Writers & Lovers - Lily King Page 0,93

and get an interview at a school in New Hampshire. I drive up there, find the gothic, gloomy school, turn in the half-moon driveway, curve around the lawn and flagpole, pass the parking lot, and drive back home crying and clenching.

Phil leaves messages on my machine that Caleb doesn’t answer.

He has a flight out on Thursday, but he doesn’t get on it. He says Adam has tickets to a play and has asked him to stay.

That night I’m reading in bed, and I hear them come in the driveway and go inside Adam’s house. I don’t like what’s going on. I want to call Mom. She wouldn’t like it, either.

I go back to my book and try not to think of them.

I hear knocking and open my eyes. My light is still on, and my thumb is still inside the book, but I fell asleep. I fell asleep. I don’t even care that I’ve been woken up, because I fell asleep like I used to, for years and years, my thumb in a book.

I unlock the door. Caleb is still in his suit from the theater, but he seems smaller in it. I’ve never seen him look so small before. Nothing is right about his face, either.

‘Can I sleep here tonight, Case?’

He falls onto my bed, and I sit beside him.

‘What happened?’

He shakes his head. He takes a deep breath. ‘We consummated our flirtation.’ And then he curls up and covers his face and a terrible whine comes through his hands. I didn’t know how Caleb cries. I’ve never seen it before. It sounds physically painful for him. I rub his arm. I smooth his hair. The futon shakes beneath me.

‘It’s okay. It’ll be okay. Phil will understand.’ I don’t know if Phil will understand. But I don’t think he’ll be as surprised as Caleb might think.

‘I love him, Case. I think I’ve always, always loved him.’

‘Adam? Gross.’

He whines. ‘He shoved me off of him after.’ He barely gets this out before he lets loose with a wild moan. Oafie starts barking from Adam’s mudroom.

When the long jag is over, I pull his hands off his face. ‘Listen to me. He wanted it. He wanted you. This whole week all he’s done is talk about sex and the people you both fooled around with. He was working you all week. I saw it. He wanted you, then he wanted the satisfaction of pushing you away.’

‘It was so awful. The expression on his face.’

‘He’s never going to allow himself the option of you or any other guy. He’s not that brave. And I don’t think you’re in love with him. You just needed to play out an old attraction.’

He’s lying there with his eyes shut, but he’s listening.

‘Go home. Tell Phil everything. See where it goes from there. Maybe you’ll still want to leave him. Maybe you’ll look at that gorgeous dining room table he made you and you’ll think, “Is there anything sexier than an ophthalmologist who can make me a seven-foot table?” ’

In the morning I drive him to the airport. He flips down the visor and sees the red hollows under his eyes. ‘God, I look worse than you now,’ he says. He looks out the window at the morass of highway construction. ‘I hate Boston. Nothing but pain in Boston.’

At the terminal, he pulls his suitcase out of the back, and we stand close on the sidewalk.

‘You going to be okay?’ he says.

‘Yeah, and so are you. Call me when you get home.’

He nods. We hug each other tight.

I feel like my mother, and I feel like my mother is hugging me.

He walks to the revolving doors. He waves. The doors spin him away.

Caleb left me the name of a doctor who agreed to see me three times before my insurance ran out at the end of the month. His name is Malcolm Sitz, and his office is in Arlington on the third floor of a brick duplex. He can only meet at five thirty in the afternoon. We’ve just lost daylight savings so it’s already dark when I get there.

He’s a slender man with smooth skin and a silver bob. He has a moustache he likes to touch. From my seat, a pilled wool armchair facing his ergonomic recliner, I can look out the window and down into the house behind his small yard. It’s a contemporary house with walls of glass revealing a brightly lit kitchen. A girl of nine or ten is sitting at