claire walked the house as she listened—through the kitchen, the living room in circles. I just wish it wasn’t the first one. She checked her teeth in a bathroom mirror, opened the cabinet with the cookies, the drawer with the beer. I had that dream last night, where I’m on the block in a snowsuit. She sat at the bottom of the steps, rubbed her fingers over the nap of the carpet. My left shoulder’s been popping a little in practice, but I think it’s okay. She leaned on the doorway of Noah’s room; the smell of his shower still clung to the wallpaper. You’ll be there, right? Claire considered going in; she’d never been in his room before. Claire? She flicked on the light in the bedroom, one arm stretched across the doorway. You still with me?

  “I should go. My battery is dying.”

  Noah’s room was impeccable. There was only one nightstand, a book on it, a lamp, an alarm clock. A picture of Hadley and Thomas sat on the dresser. She realized it was the only room where there wasn’t a picture of Lauren.

  “Can you call on the house phone, then?” Eli asked.

  Claire walked to the bed and sat down. She wondered if Noah kept to one side or if he drifted to the middle, got tangled in the blankets. Did he let Hadley and Thomas climb in during the night, use them to fill the space of Lauren’s body? Claire thought of her own parents’ bedroom, of her father’s reading glasses on the bedside table, of her mother’s knitting in a heap on the floor, of their nightly rituals, silent and synchronized.

  “My ear hurts,” she said, rising to turn off the light. Claire retreated, hoping her feet hadn’t made small impressions in the carpet. “I’ll see you at eleven.”

  Eli couldn’t sleep on nights before meets or games, and he had offered to pick her up. Noah always minded the time, and although they had a system for him being late—he was to call Claire’s cell phone—he never used it, never took a minute longer than he had promised to.

  “At eleven, then.”

  “See you soon.”

  “I’ll miss you.”

  Claire laughed softly. “See you soon,” she repeated.

  • • •

  Noah met Sarah at the restaurant; she rose from her seat and gathered him in a tight hug. When they separated, he could see that she was more beautiful than she had been in college; girlishness had never suited her. She wore a sweater that dipped beneath her collarbones, accentuating her long neck; she kept a hand on its milky length throughout most of dinner, her other hand lifting her wineglass, jeweled rings sparkling under the warm yellow lights.

  “It’s so good to see you,” she said, lingering on the word so. Noah wondered if it was a pause of attraction or pity. “You too,” he said.

  They had married in the same year, sent regrets for each other’s weddings, but after that their correspondence had faded the way most acquaintances’ did; it had been over ten years since they’d spoken. When Lauren died, Sarah wrote him a note, filling both flaps of the card with the loopy script he hadn’t seen since their chemistry flash cards: I remember that you two were beautiful together, that Lauren radiated happiness when she was around you. The note came in with the flood of others from people who had rediscovered his address when they’d heard the news. He remembered hearing through the same network of friends about Sarah’s marriage ending within a few years, about her move to California soon after. He also remembered how Lauren, when he passed the news of Sarah’s divorce on at dinner one night, had remarked on how Sarah had always been drawn to the wrong men. “Sad, but not a surprise,” she had concluded with a shrug.

  Sarah put her elbows on the table, her hands clasped under her chin. “Who would’ve thought we’d be having dinner like this?”

  “It’s been a long time,” Noah said, shifting the napkin on the table with his fingertips.

  “When I knew I’d be nearby, I had to call and see how you were.”

  Noah and Lauren had always lived close to Boston, but Sarah had never felt compelled to call before. “Do you come here often?” he asked.

  At this, Sarah’s face erupted into a magazine-worthy smile, and then a laugh she couldn’t keep in, playful and sweet. Noah shook his head, embarrassed, but laughing, too. “I meant to Boston, for business, not—”

  “I’m a Libra, if that’s your next question,” she teased him.

  Without the safety of their previous arrangements—in college, Lauren had in t
he end waited for Noah after their study dates—Noah realized that Sarah, too, had carried something for him, something small and throwaway that now could be real. That Lauren’s death had allowed for this filled him with anger and longing.

  By the time the waiter came over with their appetizers, their conversation was easy, flirtatious even. Like the dates he would have gone on, Noah thought, had he dated after college rather than marrying his wife.

  But at a mention of a school project Noah had been helping Hadley with, Sarah released her spoon into her soup and put her hand over her mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, taking in air sharply.

  “It’s okay,” he said back, as he always did.

  Sarah’s voice dropped to a whisper, like his daughter’s did when she was upset. “I just remember her talking about that name—it was her mother’s?”

  “Her grandmother’s maiden name.” Noah was reminded that Sarah and Lauren had really been friends, that it was this fact that had kept his crush from being real, a fact he had been trying to forget.

  Sarah put her napkin to her damp, beautiful eyes and Noah patted the hand that still lay on the table, the way he had learned to do after the funeral. How easily he gathered others’ hands in his own now, channeling grief through his skin, relieving others of their sorrow for his loss. The idea was wondrous to him; there was no section of his brain in which Lauren lived that he could just give away. Noah had been collecting other people’s feelings for Lauren—their truths and confessions and tiny memories—for more than two years now, and imagined he would for the rest of his life.

  Sarah’s fingers didn’t curl up around Noah’s as he had hoped they would, his touch perhaps too sincere, too hungry. She apologized again as she extracted her hand from under his, excusing herself to the restroom. No waiters came by to fill his water, or the mostly full wineglasses, and Noah sat alone, no longer hungry, over his salad plate. When Sarah came back from the restroom, her smile was timid and ashamed, and while he tried again to make a quick joke, to make her laugh the way he had before, the best he could coax from her was a few weak nods. Through the rest of their meal, they talked of other things, of the people they had known in college, halfheartedly traded gossip that was not about either of them.