“I agree. Congratulations.” He turned to go, but she caught his sleeve.
“Hang on. I’m sorry. It’s all this gossip in the office—it’s making me defensive.”
“Don’t pay attention. It’s just envy.”
“Thanks. Things all right with you?”
“Yes. Thanks.”
“Good.”
Odette, who had been hovering, interrupted them then. “Mr. Masterson wants to see you,” she told Adam, avoiding his eye.
“Now?”
“Before the end of the day.” She gave a quick smile, more like a wince, and scurried away.
“What’s this about, do you know?” Adam asked Valerie. But she lifted her shoulders in a shrug.
* * *
Back at her desk, Valerie dropped her face into her hands and stayed that way for a time, massaging her eyebrows. Then she straightened up and watched her fingers tap on her desktop. She caught her lower lip beneath her upper teeth in a pensive way. Biting her lip was a new habit, but with teeth and lips like hers, it wasn’t unattractive. She took a deep breath, shook the hair from her eyes, and jabbed “1” on her cell phone. And, in a voice artificially bright, “Are you sitting down? Get ready for the craziest piece of gossip ever! Office rumor has it that Adam is already consoling himself in someone else’s arms.”
The punching of “1” on her cell phone had become a habit again. The night she left Adam’s house and moved back to her own cold apartment, she had debated calling Agatha and trying to patch things up but decided against it—too humiliating to call when her love life had just fallen apart. But when Masterson had given her the good news, she hadn’t hesitated. It was bang “1” and “Celebration time! I’m finished with Adam, I’m out of the ’burbs, and I’ve just been made partner! So is it your place or mine?” The champagne cork had flown into the air in Agatha’s living room, and Valerie had prattled away all evening, determined to present both her promotion and the end of her affair as personal triumphs, which Agatha had kindly allowed her to do unchallenged. (If Valerie had been attentive to her surroundings, she would have noticed that Agatha’s apartment had changed. There were a few objects in it now—a book, a plant, a teacup—standing out garishly from the white background like a handful of flowers strewn on the snow. And Agatha was looking different, too, softer somehow, her hair paler and floppier. But Valerie didn’t notice.) And ever since then, the two friends had been back in touch, although it was always Valerie now who called Agatha—naturally so, Valerie thought, as she was always the one with news. Like now. “You’ll never guess who it is, so save your breath. Are you ready? James Mackay! Adam’s squash buddy. And half these idiots in the office actually believe it! Now, is that a riot or what?”
Agatha, hard at work on an article due in ninety minutes, thought it was more “what.”
* * *
The boys were becoming difficult, there was no denying it. They quarreled and fought, Hugo was sucking his thumb again, and Matthew was distant and glum. Sophie did her best to keep their spirits up, but she was deeply irritated that once again Adam’s sex life, or this time his lack of one, was making things hard for the children and therefore for her.
“Don’t you want to water your plants?” she asked Matthew, who was sitting on the floor with his arms crossed. Hugo was out on the porch overwatering his. Matthew shook his head.
“Are you feeling okay?”
He shrugged without looking at her. She put her hand on his forehead, but he pushed it off.
“What’s wrong, honey?”
“Can we come and live here with Daddy?”
“Oh, honey…” She pulled him up onto her lap. “This house is too small for that. It’s better to stay in the big house for now.” He turned his face away.
Hugo had come in and was listening, too. “Valerie left,” he said.
“Do you miss her?”
“I don’t know. Daddy’s sad now.”
“I guess he misses her,” Sophie said.
“No, he doesn’t want Valerie,” Matthew said firmly. “Daddy wants you.”
Hugo agreed. “Daddy wants you.”
They looked at her, waiting.
At such a moment, it’s hard to clap your hands together and suggest a game of hide-and-seek, but that’s what Sophie did, and if Matthew sulked a little at first at being brushed off like this, soon they were both absorbed in the game. But Sophie wondered how they had gotten the idea that Adam wanted her back. It would be enraging if he were moping and playing the victim. But most likely the children had made it up, assigning their own wishes to him in order to give them more weight.
* * *
Just when Sophie was beginning to think Henry might be back from Seattle soon—and working hard to keep her mind off it—a postcard came from him. She pulled it out of the mailbox with the message side up, so she read that first. It took no time. Scrawled on it were the words “Bracing sea air! Wondrous for the complexion!” She frowned and tossed the card in the trash, but then it occurred to her that the picture on the other side might have a significance that would make up for the thinness of the text, so she fished it back out and turned it over. Yachts. Moored somewhere. Possibly the dullest postcard on sale in Seattle.
There was no doubt about it: Henry was a lightweight. Well, a man whose only preoccupation was “switching”… She should have known. It was all over. He was reunited with the mother of his child, and Sophie would never see him again. By clinging to the dimmest possible view, she hoped to protect herself from disappointment—or maybe even tip the scales in her favor somehow, as if hoping were unlucky, so banishing hope might improve her odds. But, of course, trying to trick fate like that could only be doubly unlucky. So best to forget the whole thing. Just forget it.
* * *
On Thursday, Milagros let herself into the Deans’ house as usual with her key. She cleaned the kitchen and bathrooms as usual and dusted and vacuumed the living room, but when she flung open the door to Mr. Dean’s study, she let out a startled yelp.
“Mr. Dean! You scared me! What are you doing here?” He was wearing a sweatshirt and shapeless corduroys, and the room was a mess, with books piled on the floor and the furniture shoved every which way. His head was bent over a drawing at his architect’s table, and it wasn’t until he had finished tracing a line that he looked up and smiled. “I’ve been fired. So I’ll be working at home, for the time being, anyway.” He was unshaven, and on his feet were a pair of holey bedroom slippers.
“Fired! You don’t look too worried about it.”
“I’m not.” He stood up and stretched. “Like some coffee?”
Milagros sat stiffly at the table while he made and served the coffee with the loquaciousness special to the solitary worker-from-home. “It’s wonderful working from home,” he confided. “My mornings are so different, you can’t imagine. It used to be hellish, getting their breakfast, my coffee, their hair combed, my tie.… I was always shouting at them to hurry and pulling on their arms. Now there’s no rush. I attend only to them until they’re safely at school, and then I come back and deal with myself. No tension this way. No boss either, and no colleagues. This is the life! And, of course, I don’t need to wear a suit, so you don’t have to bother with ironing my shirts—that’s good news, isn’t it? Have one?” He held out a plate of oatmeal cookies. “I made them myself.”
He sensed he was failing to put her at ease. It was with an air of recognizing the signs of incipient mental breakdown that she said, “I prefer to iron some shirts all the same, Mr. Dean. You’ll need another job.”
“No doubt. Eventually. But I’m in no hurry, I have to say. Ah… Milagros?”
“Yes, Mr. Dean?”
“I don’t want Sophie to know just yet that I’ve lost my job. It would only worry her, and…” And sound like more blackmail, he finished to himself. To say nothing of making him seem utterly pathetic, losing first wife, then lover, now job.
“It’s nothing to do with me,” s
he protested, raising her hands to mean that keeping secrets wasn’t part of her job.
But he misunderstood her. “Oh, thank you. I really appreciate that. It’s only for a little while, until I’m set up elsewhere. And I’m working on a project—a sort of surprise for her. I won’t show it to her until it’s finished.”
“A surprise for Sophie,” Milagros repeated slowly. “Okay. I am a tomb.” Which Adam took to mean that she would hold her tongue for a bit and wait to see what happened.
* * *
But Sophie did find out about Adam’s losing his job, that very night when she got home from walking Bertie. She was grateful again for her dog walking now that Henry was gone, which made her realize how close she was to being lonely, really. Henry had shielded her from it for a while, but loneliness had been there beside her all along, waiting to repossess her—the empty apartment, the ticking clock, only her books for company, and hardly any phone calls now except for the odd one from her mother, sounding peeved (“disappointed” was her word) that Sophie had still not managed to patch up her marital problems when she, her mother, had so many worries of her own. “I know. It’s inconsiderate of me, isn’t it?” Sophie had said once, startling herself. But her mother appeared not to have noticed.
Sophie had left Bertie in Dorina’s apartment and started up the stairs when she stopped short, her heart hammering. Sitting on the first-floor landing was a strange man.
“I’m sorry, Sophie. Didn’t mean to scare you. I wasn’t sure which apartment was yours,” he said, standing up. “I’m James. James Mackay. I work with Adam. Pleased to meet you.” He smiled nervously and held out his hand, which she didn’t shake, so he raised it in an awkward wave.
Sophie thought she recognized him vaguely. “Is Adam all right?” she asked.
“Well, no. Not really. He got fired. He wasn’t going to tell you about it.”
“Fired? Why on earth would they fire him?”
“Oh, different reasons. Downsizing, for one. And he was late a lot, and he missed meetings. Missed whole days sometimes, what with taking care of the boys.”
“Oh. I didn’t know.”
“No, he didn’t want you to know.”
“Then why are you telling me? Are you implying I’m to blame?”
“No! Not at all. It’s just because…” He drew a breath. “Because Adam’s basically a good guy. He knows he’s made mistakes, of course, lots of them. But his heart is in the right place.” She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall, waiting. “The problem is… that not everybody is good at using words. Adam’s not. He may not always be able to say what’s on his mind, but… but that doesn’t mean he’s not…” He grew flustered by the impatience he read in Sophie’s body language. “What I mean is that the ability to use words… or rather the inability to use words…”
“Is a trait the two of you share,” she finished for him. I like being mean, she marveled to herself once again. “Did Adam send you here?”
“Oh, God, no. He’d be furious if he knew.”
“Then how did you know where I live?”
“Oh, I got it out of him. I told him I was going to pick the kids up here tomorrow. I baby-sit them sometimes.”
“You do?” A complete stranger to her—oh, the indignities of being a separated parent.
“Look, Sophie, I see now that I shouldn’t have come, but since I’m here, I might as well go ahead and make a complete fool of myself. What I came to say is that Adam is a good guy and he’s changed. Taking care of the boys has really opened his eyes, to a lot of things. He misses you. But he can’t tell you that because he’s ashamed. That’s all. Now I’ll go. And excuse me for butting in.”
He started down the stairs, but she stopped him. “He may very well miss me now, James. I can believe that. But he would never have missed me if he had been allowed to leave the children with me and start a new life with Valerie. That’s the truth.”
James could only shake his head. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he mumbled.
“Tomorrow?”
“It’s true that I’m coming to pick up the kids. I’m taking them to a movie.”
“Oh.”
“Bye, then.” He nodded and left.
* * *
Just when it seemed to Sophie that everyone was ganging up on her—Adam, her mother, the boys, and now this James—Matthew’s teacher took her aside to show her some of his drawings.
“Take a look,” she said, passing them over. “You see how everything’s divided?”
Sophie studied them—mostly pictures of houses standing in gardens with trees on either side, the whole thing divided vertically into two halves. But there was also one of a child with a double profile looking both ways at once. “I see what you mean.”
“It looks like something might be upsetting him. Can you think what it could be? This is classic parents-splitting-up stuff, but he seemed to be taking your separation so well. Both boys did.”
“Their father’s new relationship also ended recently,” Sophie said—with a tiny amount of relish, she was surprised to note. “His girlfriend moved out about a month ago. The boys were quite fond of her.”
“Okay, that could be it, then. It’s actually pretty common for a second breakup to be more upsetting for the children than the first.”
“But why? I mean, surely…”
“Well, children are adaptable, but only up to a point. One divorce and the kids weather the storm, new partners come onto the scene and the kids cope with that, too, but now what? A second relationship breaks down, and they start to think, ‘Are people going to be coming and going continually?’ They can’t accept that. What’s happening now is that Matthew’s feeling your separation all over again, and that’s what the dividing lines are about: ‘Mommy’s house, Daddy’s house—and where do I fit in?’”
“How infuriating,” Sophie said after a silence. “How infuriating that something I have no control over should affect them so much, and affect even my relationship with them. It’s not fair! But then, what is?” She laughed angrily.
The teacher shrugged apologetically. “This is only a temporary setback. Don’t worry too much about it. They’re well adjusted, confident little boys, and they’ll come through this fine. Just so long as you and their father are there for them, that’s all that matters.”
“Could I take these?” Sophie asked, touching the drawings.
“Sure.”
* * *
Sophie sat alone that night in her apartment, feeling sad about the two-faced child in Matthew’s drawing. She poured herself a glass of wine and remembered what Henry had said about how someday Adam would seem like just another girlfriend, how he was her Number-One Helpmate in raising the children, and how in order to do a good job of it, they would have to learn to work together smoothly. That included helping each other out when they needed it. And Adam needed help now. He was going through a hard time… he’d lost Valerie, lost his job… and he needed to see these pictures of Matthew’s. When the glass was empty, Sophie reached for the phone and dialed his number calmly, her face relaxed into a magnanimous expression.
“Hello! Sophie, is that you?” There was a lot of background noise, music and chattering people, bursts of laughter—a party. He was having a party. “Yes, I’d love to get together!” he shouted. “Yes, whenever you want! Fine! Okay, I shall look forward to it!” There was another great gust of laughter, a woman’s, cut short by the hanging up of the phone. Sophie looked around her silent, empty apartment and felt a lump of anger forming in her stomach. She regretted bitterly having arranged to meet him.
* * *
Then Dorina fell down and broke her hip. A silly accident. She slipped on a rubber toy of Bertie’s, invisible against the pattern of the Persian rug, and lay there for hours before the cleaning lady found her and called an ambulance. The first day that she was allowed visitors in the hospital, Sophie brought her a photograph of Bertie and pinned it to the wall by her bed. Dorina was vague and disorie
nted, but delighted with the photograph and anxious for news of her pet. “If anything should happen to me,” she said in a trembling voice, “will you take Bertie? I worry about him so.”
Sophie took Dorina’s hand and held it firmly. “I will. That’s a promise. I’ll take Bertie, and I’ll give him a happy home for the rest of his life.”
“Oh, thank you, darling. You have no idea.…” Dorina closed her eyes and rested.
On her way out, Sophie remembered reading that old women who break a hip often die within a year—and she wondered how long dogs live.
The trip to the hospital made Sophie a little late for her meeting with Adam, which was all to the good, since it allowed her no time to fret or grow nervous. She had chosen as the most appropriate venue for their talk the bar downtown near her lawyer’s, the place where she had drunk with the old barfly some six months before, on the day she had started divorce proceedings. When she stepped inside now, she had to pause and touch her brow, momentarily overcome by stale beer fumes. “You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille” was playing on the jukebox again—or still. The bartender looked up with the same St. Bernard eyes, wiping the bar top slowly with what was probably the same rag, quite possibly unrinsed since her last visit. This was a place where time stood still. Sophie’s redheaded drinking partner wasn’t there, but Adam was, sitting in a corner, looking around uncertainly in the gloom. Sophie swung her backpack down onto a chair and told him the story of Dorina and the dog, almost as if he were a just another person in her life.
“The boys will be delighted,” he said. “About the dog, I mean. Not the… accident, naturally.” He was less at ease than she was and looking interestingly different—unshaven and scruffy, like a cartoon caricature of an unemployed man. The funny thing was, he looked better like that. Not younger exactly, but… looser.
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