She had told Al on the phone last night about the dog, felt like she’d given him an excuse to air his misgivings.
Yes. I mean, they’re professionals. I don’t know.
You sound scared.
I am scared.
Tell them you don’t want to do it.
I want to do it.
Agh. Suze. I just worry about you. You say yes to everything.
Sometimes she feels like she is becoming two different people, the woman out here (expansive, celestial) and the woman at home (protected, held). Perhaps she needs both of these things. Perhaps it is okay to need both.
I don’t want you to worry, she said.You sound like your mom when you worry.
Well, then don’t tell me these worrying things.
So, I should pretend like they’re not happening?
No, just. Make them not happen.
Now we are into wishful thinking.
Oh, good, my favorite. Come home.
I can’t.She couldn’t bring it up again. The conversation only makes both of them sad, and they have become careful not to let it ruin the short sweetness of their moments. Goodbye has developed a new pain in repetition, the dull awareness of acclimation.
Outside, the streetlights are dancing over beetle-wing cars, none of them taxis. Maybe she should think about herself more. Margie would. Only the problem is, her interests only ever get her into trouble—they’ve brought her here, on the teetering edge of this star-strung set-piece city, three thousand miles away from the man who is her husband. The rising wail of Sunset, the smash of music and loud, late-night laughter is dulled by the drone of something bigger. The heavy inevitable reckoning with what she wants, what shereallywants. She cannot avoid the costs of her interests.
2008
The clock by Sebastian’s bed reads four in the afternoon. On his desk is a mess of unfinished homework. Doodles grow like fungus in the margins: geometric mazes and rocket ships and sea creatures. Crumpled efforts at essays stud the floor amid the cairns of dirty clothes and unpaired sneakers. But Sebastian is not there. And Sugar Baby is not in the driveway.
If you’re looking for him, follow the scent of his deadly tail pipe out of Aldwych, toward the city. You’ll hit the main road that passes over the Essex Bridge and drops into Salem. Keep to the back roads, away from the witch kitsch and ambling tourists, and you’ll find him cruising a shabby side street, staking out a pale blue house.
His ankle is still throbbing from yesterday, complaining every time he taps the gas, so it’s a relief to slow down. The house doesn’t have a number, but the mailbox does, along with a crudely painted assembly of kittens clambering out of a basket. He hasn’t seen Sadie in a decade, but she was right there in the phone book. Vaguely, he remembers the voicemails, a franticness he did not associate with adults.
They had a tough childhood, his father said once when he asked about her.Your mother was better equipped to get out of it.
But it doesn’t look so bad, this house. Sure, it’s smaller than his and a bit run-down, but not unloved. There are gnomes in the front garden and an American flag. An old board that saysWelcome!hangs from the gate in the low chain fence.
Sebastian pushes it open.
On the front porch, he stands before the weather-beaten screen door.Pop music plays inside. The sun is still high in the sky, and several miles away Lola is running around a track. A dog barks. He rings the bell.
The woman is shorter than he remembered, her blond hair chopped in a puffy fringe on her forehead. She’s wearing fuzzy leggings and a purple tank top.
“If you’re selling knives, I’m sorry, I bought some from the kid yesterday,” she says.
“Sadie,” he says. “It’s me.”
His aunt looks him over and whispers under her breath, “Mary Mother of God.” She wraps her arms around him.
“Come inside,” she says. “I’m making coffee.”
The walls are all papered: tiny rose bouquets and yellowing pastel stripes. The carpet exhales ash and citrus spray. In the living room, cat hair clings to everything. A black angora ball animates from underneath an armchair and slinks over to him, rubs against his calf. It is missing chunks of fur from the top of its head. Sebastian bends down to it.
