Everybody Has Everything - By Katrina Onstad Page 0,41

But these babies lacked specificity; James hadn’t connected with any of them. Now those babies had become children, large and staring. James found them at the same parties when he was looking for the bathroom. They sprawled on couches in rooms with the television on, or were tucked into beds, sleeping. Suddenly he felt acutely aware of all he had not been privy to; the conversations he had been excused from in his life, just by being male, and having a barren wife.

“We’d have to get a sitter,” he said.

“What? Are you joking? Did you guys adopt or something?” Doug laughed then, as if such a thing were entirely improbable. “Did you get a dog?”

“We’re looking after a little boy. His parents died,” said James. “Well, his father died. We don’t know if the mother’s going to be okay or not.”

James didn’t mention that the daily call to the hospital was always the same: “Stable.” Ana had visited twice, while James looked after Finn. With her coat still on, she reported: “Stable,” pouring a glass of wine so quickly it splashed.

“What the fuck? Who? Are you serious?”

“You don’t know them.”

“Maybe I do.”

“Marcus Lamb and Sarah Weiss.”

“Don’t know them.” Doug’s voice contained a hint of disappointment about that fact, as if he’d been unfairly excluded from a party.

“How old’s the kid?”

“Two. A boy. Finn.”

“Todd Banks and his wife, you know them? They’ve been trying to adopt from China, but it’s totally fucking impossible right now.”

“I guess we’re lucky,” said James, and Doug didn’t notice the sarcasm in his voice, or let it be. (But a gnawing thought now: What about China? What about the baby in China, separated from them by only a few signatures and uncut cheques?)

“That is fucking crazy, man. How’s Ana?”

“She’s okay. Good.”

Mark Pullen, sitting on James’s other side, leaned in. “Did you hear that? Alice sold her screenplay.”

James turned.

“I didn’t even know you wrote,” he said, trying to add a smile to the observation.

“I don’t really. It’s a comedy about catering for the rich and famous. I wrote it in three weeks.” She beamed. Mark, her husband, put an arm around her. He directed commercials and in all the years that James had known him, he’d never heard him aspire to anything else.

Alice Mitchell had only ever been kind to James, and her peanut brittle was a phenomenon. But he hated her a little in that moment.

“She’s being modest. She’s a great writer,” said Mark. “We just got back from L.A. and the producer said she had a voice like Nora Ephron.”

“ ‘Like Nora Ephron before she got boring.’ It was more of an insult to Nora Ephron than a compliment to me.” Alice kept smiling, so wide and bright that James could hardly look upon it.

He stood up suddenly, searching his pockets for cash.

“Alice, I’m thrilled for you,” said James, leaning down and giving her a kiss on the cheek.

“See you Friday?” shouted Doug as James walked off, waving over his shoulder. James didn’t answer.

At home, he dropped his gear in the hall and walked quickly up the stairs to Finn’s room. He went in and put his hand on Finn’s chest, which rose and fell confidently. This touch drained James of his anger.

After he’d showered and crawled into bed next to Ana, sleeping soundly, James had a thought: This might be temporary. Finn might be only a houseguest. Marcus’s parents could appear, with their blood ties ready to tighten around the boy. Or Sarah – Sarah could wake up. She could wake up and Finn would be reabsorbed into her, never to be seen again.

James turned over these scenarios in the dark, still feeling Finn’s chest under his hand. These futures burned behind his open eyes, waiting for an answer.

“Should we wait out here?” James always looked for a reason not to go in to the nursing home. Usually he would arrive after Ana, with coffees purchased in slow-motion, or drop her off to circle the block several times under the guise of looking for parking. This time, of course, with Finn in the car, he had a good reason to be absent. Still, Ana was irritated; he had begun to throw Finn in front of her to block motion – conversations and fights ceased because the boy was there, indicated by James with a flick of his head, a finger to the lips.

But he was right, of course, that no child would want to come into this place, especially when there was a playground