by Mary Hogan
But how could he not stop on the top step and turn his head and cock his ear when he heard his mother shout, “What the hell do you care? You have your son.”
Owen had curtly replied, “We’re a family, Lidia.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re no more interested in me than I am in you. What we have is an arrangement.”
“It’s a sin. The worst kind of sin.”
When Logan heard that, how could he not freeze in place and listen?
Downstairs, Lidia had marched into the kitchen. Logan heard the familiar suction sound of the refrigerator door opening. He could picture the moist rubber strip, the differential pressure created against the stainless steel. A green Perrier bottle clinked against the row of green bottles and carbonation was released into the air with a distinct fzzt. The sparkling water glugged into a glass already on the table. In a controlled voice, Lidia said, “Don’t you think we’ve questioned God’s role in all this? Why us? Is He testing us, chosen us? I’ve prayed about it endlessly. We both have. But only one answer keeps coming back to me: in the eyes of God, love is transcendent.”
“Jesus Christ, Lidia. He’s a priest.”
Logan heard his mother take a gulp of water then set the glass back on the table. “God has forgiven my sin,” she said. “He’s forgiven both of us. We’re consenting adults.”
“If the church finds out—”
“You think this has never happened before? Don’t be naive. The church has had enough other scandals not to care. Besides, I’ve made sure no one will tell. Who would? You? Are you prepared to drag your family through the mud?”
The refrigerator door slammed shut with the same tight sound. “Let’s be adults, shall we, Owen? For a change.” With her efficient gait, Lidia exited the kitchen and marched down the hall toward the entryway. Soundless in his sneakers, Logan tiptoed into his bedroom and slipped behind his open bedroom door. Owen said, “I don’t appreciate your condescending tone.”
“All right, then. As equals. The pretense stops here. Let’s finally face what we’ve been avoiding for twenty years. Never in a million years would you have married me if I wasn’t pregnant with Pia.”
“But you were. And I did.”
“For that I gave you a son. We both had what we wanted.”
Logan’s heart pounded. He imagined his father’s hurt face. Never had Owen been able to detour Lidia when she was steamrolling his way. “All I’m asking,” she said, “is for you to look the other way. As I have. Let’s stop pretending, Owen. At long last. We both know a divorce is out of the question. I also know you stopped loving me the moment you found out that Pia wasn’t yours. Not that I blame you. But we made a decision—as parents—not to tell the children. It was the right decision. Now, between us, can’t we quietly live our own lives?”
With the stealth of a cat burglar, Logan slid open his closet door. The musty smell of airlessness comforted him. It was the aroma of his childhood. A few old flannel shirts still hung on the rod, his dress shoes lay in a corner, barely worn. Gingerly setting his backpack on the floor, Logan noiselessly folded his lean body into a corner of the closet as he heard both of his parents climb the stairs. Lidia’s crisp footfalls were followed by Owen’s leaden ascent. They passed Logan’s open door on the way to their own room. In his mind Logan imagined his father standing passively in a bedroom with a girly satin bedspread and gilded edgings—a space that had always been Lidia’s domain.
“I won’t be a divorced man,” Logan heard him say. “I told you that from the start.”
“Don’t you think I know that? Neither one of us can get divorced. That’s why I chose you. I don’t want a divorce. All I want is for you to accept it, Owen. Cam is the man I love. The father of my first child. I won’t stop seeing him. I can’t. Do you understand that? He’s part of me.”
Through the strumming of his heartbeats, Logan heard his mother step closer to his father and say, seductively, “In exchange, I’ll give you your freedom. Think about it. What’s more alluring than a married man?”
At that moment, the phone rang, startling everyone. Owen picked it up and said, “Yes?” uncharacteristically harsh. “Oh, hello, Jula. Forgive me.” He cleared his throat. “How are you? The kids okay?”
Logan’s eyes shot open. He shrank deeper into the closet and gathered the few hanging shirts about him. For the next few moments, the Queens house was as silent as death itself. He could picture the blood draining from his father’s face. After a long, dreadful minute, Owen simply said, “I see.”
“What is it?” Lidia demanded to know.
Owen didn’t answer her. Instead, he said, “Thank you for alerting us,” and hung up the phone. With a panic Logan had never before heard in his father’s voice, Owen Sullivant said to his wife, “Check your son’s room. I’ll check the basement.”
Forever, Logan told his sister in Galisteo, he would remember the sound of Lidia’s high heels on the hardwood floor. “To this day,” he said, “I can close my eyes and hear that awful scraping.”
Crouched as low as he could in the back corner of the closet, Logan prayed to disappear. He begged God to help him disintegrate into a pile of dust so he could flatten to the floor and blow away. Feeling like a child, he pressed his eyelids together and willed himself small.
“There was a rush of air as Lidia swept the clothes to one side. I was hunched in a corner, my eyes glued shut. I didn’t want to see her face.”
Yet, he heard her. First, a sharp intake of air. Something between a gasp and the gulp of oxygen a person attempts after a punch in the gut.
“What are you doing here?” she asked accusingly. Logan didn’t answer. His knees were pressed up to his forehead, as if his mother might disappear if he refused to look up. Perhaps he could will himself back to Pawtucket? Silently, he breathed in the buttery smell of the bakery that still clung to his jeans.
“Get up, Logan.”
When he didn’t move, Lidia poked her son’s knee with the tip of her pointed shoe. “I said, get up.”
Slowly, Logan lifted his head. He brushed the hair from his eyes and looked full into his mother’s face, bracing himself for the furnace blast of her rage. Instead he saw something worse. For the first time, Lidia’s face was stripped of all pretense. Her son saw the woman she really was: frightened, weak, caught. She had the panicked white-eyed look of an animal with one foot in a snap trap. Logan burrowed his head back into his knees. No longer could he bear to look.
“What did you hear?” Lidia whispered, dry lipped.
Unable to look up, Logan muttered into the denim, “I won’t tell anyone, Mama. I swear. No one. Not ever.”
Until that day with Muriel, he never ever did.
FORT LEE, NEW JERSEY, was the same tangle of lanes and semitrucks as it had been when they’d rented the car there a week earlier. The George Washington Bridge had the same gray Erector Set style. Manhattan was a brown skyline in the blue distance. Seated in the cab home, Muriel smelled a familiar scent: cologne-covered body odor. The sweet staleness of eight hours on vinyl. The aroma of home.
Reaching across the backseat, Joanie took Muriel’s hand in hers and held it silently for a few moments. Then she squeezed. “We rarely get the families we deserve, baby girl. That’s what chocolate is for.”
It made Muriel laugh. As Joanie always did.
“I guess you’re my family now,” Muriel said quietly. On the long drive across the country she’d had ample time to ponder the fact that Logan had overheard Lidia say, “I gave you a son. We both had what we wanted.”
What we wanted. Muriel was never mentioned once.
“In that case,” Joanie said, “I hit the jackpot.”
Chapter 36
IT WAS SUNDAY. Muriel’s favorite day. The night before, she’d gone with Joanie to see the first preview of an off-Broadway play that was so inventive it restored her faith in the future of theater. Joanie’s, too. Perhaps the Disney invasion might be waning after all.
That morning, Muriel nestled into the warmth of her comforter, luxuriating in the perfection of the moment. No one needed her to be anything that day. If she didn’t want to, she didn’t even have to get up. She could order in, lie around, live in her pajamas. At the other end of the room, the radiator hissed. It was probably chilly out. Maybe she should stay in bed after all.
But first, a coffee would be nice. Swinging her bare feet onto the floor, Muriel slid them into her waiting fuzzy slippers and stretched. She rolled her neck in a slow, lazy circle. A cinnamon bagel was cut and waiting in the freezer. She could nearly smell the warmth that would fill her apartment when she toasted it, taste the saltiness of the butter that would melt into the bagel hole, pooling onto her plate. On her way to the bathroom, she stopped by the window and pulled back the sheer curtain.
“Oh!” Muriel drew in a sharp breath. It was snowing. Soft, huge snowflakes lazily zigzagged down from the gray sky. They were as fluffy as cotton balls. First snow. The best snow. Obviously, it had stuck during the night. The city was covered in pristine frosting. No way was she going to stay in bed that day. Not when New York City was at its most magical.
Quickly, Muriel peed, splashed water on her face, and donned her long underwear. Breakfast could wait.
IN THE SAME way Maine’s fall foliage makes anyone who sees it hunger for a Norman Rockwellian style of life, first snow in New York is so heartbreakingly beautiful it explains why residents pay ridiculous rents for rabbit-hole spaces. First snow alters the city vibe itself. It’s so quiet you can hear silence. Even the crunching of snow beneath rubber boots and the occasional cab tires is muted. First snow in the city is a communal dose of Ecstasy—everyone is happy, everyone is a neighbor, everyone is a friend. The whole city reflects its light.
With her Sherpa-style hat on, ski pants, lined jacket, and new red mittens from T.J.Maxx, Muriel clomped down the stairs of her building in her snow boots. A shoreline of white had blown through the bottom crack in the exterior door. Obviously, it had been a windy night. But now, the outside air was a blanket of polka dots.
“Hurry up! C’mon!”
Like bits of graphite being sucked onto a magnet, New Yorkers took to the snowy streets on their way into Riverside Park. Kids, puffed up in down, waddled to the sledding hill. Their parents carried cross-country skis on the shoulders of their North Face parkas and dressed their dogs in fido fleece. Others carted garbage can lids to be used as sleds and wore layers of huge hooded sweatshirts. First snow in the city was an equal-opportunity joy. No one was unwelcome.
“Duck, sucka!” A snowball fight had erupted across the street.
In front of her building, Muriel tipped her head back and opened her mouth to catch the snowflakes on her tongue. They fell softly onto her face and eyelashes, turning into water the moment they touched the warmth of her skin. The sun was a fuzzy tennis ball; soon it would burn through the clouds, turn the sky a vibrant blue, and melt the top layer of snow into a shiny fondantlike crust. Until then, Muriel wanted to enjoy every moment of the morning. First snow was why she couldn’t imagine leaving New York. Without the airless humidity of August, the abrasive sounds of sirens and honking and swearing at slow pedestrians year-round, the stale human smells inside a cab, the rats skittering across the park’s promenade at dusk, the gray scummy water in a summer gutter, how could anyone properly appreciate the inclusive silence of a city’s first snow?
Muriel wandered into the street.
“Incoming!”
Deftly sidestepping a snowball, she bent down and fashioned a return throw from the perfect packing snow at her feet. In her best imitation of a relief pitcher she reached her arm back and hurled the snowball at the gaggle of shouting boys, hitting one squarely on the chest.
“Uh-oh.” Before he could retaliate, Muriel blended into the stream of neighbors on their way into the park, crunching her knee-high rubber boots across Riverside Drive and climbing the snow-carpeted stairs to the open square promontory in front of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument.
“Garrett, come!”
Ignoring his owner, a puppy, off leash, bounded over to Muriel. A blob of white snow teetered atop his wet black nose. Wriggling with puppy ebullience, he leaped up and planted two snowy paws on her torso, the chestnut hair on top of his head spiked with melted snow. Instantly besotted, Muriel bent down to rub her mittened hands behind his ears.
“Garrett, down!” With both arms flailing like a windmill, the owner yelled from across the square, clomping through the crowd in ankle-deep powder with white steam puffing from his mouth. Garrett took one look at his master before taking off, bobbing and weaving like a running back.
“Garrett, heel!”
Clearly beyond control, the puppy circled around the square, chasing snowflakes, careening into snowmen, scooping snow clumps into his mouth, burrowing into a snowdrift only to leap back up the moment another dog passed by. He romped with canines, bit their ears, jumped up on children, behaved badly. Nobody cared. They tussled playfully with him, threw snowballs for him to catch and eat. His owner stood by helplessly as Garrett waggled his way back to Muriel, his pink tongue hanging sideways out of his mouth. Hiding behind her, she felt his long skinny tail softly whip the back of her legs.
“Garrett, sit.”
As soon as Garrett’s owner drew near, his puppy was off and running.
“A highly trained animal,” he said, steam shooting out from his mouth. “I’m thinking of showing her at Westminster.”
Muriel said, “Garrett is a girl?”
“I know. Crazy, right? I named her after my favorite popcorn.”
Her jaw dropped. “CaramelCrisp?”
The dog owner looked offended. “Not for the main course. Good heavens, I’m not that crazy. Usually I start with a CheeseCorn appetizer, then enjoy the basic pop with butter and salt. CaramelCrisp—with pecans—is dessert.”
Slapping her hand to her chest Muriel said, “Pecans? I didn’t dare dream.”
Garrett galumphed back, resting the full weight of her panting body against Muriel. “She’s grown accustomed to my leg,” Muriel sang to the tune of the My Fair Lady song. “Like breathing out and breathing in.” As she reached down to pet the dog’s wet head, Garrett snatched her mitten off her hand and bounded away.
“Oh no! Garrett. Come. Now!”
Muriel just laughed. “Let her go. She’s having such fun I don’t have the heart to stop her.”
“If your mitten is ruined in any way, I will buy you a new one.” Then he stopped and added, “What am I saying? Your mitten will be ruined in every way. It’ll look like Einstein’s hair. You should see my shoes.”
When Garrett’s owner smiled, his entire face changed. Like Ewan McGregor’s. It was impossible not to smile back.
“I’m Muriel,” Muriel said, holding out her bare hand.
“I’m mortified.” He took off his glove and shook her hand. His bare palm felt warm and soft. Then he slid his steamy glove onto Muriel’s cold hand. Like Cinderella inserting her foot into the glass slipper, it felt thrillingly right. The intimacy of the body warmth inside that glove made Muriel blush. She looked down, wondered if she’d remembered to brush her teeth.
“When I’m not mortified, my name is John. And you don’t have to rub it in, Muriel, I know my parents had no imagination.”
Again Muriel laughed, though she covered her mouth with her hand. John scanned the crowd for his dog. Muriel, trained well by her mother, glanced down to see if his ring finger was bare. It was.
“What kind of dog is Garrett?”
“A mix of Portuguese water dog and Belgian sheepdog.”
“Well, there you go. She doesn’t speak English.”
Now John laughed. “Her English does seem to be limited to ‘goodie,’ ‘park,’ and ‘din-din.’ ”
As if on cue, Garrett bounded back. “See?” John bent down and grabbed her, attaching the leash to her collar. Muriel felt a twinge of sadness that they were about to walk away. But they
didn’t. Instead, the three of them stood in the middle of the square taking in the joyful romping all around them. The snow had stopped its steady fall; flakes were drifting down here and there, blown to the ground by a mild breeze. Rays of sunlight broke through the blanket of clouds. The Hudson River beyond was filled with floating ice. It was gorgeous. The most beautiful day of the year. Muriel was so glad she hadn’t stayed in bed.
John’s cheeks were as red and round as pomegranates. He wore a navy blue knit Yankees cap. In his puffy jacket, he looked like a gingerbread man. Undefined limbs and a slightly startled expression. Thirtyish, he struck Muriel as more winded than he ought to be chasing a puppy, but running through thick snow could be exhausting. Normally she’d never insert her hand into a stranger’s used glove, but it was first snow. The rules were suspended. Feeling the warmth of John’s glove radiate through her body, she wondered what he looked like beneath his jacket and hat. Did he have hair? A potbelly? Was he the flannel-shirt type?
Surprising herself, Muriel really wanted to find out.
John asked, “Could you please hold Garrett’s leash for a moment?”
“Sure.”
Bending over, John scooped up a handful of soft snow and molded it into a ball. “You’re about to see why I went to college on a baseball scholarship.” Aiming for a crumbling snowman on top of a marble balustrade, he reached both arms overhead, lifted one leg, wound up, pitched, and missed the snowman entirely, only to hit the shoulder of a mother leaning down to button up her child.
“Oh my God,” John called out, rushing forward. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay? I was a poly sci major. My sport was chess.”
The mother was fine, if a bit confused, and Muriel was enchanted. When John returned for his dog, he said, “Using an innocent puppy and an athletic lie to flirt with you? What a cad!”
She couldn’t stop grinning, even as her nose ran. Attempting a seductive tone that was made more challenging with her frozen lips, Muriel looked John directly in the eyes and said, “I’ve always had a thing for cads who play chess.” The word “play” came out as “pway” but she didn’t relinquish John’s gaze. Not even when she reached into the pocket of her jacket to retrieve a wad of tissue and dab at her runny nose.