I said, taking her hands in mine, “your mother loves you. And there are far worse things she could have done to you or to anyone else than, than—”
“Than kissing a friend.”
“Yes,” I said. “So let’s not think about it anymore.”
“My friend Courtney says I should use it to blackmail her for an iPod.”
“I think I’d like to meet Courtney,” I said and smiled. The mood lightened, but the word “blackmail” hung in the air, dark and silty.
August 22, 1967
bubble bath
HE CALLED WHEN THE CHILDREN were napping. He is thoughtful that way.
He’d read about my mother’s death in the paper, and he said the same thing he’d said the last time he called: When were you going to tell me, Annie? As if we were still high school sweethearts at the private schools across the street from each other, and I owed him information about my life, my family, the events of my day. Back then we shared grades, scores, gossip. He’d always wanted detail—what was your time in the relay? How many people were at the pep rally? Now I’d had a baby and not told him. I’d lost my mother and not told him. I don’t know what he had for breakfast or what color shirt he is wearing. What else don’t I know? He doesn’t know I lost my breast as well as my mother, and I don’t know how to tell him that.
“I want to see you,” he says, holding on to the word “you” like a glider, moving across the pitch of towers and monuments and cupolas, west to where I stand in a shuttered upstairs window with the beige phone cord curled around one hand. Can he imagine he sees my roofline, Theo’s deck where he takes his coffee, the whitewashed brick chimney, the tree that brushes it out back, the wrens that flit through its branches, and all the houses, the woods, hills, wires, everything in between, that separate us?
The last time I was in the city, I drove past Peter’s office building, a tall silver scar, circling the block for nearly an hour, watching the revolving glass door, the way it pulled people in in slow motion and spit them back out again. He didn’t come out. I didn’t go in. The taste of disappointment in my mouth reminded me of the day I’d waited for my father. The city blocks weren’t like mine, filled with neighbors and an occasional college student, where I could hear the drag and slide of their guitar cases and blue jeans brushing against the sidewalk. No. This was all clicking briefcase and honking horn. I felt frumpy even hidden in my car.
“How about this afternoon?” I say and he is stunned, quiet for a second. He expected protest, impossibility. “I have a sitter coming at four.”
We agreed to meet at four thirty, at a grimy tavern not far from the train station. I’d thought of Stuart’s first, but it was too popular. No one we knew had ever gone to the tavern—I’d lived in the area my entire life and never been. All I knew was that it used to be called the Lamplighter, but now it had a cheap sign that simply said TAVERN. I tried not to dress too carefully; didn’t want the babysitter to think anything was off. I wore a red silk blouse with plain gray slacks, and low heels. At the last minute I added a woven Tibetan belt Betsy had given me; it looked like something a hitchhiker would wear until you put it on, until you saw what joy a new texture could add. I decided not to put my red lipstick on until I got in the car. When Emma’s teacher asked where I was going, and did I want to leave a number? I said I was running errands, that Theo could be reached at his office in an emergency. I kissed the baby, and when I tried to hug Emma, she squirmed away, preferring her teacher.
“You’re so good with her,” I said softly, and they both smiled. I felt no guilt leaving, not one bit. Only later would I feel guilty over not feeling guilty.
I arrived first and chose a booth near the jukebox. Two men sat at the bar drinking beer near the neon PABST sign; they didn’t turn when I came in. Good, I thought; I wasn’t dressed too flashily. After a few minutes the bartender walked over, snapped a coaster down, and asked