But Charles is laughing now. “Igot it,” he says. “Unbelievably. My mother is not the most reliable messenger. She’s got her own priorities. Unless it’s soup, she’s just not that into it. But then she thought you might die, and that it was being upset about the book that had done it, and she took a taxi all the way up to my place, showed up at my front door. She’s never done that before. She normally doesn’t feel comfortable north of Highway 7. She says she gets vertigo. Ithink she made a deal with God—she returns the book to me, and you get better.”
“Iguess it worked,” says Clemence. All these unseen forces beyond her knowledge. “How did your wife take it then?” Clemence asks him. “Your mother showing up there unannounced?”
“What do you mean?” says Charles.
“Idon’t know.” Clemence mainly wants to demonstrate that she’s in the know, that she’s not interested in Charles in that way, and that she’s not a fool after all, in spite of all her experience attesting otherwise. “Iwas just—” Shewas just trying to pass as someone normal. “How come she never comes downtown with you?”
Charles says, “We’re separated. It’s been ages. Idon’t even know how you know about her. Idon’t think Iever said—”
“Your mother,” says Clemence.
Charles says, “Ahh.” The light is dawning.
“She talked about her all the time. Iguess they were close.”
“My mother hates Claudia,” says Charles. “She always has. Iwouldn’t say that was the whole problem, but she made it hard sometimes.”
Clemence says, “Ihad no idea.” Were other people’s lives ever what they appeared to be from the outside? “She told me all about her. You have a wife, and she’s a doctor.”
“Well, she is a doctor,” affirms Charles. “And Ithink my mother hates the idea of divorce even more than she hates Claudia, which is saying something. She says she was never good enough for me, but she also hopes we reconcile. She wants grandchildren. My mother contains multitudes.”
“Walt Whitman.”
“Just like him,” Charles says. “Listen, I’m sorry all this is weird. Ithink she was nervous, too, about you and me. She’s protective. She knows I’m not in the right headspace for a new relationship now. Ithink she could tell that Ilike you. But the timing’s just—”
“Iknow,” says Clemence, and she does.
“It’s honestly just refreshing to meet somebody and be friends—that doesn’t happen for me very often anymore. And besides, you’ve got a boyfriend. The Italian guy.”
Clemence has given up arguing the Italian part. “He’s not my boyfriend. Ihaven’t heard from him in a month.” And now here’s Charles, and he’s brought her soup. How has she managed to get all of this so wrong?
“But he left you those notes.”
“What?”
“They’re piled in the hall,” says Charles. “Did you see them on the table on your way in?” But she hadn’t bothered to look. The only mail she’d received was from Toad’s lawyer, but now that’s over. Charles says, “My mom says he was over here all the time.”
“But your mom also told me you had a wife.”
“The notes are there,” says Charles. “The notes are irrefutable. Come on!” He gestures for her to follow him back downstairs, and there they are, a stack of envelopes. She picks them up, examining Toby’s messy scrawl with bright blue pen, like the penmanship of a child who’s writing with his eyes shut. Ugly, and yet strangely appealing, which sums up Toby himself quite perfectly, and Clemence feels that frisson again, the curious feeling that keeps her thoughts returning to him, in spite of so many reasons why they shouldn’t.
Charles is waiting as she rips the envelope open—a piece of lined paper torn inside, torn from a three-ring binder. It’s a drawing made with the same blue ink, a rough drawing of a woman’s profile, a sparkle evident in her eye, something slyly amused within her smile.
“What is it?” asks Charles.
Clemence says, “It’s me,” surprised, and she shows him, because she’s recognized herself at once in thosefew lines, more familiar even than her face in the mirror. Nothing else is written on the paper except Toby’s name, scrawled in the right-hand corner.
“It’s good,” says Charles, surprised, and Clemence is surprised as well. Opening another envelope to find a different drawing, same pen, same face, Clemence laughing with her mouth open wide and her eyes shut.
The third envelope Clemence opened contains a drawing of Clemence with her chin in her hands, rolling her eyes, but she’s smiling.
“They’re really good,” says Charles. It is hard to believe. That even Toby has a hidden side, hidden talents, and that he sees her, really sees her. She’d sensed it, but here was living proof, pages and pages of it.
“Ithink,” says Charles, “that you’ve been on his mind.”
“What day is it?” Clemence wonders. It’s been so long since such details mattered. But it’s Thursday, which means that Toby will be at the bookshop. “Ineed to get my coat—” she murmurs. All the way back upstairs, but it’s freezing out.
“Here.” Charles hands her his own coat, which he’s slung over the banister. “He’s been waiting for you.” Indicating the envelopes, the drawings. “You should go.”
