A Window Opens: A Novel (28 page)

Then I called Nicholas. He sounded groggy, like I’d woken him up. “Hi, Al. How was your thing?”

“Fun. Guess who I saw?”

“No clue. Who?”

“Remember Bonnie who used to work in the dining hall? She was in our Shakespeare class?

“I think so. She was from Santa Fe?” When he said this, I remembered Bonnie’s tote bag from college: a tooled leather number with a flap of Native American tapestry across the front. It was a cut above my Jansport backpack; Bonnie was going places even then.

“That’s the one. She was sitting right behind me. She’s a really big deal now.”

“Well. Good for her. I think you’re a really big deal, too, for what it’s worth.” I could hear him smiling through the phone. “My parents called to see how your dad is doing. They’re wondering how they can help. Any ideas?”

“I can’t think of anything. I mean, there’s so
much
to do, and then on the other hand, there’s
nothing
to do. It’s surreal.”

A young couple walked by, fingers hooked through each other’s belt loops. The woman was laughing so hard, she had to stop and hold her stomach. The guy placed a hand on her lower back and rested his
forehead on her shoulder so they formed a human pretzel of hysterical glee. When was the last time I laughed like that with Nicholas? I couldn’t remember.

“Al, are you still there?”

“Yes.”

“Are you okay?”

I sighed. “Nicholas, I miss him already and he’s not even gone.”

“I know. Listen, I’m waiting up for you. Come home.”

•  •  •

When I finally arrived at 11:15—two hours after the Center for Fiction event ended—I stumbled tipsily up the front steps and then had to ice my shin.

As I left the house again to walk Cornelius, I noticed a mug on the porch next to one of our green Adirondack rocking chairs. I leaned over to grab it, and an ashy liquid spilled onto my wrist. The mug was full of cigarette butts—maybe fifteen of them floating in an inch of foul water. I stood there for a minute, looking out at the recycling bin by the curb, knowing it was stacked to the brim with Sam Adams bottles. Nicholas hadn’t stopped drinking since our conversation; he’d just gotten more careful hiding it from me. Every night when I kissed him hello, his breath smelled like Aquafresh.

I sat down in the rocking chair, remembering all the afternoons Margot attempted to break the Guinness World Record of hula-hooping (74 hours, 54 minutes) while Georgie napped in my arms in this very spot. Inside, Nicholas turned off lights: kitchen, dining room, sunroom, hallway. Eventually, he poked his head out the front door and said, “You ready for bed?”

I held the mug over my head like an angry Statue of Liberty wearing a dress from Lord & Taylor. “Nicholas, is this Jessie’s?” I actually hoped that it was.

He sat down in the rocking chair next to mine, sighing as he landed. “No, it’s not Jessie’s.”

“You’re telling me that these are your cigarettes?”

“Some of them, yes.”

“So now you’re
smoking
?”

“No, not really, I—”

“Wait,
some of them
? Can you tell me who the others belong to?”

“They’re Susanna’s. She came over after the kids went to bed—”

“Okay. Let me get this straight.” I leaned down to place the mug on the floor of the porch. I could hear the blood rushing through my ears. “You’re telling me that you and my best friend were sitting here on our front porch,
smoking
, while my dad is in a
chair
six miles away,
dying
from cancer he wouldn’t
have
if he
HADN’T SMOKED
?” I spoke between massive, heaving sobs, the kind that sound like hiccups but aren’t funny. I leaned down again, picked up the mug, and hurled it over the porch railing and into the yard, where it landed among the skip laurels, stubbornly intact.

Nicholas opened his mouth to speak, but I kept going. “Also? Why is
Susanna
coming over after the kids are asleep? Is there anything you need to tell me?”

He laughed, but not in a nice way. “I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer.”

I thought of the couple at Penn Station, how they’d kissed each other for the length of the escalator ride up to Madison Square Garden. If we had a few seconds of downtime, Nicholas and I were more likely to be checking our phones. Still, in my heart of hearts (wherever that is), I knew he wasn’t a cheater. He was just a drunk.

“Nicholas, this has
got
to stop. You’re drinking and smoking and who knows what else—just
falling apart
at the very moment I need you to—  I don’t know—be a
man
! You can’t be sitting here on the front porch like some good-for-nothing, playing quarters and smoking like a chimney all the time—” I was on a roll and I could have kept going, getting myself more and more riled up, but Nicholas put a gentle hand on my arm.

“Alice. Take a deep breath.”

I stopped.

Our neighbors’ living room light went off, and I wondered if they
were sitting there in the dark, watching us have it out. I’ll admit, I’ve observed their occasional marital spat with interest.

Nicholas started rocking in his chair, eyes fixed straight ahead on the windows of Georgie’s classroom across the street. “You’re right. I’ve been drinking too much. I’m not in such a great spot myself, as you know, but I definitely need to cut back. And I will. I promise.”

“I thought you were going to cut back after we talked last time and instead you started hiding your beer under the back porch.”

He glanced at me, smiling briefly. “I’m not an alcoholic, Alice. I was just too lazy to bring it in from the car and I didn’t want to listen to your grief. But you’re right. And these cigarettes—”

“Which are
disgusting
, by the way, aside from being completely unacceptable in the home of the daughter of a cancer victim; not to mention Margot being at such an impressionable—”

“
Alice
. Will you just listen for a minute? Susanna brought them over. She stopped by to talk about—well, she thinks the Blue Owl might have to declare bankruptcy, and she wanted my advice. She was pretty upset.”

“Fine. Still—”

“She’s really in trouble. Even if she can get more customers into the store, she owes quite a bit of money and, honestly, it’s not looking good—”

“Yeah, but that’s still no reason to be smoking.” I was losing steam. I knew Susanna smoked occasionally in her garage; it certainly wasn’t her best habit, but who was I to judge? At least Susanna found time to shop for her kids’ Christmas presents; I’d delegated this responsibility to Jessie, who tactfully texted from Sports Authority, “Are you sure O wants the LeBron jersey? Pretty sure he had his eye on Chris Bosh.”

“Alice, these are tough times. We need to work harder at getting through them together.”

I rocked back and forth in my chair. Down the street, the last train of the night idled in the station.
Clang, clang, clang
. It pulled away, heading to the next town.

“Alice? Did you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“I’m still mad, but I love you.”

“I love you, too. I’m sorry.”

We went upstairs and this time I didn’t push him away when we turned off the light. Fade to black.

F
or the first thirteen years of our marriage, Nicholas and I avoided hosting all major holidays. Actually, we hosted Christmas the year we got engaged, and the whole affair was so egregiously mistimed, we ended up serving the turkey (rare) at eleven p.m.

Now, given my dad’s health, we finally decided to take the plunge for Thanksgiving. The conversation went like this:

Nicholas:
“Don’t you think it would be fun to host Thanksgiving?”

Me:
“Who would cook?”

Nicholas:
“Me.”

Me:
“Everything?”

Nicholas:
“Can you be in charge of desserts?”

Me:
“Homemade chipwiches?”

Nicholas:
“Done.”

Me:
“What about my dad?”

Nicholas:
“What about him?”

Me:
“What if he can’t get up the stairs?”

Nicholas:
“Will and I can carry him.”

On Thanksgiving morning, Margot bossily supervised Georgie’s painstaking lettering of the placecards; Oliver and Nicholas basted the turkey; I made the chipwiches and chocolate mousse, checking my recipes no fewer than fifty times and leaving our first-generation iPad splattered with heavy cream.

As I straightened up the kitchen and unloaded the dishwasher for the final time before the onslaught, I realized I hadn’t been alone in this room for months, let alone actually cooked in it. When had Nicholas rearranged the drinking glasses? Or was it Jessie? And when did we get this mysterious yellow plastic contraption that Georgie said was a pineapple corer—and why?

I thought back to a simpler time, to all the afternoons I’d sat at the kitchen table with Cornelius curled at my feet while the kids ate their Earth Valley chocolate chip granola bars after school. The light comes in just so at that time of day, making the kitchen glow in a way that reminds me of the day we first saw the house and knew it would be home. Now I felt like I barely lived here anymore. But at least, since it was Thanksgiving, my phone was quiet. Apparently, even Greg took a break to eat turkey. Or maybe tofurkey.

At the appointed time—actually ten minutes early, as is our way—my brother’s Subaru pulled up in front of my house and his family emerged, bearing tin-foiled platters, pie plates, and Pyrex dishes: cranberries, stuffing, bacon-wrapped figs, creamed spinach. A few minutes later, my parents arrived in their Toyota. My mom was behind the wheel—an unfamiliar sight—but even through the windshield I could tell that my dad was better than he had been in weeks. To begin with, he was awake, and he didn’t have the usual furrow between his eyebrows,
and
he wore a button-down shirt instead of his usual Georgetown sweatshirt.

Slowly, carefully, my dad made it up our front steps on Nicholas’s arm, then smiled warmly at our kids, who clustered nervously in the front
hallway. They took a moment to assess his decline since the last time they’d seen him a week earlier, and then—expectations recalibrated—ran out to the yard to play basketball with their cousins.

Mary and my mom were already arguing about how the gravy should be made. All was not exactly right in the world, but at least everyone was under one roof and alive.

The meal was delicious. We abandoned the dining room and instead brought our plates to the living room so we could be near my dad, who was settled in front of the fire. He couldn’t eat anything but jotted “Mangia!” on a legal pad when Margot said she felt bad gorging in front of him. It was the first holiday in twelve years when Nicholas and I didn’t have to pop up multiple times midmeal to refill a sippy cup or hunt down a missing Dora spoon or produce a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I looked around at my family and felt really, truly happy.

Oliver announced glumly, “My homework is to go around the room and say what we’re grateful for.”

My mom groaned. “Oh, you all know that’s not really my speed.”

“Mom, he’s hardly asking you to bare your soul. Just think of one thing that makes you happy.” Even in near-middle age, I recognized the look on Will’s face from childhood: trying not to cry. All the adults were determined to keep the mood light, but it was impossible not to trip on the fact that this would be our last Thanksgiving with my dad. The turkey tasted different, carved a little too thick by Nicholas.

Will swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple plunging toward the collar of his Patagonia sweater. “Okay, I’ll get started. I’m grateful that we’re all here, especially this guy.”

Margot jumped in next. “Me, too. I’m grateful for Pop.”

Then it was Georgie’s turn: “For mashed potatoes. For Pop. For Cornelius, even though his breath stinks.” She reached down to pat the dog, who hung around waiting for her to drop a scrap of turkey on the floor.

We all looked expectantly at my dad, who pointed his finger straight at my mom. I almost said, “No, it’s
your
turn,” but then I realized what he meant:
she
was what he was most grateful for. The rest of us nodded, lips
pursed stoically, knowing this simple gesture was one of the most romantic of their impressive forty-five-year run.

When the wave of gratitude reached me, I felt the need to lighten the mood. “I’m grateful that I took a big leap this year, and that Nicholas helped me do it. I couldn’t be doing this job without him and my fabulous kids.”

I smiled at Nicholas, who was nursing a seltzer while rolling a scented pinecone awkwardly on the tablecloth next to his plate. He flashed me a quick grin back.

“Why does everything have to be about your
job
all the time?” Margot’s face dissolved into a full-blown snit, and there was an uncomfortable silence. Will might have rolled his eyes, or I might have been overly sensitive. We continued to go around the room, but the moment was gone.

That night, Will and Nicholas helped the cousins extract the wishbone from the turkey carcass. It was a disgusting operation, and I knew my one wish would never come true, so I went down to the basement to make a phone call. It went straight to voice mail: “Hey, it’s Jessie. Leave a message after the beep and I’ll get back to you.”

I leaned against the dryer. “Jessie. It’s me. You’re probably in the middle of dinner but I just wanted to say thank you. I couldn’t do . . .
this
without you.” I gestured at the detergent bottles and retired lunchboxes and pairs of crisply drying jeans as if she could see what I was talking about. I really hoped she knew what I meant.

S
usanna sent a video to my Scroll e-mail with this note: “I know you hate things like this, but promise you’ll watch. Just promise. You’ll be glad you did.”

I clicked play. To the tune of the
William Tell
overture, a woman on a stage launched into all the things she says to her kids every day:
Get up, get out of bed/Wash your face, brush your teeth, comb your sleepy head/Here’s your clothes and shoes
 . . .