by Kate Manning
We waited till Hallie was asleep.
Milo was sitting on the terrace in the back, quiet, watching the waves rolling in, greasy in the moonlight. There was no wind. I sat next to him and pulled my legs up under my skirt, laid my head on my knees. Then I began. I tried.
“You know … what I said …”
He watched me trying to get the words into sentences, trying to get the building to stand upright again, reconfigure all the pieces of rubble, like film running backward.
“There’s … no way …” I said, “to explain.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.
“But I wanted—”
He shook his head.
“To say—”
“Say nothing.”
“I’m sorry. That’s what I wanted to say.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m sorry, too.” He said it with the thumb side of his fist to his mouth, as if he were punching himself. “I’m sorry, too.”
At first I thought he meant he was sorry I had done what I did, said what I said. But then I thought maybe he was apologizing. For hitting me. For leaving me and Hallie for five weeks alone.
He was sorry. I could see it, but he never said for what.
Later I knew for what. For betrayal. For where he had just been. For who he had kissed, the bed he had slept in, the words he had spoken; I can just imagine them, each flash of it like hitting me again. Sorry. Yeah, sure, he was sorry.
But for us that night, apology mixed with hurt, plus anger, plus guilt, was highly combustible, volatile. The fusion of these in Milo and me caused such a violent reconciliation, forgiveness like a sport, like blood wrestling. One minute we were sitting quietly outside, watching the helium moon rise higher, lost in our thoughts, feeling the wind pick up and loosen the tops of the trees; and the next minute our fingers were tangled and our wrists cocked back, pulling hard against each other. On that tension alone we rose to our feet, kissing, stumbling inside, banging into furniture, cursing, spilling glasses over, laughing, toppling down in the living room, rolling around. We burned our skin on the carpet. All the sounds we made were against our will, wild cries and gusts of words through teeth. I cut my tongue where he bit me. Milo’s shoulder bled where I scratched him. We were up all night.
But of course, in the morning, the beast of what happened was still there, curled by our hearth, still begging under the table waiting to be fed on scraps of suspicion and doubt or, if we could possibly manage it, caged and tamed and housebroken.
We sat with coffee outside, watching Hallie running in the garden, trying to catch butterflies. Her hair flew out behind her and caught the sun so it shone down her back, black and bright. She was a butterfly herself, flitting around the lawn with a small net that she smashed wildly down, always missing. Each time she swiped, she would stop and check to see if we were paying attention. Look! she kept saying, and we would have to say Yes! or Oh! or anything to prove we noticed.
“Milo?” I said, out of the blue.
“Hmm.”
“Darryl said—”
“What?”
I hadn’t meant to speak, but now that I had started, words kept leaking out, as if I were a broken faucet. “He said I had a sick interest in you,” I said, “and you had a sick interest in me, and that’s all it ever was.”
“Well, that’s just Darryl,” Milo said carefully, sipping his coffee.
“Is that just you?” I asked him.
Here there was a pause. “I don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“How do you know something like that?” he asked.
“Like what?”
“Like what’s a sick interest.”
“I know,” I said.
“What do you know?”
“That it’s not sick,” I said. “Mine in you, I mean.”
“Why not?”
“It’s healthy,” I said. “See?”
He looked at me and allowed a smile. “Yeah,” he said. Then, after a minute: “What else did Darryl say?” He asked me this idly, not as if there was something in particular Darryl might have said, some beans he might have spilled. “What else did he say?”
“Nothing.”
Inside the phone was ringing. It was a Saturday morning, and if things went as they usually did, the phone would be ringing all the time now, with people calling to invite us places, for tennis, to parties on their boats, to charity balls and dinners and weekends somewhere exotic. I was looking forward to things going as they usually did. I was hoping for some frivolity and tennis, maybe some flashbulbs and some starlight and some dance music to be coming along soon.
“Hello?” I said. No one spoke. “Hello? Hello?”
Whoever it was hung up. I went back out and Milo asked Who was that? and I told him No one. “They hung up,” I said.
“Hmm,” he said.
“We had a lot of those, on the machine,” I said. “And more just in the last couple of days, two a day, sometimes.” I also told him about the message from the security company, that the alarm had gone off while we were away.
He sat forward abruptly. “Are you saying somebody broke in here?”
“They just said the alarm went off.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“What was it?”
“Apparently nothing.”
“What happened?”
“They said it was fine.”
“Did they check?”
“Don’t yell at me.”
“I’m not yelling. I’m trying to get you to realize.”
“They said they checked.”
“Who checked?”
“That a neighbor checked. Mrs. Deraney.”
“They sent the neighbor? That’s all? A neighbor?”
“They said to call them.”
“You bet I’ll call,” he said.
At the time I did not wonder who it was that called and hung up, or whether anyone had tried to break into our house. Although I worried about things like that—intruders or deranged fans—mostly they seemed as unreal to me as cartoon bad guys. They were things that happened to other people. Also, Milo was home now, and I could see that he was worried about our safety, our family. Hallie got tired and as we talked she fell asleep on Milo’s lap. Sitting there, I was happy; glad the subject was changed from what had happened to what was going to happen now: the future. Milo used the word we. We’ll get guard dogs. We’ll hire a security guard. We’ll have to have someone here when we’re away. But then the phone rang again and Milo’s arms were full of sleeping Hallie, so I went in and picked it up.
“Hell-oh there, Miss Anne!” Of course it was Darryl.
“Hello,” I said flatly.
“So he’s back. Well, well.”
“So,” I said, “you were wrong.”
“Was I, Pink?” Darryl said, so lightly. “Maybe so. Maybe so.”
My skin prickled, hearing him. He was jovial. It just chilled me.
“May I speak with him?”
“Hang on,” I said. “It’s Darryl,” I told Milo. My mouth was dry.
He slid Hallie gently onto a long chaise and took the phone back into the house. He winked as he went and I could see him talking, the phone clamped to his ear with his bare shoulder. It was a short conversation. He hung up and came back out and sat with me.
“What did he want?”
“Just meeting tomorrow with some money people for Justice Warrior.” Justice Warrior was the next Cade movie. Cade Four.
“On a Sunday?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“You just got back—”
“It’ll take an hour. Two. It’s just lunch.”
“It’s Sunday.”
I didn’t like the thought of it. Milo and Darryl. My ears burned already, at the thought of the jokes they would tell.
“I don’t like Darryl anymore,” I said.
Milo peered at me the way his father did sometimes over his glasses. Explain, said the
look.
“I don’t like him,” I said. “He gives me the creeps.”
“He’s a pussycat.”
“He hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“He’s not good for you, Milo.”
“Without him there would be no Cade.”
“True,” I said. “He calls me Pink.”
“So? Should be used to it by now.”
“He calls me Miss Anne.” How pathetic my reasons seemed, aloud.
“That’s how he talks. It’s just a joke. He’s yanking your chain.”
“It’s not a joke to me,” I said.
“What is the matter with you? Calm down.”
“He makes me nervous.”
“What are you trying to say?” Milo narrowed his eyes at me in a warning way.
“When you were gone,” I started, “he said you did not want to speak to me.” Milo looked interested now, so I kept going. “He said you would not be calling me. He said you were over me, that it was over, that you said it was.”
“I did not say that.”
“I asked him to please tell you that I needed to talk to you,” I said. “To get you a message.”
“I did not get a message.”
“Darryl said you didn’t want to talk to me.”
Milo looked away. “Did you get a message from me?” he asked.
“Bobbie told me that you were skiing,” I said.
“I was skiing,” Milo said. “Listen: Not from D.? No message?”
“Darryl just told me you never cared about me in the first place.”
“I don’t want to hear this,” he said.
“He told me what you say about me. Your joke.”
“I said I don’t want to hear it.”
“He said—”
“Stop it.”
So I stopped.
But then Milo asked: “What joke?”
Should I tell him? It was funny, right? Chocolate fantasy, black booty quest. He asked me so I took a breath and told.
“Fuck him, the fucker,” Milo said when he heard. “That was not my joke.”
“Whose was it?”
“His.”
“Did you laugh?” I asked him.
Milo thought about it but you could tell he didn’t want to. “I don’t know,” he said wearily, almost as if he was admitting something. “I guess I laughed.”
Of course he laughed. Because it was funny! Barbie on a Black Booty Quest. It was a riot. When I heard it I pictured Astronaut Barbie in some rocket ship, her stoned, starry eyes stuck open, having trouble with the control pedals because of her feet in lifetime stiletto position, questing and lusting through the cosmos with her pointy torpedo bosoms at the ready. I could care less if Milo laughed. It was funny as long as it wasn’t true about me.
“Barbie on a quest—” I said. “Is that what you think about me?”
He took a long time to answer. “You know me,” he said, shrugging and guilty. But then he said it again with a different inflection. “You know me.”
“I do?” I asked, surprised. “Really?”
“As much as anyone,” he said. “More, probably.”
At the time I bought it; his words pleased me so much. The idea was a shiny bauble from Milo’s lips, not even an answer to my question, distracting me. I knew him. I wanted to buy it so I did, without asking the price. How expensive it turned out to be—to think I knew him, or could. Because how can you know anyone, really? I don’t care how many times you have slept with him or next to him, listening to him breathe or snore, dream or kick the covers. What did I know? That he liked sugared cereal for breakfast? That his waist is a 32 and his shirt collar is a 15? That when he was a boy he had his tonsils removed and was terrified of the doctor? I knew a long list of things about him. So what? The mother of the murderer says, He was such a good boy. The neighbors of the drug dealer say, You would never believe that about her! She was an A student. The wife of the playboy says, He was home every night for dinner.
Milo was quiet that afternoon. I was calmed down. Hallie woke and I was busy with her, making her lunch. Milo watched us from a kitchen stool and joined in the conversation a little, but he was distracted, restless, pianoing his fingers and nodding occasionally as if he were arguing something out with himself. What was it? Once I asked him and he smiled and brushed my hair with his hand. Nothing, he said. He picked up Hallie and sang to her. He rinsed the dishes, looking glassily out the window into the dark.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said.
He didn’t sleep well, tossing and keeping me awake. The sheets were pulled to his side of the bed, tangled around him.
The next day he went to lunch with Darryl and when he came home, it was all over, just like that. “Darryl and I have decided to go our separate ways,” he said, beaming in the front door, announcing his news. He seemed almost relieved, saying Where’s my girls? Grabbing us up the way he did to people at parties. I smelled cigar smoke on him. It was in his hair and in his mouth. I tasted it when he kissed me.
“We just decided to part company for a while,” he said.
I was shocked. I said I was.
“Welp,” Milo said, explaining, “if you’re not moving forward, you’re standing still, right?”
“But Darryl was your friend.”
“He is still my friend. He’s just not my agent or my business partner.”
“Did you tell him what I said?”
“I told him he makes my wife nervous, yeah.”
“I wish you hadn’t said that.”
“Why?”
“Because he’ll think—he won’t know what I meant.”
“He doesn’t care what you meant. He thinks what he thinks.”
“So what did he think?”
“He thought it was funny, that he makes you nervous. He thought it was hilarious.”
“No,” I said, “about you firing him.”
“I didn’t fire him. We came to an agreement. An amiable agreement.”
“Which was what?”
“To dissolve our partnership. I’ll buy him out. Pay him for his half.”
“Just like that?”
“Yeah,” Milo said.
“But why?”
“I thought you’d be happy. You’re the one who wanted me to move on.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Well, not in so many words.” Milo shrugged. “But listen: Sometimes you just need a new coach. One guy teaches you what he knows, then you go learn something new from somebody else. I learned a lot from Darryl. He got a lot out of me. We had a great run. Right now we’re both on different courses, you know? It’s not a big deal.”
“How’s he feel about it?”
“He wants to direct,” Milo said, as if that explained it.
What took place I still don’t know. They had lunch. They parted company. They were still friends, or so Milo claimed. I don’t know what was said between them any more than I know whether they ate steak au poivre or Caesar salads. I don’t know what agreement they had, or what Milo meant about paying Darryl, buying him out. I didn’t ask questions such as: Did Milo have his own reasons for easing Darryl out of the picture? Would Darryl blame me? I tried not to think of it again, that lunch, those long bad weeks, until I had to. I was ready to forget all about Darryl and his names for me, his schemes for Milo, his theories about us; I was happy to forget what happened in Newark and that terrible night in our New York living room. I would just not think about it, ready to move on. Now, though, I sift these scenes obsessively, as if they were a sandpile where I’d lost my wedding ring, on the slim chance that it will turn up again, hard and glittery like a fact.
32.
Here is the part where we were happy for a while. Here is the part where Hallie learned to skip, and we all had to go around skipping to my lou my darling, singing that song because she liked it, and being lighthearted. Our hearts were so strangely light during
those days, considering our bitter words, and the fact I had hurt Milo, and he had hit me and left me for five weeks. Now he was always hugging me and reaching for me in the night, kissing me languidly in the kitchen. Why? It breaks me to think about it now, the way he kissed me sometimes; as if he were privately sad about something. I thought it was tenderness. I thought he was sorry for hitting me, and had forgiven me. There was not one warning of the kind I had been raised to watch out for, some sign from Heaven, angels or plagues. Nothing like that. Just once in a while a distractedness. And Milo had always been like that, moody and pensive.
He got up in the early mornings with Hallie, and they took walks along the beach, skipping, of course. Hallie was so proud of herself because it is quite an accomplishment for a three-year-old to skip. She was astonishingly coordinated. She had a gymnast’s body, with hard little muscles in her thin arms. She started to call Milo Daddy-boy. I don’t know where she heard it or whether she made it up, but that was his name. Daddy-boy, Daddy-boy, all day. It was during this time that she took such a shine to him. He was about to start shooting Cade Four, Justice Warrior. He had a new power agent from the biggest agency in Hollywood. A white guy named Roy DiCostanza. Roy had a chestnut-brown mustache and a stable of talent including everyone you ever heard of. Roy was going to take Milo global. He was going to cross Milo over. Beyond Cade. That’s what he said. Milo was talking about new projects, about producing, about writing his own scripts. Every day he’d work out and go over his lines for Justice Warrior, and the rest of the time, except for rehearsals, he’d play with Hallie. At night we had conversations like this:
“Trevor.”
“James.”
“Jayson.”
“Adrian.”
“Adrian!?” he said. “Adrian? Adrian is a girl’s name.”
“Is not. Adrian Robicheaux. What? Don’t make that face.”
“Jake. Now that’s a good goddamn name. Jake Robicheaux.”
“Jake?”
“What’s wrong with Jake?” he said.
“Sounds like some guy with a moonshine business.”
“Well, what the hell then? What do you like?”
“Leland?” I said.
“That was my grandmother’s name,” he said. “Her maiden name.” I nodded.
“Leland Robicheaux.” Milo was smiling now. “For a boy.”