by Zoe Fishman
“Hi,” she mumbled. Teddy blushed despite his best efforts. He had no control over his physical response to anything lately. It was horrible.
The cop turned off the wail of his sirens, but they continued their blue and red swirl in the morning sun. He got out of the car, looking young for a cop, Teddy thought. Like his English teacher, Mr. Case, who was just out of college and wanted everyone to call him Jack. Teddy just couldn’t for some reason; it felt too strange, like seeing his parents hold hands or something. Not that he’d ever seen that.
As the cop walked toward them, Patty ambushed him, launching into her rendition of events a few feet from Teddy and Krystal. Teddy contemplated the ways in which he could start a conversation with Krystal based on what he had seen on film, but the only thing he could think of was “Do you come here often?” which, given the fact that they were stranded on the side of the road, didn’t seem appropriate.
“Son?” the cop asked, motioning to Teddy.
“Yessir?” Teddy replied, shifting his backpack a little as he walked the short distance to them.
Krystal followed; he could hear her flip-flops slapping the concrete sidewalk behind him. The SUV driver had wandered closer too, finally off her phone. She looked at Teddy nervously, her eyes like two middle fingers of disdain, despite the forced smile on her face.
“Mrs. . . . ?”
“Platt,” Patty answered, her voice gravelly and shrill.
“Mrs. Platt here was just saying how you saw what happened?” the cop asked Teddy.
“I did,” answered Teddy, feeling nervous.
Would the SUV lady go to jail, right here on the spot? He felt guilty suddenly, thinking of those stick-figure children. But no, he had to do the right thing.
“I was on my way to school, waiting at the light,” he explained, “when I saw her Suburban pretty much just run Mrs. Platt right off the road. Crossed into her lane like she wasn’t even there.” He could feel Krystal looking at him and straightened his shoulders.
“Is that your memory of the event, Mrs. . . . ?” he asked the culprit. Culprit was one of Teddy’s favorite words.
“Sinclair,” she volunteered, glaring at Teddy. “I had my blinker on,” she began, before stopping abruptly. “She was in my blind spot.” She shrugged her thin shoulders, surrendering to her guilt. “Yes, it was my fault,” she admitted. Patty Platt smirked.
“All right, well, thank you, Tommy,” said the officer.
“Um, actually, sir, it’s Teddy.”
“What?” the cop asked.
“My name. It’s not Tommy; it’s Teddy.” The cop’s eyes narrowed.
“Right. Teddy. You’ve been a big help, Teddy. You should be getting to school now, shouldn’t you?”
“Do you mind writing me a note? Just to say that I was here?” asked Teddy, wishing he had anywhere to go but school. Into a pit of snapping alligators would even be preferable.
“Sure, kid.” He ripped a blank ticket from his pad and began scribbling on the back of it.
“Thanks a lot, Teddy,” said Patty Platt. He liked the sound of her first and last names together. “You saved us a big headache.” She jerked her head in the direction of Mrs. Sinclair, who was on her phone again, yapping away.
“Yeah, thanks,” said Krystal, moving closer to Teddy. Up close, her face was even more feline than her mother’s, like she might start licking her paws at any moment. “She prolly would’ve tried to say it was my mom’s fault.”
“No problem,” replied Teddy.
“Here you go,” said the cop, handing Teddy his note. “Thanks again.”
“Just doing my job,” Teddy replied gravely. “Okay, well, guess I’ll be going. Good luck.” He turned reluctantly and began to walk.
“Wait!” yelled Krystal. “You got a phone?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Teddy lied. “But it’s at home.”
“You got a piece of paper?” Teddy nodded, his heart beating so quickly that it shook his skull. He pulled out his green notepad. “I got a pen.” She waved a purple sparkly one at him and snatched the notepad from his hand.
“What’s all this writing?” she asked, thumbing through it with turquoise-chipped nails, bitten almost down to her white half-moons, which peeked out of the paint.
“Just stuff I think about,” mumbled Teddy.
Krystal looked up, directly into his eyes. There was a sliver of green across each of her irises.
“Cool,” she affirmed. No one had ever called Teddy cool. Quickly, she scrawled her number on a blank page. “Call me,” she commanded, handing the notebook back.
Teddy nodded and turned toward school. Touching his notepad, which he had shoved back into his pocket, he smiled.
Chapter Three
Paul
Paul sat on the couch, his stupid foot propped up on the stupid ottoman, feeling sorry for himself and watching some not-altogether-unpleasingly-plump woman with brown hair and thick bangs cut in a very straight line across her forehead whisk eggs in a white ceramic bowl.
The sound was muted. He just liked to watch people cook; he didn’t like to hear them yammer on about it. A book about triathlon training lay open on his lap, although he hadn’t yet read a word of it in a week. Sylvie had brought it home from the library, holding it aloft like some kind of prize. It was a nice gesture, if not inherently inauthentic.
Why Sylvie was so threatened by his exercise regime, he still couldn’t figure out. It wasn’t like he hadn’t asked her to join him on countless occasions, when he had first started out.
Paul had been in okay shape before, had played soccer and basketball in high school and messed around with both in college, although not on a team or anything. He had never been good enough for that. But he was an athletic guy, which was why he went into contracting, actually—the thought of being on his feet was way more appealing than that of sitting behind a desk. A lot of people assumed contractors weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, that that’s why they chose to work with their hands, but they were wrong. Paul was smart. Not to brag or anything, but he was.
He sunk farther into the couch, fighting his lids as they began to flutter. He had been like a newborn since he had broken his ankle, sleeping every two hours because what else was there to do? He hated it.
“How you doing?” asked Sylvie, padding up to him.
His eyes flew open, grateful for the distraction. He smiled up at her, noticing again that her face was not the frozen mask of resentment he had become accustomed to. When had the mask become her actual face? he had wondered just the night before, lying in bed with his ankle aching, the faint drone of the television show she was watching downstairs soothing him to sleep.
It would be easy to say that it had started with Delilah, but that wasn’t true, though of course no one is ever the same after tragedy, himself included. And a shocking, sudden and unexpected tragedy like the kind they had all endured at that? Forget it.
If Paul had to pinpoint when exactly their marriage had taken a turn, he’d say it was when Teddy was around three. For years, Sylvie had been riding Paul to get his business off the ground, to go all in for their future so that she could have a break from her relentlessly depressing but bill-paying and benefits-providing job. But then when he had, she had hated him for it. He was never around, she said. He was always working, she complained. She’d had to change her schedule to accommodate his later hours and Teddy’s activities, which meant, unfortunately, that he didn’t get to see Teddy, or her, for that matter, all that much. But that was what she had wanted! He couldn’t win.
Their grief had bonded them again initially, but then inexplicably, because she refused to talk about it, that glue had melted into nothing. Her affection toward him had become forced, for Teddy’s sake only, Paul could tell. Then his triathlete training and subsequent equipment obsession that had made more than a small dent in their savings had erased even those, setting her mouth in a firm line whenever he appeared, her eyes cold and distant. And then when h
e fell and she had to take care of him, well, that had been the final straw, he guessed. She hadn’t even made eye contact with him in the emergency room, she was so annoyed.
But this morning, she had actually greeted him with a smile. She had touched him. She had called him “P.” She’d lit a candle for Delilah. What in the world was going on? he wanted to know but knew better than to ask. Because if he asked, forget it. Sylvie would get defensive and the mask would cover her face again, shutting off all her light. God, he’d missed that light.
“Okay,” he answered, patting the beige couch cushion beside him. “Have a seat; take a load off. You’re working from home today, I take it?”
“I’m supposed to be,” she answered, landing with a thud that jiggled his ankle and made him wince. Sylvie worked in marketing, doing what exactly Paul wasn’t sure, despite the fact that she’d been doing it for almost the entire twenty years he’d known her.
“Sorry,” said Sylvie. “I have reverse body dysmorphia.”
“Reverse?” asked Paul.
“Yeah, I think I’m much smaller than I am.”
“Is that a thing?”
“Everything is a thing these days.” Sylvie patted his knee gently and settled back into the cushions with a sigh.
Not a poisonous sigh either, but a contented one, Paul thought. It was very strange, what was happening. Paul watched the television, the woman now pulling a bubbling pan out of the oven with a red mitt, reminding himself not to say a word about it.
“What’s she making? A quiche?” asked Sylvie.
“I think so. I turned the sound off, so it could be anything, really.”
“Why do you mute it, anyway?”
“You know I don’t cook,” answered Paul. “I just like watching other people do it.”
“Wish I had that luxury,” said Sylvie.
“That chicken thing you made last night was delicious,” said Paul.
“That was salmon.”
“Oh. Yeah. That’s what I meant.”
“You want to go outside?” Sylvie asked. “I could set up a chair for you in the yard. It’s a beautiful day.”
Paul looked to one of the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the deck. The sky was as blue as the sea, not a cloud in sight.
“Okay,” he agreed. Sylvie stood up. The sight of her ample backside aroused him, without warning. He pulled her back down.
“What?” she asked, considering his unspoken message with a raised eyebrow.
She could use a tweezer, his younger sister, Gloria, had said, the first time he had brought Sylvie home. He had blown up at her, telling her to fuck off, much to the chagrin of his churchgoing mother. He loved Sylvie’s eyebrows; they were as unapologetic as she was.
“Here?”
“Why not?” Paul asked, smiling. Hoping. Sylvie looked around the room, realizing that she had no excuse to say no, Paul surmised.
“But your ankle. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Last time I checked, ankles were not involved.”
He pulled her closer, gently. To say please was pathetic, but that’s what he was thinking.
“Okay,” she whispered. “But how?”
“Why are you whispering?” Paul asked. Sylvie shook her head, her eyes downcast. “Follow my lead,” he said.
Paul took her face in his hands and kissed her lips, which tasted like coffee and syrup. It had been so long since their mouths had met. She surprised him by probing his open mouth with her tongue, tentatively at first and then with a bit more force.
Awkwardly, he lifted his foot off the ottoman and pulled at the waistband of his pants, not making much progress. Sylvie stopped to help him, pulling them down and over his cast into a plaid puddle on the floor. She stood up, laughing a little as she removed her own.
Usually, Sylvie’s tendency to laugh during sex made Paul self-conscious and angry—a feeling that always led to an argument, because Sylvie couldn’t understand why he took himself so seriously and he couldn’t understand how she didn’t take him seriously—but not today. Today he was just grateful that it was happening at all, and so he would keep his mouth shut.
She straddled him, guiding him inside her and slowly easing herself up and down with more than a slight degree of difficulty. He closed his eyes, focusing on the exquisite pleasure of something other than his hand doing this work, God’s work, really, and surrendered to her familiar rhythm.
Within moments, he was done, exhilarated and embarrassed all at once but too exhausted and surprised by the fact that it had happened at all to care. She collapsed against his chest, inside of which his heart was beating so quickly it felt as though it might jump right out and dance a jig of happiness, right across the floor and out the door.
“That was nice,” Sylvie said breathily.
“I’m sorry I finished—”
“Shhhh,” she commanded. “Don’t speak.”
He grunted and closed his eyes. She was beginning to get a little heavy on his lap, but he didn’t want to move. He was still inside her, after all, like a snail in its shell. Although he didn’t like to think of his dick as a snail. He would move. Slowly, though.
“Oh, sorry. I think I passed out there for a second,” said Sylvie. She rolled off and back into a sitting position on the couch beside him, pantless.
Paul stared into the kitchen, at the Yahrzeit candle on the counter, its small flame flickering inside the glass votive.
“That was nice this morning,” he volunteered, encouraged by the rare intimacy of the moment. “With the candle.”
“Yeah,” agreed Sylvie quietly.
“Unlike you, though,” said Paul, even as he feared he’d trip a wire with his comment. Sylvie shrugged.
“You know me. Full of surprises,” she replied. She didn’t sound angry, but her terse reply suggested that the conversation was over, unless Paul felt like losing an arm. He did not.
“Teddy seemed good this morning,” he said, switching gears.
“Yeah,” said Sylvie, sitting up.
“He’s a good kid,” he continued. “Except when he’s being a jerk.”
Sylvie laughed. “Our preteen,” she said, shuddering. “Oh God, this is just the beginning too, you know. Stupid me, I thought boys didn’t go through this.”
“Go through what?” asked Paul.
“The silence. I mean, I knew physically we were in for a shock with him, but emotionally I figured he would always be accessible.”
“Accessible like me, you mean.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” answered Sylvie.
“But why should he be like me now? He’s always been much more like you. Emotionally, anyway.”
“What are you saying?”
“Forget it, never mind,” said Paul.
“No, go on,” urged Sylvie. “I promise I won’t get angry.” Paul made a face. “I’m serious.”
“Okay, well, at the risk of losing my other ankle, I just mean that Teddy’s never been one to talk about his feelings. Remember in kindergarten, when he had that bathroom accident and some of the kids were total assholes about it?”
Sylvie squinted, trying to remember. “Oh yeah, he pooped behind the art easel.”
“Right. But we would never have known if his teacher hadn’t called us in for a meeting. The kid was cool as a cucumber.”
“Paul, he was five.”
“Yes, I know he was five, but still. He’s been that way all his life. When he was a baby, he’d twist up his face, looking like he was going to cry, but then at the most you’d get a tiny squeak of discomfort.”
“Our stoic warrior,” said Sylvie.
“Like you,” confirmed Paul.
He bent down to pull up his pants but realized that he needed Sylvie’s help. This damn cast was the bane of his existence. Before he had to ask, her hands were there, lifting his ankle and then his pants up and over it.
“Thanks,” he said, handling his other leg.
Paul had assumed, when Sylvie was pregnan
t, that Delilah’s personality would be more like his. He’d never gotten the chance to know, but he wondered about it still. If Teddy looked like him but acted like his mother, Delilah would have been the opposite. Logically it made sense.
Sometimes he’d see little girls and their dads out and about, certain girls with Sylvie’s coloring, and his heart would hover in his chest, like a rickety elevator before reaching its appointed floor. He wished that she’d lived with every fiber of his being. He mourned Delilah’s death, the girl who never got a chance to be; but more than that he mourned the family of four that never was, the innocence of his family of three and, going way back in time, the optimism of his marriage of two.
Sylvie stood up. Paul watched her gather her dark hair into a ponytail with one hand while sliding the black elastic that otherwise encircled her wrist up and over it in one fluid motion.
“Do you need help getting up?” she asked, turning to him with her arm outstretched.
He nodded gratefully. He did.
Chapter Four
Sylvie
Sylvie ran to the stairs and up, up, up: clomp, clomp clomp in her tan clogs.
“Sylvie?” Paul called from upstairs, sounding alarmed. Sylvie couldn’t remember the last time she had moved at this speed in his vicinity.
“I’m not being chased!” she yelled back, making a beeline for their bathroom. “I just really have to pee!”
She closed the door behind her and ran for the middle drawer. The bottle. She twisted off its cap and shook out one of her magic pills into her palm. Into her mouth it went, and then, thirsty at the faucet like she had been stranded in the desert for days, Sylvie drank.
She stood up, swallowed and ran out of the bathroom.
Shit. She ran back in, checking to make sure she hadn’t left the bottle out on the counter. She hadn’t. Okay. Okay. Good.
But wait.
Why was she leaving the bottle in the drawer anyway? Paul didn’t want anything to do with the pills, but if he happened to see the bottle, he could notice that a few were missing, and if he hadn’t taken them, then who had? And then he would approach Sylvie, and— She took the bottle out of the drawer and jogged to her side of the walk-in closet, which was just off the bathroom.