a solid hour or two. James would go first, noting how Jennifer referred to the girls as “Princess Sophie” and “Diva Olivia.” Then Ana would talk about the marble countertops, Mike’s crippling boringness. James might revel, once again, in the way that Jennifer had very specific opinions about very small things – the right temperature for drinking water; why Jay Leno is hilarious – but at the mere mention of politics, she left the room to fuss about in the kitchen. The kitchen. The excess.
But not that night. The venting had been neutered by the unavoidable, continuous kindness the family had shown them, by the way Jennifer had crouched down and whispered in Finn’s ear, ending the night with him in an embrace. Had that always been there? Had they just never seen it, never needed to call upon it until that moment?
“Did you have fun tonight, Finny?” James asked.
“Go see mama,” said Finn. The beeping of the toys stopped.
Ana straightened; it was Jennifer, with her abundance of maternal warmth, who had triggered this yearning in Finn. It was seeing a real family in its chaos that made him miss Sarah.
“Go see daddy,” said Finn.
“We can’t see them right now, honey,” said James. “I’m so sorry.”
Ana looked behind her, expecting Finn to erupt, and why not? He must know he was at the centre of a terrible injustice. He must be furious.
But he was simply staring out the window.
“Should we put on some music, Finny?” asked James, turning on the radio.
The three were quiet for the rest of the ride. James found a parking space right in front of their house, but didn’t comment on it.
He carried Finn upstairs, leaving Ana to her work. She took the laptop to the breakfast nook. The sound of Finn in the bath moved through the floor above Ana’s head. Squealing and thumping, laughter.
Dim light from the inside of the house caught the yard, and something looked different to Ana’s glance. She leaned closer to the French doors. The men had been coming. James had not mentioned it, and with her late nights, she had been returning in the darkness, and had not noticed. Day after day, while she worked in her tower, they had been transforming the yard. The limestone was laid, a grey skating rink in the centre of the garden. A large red Japanese maple stood in a bucket, waiting to be planted. The perimeter was empty of plants, but covered with rich, churned soil. These invisible men were determined to bring life into the place, even though winter was coming. They had been so late that James had negotiated a discount. No one used landscapers in this infertile season.
Something in the limestone unsettled Ana. She felt a tug of certainty that the hole was still beneath it, that a toe on a stone could break through the surface, pull her down into a muddy pit. She put the thought out of her mind, pulled her face from the glass and turned to her e-mails.
Soon, there would be plants in the ground, or at least seeds. She should think about that instead. Ana reminded herself to look again tomorrow.
Ana didn’t want her personal life in the system at her firm, so years ago, James had found a lawyer downtown whose two-room office was over a fish shop.
He went there first, to sign papers delivered from Sarah’s lawyer, whom he had visited the day before. That office had been fancier, in a highrise, with a receptionist. Despite Sarah’s Pig Pen cloud of mess, and Marcus’s Zen-like quiet, it turned out they were affairs-in-order types. And now he, James, whose affairs had never been in order, had power of attorney over their family. He could see their bank account, which was healthy, and their credit card bills (Sarah charged $3.76 at Starbucks four or five times a week, which made James laugh). One day, he would be able to access that money. The insurance company moved along at its arthritic pace, but there had been a decent policy. If Sarah died, Finn would be rich, or richer than James.
All of these revelations (Marcus had stocks! Stocks!) were intimate, and unwanted. As he met with each official, and signed each document, James remembered the feeling of having sex with someone he didn’t love; a little part of him kept repeating: “I can’t bear this. I can’t do it. I’m the wrong guy.”
But, as he was informed many times, Sarah was not dead. So this