“You don’t see the sacrifice,” Daisy says. “You don’t see that we open up our guts to get where we are. The lecherous directors, the constant rejection—”
“I’m sorry,” I say to Piper, interrupting her because I’m suddenly embarrassed for all this excess and for Daisy making it appear as if this is a hardship.
“Don’t apologize,” Piper says. “I love it here, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that it feels like something from a movie set, that’s all. But if you asked me to move in, I wouldn’t say no.” She leans over and squeezes my knee. “You’ve just come a long way from Canton, Tate.”
“I guess I always wanted to get as far away as I could.”
She makes a face like I’ve hurt her.
“Not from you, Pipes, from there.”
“If you can dream it, you can be it,” she says in a faraway voice that reminds me of home. She laughs, shakes her head. “Mom.”
I gaze up to the white lights and wonder if maybe I hadn’t been clear on what I dreamed.
Ben lets himself in and finds us on the patio. It was part of our mediation, the custody: he can have a key, though he can’t come and go as he pleases as if he still lives here. But it’s a sign of good faith, and it’s intended to be a symbolic gesture so Joey doesn’t feel like his parents are at war.
“Hey,” he says, and we all tilt our heads toward him as if he is a familiar stranger. “I’m ... just here. Just ... letting you know.”
“Joey’s with my dad in the screening room.”
He nods. “My mom went to find them.”
He plunges his hands into his pockets, as Piper stands too quickly and kisses his cheek hello, reaches for an awkward hug. She’s forgiven Ben for Amanda too, and now she’s encouraged me to take a breath, to slow down the divorce papers, but Piper relies on Scooter in ways that I never did with Ben, and I tell myself that this makes her more vulnerable, more romantic in her worldview. Piper excuses herself to the kitchen, and Daisy scampers out behind her.
“You OK?” Ben asks when we’re alone.
“I’m worried about Monster,” I say. “His back legs aren’t doing well; he can’t do the stairs ...” I don’t tell him about how he pees on the rug involuntarily; how I sometimes have to bring his food to him because he’s too listless to rise.
“Have you spoken with the vet?”
“Of course I’ve spoken with the vet,” I say, then chide myself. I’m not trying to be shrill, it’s just the easiest way, the default between us now. “Yes,” I say more gently. “I mean, he’s fine for now, but ...”
“Listen.” Ben steps closer. “I’ll come with you, we’ll do it together.”
“It’s OK,” I say. “I mean, I’m fine.”
“Tate, he’sours.”
I want to say,I’ve spent so much time dividing our life together that I don’t know what that means anymore.
Instead, I head toward the kitchen. I head toward safety.
35
BEN
OCTOBER 1999
Daisy put me up to it. I’d run into her at Ray’s Pizza earlier in the night, and she told me she was working a shift that night at a bar off Fourth—Dive Inn—and told me to swing by for a beer. Amanda was at the hospital until eleven o’clock, so I figured what the hell. I buzzed Amanda, who said she’d stop over when she got off, then we could go crash at her place, which wasn’t too far, just a couple blocks over on Astor. Easier than me shooting uptown to my parents’ on the subway, which was unreliable at night, and besides, it was my parents’. Not exactly living the dream. But that had been part of the deal with my dad: he’d wanted me to be a banker or a lawyer or head to business school after Williams. Like the writing was on the wall with my liberal arts education, my major in English: that I wasn’t going to amount to much, at least by my father’s definition. My mom convinced him: pay for grad school, at least most of it, but don’t subsidize my lifestyle. I took out a small loan and landed at my parents’ doorstep, the ink on my diploma barely dry.
Leo still lived at home back then too, so it was like old times, only now he reeked of weed and had beer on his breath, but my mom pretended not to notice because he got by at Dalton and played on the football team, and also, he was the baby, and we loved him for it.That’s just Leo,we’d grown used to saying with a shrug. My dad indulged him because Leo did well enough to likely matriculate to Columbia, where my dad was occasionally a guest lecturer and had connections, and because Leo had a slight inkling of maybe becoming the banker my father had hoped I’d become, or maybe a lawyer at my dad’s firm.
“God help us if Leo’s ever the one to have to bail someone out,” I said to my mom one night last year, after Leo had swung down from campus to have her do his laundry.
“Benjamin, stop it,” she’d replied, folding his T-shirts. “Your brother has so much untapped potential ...” She shook her head, pressed her hands on the cotton to smooth out the wrinkles. “He can do anything one day.” Then she added: “You too, Benny. You too.”
Daisy’s shift is ending, and my beer is getting warm, and Amanda hasn’t shown. There’s a pay phone in the back of the bar, and I debate trying the hospital but I know what she’ll say:Something came up. They needed me. I couldn’t help it.I’ll say,OK, I get it.I try not to take it personally, like my mom’s backhanded compliments.
