“Roger that,” says Mark. He gives a little salute, then he and Nicole turn to go, and Louisa gets the funniest feeling, like the universe had been tilted all summer and now suddenly has righted itself.
“Louisa,” says Steven. “There’s something important I have to say.” He takes her hand across the table, threading their fingers together. Their plates are gone, magically whisked away while they were talking to Mark and Nicole. Steven looks deep into her eyes and says, “I don’t know how your mother is going to feel about what I’m going to say next. This decision is going to affect her more than anyone, you know.”
She steels herself. It’ll be okay. She’s strong. She can handle anything. “What?” she whispers.
“I really think we should get a second bottle of Sancerre.” He signals Thomas.
While they’re waiting for the wine a memory tiptoes into Louisa’s mind. When Claire was a newborn—opinionated more than colicky, but almost clinically opinionated—Matty was five and Abigail three. Matty had to be picked up from half-day kindergarten at noon every day, which was right when Abigail, who stubbornly refused to give up the security of Pull-Ups, even though she could use the toilet perfectly well, typically unleashed her daily bowel movement. Louisa was teaching only two classes that semester, but it was two classes too many, and the part-time sitter, a student at Parsons, was more artsy than reliable. If Louisa was anywhere in the children’s orbit, they (or anyway the two who could successfully perambulate) would prowl the apartment, looking for her. She graded an entire stack of midterms on the floor of her closet with the aid of a flashlight she hung from the clothing rod because for a short time nobody could find her there. And it wasn’t a big closet.
One time Steven came home from work and found Louisa draped across the kitchen counter, weeping quietly into her sleeve. Matty and Abigail were building a tower out of pasta boxes, and Claire, in her baby bucket, was just beginning to stir.
“Glass of wine,” he said. “Bath. Go. I’ve got this.”
“But Claire will need to nurse—”
“Claire can wait twenty minutes. Go. Use bubbles.”
At the mention of bubbles Abigail perked up and said, “I come too.”
“No,” said Steven gently. “No, no. You stay with Daddy, Abigail.”
It was only one night, out of a thousand messy, chaotic ones. And yet she can’t stop thinking about it all of a sudden. Louisa, who has never liked baths, who probably hasn’t taken a bath since then, had soaked for forty-five full minutes, until the skin on her fingers and toes was wrinkled and pinked. When she’d finallycome down Steven had set the table for two, fed Abigail and Matty, and was soothing a bereft, hungry Claire while overseeing a pot of pasta on the stove. (He had even tidied up the pasta tower.) Remembering this now, and looking at the printout of Abigail’s email, Louisa feels like there’s a tiny fist squeezing her heart very gently. She has to dab at her eyes again.
Louisa sleepsso latethe next morning. It’s nine-thirty when she opens her eyes. Louisa hasn’t slept until nine-thirty since she was pregnant with Matty, almost fourteen years ago. After Primo she and Steven had gone into town for a nightcap at Fog Bar. After that, worried that they were too tipsy to drive home safely without waiting a bit, they’d walked down to the sandy beach near Archer’s where they’d made out like a couple of teenagers before eventually going home and sharing one of the twin beds. She blushes now, thinking about it. Until last night she hadn’t shared a twin bed with a man sincecollege!
She lies in bed for a few more minutes, listening for sounds in the house. She hears—nothing. No quarreling in the upstairs hallway, no running of water from any of the bathrooms, no washing machine chugging away with the endless loads of bath towels and beach towels and kitchen towels and running shorts. She tiptoes down the stairs, worried that she’ll find that the whole family has been murdered in their sleep and that she, for some unknown reason, has been spared. The dining room is empty; so too the living room and the playroom and the kitchen. The kitchen counters gleam.
She calls out an exploratory, “Hello?”
“Out here,” says Steven from the porch, where he is sitting in one of the wicker chairs. Abigail is kneeling on an ottoman in front of him, her back to him. The water is calm; the harbor looks scrubbed clean.
“Daddy’s braiding my hair,” says Abigail. “You slept late,” she adds accusingly. “I had three big knots.”
“Ouch.Three?” Louisa watches Steven working the comb through Abigail’s mane. His patience is baffling. “I’m sorry! I can’t believe how late it is. Where is everybody? Does anyone need breakfast?”
“Everyone’s had breakfast. Your mom went into town, and she brought Claire with her. Your dad’s sitting over there—” He nods toward the water, and Louisa sees Martin in one of the Adirondack chairs, maybe watching the boats, maybe dozing, maybe lost in the distant past or the near past. “Barbara’s due in half an hour. Matty is running, of course.”
Louisa sits on the arm of Steven’s chair.
“How’s it look?” asks Abigail. She’s always anxious about her hair. Louisa supposes this instinct will get worse, not better, with age.
The part is off center in the back, zigging and zagging like a broken zipper. “It looksperfect,” says Louisa. She waits for Steven to wrap the elastic around the second braid so she can take his hand in her own. “It looks absolutely perfect.”
43.
Matty
Matty falls asleep on one of the large flat rocks at low tide. When he wakes, his father is standing over him.
“Hey, buddy, want to put on a shirt? I’ll take you out for happy hour in town. I could use a beer, and they only have wine and cocktails here.” He rolls his eyes in an exaggerated way.
“We have beer here!” Louisa calls from the porch, where she is inspecting the herb pots. “But go ahead.”
Happy hour? Matty puts on a shirt. They go to the Time Out Pub. The interior of the pub is dark and cool, a direct contrast to the sunny day.
“Hey loves,” says the bartender. “Boys’ night out?” She has an accent. Irish, maybe. Could be Australian. Something about her reminds Matty of Hazel: it might be the freckles across her nose, or it might be the tiny gap between her two front teeth, which you can see that Hazel’s braces are working to close.
“That’s just right,” says his father. “Boys’ night out.” He claps Matty on the back, too hard. He pulls out a barstool for Matty and one for himself. “What’ll it be, Matty? Beer? Cocktail?”
