by Julia London
“Here, Daddy,” Levi said, handing up a jar of pizza sauce.
“Good job, buddy,” Asher told him, and turned his attention to supper.
After pizza, they watched the hedgehog movie that had Riley rolling her eyes with teenage disdain but held Levi enthralled. They made some popcorn and watched a second movie about a family mistakenly stuck on a strange planet with endearing, one-eyed creatures. When it was over, Asher picked up Levi, who had fallen asleep, and carried him to bed.
As he tucked Levi in, Levi woke up and watched Asher through heavy lids. The sound of a heavy thud in the hallway reached them, and Levi’s eyes widened. “What’s that?”
“Riley dropped something,” Asher said. He leaned down to pick some toys off the floor.
“Sometimes I hear Mommy upstairs.”
Surprised, Asher paused and looked at his son. “You do?”
He nodded. “She walks around up there.”
As there was no upstairs, and no Susanna walking around, Asher thought he should call an exterminator.
“Do you hear her, too?” Levi asked.
Only in his thoughts. “Why do you make everything so hard? Can’t you just enjoy life?” she’d asked him once. No, he hadn’t been able to just enjoy life, not with her ups and downs wreaking havoc on them. “No, I don’t hear her,” he said.
Levi considered that a moment, then asked, “Do you miss her, Daddy?”
“I wish she were here,” he said, and he did, for Levi’s and Riley’s sakes. But he didn’t miss her, not in that way. He kissed Levi’s forehead. “Go to sleep now. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
The hall was dark when Asher emerged from Levi’s room. Riley had apparently turned in for the night, as there was no sound coming from the media room.
Asher went downstairs to clean the kitchen. As he walked into the mess, he remembered that he’d never had that mojito. He opened the fridge and took out a beer, drinking it as he started to clean. He opened a second beer to finish up, and when he finished, he turned off all the lights except one over the stove, then helped himself to a third beer.
He leaned back against the counter, sipping, listening to the silence. Asher didn’t care for silence, because he had a tendency to fill silence with thoughts that collected like birds on a wire, reminding him of a life he might have had once but had lost forever, of the lonely, empty road stretching far beyond him.
He abruptly walked outside to escape the silence and paused to look up at the night sky and the full moon. He drank his beer.
That moon reminded him of Susanna. Once, when they’d first been married, Susanna had had a bad day and told Asher she was going to take a long bath. But he’d found her outside on the patio of the little house in central Austin, their first home, reposing in a lounge chair, completely naked. She’d laughed when he’d looked around, anxious about neighbors. And then they had made love, right there on the lounger. Susanna had been completely uninhibited, crying out when she’d come, and laughing when he’d frantically tried to shush her. “Don’t worry so much, Ash. Our neighbors have sex, too,” she’d said.
Asher strolled out a little farther, looking up, remembering the stars from that long-ago night, twinkling over the heads of two lovers. And they had been lovers then. Intimate, passionate lovers—
“Hi.”
The voice startled Asher, and for a brief, stunning moment, his mind let him believe that Levi was right, that it was Susanna. He peered into the darkness. A movement in the pool caught his eye, a woman in one of the thick foam chairs that Susanna had favored. But the hair was wrong. It was too . . . messy.
“I’m sorry, I thought you saw me. Did I scare you?”
He realized it was Jane Aaron. Asher could see her now in the moonlight, her head resting against the back, her legs dangling in the water. She hadn’t even turned on the pool lights; she was just floating in the moonlight. “Jane? What are you doing?” He started forward, hesitated, and then moved again, to the pool’s edge.
“Nothing. Just floating. It’s such a beautiful night, isn’t it? Do you mind?”
“Of course not. You’re floating in the dark?”
“Absolutely. Better to see the stars that way.” Her hands drifted in the water, languidly moving to keep her facing him. “You can’t see stars like this in Houston because of all the lights. But out here . . .” She sighed and looked up. “They seem so close. It feels like you can almost touch them,” she said and lifted her arm, as if she thought she might.
Asher looked up, too. All those stars made him feel small and insignificant.
“But then again, it’s so vast, it makes me feel . . .”
Alone. Small. All the clichés, all the things he felt about those stars.
“Hungry.” She laughed softly.
Surprised, Asher shot her a look. Jane didn’t notice; she lowered her arm, dipped her hand into the pool. “Hungry?” he asked, curious now.
“In a roundabout way,” she said lightly. “The starry sky reminds me of Italy. I went there last summer, and I was in this little Tuscan village, on a piazza, and there was this sea of people, all these happy Italians sparkling around me. But they all spoke Italian. I don’t speak a word of Italian, and it occurred to me that theoretically, I could say anything and no one would know. It was a strange feeling. And looking up there, at all those stars that can’t hear me or see me . . . I thought about Italy. And then I thought about pasta.” She laughed again.
He pictured Jane in Italy, bobbing in a sea of sparkling Italians. Alone. He’d just been thinking that himself, and it gave him an odd prickle on the back of his neck. “You didn’t go with a boyfriend? A friend?”
“No, just me.” She laughed. “I was trying to find myself,” she said, playfully adding gravitas to her voice and making imaginary quote marks in the air.
Asher’s curiosity was suddenly raging. He recalled a strange day he’d spent in Hong Kong.
“Great. Now you think I’m weird.”
“Just the opposite,” he said. “I was remembering that the same thing happened to me. I was in Hong Kong, and I decided to walk from my hotel to the office where my meeting would be held, but I got lost. I ended up in a park, sitting on a bench in the middle of a bunch of old Chinese guys. No one spoke English—believe me, I tried. I remember thinking that I could get lost and never find my way back. I could spend the rest of my days hanging out with old guys on park benches.”
No one had even looked at him that day. He’d felt like a useless bag of bones. He was no one to anyone, except two kids who would outgrow him one day.
Jane giggled.
He couldn’t imagine that she’d experienced something similar, that feeling of being invisible in a world of people. “So did you?” Asher asked.
“Did I what?”
“Find yourself.”
Jane laughed. “Not exactly. Truthfully, I think I’ve just begun to look.”
She suddenly slipped out of her chair, hooked one arm over the side, and pulled it along as she swam to the edge. Asher watched as she got out of the pool. She was wearing a one-piece swimsuit, the sort someone would wear to swim laps. Jane had a lush figure—not pencil thin like Tara, but curves in all the right places. Asher was surprised that he found her so . . . attractive.
Jane picked up a towel and began to dry off. “I guess you did, though.”
“Pardon?”
“You found yourself.”
“Ah . . . not really,” Asher said. “But I found my way to the office.”
She smiled. “Well, thank goodness you did. What would Riley and Levi do if you hadn’t?”
Asher didn’t answer. They stared at each other for a moment. A long moment. “I’ll just . . .” Jane nodded toward the guesthouse and wrapped the towel around her.
“You don’t have to get out. Or go in,” Asher said. Maybe it was the beer, but he suddenly wanted her to stay and float in the moonlight. “I’ll leave you alone with your stars.”
“
No, I should turn in. I have so much to do tomorrow. Good night.” She turned and walked to the guesthouse. A long tail of dark, wet hair looked like it had been poured down her back. At the door to the guesthouse, Jane paused and glanced back at him before slipping inside.
Asher turned his back to the guesthouse and looked up at the moon. “Note to self,” he muttered. “Lay off the beer.” He shouldn’t be looking at the nanny that way; it was way out of bounds. He didn’t want to be the guy who ogled the young, pretty nanny, because those guys were asses, and Asher was not an ass.
He just wished Jane didn’t look so damn good in a bathing suit.
11
Asher roused his kids the next morning with a very loud and off-key rendition of Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” and helped them get their things together for a trip into Austin. They had brunch at Guero’s, a taco bar on South Congress Avenue where Austinites went to see and be seen. Levi liked the pictures on the wall and the variety of salsas that accompanied the constant flow of chips.
Riley, apparently unhappy with her hair and her bathing suit, which she proclaimed baby-ish, wore a goofy hat and ate only a few bites of her enchiladas.
After lunch, they headed for Zilker Park and Barton Springs, one of the largest natural swimming holes in the state. It was an Austin institution, a city-maintained, spring-fed pool that maintained a constant temperature of sixty-eight degrees year-round. It was heaven in the hot summers, and warm enough in the winter for serious swimmers.
The best part about Barton Springs was the setting. Large pecan and cottonwood trees hung over the grassy slopes, providing plenty of shade. The pool itself was enormous, one thousand feet long. Nevertheless, in the summer, it could get very crowded, and this warm Memorial Day weekend was no exception.
Levi had a dangerous like of jumping off things, and he had reached the side of the pool and jumped in in expert cannonball fashion before Asher could stop him. Riley was more reticent. She fussed with her bathing suit and her hat and finally made her way into the pool, easing in one inch at a time, complaining that the water was too cold, complaining when Levi playfully splashed her.
The water felt great to Asher. Barton Springs brought back a lot of memories of his childhood. He and his buddies would hang out on the grassy slope above the pool, and when they tired of that—meaning there weren’t any girls taking their bait—they’d head for other parts of the park, such as Town Lake, where they would rent canoes, or over to the disc golf area, where they would heave Frisbees well past their mark.
He’d forgotten how weightless those lazy summer days of his youth had been, with nothing more than a bright future looming on his horizon. As Asher floated on his back, he had a moment of wistfulness, of wishing he could go back and do it all over.
The moment was washed away when Levi splashed him and said, “Let’s race, Daddy!” and he realized no matter how difficult or unfair his life might have been, he wouldn’t trade a single moment with his children.
After a couple of hours in the water, the three of them moved down to the area below the dam. Riley wanted shade so she wouldn’t get burned, although that seemed impossible, seeing as how the sun hat she insisted on wearing dwarfed her. But Asher obliged her and tossed out a blanket beneath a cottonwood and fed them his version of a snack—grapes, crackers, and Cheez Whiz.
Dogs were allowed to swim below the dam, and Levi eventually wandered a few feet away to watch them. Riley and Asher remained on the blanket, Asher watching Levi.
“Oh, God, that’s Dax,” Riley said suddenly, and twisted around so that she was facing Asher, her back to the pool.
“Who?” Asher asked, peering over her shoulder.
“Dax Hawkins. He goes to my school.” She stole another look over her shoulder. “He’s the one in the blue.”
Asher saw a skinny kid with a mop of dirty blonde hair in the company of two younger boys. “Want me to call him over?”
“What?” Riley gasped. “No! I don’t like him!”
“Why not?” Asher asked curiously.
Riley shrugged and drew her knees up to her chest. “He’s always talking to Anna Greenberg.”
“Anna who?”
“Greenberg,” Riley said and pulled her hat lower over her eyes. “She’s, like, the cutest girl in school. Is he still there?”
“He’s still there. Anna can’t be cuter than you, baby girl. You’re beautiful.”
Riley snorted. “You have to say that. You’re my dad. Where is he now? Is he coming over here?”
Asher leaned up to look around her. “No, he went off in the other direction. And I don’t have to say that because I am your dad, I am saying it because it’s true. You’re really beautiful . . . especially when your hair isn’t pink. I bet all the kids at school think so, even if they don’t say it.”
Riley dipped her head. “Highly doubtful. No one likes me.”
Asher tried to see her face, but her hat prevented it. “I don’t believe that for a minute.”
“Dad,” she said impatiently. “You don’t understand.”
He did understand—he just didn’t know how to deal with it. It was moments like this when Asher missed Susanna most of all. She’d been Riley’s rock; the two of them had discussed everything. Asher knew that Riley missed her mother so hard and deep that it colored everything in her life. To make matters worse, he was so dumb about things like boys and hairdos and the cruelties of the middle school years.
“Anyway, I don’t care, because I don’t want to be friends with anyone who likes the Jonas Brothers. Anna loves them.”
Riley said it as if Anna liked to eat ants, and Asher couldn’t help but smile. “What’s wrong with the Jonas Brothers?”
“They’re just the biggest losers in the world,” Riley said, picking at the blanket. “Tracy Graeber asked me if I wanted to go to their concert, but I wouldn’t waste money on that.”
That was the first Asher had heard of that. “When?”
Riley shrugged. “When you were in Chicago that time.”
Chicago. American Airlines account. He’d been so crazed in trying to get that pitch together. They’d lost the account to another firm. Had Riley said something then, something that hadn’t registered? He tried to see his daughter’s face again. “Did you want to go?”
“No, Dad, are you listening? I hate the Jonas Brothers. They’re so lame.”
“They seem to be doing pretty well to me,” Asher said innocently.
Riley looked up with an expression that suggested he was a moron. “They can’t even sing. It’s totally dubbed.”
He honestly didn’t know if they could sing or not or if they were dubbed. The only thing he knew about the Jonas Brothers was that one of his partners had paid a hefty premium to get his daughter and her friends prime seats at the concert. It had never occurred to him that Riley might want to go. She’d never mentioned them, and he had certainly never thought to ask.
Those were the sorts of things that Susanna had always known.
Riley needed a woman in her life. Asher knew it. The older she got, the more it was apparent to him. He wished he or Susanna had had a sister. “Maybe you want to call Grandma Helen when we get home,” he suggested, thinking Susanna’s mother might know better than he about hair and other things that might be bothering Riley.
Riley cast a suspicious look at him. “Why?”
“Why? Because she likes to hear from you.”
Riley’s eyes narrowed. “You always do that.”
“Do what?”
“You always push me off on Grandma Cheryl or Grandma Helen. It’s like you can’t even talk to me, like I’m a loser or something. You think I’m like her.”
“Like who?”
“Mom! But I’m not like her, I am my own person, and you don’t have to always freak out if I don’t like something.”
Asher had to tread carefully here. “I am not freaking out, baby girl. I know you are you, but I thought maybe Grandma Helen knows about hair
and the Jonas Brothers more than I do.”
“Trust me, Grandma Helen doesn’t know anything about hair or the Jonas Brothers,” Riley snapped and looked away, toward the dog swim. “Maybe you would know if you were ever here.”
That comment, delivered by his twelve-year-old daughter, was a harsh reminder to Asher of the disagreements he and Susanna used to have. His long work hours had been a point of contention between them. “You hide from me, from us, in that job!” she’d spat at him once. “I work that job so you can live like this,” he’d responded just as hotly, gesturing to the expensive house and designer furnishings that had been breaking his back.
“Riley, I can’t read your mind. If you want to go to a concert, or get a haircut, all you have to do is ask,” he said irritably. “Listen, I know you miss Mom, and I wish she were here, too—”
“Really? You don’t act like it. Sometimes I think you’re glad she’s dead—”
“Hey,” he said sharply. “Don’t speak to me like that.”
Riley turned her head so that he couldn’t see her face.
“Now listen here, Riley Ann—”
“Levi is bothering that lady,” she flatly interrupted.
Asher looked up; Levi was talking to a young woman who had a chocolate Lab on a leash. Levi had his hand on that leash and was tugging on it. “Great,” Asher muttered and leaped to his feet. He paused to look sternly at Riley. “We’re not through,” he said. “Levi! Take your hand off that leash!” he called to his son.
Startled, Levi looked up, saw Asher striding toward him, and guiltily dropped his hand.
“I am sorry,” Asher said to the young woman as he put his hand on Levi’s shoulder and pulled him back. The dog eagerly sniffed Asher’s legs, tail wagging. “My son loves dogs.”
“I can tell,” she said, smiling. She was pretty. “It’s okay. Molly doesn’t mind.”
“Hey, Molly,” Asher said, leaning over to pet the dog. He straightened up again. “Come on, Levi.” The young woman smiled at him, and Asher felt a tiny flicker of desire. He smiled back, let his eyes take a quick inventory of her body. “Have a good day,” he said.