The Atlas of Love

by Laurie Frankel

  “But you feel like shit when you leave those plays,” Jill objected. “Hero is stuck with this guy who’s totally untrusting and mean. Helena marries her awful ex-boyfriend who only loves her again because of magic fairy dust. Viola ends up with this sappy, pouty dude who’s probably gay anyway.”

  “Well, okay, but that’s the point. Those guys didn’t learn, so they get married at the end, but you don’t feel good or happy about it. But think about Beatrice, think about Rosalind. These are marriages you do feel good about, not because the guys or even the heroines were perfect at the beginning but because they’ve learned. No one’s perfect going in—no one’s ever perfect—it’s the ones who hear their detractions and can put them to mending who you’re happy for.”

  “Yeah, but doesn’t that mean my mom and Daniel are going to get married?” Jill giggled.

  “It’s just a metaphor, Jilly.”

  “What do you think I have to learn then?” she asked.

  “What do you think you have to learn?”

  “Isn’t someone supposed to help me figure that out?”

  “Sometimes. But usually the women have to come into it all on their own.”

  “Isn’t there supposed to be a sidekick? Someone to tell the heroine the answers?”

  “No one can tell her the answers. Figuring it out is her job. Fixing it isn’t the hard part. It’s learning what it is needs fixing in the first place. Beatrice learns that being harsh and afraid does her no good. She decides to love and let herself be loved—and she is. Rosalind realizes that time is short and love is precious. She finally gets that she doesn’t have unlimited time to screw around pretending to be a boy and messing about in the woods. She’s afraid Orlando won’t love her anymore when she’s not so young and pretty and the novelty wears off. She has to learn to trust that he’ll always love her even when she’s old and gray and they’ve been together for eighty years.”

  “But I wasn’t afraid to let myself be loved. I was ready. He said no.”

  “Then that’s not your thing,” I said.

  “What is?”

  “Can’t tell you.” I shrugged. I didn’t know. And it was her journey besides. The difference between Shakespeare and life is the absence of fairies, long lost twins, and really knowledgeable cross-dressers to solve all your unsolvable problems. On the other hand, the kitchen was clean, the dishes dried and put away, the counters scrubbed, and Atlas sound asleep and not even throwing up.

  Twenty-six

  I did not know when the phone rang. I knew in the instant between saying hello and hearing the reply. Maybe I recognized the held breath on the other end. Maybe the pause was just longer enough than usual to herald a quick and unthought thought. I picked it up and said hello and felt my heart seize in the half moment before he said, “Hi, Janey,” softly, sad, but also holding down something bigger. And I couldn’t say a word.

  “Are you there? It’s me.” Faced with silence on the other end of the line, Daniel stopped sounding small and afraid and turned back into Daniel again. He’d identified a problem he could tackle. “Okay, you don’t have to say anything. Just listen. I’ll keep talking unless I hear you hang up.” I wasn’t too angry to speak. I simply couldn’t think of how to start talking. The everyday pleasantries that fill most conversations, particularly with people you haven’t seen in a long time, didn’t seem appropriate, but neither did skipping them and plunging right in. “I know you must be mad,” he said, “but I also know you’ll hear me out. Not that I have a big speech planned. Diane called to tell me she told Jill. I thought I’d better call.”

  He stopped and no one said anything, and I wondered if that was it. “I haven’t been staying away because I don’t care about her. I miss her. I still love her.” The her felt conspicuous. “I just thought I should give you guys—her—some space, lots of space. Like I made my decision, so now I didn’t get to half-ass it—call when I felt like it or ask after . . . you know, how things were, when I said I didn’t want to. It was like all or nothing, and having chosen ‘not all,’ I had to take nothing.”

  “Okay,” I finally managed, then added, “How are you?”

  He let out a long, loud breath, and I heard him smile, whether from relief or absurdity I am not sure. “I’m okay. I got a job tech writing in Tacoma for a startup. I play sometimes in a band. I’m fine I guess. I miss you guys . . . I miss Jill.”

  He didn’t elaborate, and he didn’t ask me how I was, how we were, knowing, I guess, that I couldn’t tell him without talking about Atlas, about Jill, about the joys and challenges of taking care of a child who wasn’t quite mine and wasn’t quite his. So we were out of things to chat about. “Would you like to talk to Jill?” I asked. And quietly again, cowed, he said he would. I put my hand over the mouthpiece and called her name. She walked downstairs holding Atlas, took one look at my face, and knew as well. The blood drained from her face so quickly I expected to see it puddle at her feet. I handed her the phone and got up to leave the room, to leave her the downstairs and the comfortable chair, a small, warm, private hole in which to curl up as tightly as possible and have this conversation. I was halfway up the stairs, and she still clutched the phone without saying anything into it when she called my name, and when I turned around, she handed Atlas out to me without a word.

  Upstairs, Atlas and I sat on the floor of his room with the door closed and played with (chewed on) blocks. I did not want to eavesdrop, and I certainly didn’t want Atlas to hear a word or even the tone of it, but I did want to tell someone (well, everyone) that Daniel had called. I called Katie. She was at Peter’s. We had this conversation:

  Katie: Hello?

  Me: Dan called. They’re on the phone now.

  Katie: I’ll be right home.

  Not even young love and a new engagement would keep her from this. She arrived less than ten minutes later. I thought she was so flushed and out of breath because she’d run home, but no, Peter had dropped her off. She was flushed and out of breath because she had dragged up the driveway and then up the stairs an enormous bag full of something odd shaped and cornerful.

  “Where is she?” she wheezed, slumping exhausted to the floor and laying her head in Atlas’s lap. He thought this was hysterical.

  “She’s down there. In the living room. You didn’t hear her when you came in?”

  Katie shrugged. “She wasn’t talking, and she wasn’t crying. Or if she was, she was doing it very quietly.”

  “What is that?” I nodded at her Santa bag.

  “Oh, it’s Peter’s laundry bag. It was the only thing big enough to fit.”

  “To fit what?”

  “All the wedding stuff,” she said happily. Out of Peter’s laundry bag came half a dozen bridal magazines, binders of sample wedding invitations, stacks of folders from florists, caterers, photographers, DJs, cake decorators, party planners, reception sites, tuxedo renters, and hairdressers. She had books about how to pick the perfect dress, plan the perfect reception, choose the perfect color scheme, make the perfect wedding favors. She had a sheaf of brochures with beaches and hand-holding couples on their covers bound with a pink ribbon and “Ideas for your perfect honeymoon from Suns and Lovers Travel Agency” written on a card in perfect script. When the bag was finally empty, she found her purse among all that mess and produced from it six pieces of cake in Ziploc baggies. “Samples,” she announced excitedly, and unsure how long it might take Daniel and Jill to sort out what they had to sort out, I was delighted someone had thought to bring food.

  Not ten minutes later, we had everything stacked in neat and organized piles. Atlas was passed out cold on the floor, covered in white and pink frosting, his hair and hands matted with crumbs. Katie and I, also a little frosted and becrumbed, paged through the bridal magazines, turning down the corners of pages with dresses we liked and, much more frequently, holding up the whole tome to show dresses so alarmingly hideous and inappropriate, it never stopped being funny when we said, mock serious, “How about this o
ne?”

  After a while, we couldn’t look at bridal magazines anymore. We woke Atlas up, gave him a bath, and put him to bed. By then, wedding cake samples aside, we were well and truly starved. We did a mental survey of the fridge and pantry, considered what we could run downstairs and grab unnoticed that wouldn’t have to be prepped, heated, or eaten with utensils, and made a dinner plan that included cheese cubes, cherries, pretzels, vegetarian bologna, and some leftover lasagna (not strictly finger food but desperate times and all that). We crept stealthily downstairs and by only the light of the fridge were just finishing our scavenging mission when Jill said, “I’m off the phone. I’m just sitting here. You guys can turn on a light.”

  I felt bad because frankly I was having a great time. It was fun playing blocks with Atlas and feeding him tiny pieces of cake. It was fun to look at bridal magazines and wedding stuff. It was even fun to sneak into your own kitchen with the task of procuring a dinner, silently and unseen, that needed no more preparation than slices of wedding cake in plastic baggies. Meanwhile, here was Jill, sitting in the dark all alone in some kind of paralyzed depression while I considered what kind of improvements might be made to a stealth dinner menu with the procurement of night-vision goggles and a jar of mustard.

  Katie flipped on the kitchen light, and Jill blinked like a night creature, buried her head in her hands.

  “Where’s Atlas?”

  “Sleeping.”

  “He . . . got into some cake samples.”

  “What are you guys doing up there?”

  “Looking at wedding stuff.”

  “Thanks for giving me some space.”

  “Sure.”

  “Is there any cake left?”

  Katie and I exchanged miserable glances. How could we have failed to save her at least a token piece of wedding cake? On the other hand, how were we to know she’d feel like eating? Optimistically, I took this as a good sign, reached under the counter for the big Pyrex, and started making carrot cake.

  “So, what’d he say?”

  She hadn’t moved from the corner of the living room, hadn’t removed her hands from her face, but, at this question, toppled over into fetal position on the floor, hugging her knees to her chin, and becoming a big ball of Jill.

  “We just . . . talked I guess,” she muffled from behind her knees. “He told me about his job, his apartment, his life. He said sorry for talking to my mom behind my back. He was worried about me—not really about Atlas though. He said sorry for not calling sooner. He said he wanted to call right when Atlas—he just calls him ‘the baby’ like he doesn’t have a name—was born, but he didn’t feel like he could, and then once he hadn’t, it just got harder and harder, and he couldn’t call then because it was too late and besides what would he say. He offered to send me money, which is ridiculous. He kept asking really deeply how I am, which is also ridiculous. He asked about Atlas but not like he really wanted to know. Besides, how do you answer that question? ‘How’s the baby?’ What do I say? ‘Well, he threw up earlier, but he seems better tonight, or at least he did until my roommates fed him cake.’ He’s never even met this person, so I don’t know what he means by ‘how is he?’ ”

  “It’s weird,” Katie mused, “because that’s not what your mom said.”

  “What?”

  “That he wasn’t interested in Atlas. She made it sound like he was all desperate for information and to see pictures and was thinking of moving in here or asking you to marry him or something.”

  “She wishes,” said Jill dismissively, and I wondered what Diane did hope for, how someone whose fondest wish was only for Jill’s and Atlas’s well-being would want this situation to turn out. “He barely acknowledged ‘the baby’ at all.”

  “Maybe he didn’t feel like he had the right to,” I said. “Probably he was scared and nervous. Probably he felt awkward and guilty.”

  “So you’re on his side.”

  “No.” Absolutely completely totally not. No no no no no. “I’m just saying he probably wasn’t trying to be a jerk. He probably wasn’t a jerk. He just came off like a jerk because this is a difficult situation.”

  “You are on his side. It’s a difficult situation because he made it difficult. He’s the one who left. He’s the one who deserted us. He’s the one who hasn’t called me but is secretly dating my mother.”

  “How did you leave things?” Katie changed the subject.

  “He said he’d call me again in a few days. I didn’t say anything. Then we hung up.” A long pause then suddenly, “I’m out of here,” pulling on shoes, grabbing keys and cell phone, heading out the front door. She was almost gone when she stuck her head back in and hissed, “Don’t touch my baby.”

  We gave up on dinner. We followed up the wedding cake slices with at least half the batter of the cake I was making for Jill who wasn’t here to eat it. Then we baked the other half and iced it with Jill’s name and a smiley face, hoping it would make her smile too and not seem to be mocking her. It was weird she wanted to spin it now like he’d deserted her when at the time she’d insisted she was fine with his leaving and didn’t want him around if he didn’t want to be here. It was weird that she was so angry that he didn’t ask about Atlas when the night before she’d been so afraid he would want custody. And it was weird that she thought I was on his side when I was so totally on hers, on Atlas’s, on mine. Because of course this was my life we were talking about too. One way or the other, Jill and Atlas weren’t separable. One way or the other, Katie was leaving. If Daniel came back or if he didn’t, all I was guaranteed was friendship, the opportunity to pick up the pieces. Daniel might disappear again. He might get partial custody. He might marry Jill and move in and be a family. But as far as Atlas went, I wasn’t guaranteed a thing.

  I called Nico so he could be an impartial observer guaranteed to be on my side.

  “You are an amazing friend,” he told me.

  “Thank you.”

  “You are also an amazing mother,” he added.

  “Thank you.”

  “And you are going so above and beyond here. Jill shouldn’t be pissed at you. She should be on her knees before you, supplicant with gratitude.”

  “She should.”

  “You are an amazing woman, Janey—the kindest person I have ever known. Anyone lucky enough to have you in their life—especially every day, especially right down the hall—should be profoundly thankful,” said Nico, which, of course, was why I’d called him. Then he added quietly, “I understand Dan. I know what it’s like to realize you’ve made a mistake and want to come back and not be able to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t always get it right the first time. And not all mistakes can be undone. You’re too young to see what you have when you have it. And then when you realize it, you get it in your head that it’s just too late, and then it is. Dan’s lucky. Atlas is his free pass. Since there’s a baby, he has an excuse to come back.”

  “He wants to come back for the baby,” I said.

  “No he doesn’t. He’s willing to come back despite the baby. It’s not the same. He wants to come back for Jill. Trust me.”

  “How do you know?” I asked. But he wouldn’t say.

  Later, I was in Atlas’s room stuffing all the wedding brochures back into the laundry bag they had miraculously come out of. Usually, I am not scrupulous about my own mess, let alone someone else’s, but I had this horrifying vision of someone rushing in to a crying Atlas in the middle of the night and fatally tripping over one of the four million pieces of bridal literature on the floor. Except for Atlas, I was alone in the house, and so I was comforting him aloud, even though he was asleep and couldn’t understand. “It’ll be okay,” I promised him in whispers. “We’ll all always love you and always be there for you. We’re not going anywhere. We’d never let anything bad happen to you. Your mom’s not really crazy. She’s just having some stress. Your dad’s not really evil. He’s just . . . confused. Your mom’
s not really mad at Grandma or at me. She’s confused too. You’re a lucky kid. You are much loved. You live with a bunch of crazy people, but you are much loved.” He just slept unperturbed, unconcerned. I felt actually, viscerally even, jealous of him. I envied him his rest and his ignorance and his powerlessness.

  And the literalness with which he lived his life whereas I was mired again in metaphor. Maybe Ethan had been right—Jill and Katie, Daniel and Peter, weren’t textual foils after all. Maybe Jill and I were the mirrors with wayward, prodigal, onetime lovers hinting about changing their minds. Being confusing. Being missed.

  “Thanks for the cake,” said Jill behind me. She was holding the plate in one hand and stuffing fistfuls of cake into her mouth with the other. “Mmfff gwaaaay,” which I thought meant, “It’s great,” but could have been anything. “Look who I found making out on the porch,” she swallowed, pulling an abashed Katie in by a sleeve. She had called Peter an hour ago to go for a walk. Apparently, they hadn’t made it quite that far. “He came to pick me up, and we got distracted,” she explained.

  “That is a really big bag,” Jill observed, red eyed but smiling, chastened, making up.

  “Planning a wedding is a lot of work,” said Katie gravely though neither Jill nor I were buying this. Katie loved planning parties. She thought it might have been her calling. If her two-doctorates-chaired-professor father wouldn’t have thrown the biggest fit Salt Lake City had ever seen, she would have been a wedding planner for a living. “In all the excitement this evening, I forgot to tell you guys we picked a date. June twenty-ninth. We decided to do it right after Summer One ends, so no one would have a conflict.”

  “I don’t think the Summer One schedule is the same next year,” said Jill. “Did you ask someone in the Registrar’s Office?”