Best Intentions (13 page)

T
he rest of the week crawls by in something of a trance, as if we each feel the need to withdraw into our own worlds, hunker down and get our individual jobs done. The four of us, Claire, Phoebe, Sam and I, move as parallel lines through the apartment, the act of putting one foot in front of the other, of getting through school days and homework-laden nights, workplace machinations and the normative pedestrian tasks of cooking dinner, cleaning up, paying bills absorb us. Every now and then we look up, ask a question, try to concentrate on the answer, but we are only feigning interest, none of us has the energy it would take to truly engage. We are, each of us in our own way, tilted toward the weekend, telling ourselves that we will be able to backtrack, make up for this essential lack of attention and reconnect in the coming envelope of time, as if affection can be put on hold and reclaimed at will.

Sam and I are careful with each other, waiting for the residue of recriminations and explanations, confessions and apologies to fade, blend into the fabric of the immediate past and eventually be forgotten.

We do not mention the other night again.

Instead we practice gentleness, the small wordless touches, the chance looks that form the hallmarks of marital complicity, and if they are conscious rather than organic they are no less appreciated.

Even Deirdre and I seem to be avoiding each other, playing at phone tag with a mutual lack of conviction. When Jack e-mails none-too-subtly asking what I have learned, I can honestly tell him nothing. The person I most want to hear from, Susanna Carter from Harcourt's London office, does not reply to my first—or second—request for information on Favata.

Finally Saturday morning arrives, drowsy and slow.

I go into the living room where Sam is reading the paper, his bare feet up on the cluttered coffee table, and sit down on the couch beside him. I pick up the Metro section, stare at it, the print a dyslexic blur of black and white, and put it down, waiting for him to finish his article, acknowledge me. He puts his hand on my knee but doesn't look up until he is done.

“Have you decided what you are going to do this afternoon?” he asks as he plays with the ragged edges of the paper.

Claire, to her overwhelming delight, is going to help Deirdre at the store and Sam has promised to take Phoebe ice-skating at Chelsea Piers, a place I have an outsized distaste for and do anything I can to avoid. The endless blocks of bowling lanes, hot dog venues, video game parlors, all with lights flashing and music blaring at ear-shattering decibels, strikes me as a Las Vegas for urban children, dizzying in its sensory overload and over-the-top prices.

“I don't know.” It is so rare that I have free time alone that I haven't been able to settle on an option, I'm that out of practice. “I thought I might go into work for a little while after I drop Claire off.”

“Why on earth would you do that?”

I have been trying to get Sam to understand how precarious it feels at Merdale, how I cannot seem to grasp their language or their motives, but each time he has offered up some rote bromide and changed the subject. Uncertainty has always left him deeply discomfited, and though I have tried through the years to make him understand that if I express confusion or self-doubt it does not mean that I expect him to fix it or that more long-standing chaos will ensue, it hasn't sunk in. Sam wants, needs me to be sure of myself and in
many ways that has served me well, forced me to act more confidently than I otherwise might have. But there have been just as many times when it has left me feeling mute and misunderstood.

Still, he has been on his best behavior, making every attempt to listen—and I do not want to press it, not now as we are knitting back together.

“You're right. I'll probably just come home,” I say.

He nods and gets up to dress. As he moves past the coffee table the newspaper scatters.

“What's that?” I ask, noticing a manila folder that looks vaguely familiar.

Sam picks it up. “Nothing.”

I look more closely at the folder. “That's our financial records.”

“I just wanted to go over some things.”

“What things?” We usually tackle this odious task together once every few months. To lessen the pain, we have made something of a ritual of it, splurging on a far better bottle of wine than is our standard wont, squabbling over whose purchases are the least necessary, giving up, making up, regretting the price of the wine by the time we are done, anxiously swearing to cut back.

“I wanted to know where we stand these days. With the market the way it is, I thought we might move some things around.”

“So where do we stand?”

“Knee-deep in quicksand.”

I groan. “Thanks for the reassurance.”

“Anytime. By the way, I realize this news isn't exactly going to break your heart, but I'm going to drop the Wells thing.”

“When did you decide that?”

He smiles. “Oh, around two a.m. Seriously, I've been thinking about everything you said. I've got Simon breathing down my neck. And I just don't think I'm going to find what I need. Not in time, anyway.”

“I'm sorry, Sam. I know how much work you put into it.”

They are small gifts, his concession, my empathy, but they are what we have to give, they are everything.

“Don't forget Phoebe's mittens,” I call after him as he rises to leave the room, the folder tucked beneath his arm.

“Huh?”

“For ice-skating.”

“It's indoors. It's not going to be that cold,” he says dismissively. In the enduring scheme of our marriage, caution is my department.

“She hasn't been skating since last winter. She needs them for protection when she falls.” One of the things I love best about Phoebe is the blind optimism she has in her own athletic ability despite all evidence to the contrary. That's not to say it doesn't make me insanely nervous at times.

“All right.”

“What time do you think you'll be back?” I ask.

“I don't know, three, four. Where are they?”

“Where are what?”

“The mittens.”

It occurs to me that he is not really asking for their likeliest location but prompting me to find them for him. I consider telling him to look for them himself but I don't. The first attempt at ferreting out last winter's accessories from the jumble of mismatched gloves, hats and scarves is an iffy proposition at best, especially for one with little experience in this type of archaeological dig. “I'll get them,” I tell him.

After Sam and Phoebe leave, I find Claire in her room trying on everything she owns while semi-pornographic rap thrums from her computer's tinny speakers. Clothes fly through the air; leggings, tunics, miniskirts drift like colorful parachutes and land in crumpled heaps on the floor. Nothing is right, nothing is good enough. The rawness, the gnawing dissatisfaction and uncertainty of being thirteen is painfully evident as she races back to the closet. I am torn between the impulse to laugh—the inanity so familiar and so futile—and to soothe.

“Try the pink shirt,” I suggest.

“I already tried that.”

“Claire, Deirdre is expecting you. You don't want to be late for your first day on the job.”

“I can't go looking like this.” Tears of frustration and despair pool in the corners of her eyes, a vestige of the childhood she is so desperate to leave behind. She whips off her skirt and top.

Silence is clearly my best strategy here. “Five minutes,” I say as I turn to leave.

“I wish you'd just let me go by myself,” she spits out as she slips on a pair of skintight jeans. “You're so overprotective. Why don't you trust me?”

“I do trust you,” I reply. “Not that this week was the best example of it.” I am still annoyed that she forgot to call when she and Phoebe got to school the other day.

Claire frowns. Her fury that I had the middle school dean track her down shows no signs of abating.

I soften. “I thought it would be nice to have a chance to catch up with Deirdre.”

“We're going to be working, Mom.” She glares at me, incensed at the possibility that I might monopolize her precious time with Deirdre.

“Don't worry, I have no intention of staying,” I reassure her, as I head into my own bedroom to get dressed.

It is a gorgeous early fall day, the air sharp and crystalline when we finally leave the apartment. “Let's walk,” I suggest. We have always been at our best when engaged in movement or activity, freed from the constrictions and expectations of home. When Claire was three, I took her to her first movie and we danced together up this very street. Filled with a surfeit of joyous anticipation, she turned to me, her eyes wide with revelation, and exclaimed “I love you!” as if just discovering it. It was the first time she had ever said it as anything but a response to a similar proclamation from me, and my heart has never been the same.

I still see hidden beneath her early adolescence the infant's face that I once studied with such wonder-filled scrutiny. It is there, inside her, inside me, always.

We talk easily now of television shows and upcoming movies, the previous sartorial wrangling forgotten. I am careful to avoid any potential minefields, anxious to preserve the moment.

When we reach the store, Deirdre kisses us both hello.

“So how was the first week of school?” she asks Claire.

“Fine.”

“Did you scout out the boys at St. Bernard's yet, or Dalton?”

Claire smiles, admitting that she has. I look at her, surprised. It never even occurred to me to ask.

“So,” Deirdre continues. “Any cute ones?”

Claire grimaces. “The nice ones aren't cute and the cute ones aren't nice.”

“At least you're learning that early. It took me years. I'd love to tell you it gets better, but it doesn't. My advice is to go for smart and funny.”

“Really? I thought your MO was more along the lines of borderline personality and unattainable.”

Deirdre swivels to me.

“Sorry.” I turn to Claire. “My advice is no dating at your age.”

They both glance over at me and decide the best course is to totally ignore my existence.

Deirdre assumes an authoritative voice with Claire, flattering her with the no-nonsense way she details her responsibilities for the day. Claire listens closely, wanting above all to please and impress Deirdre. We leave her neatly folding a stack of boatneck cashmere sweaters—a skill I was unaware she possessed—and go into Deirdre's small office in the back. She sits down at her desk, cluttered with fabric swatches and dog-eared fashion magazines, catalogues and a startling array of unopened mail. I take the seat opposite her.

“Have you been avoiding me?” I ask.

“Of course not. I've been busy.” She fiddles with the loose knob of her desk drawer. “I don't know. I guess I needed some time to think.”

“Think about what?”

“It's been intense, okay?”

“What has?”

“Jack. Ben. Everything.”

“I'm listening.”

She pauses. “Whenever I talk to you about Ben you get this look on your face.”

“What look?”

“Disapproval.”

“That's not true.”

“Yes, actually it is. I don't blame you. I'd probably disapprove, too. But it's there.”

“Sorry. I just want you to be happy.”

“And you don't think Ben can do that for me?”

“I don't know.”

She sighs. “Neither do I.”

“What's going on?”

“Maybe my seeing Jack bothered Ben more than he'll admit. Whenever he feels me slipping away he does something to pull me back in. Thursday night, he managed to get us a table at the River Café. I think he did a photo shoot of the chef at one point. Anyway, we had this incredible bottle of wine and you know how romantic it is there…”

“I've never been.”

“You should go.”

“I should do a lot of things. Go on.”

“Halfway through dinner he told me sort of, maybe, that he'd thought about what I said and he's not as interested in having a ‘rotation' of women anymore.”

“Sort of? Maybe?”

“He was a little vague on details,” Deirdre admits. “I didn't really press him.”

“What caused his sudden change of heart?”

“I don't know. Jealousy? Don't get me wrong, I wasn't totally buying it. I know Ben too well. And he didn't say anything specific about us. But at least what he did say, or imply, was different from anything he's said in the past.”

“The past meaning earlier this week?”

“See?”

“Sorry.”

“What if he means it this time?” Deirdre searches my eyes for an answer we both know I cannot give her.

“Where did you leave it?” I ask.

“We didn't. It drives me batty. We had this fantastic night together and I haven't heard from him since.”

“It's only been two days.”

“I know. And he has his kids this weekend. He still hasn't told them about us, so I'm sure I won't hear from him till Monday.” She plays with her hair, takes a deep breath. “You want to hear how pathetic I am? I've calculated his every-other-weekend schedule for months ahead. I don't make plans for weekends he doesn't have the kids, even though he doesn't always ask to see me then. And I tell myself not to feel bad on weekends he does have them if he doesn't get in touch. Of course, he has no idea of any of this.”

She waits for me to lecture her, but I don't. I know that desire is not something we can control; too often it disappears when we wish it wouldn't and refuses to vacate our hearts when we would give anything to be free of its yoke.

“It's so hard to go from the kind of intimacy we had on Thursday to a total lack of communication,” she says. “Relationships are supposed to make you feel less lonely, not more, right?”