DIANA
Since talking to Lizzie, and her lawyer, Diana had made some headway toward getting her life back on track. She’d driven her son back home for a visit. Gary took Milo to the science museum and the zoo while she stayed behind, wandering from room to room of the row house, which had remained unchanged (and, she suspected, uncleaned) since the morning she’d left. She picked things up—the framed wedding photo on their dresser, the painted ceramic pitcher she’d bought on spring break in Mexico, the iron Buddha one of Gary’s friends had given them as a wedding gift—and held them, weighing them in her hands before setting them down again.
In the mornings, after a more reasonable run, she’d go upstairs, shower, dress, and help Milo with his lessons, listening to him read out loud, coaching him through a few pages in his math workbook, watching as he wrote stories, and postcards to his dad. In the afternoons, she’d take him to the library, or to the town green, where he’d made friends with a girl who wore her curly blond hair in braided pigtails and taught Milo how to hula hoop with the pink glittery hoop that her mother carried to the park, looped over the handlebars of her little sister’s stroller.
Still, by four or five most afternoons she found herself in bed again, a cup of chamomile tea steaming on the bedside table, a light down comforter pulled up to her neck, the window open a crack so that the crisp, salt-scented air could come through. She’d lie there and think about Doug. Did he miss her? Had he moved on? Was he bringing some other girl to the Khyber, or the parking lot, doing the things to her that had pleased Diana so well? Would she ever see him again? She would consider these questions until she dozed off, sleeping until the sun went down and someone came to wake her up for dinner, which she never helped prepare. Sylvie, who had somehow, miraculously, learned how to cook, would make soups and stews and homemade breads, chicken pot pies, casseroles and roast turkey breasts. Milo would help set the table, and Diana and Lizzie would do the dishes, and wipe the counters and sweep the floors. Regression, she thought … although could it really be regression if she and her sister were retreating to a life they’d never had, an idyllic childhood they’d never enjoyed?
Usually Lizzie delivered the late-afternoon wake-up knock, but one Friday she woke to Milo’s husky voice outside her bedroom door. “Trick or treat!”
Trick or treat? Diana bolted upright in bed, her heart pounding the way it had at the end of one of her epic runs. Was it Halloween? Could that be? She’d noticed some decorations in stores and around town, and the curly-haired girl had told Milo how she planned on going out dressed as a football player (the little girl’s mother, who’d never said more than “hello” and “see you later” to Diana, had rolled her eyes at this), but Diana had figured it meant that the holiday was approaching, not that it was here already. I am, she thought, swinging her legs out of bed and steeling herself to face her son, the worst mother ever, the worst mother in the entire world. She’d cheated on her husband, she’d torpedoed her marriage, she’d yanked Milo out of school and away from his home and everything that was familiar and dragged him up to Connecticut, and now she’d forgotten what she well knew was one of the most important nights in a child’s year. Could he ever forgive her, and, if so, how many years of therapy would it take?
“Milo, I’m …” She started to say sorry, but the word died on her lips, because there was her son, dressed in a costume. He wore—she blinked—a shiny black sphere that extended from his neck to just above his knees, leaving his arms and legs free, and seemed to be unpeeling in sections, like an orange. Underneath it, he wore black pants and a black turtleneck.
“I’m a Bakugan!”
“A what?”
“It’s some kind of toy,” said Lizzie, who was standing behind him. “He said all the kids in school had them. They’re, like, balls that unroll and turn into something else.”
“Ah.” Diana peered at her son, who spun proudly, then thrust a pumpkin-shaped plastic bucket at her.
“Trick or treat!” Milo said again. She felt her heart sink again.
“Oh, honey, we don’t have any candy.”
“Right here,” said Lizzie, who had a witch’s hat perched on her head. Underneath it she wore a loose black sweater, a long, tattered black skirt, black patterned hose, and ankle-high black boots. She handed Diana a bag of Hershey’s Kisses and Diana, still in shock, took out two and dropped them in Milo’s bucket.
“Oh my God,” Diana whispered, as Milo thundered downstairs to show Sylvie the night’s first plunder. “I totally forgot … I had no idea …” She sank back down on her bed. “Can he even go trick-or-treating?” Most of the other beach houses had been closed up for the season. Besides, Milo had never liked knocking on strangers’ doors and asking for candy. Every year that he’d been verbal enough to articulate a request, he’d ask to stay home with Diana, sitting on their front step in Philadelphia, handing out the raisins and pretzels she bought. This, of course, drove Gary crazy—in part, Diana suspected, because if Milo didn’t trick-or-treat there was no in-house candy to poach from.
“Where’d he get the costume?” she asked.
“I made it.”
She blinked at her sister. “You did? When did you learn how to sew?”
Lizzie shrugged. “There wasn’t much sewing. It’s mostly Velcro. I ordered this kit online.”
Diana blinked and rubbed her eyes. “Thank you. He would have been destroyed if we’d forgotten.”
“No worries,” said Lizzie. She adjusted her hat, peering at her reflection in the window. “Mom’s downstairs. She’s got a costume, too.”
Diana looked at herself, her corduroys and black boatneck sweater. Lizzie grinned. “Just say you’re a psycho killer. They look like everyone else.”
Lizzie led her downstairs, where they found Milo perched on the edge of the kitchen table and eating a bowl of soup. “I told him he had to eat something before we went into town,” said Sylvie. Diana looked at her mother, who was dressed as she’d seen her a thousand times before, in an unremarkable, expensive blue skirt and matching jacket, in hose and heels, with her hair tucked behind her ears. Diamond studs sparkled at her earlobes, her Tank watch encircled her right wrist … and, her lips were curved into a perfectly polite and meaningless smile.
“Who are you?” Diana asked.
“I haven’t decided,” Sylvie said. “I’m either Elizabeth Edwards or Silda Spitzer. Or maybe just Generic Politician’s Wife.”
“Scary,” Lizzie murmured.
“The funny thing is,” said Sylvie, smoothing her hands over her hips, “it actually does feel like a costume now. Like I was in disguise for all those years.” She fiddled with the waistband, sighed, then said, “I think I’m going to change.”
“Don’t change too much,” said Lizzie, which was what Richard typically said when any other family member announced her intention to change. Sylvie gave them a wave and walked upstairs. Milo set his spoon and bowl into the sink with a clatter, then turned to his mom.
“Are you ready?”
“Where are we going?” Diana asked.
“To the town green,” said Milo, as if this was obvious. “They’re having a festival, with music and a puppet show. Lucy’s going to be there.” Lucy, Diana presumed, was the hula hoop girl. “Come on, come on, come on!” said Milo, who was dancing by the front door as if he had to pee. Diana thought for a minute, wondering whether he could pee in his costume, and if she should make him use the bathroom before they left.
“Ready?” asked Sylvie, coming down the stairs in her yoga pants and sweater … and before Diana could tell Milo to wash his hands or use the bathroom or take a sweater, they were in the car, backing down the steep driveway, on their way to the town green, where, as promised, there were merchants (her mother’s friend Tim Simmons was among them) handing out candy and cookies and cups of apple juice, and the high school jazz quartet tootling away in the bandshell. Costumed kids carrying flashlights and buckets of candy chased one another over the lawns,
while parents with conspirators’ grins sipped wine poured into plastic cups from bottles tucked into purses or paper bags. Lucy’s mother waved Diana and Lizzie over and offered them cups of red wine. “No thank you,” Lizzie said, and the woman, who seemed a little tipsy, said, “Oh, that’s right, you don’t have kids. You don’t need any of the mommy happy juice.”
Lizzie smiled faintly—she was still sensitive about drinking, Diana figured. Impulsively, she reached out and gave her sister a hug. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for not forgetting.”
“You’re welcome,” Lizzie said, then bent to pick up her witch’s hat, which had gotten knocked off during the embrace. She’s grown up, Diana thought, feeling a mixture of pride and sorrow … because if Lizzie was an adult, no longer in need of attention and rescue, where did that leave her? How much of her identity, her role as wife and responsible big sister, could be stripped away before she no longer knew who she was anymore, before there was nothing left at all?
Ah, well, she thought. Maybe she could convince Lizzie to come back to Philadelphia with her, after Thanksgiving. Gary had already found a place to rent, a two-bedroom apartment a few blocks away from their house. Maybe Diana and Lizzie could live in the row house together. They could tend to Milo, and Lizzie, of course, would find some kind of job eventually, and the three of them could keep one another from being too lonely.
“You okay?” Lizzie asked.
“I’m fine,” said Diana. She sipped her wine and watched her son race to the top of a hill, then roll down, with his costume gathering leaves and dirt as he went. She imagined the four of them, together like this, every year—Milo getting bigger, Lizzie maybe going back to school, and Sylvie, she thought, going back to Richard … but maybe every Halloween they would come back to sit on the town green and sip wine and eat candy, bundled in sweaters and blankets as the moon rose overhead. Maybe it could be that way. Maybe someday she and her boy would be fine.
LIZZIE
The house on the hill, the house she’d never liked, was a three-mile walk from Fairview’s downtown, where the town’s single AA meeting was held in the basement of a Catholic church, and where the town’s obstetrician kept an office three doors down. Lizzie would leave the house at eleven in the morning, once she was done supervising Milo’s lessons, and walk briskly into town. She’d have a cup of tea and a scone at the coffee shop, go to her meeting at noon, pick up whatever her mother needed—groceries, a book she’d put on hold at the library, envelopes from the general store or stamps from the post office—and, depending on her load, either walk back home or wait for her mother or Diana to come fetch her. Moderate exercise is fine, the Fairview doctor had told her. In fact, I’d encourage it. So, five days a week, she walked. With her arms swinging and the music pounding in her ears, she could keep herself from thinking about the swell of her belly underneath her layers of T-shirts and sweaters, and how she was going to have to make some kind of announcement, and soon. Already, her excuses about too much time in bed and too much starchy food were feeling a little threadbare.
Each morning she’d bring her camera with her and take pictures: a crow perched on a power line, a group of girls laughing into their mittened hands in front of the empty fountain, a woman yawning as she stroked mascara onto her lashes while stopped at Fairview’s single red light.
On Tuesday morning, two days before Thanksgiving, Lizzie set off under a bright blue sky, with her empty shopping bags, and her wallet and her grocery list and her iPod to keep her company. The air was crisp, so cold that she could see her breath in puffs in front of her. She looped a knitted red scarf around her neck and started walking. She’d rounded the corner from the driveway onto the street when she saw a gray car idling at the corner. There was a man behind the wheel … and, as Lizzie watched, the driver’s-side door swung open, as if the man had been waiting for the moment when she’d come along. As he climbed out and turned toward her, Lizzie saw, with her heartbeat quickening, and a taste of old pennies in her mouth, that it was Jeff. He wore a crisp white shirt and khakis and silvery sunglasses. Beneath his short hair, the tips of his ears were red in the cold.
She tucked her hand into the pocket of her down vest until her fingers brushed her house key. She thought about running, trying to sprint back up the hill to the house, but what would that accomplish? If he’d followed her this far, refusing to take the hint of the way she’d ignored his e-mails and calls, what would stop him from chasing her to the door? And it wasn’t as if she could outrun him. Not in her condition.
“Jeff,” she said, trying to sound calm.
“Hey, Lizzie.” His voice was friendly enough, but Lizzie couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, only his neatly combed hair and his lips pressed in a straight line. She wondered whether he’d noticed her weight gain; whether he suspected, or just thought she was getting fat.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, trying to keep her voice calm.
“You took off.” He was sounding less friendly now, a little annoyed. “I’ve been trying to reach you for weeks. Did you stop checking your e-mail or something?” When Lizzie didn’t answer, Jeff said, “I thought we could talk.”
She shrank back toward the driveway. “How did you find me?”
“I called your dad.” His lips twisted. “Took me a while to get him on the phone, but I was persistent.”
“How did you get his number?”
Jeff pulled off his glasses and folded them into his pocket. “From when you called me, remember?” He squinted at her through the sunshine, and she tried to read the expression on his face. Was he angry? “Your dad gave me the phone number up here, but I decided it’d be better if I came in person.”
“And how’d you know which house?”
“Reverse directory.” Finally, he smiled. “It’s not that hard, really.”
She smiled back, feeling uneasy as she tried to figure out her next move. “This isn’t a great time. I’ve actually got an appointment.” She thought about telling him her appointment was an AA meeting, but decided not to.
“Can I give you a ride?”
She shook her head. “I’m walking.”
“I’ll walk with you,” he said. “Maybe we can get some lunch, after your appointment.”
Walking into town with Jeff Spencer was the last thing she wanted to do, but she didn’t see how she could refuse. “Okay,” she said. She did need to eat, and he seemed to be set on the idea that they needed to talk, so maybe it wouldn’t be so terrible to have a meal with him. Lunch sounded civilized. Better, lunch was public. There was no way he could start shouting at her in the middle of the Fairview Diner. At least she didn’t think he would.
Jeff fell into step beside her, and they walked toward town. For a few minutes, Lizzie let herself enjoy the feeling of being half of a couple, the way they’d been that summer, when she’d walk beside him on the sidewalk or hold his hand at dinner and think of what a normal picture they made; how no one who saw them would guess how far from typical her life had been. “So how’s Independence Hall?” she asked. He told her that the week before, a Japanese tourist had gotten stuck in the bathroom and they’d had to call the fire department, and the week before that a Boy Scout troop had lost one of its members, but it had turned out that the kid was safe and sound and asleep on a bench in front of the Betsy Ross House. “How’s Milo?” he asked, and she told him that Milo was actually up here, that she had him taking pictures, and playing Frisbee, too. A few times, Jeff seemed on the verge of asking her something, but he didn’t, so that in between their chatter about his classes and her photographs, the only sounds in the still fall air were their footfalls on the road, and their breath.
When they were paused at the town’s single traffic light, Jeff took her arm. His coat felt nice under her hand. She wondered if it was wool or cashmere or something like that. She suddenly felt ashamed of her wardrobe. The sweaters and the down vest were fine for the eighteen-year-old freshman she’d been when her pro
blems had gotten serious, but maybe not quite the thing she should be wearing at her age, even though the layers did a fair job of disguising her belly. She thought maybe for once she could skip her meeting. It might be nice to have lunch with him, to sit somewhere warm and look at him and listen to his stories, dispatches from the real world.
“Are you hungry for anything special?” he asked when she told him that her appointment could wait. “Do you have a favorite place?”
She directed him to the Fairview Diner, which made a decent turkey club sandwich and good soups from scratch.
The waitress led them to a booth. Jeff set his glasses on the table and hung his jacket and Lizzie’s vest on a hook on the wall. Underneath the fake Tiffany lamp that hung over the table, they sipped ice water and studied the specials.
“So what are you doing here?” she blurted, once they’d ordered their lunches—a turkey club for Lizzie, grilled cheese and tomato soup for Jeff.
“I want to apologize.”
She stared at him, surprised. “For what?”
“I think I reacted badly in my apartment, when you told me about your …” He paused. She waited. “Your problem. I know that it’s not always like it was for my mom. People get better. I know they do.” The waitress set his soup down, and Jeff offered Lizzie a spoonful and, when she refused, the Saltines that came with it. “I’m sorry if I scared you away.”
“It wasn’t just that,” Lizzie said. “I was going through some things … with my dad and all. My mom needed me, and my sister, and my nephew. It’s not a very good time for me to be …” She bent her head, mumbling, “You know. In a relationship right now.”
Jeff set down his spoon neatly next to his bowl. “I never stopped thinking about you.”
Lizzie stared at him with her heart in her throat. During her lost years, she’d had drug buddies and fuck buddies, but no real boyfriend and, thus, very little idea about how to handle a potential suitor … particularly one who didn’t know that he was the father of her child. She struggled to remember a movie or a television show in which a girl had dumped a boy and it had gone smoothly, but regretting the years she’d spent comfortably numb. If she’d been paying attention she’d know how to handle this. If she’d been Diana, for example, who’d moved through her teenage years and into adulthood with her eyes wide open, she would know how to send him away. “Look, you’re a really nice guy …” Good start, she congratulated herself. “But I’m really busy. And you’re down in Philadelphia, and I’m in Connecticut …” Excellent work, she was thinking, until Jeff started talking.
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