Leaves (6 page)

Later, when she was back at home, the DJ arrangements made, the contracts signed, Maria went to the closet in the guest room and pulled out her old guitar and songbooks. The Paul Simon and the Dan Fogelberg. The Suzanne Vega and the Sarah McLachlan. And of course the spiral-bounds. The guitar's strings were creaky and brittle and she was certain one would snap when she tuned it. But they held, and she strummed a few chords to get a feel for the instrument again. The tingling in her fingers became more uncomfortable as she played. Her hands had gone soft over the years, and she was going to pay the price for that now. But sitting there on the guest bed, the Paul Simon book open next to her, it didn't matter.

She played the chords to “American Tune” and “Duncan” and then decided to sing along on “Something So Right.” She always sang – around the house, to the iPod in the car, to Muzak in stores – but singing to her own accompaniment was still a journey back for her, like visiting her old high school or reentering the house she and Doug had rented just after Olivia was born. She moved on to “Leader of the Band” and “Same Auld Lang Syne” from Dan Fogelberg and then “Marlene on the Wall” and “Gypsy” and “Luka” from Suzanne Vega and “Ice Cream” and “I Will Not Forget You” from Sarah McLachlan. She laughed when she forgot how to play a chord, and laughed even louder in triumph when she remembered how to make an Fdim. This was so completely not like riding a bicycle, but she was amazed at how much she retained and at how the simple performance of these songs drew her back to another stage in her life. Olivia smiling at her sleepily. Doug sitting on the couch, head tilted, wineglass in hand, desire brimming from his eyes. Family gatherings where she provided the entertainment, at first embarrassed and then proud when someone requested an encore.

With some trepidation, she opened one of the spiral-bound notebooks. Her original songs were here, lyrics with chords written above the words. She knew from the memory of these songs that they weren't entirely awful, but she also knew that some of them were simply terrible. She turned to a protest song about baby seals and cringed at the clichés and the indignation. There was the fragment of a lyric that stopped dead because Maria couldn't think of a word to rhyme with “orange.” Here too was a song that was a blatant rip-off of The Police and yet another that was a laughable attempt to infuse her work with “soul.”

Some of the stuff
was
good, though. There was “Paradox,” the song she wrote a week after Jimmy Jilson said he would call her and didn't. And there was “Mumbledy Man,” which she wrote about her father's habit of muttering incomprehensibly when he didn't want to do something. She found the newest notebook, which started with the poem she'd written while still in the hospital after having Olivia. She ultimately worked it into a song, but the refrain was never as strong as she wanted it to be and it made for better reading than singing.

The last song in the book was “What Can I Say?” which she wrote about Olivia growing up a month after she'd stopped singing for her at night. It was the last song Maria had written and she remembered that, as she composed it, she pondered how two phases of her life were ending simultaneously. At the time, it was the most vulnerable moment in her life. She sang the first verse, but choked up on the chorus and decided maybe this wasn't the right time to play this particular tune.

She put down the guitar and got ready to get up from the bed. Enough of this little diversion. But then she flipped through some of the songbooks and picked up the guitar again. It wasn't until the darkening room made it difficult to read the pages that she realized how much time had passed. She looked at her watch, laughed, and flipped on a lamp. Then she bent toward the guitar again and improvised a bit.

I
guess Doug is taking me out to dinner tonight.

Because their two-year-old son Joey was a relentless early riser, Maxwell and Annie had a deal. Annie could sleep in on Saturdays and Maxwell got to do it on Sundays. Though the challenge of keeping the increasingly boisterous child quiet while one of them slept was considerable, the system seemed to work. They each got one morning every week to try to catch up on all the sleep they'd been denied the previous six days.

This was the first thing that surprised Maxwell about Annie walking into the bedroom at seven forty to throw on some workout clothes. The second surprising thing was the way she sat down on the bed, plopped Joey next to him and said, “I've just gotta get out of the house for a while.”

“What time is it?”

“It's a quarter to eight. I'm sorry, but I've just gotta get out.” She stood up and headed through the bedroom door. Within seconds, he heard the front door close.

Maxwell wasn't processing things very efficiently yet this morning, and he certainly couldn't process Annie's attitude. Did something happen this morning while he was sleeping? Was Joey being impossible? He'd find out later when his wife finally explained her cut-and-run to him.

He rolled over to find his son's face inches from his own and bearing a huge smile. “I don't suppose I could convince you to go back to sleep with Daddy for a while, huh?”

In response, Joey, who still didn't speak much, scrambled up and began jumping on the bed.

“Yeah, that's what I thought.” Maxwell pulled down the covers and made his way into the bathroom. It wasn't all that early – he was up by six fifteen during the week – but his head was a little foggy. He probably shouldn't have stayed awake until one in the morning watching
Sleepless in Seattle
on Comedy Central. Annie had gone to bed early and he had planned to do so himself, but he made the mistake of flipping through the channels and then he was hooked.

“Hey Pinball, shower time.” Maxwell came up with the nickname for his son not long after Joey started walking (and within days running) and showed a strong tendency to bounce off things, most notably walls and furniture. Maxwell stood in the doorway and motioned for his son, who was still jumping. Joey did an awkwardly executed seat drop and then hopped off the bed.

Maxwell and Joey showered together most mornings these days. It wasn't exactly the same experience as the showers he'd taken with Annie before the kid was born, but it was usually entertaining. This morning, Joey was occupying himself drawing on the shower walls with soap. The little bar slipped from the boy's hand in the process and he thought this was hilarious, so he repeated the act over and over again.

Eventually, Maxwell took his own soap (it was beyond pointless to share a bar with the kid) and cleaned him off.

“No hair,” Joey said as Maxwell positioned him under the showerhead to rinse off.

“Yes, hair.”

“No hair,” his son said more emphatically.

“You haven't washed your hair in something like three days. We're washing it today.” For someone who approached life with utter abandon, Joey was unusually skittish about getting shampoo in his eyes. “We'll do that thing where you tilt your head back like I taught you.” Of course Joey was incapable of maintaining that posture through the entire process and grew frantic when any suds touched his face. Maxwell rinsed him off quickly, after which the boy, forgetting the torture of moments past, resumed drawing on the walls.

Once they were dressed – yet another adventure, as Joey chose to dance away from his father after putting on each article of clothing – they headed into the kitchen for breakfast. Maxwell spent some time staring into the refrigerator and trying to come up with something to eat, but what he really wanted was some of Carmen Twillie's coffee cake.

“Pinball, come on. We're going into town.”

Downtown Oldham was a half-hour walk from their house, and keeping Joey in his stroller that long would make alligator wrestling seem relaxing. Still, it was such a gorgeous morning that it seemed silly to drive. For the first half of the walk, Joey sat contentedly, pointing to leaves and squirrels and some things Maxwell couldn't pick out. He got antsy after that, though, and when he turned completely around in the stroller, tangling himself up in the straps, Maxwell carried him on his shoulders the rest of the way.

Carmen Twillie's bakery, The Open Hearth, had been turning out world-class breads and pastries since 1970. Ever since he was a boy, Maxwell maintained an absolute passion for her coffee cake. Moist and spongy underneath and topped with dense, cinnamon-laced crumbs, it was an unparalleled morning starter. When he lived in Manhattan, he woke up some mornings longing for it. Even after Maxwell entered his thirties and realized he needed to be more careful about what he put into his body, he still stopped here at least once a week.

“Cake,” Joey said from atop his perch as they entered the bakery.

Maxwell ordered two squares, a large coffee, and a cup of milk, and they settled down at one of the three tables inside the bakery. Joey immediately took to deconstructing his piece, squeezing crumbs between his fingers and occasionally getting some into his mouth.

“No, look Joe, it's best if you eat the cake and the crumbs together.” Maxwell took a small piece and fed it to his son. The boy ate it, smiled, and then continued to tear his piece apart. Maxwell shrugged. Everything in time.

“Boys having a little morning outing today?” elderly Bill Black said as he walked by.

“Hey, Bill,” Maxwell said. “How are you doing today?”

“I'm awake and walking around, so I guess I'm okay. So what do you make of that little incident with the mayor?”

“I think we might want to get a little more information before we cast any aspersions.”

Bill laughed. “You sound like a real politician.”

Maxwell jokingly covered Joey's ears and said, “Please, Bill, my son can hear you.” Joey pulled away from him and took a huge gulp of milk, of course spilling half of it onto his shirt. Maxwell quickly blotted it up with a napkin.

“Great kid you got there, Maxwell,” Bill said.

Maxwell swept the littered table with his eyes. “I just wish he wasn't such a neat freak.”

Bill patted him on the shoulder. “Well, you two have a great day.”

A few minutes later, Maxwell had Joey back in the stroller as they walked through town. Maxwell waved hello to Mrs. Crest and Steve Wilkins and his son when he passed them on the street, and stopped into Carl Edwards' hardware store to make sure that Carl wasn't still upset about the confrontation they'd had at the last board meeting. It was always good to bring a two-year-old along when you did that kind of thing.

Afterward, they took a right turn off of Hickory and toward Arbor Elementary School. It was the best playground in town by far, thanks in no small part to the efforts of the Chamber of Commerce. Because the weather was so warm for the season, the playground was packed even though it wasn't even ten o'clock yet. Maxwell waved to a few more people and spent a minute chatting with Elise Fetters while he pushed Joey on a swing. But what he really wanted to do was play. That was, after all, what you did at a playground, wasn't it? He took his son on multiple trips down each of the three slides (the spiral one was his favorite), rocked with him on the teeter-totter, and tried to teach him how to climb the rope ladder. Joey most seemed to enjoy sliding down the pole with his father holding his butt. After a while, the kid decided it was time to run. Without warning, he took off into the park with Maxwell trailing behind. When Maxwell caught up to him, Joey stopped short, looked up at his father, and then yelled, “Go!” running off again. They did this for several minutes until Joey suddenly sat down to examine an orange leaf. This held the boy's complete attention for perhaps a minute and then he was off and running again.

Maxwell remembered reading somewhere that an experiment was once done in which an Olympic athlete mimicked the movements of a toddler for as long as he could hold out. After an hour and a half, the athlete was exhausted but the child was still going strong. As Maxwell slowed to allow his son to run ahead, he sympathized.

The walk back through town involved a half-hour at the toy store and then a tense couple of minutes when Joey ran into Fruits of the Kiln and endangered every piece of pottery in the shop before Maxwell corralled him. Joey finally agreed to go back in his stroller and they headed home at a moderately leisurely pace. By the time they got back to the house, Joey was asleep and Maxwell settled him into his crib. Amazing kid. One minute he's the Tasmanian Devil and the next you couldn't wake him with a marching band.

Maxwell walked into the den and flipped on the television. The football pre-game show would be on ESPN by now.

Annie still wasn't home. “I've just gotta get out of the house for a while,” she'd said.

For the first time, it dawned on Maxwell that she hadn't said where she was going. Or for that matter, when she would get back.

Tyler had tossed and turned most of the night, finally at some point falling into a deep sleep which kept him under until late morning. As a result, when he got out of bed a little after eleven, he felt more rested than he'd felt in a long time. He lounged around the apartment for a while and thought about doing some work on Lightroom. It was too gorgeous a day for that, though. Who knew how many of these were left in the year?

His walk through town ultimately left him outside the door of The Sweetest Thing, Patrice's candy shop. He'd passed it so many times, his pace quickening as he did so, over the last few months. But whether it was the Indian summer weather, the panoply of colors dressing Oldham, or the simple fact that he wasn't as tired today as he'd been lately, Tyler felt compelled to stop into the store this time.

For most of the five years they had been together, Tyler was more natural around Patrice than he had ever been with anyone. She was amazingly easy to talk to, and because of that it was so easy to express his emotions, his affections, and his desires. Even with his own family, Tyler felt there were certain barriers he couldn't cross. There were no such obstacles with Patrice – and because of this, he was wide open with her.

Then at some point in the last year, it all changed. Never having been in a serious relationship before, Tyler had no idea whether this kind of thing happened all the time, but he realized one day that they'd exchanged the sense of intimacy they always had between them for the assumption of intimacy. He thought everything was fine because it always had been. It was then that he realized Patrice was telling him less about what was going on in her life. That they hadn't had a meaningful conversation for longer than he could remember. Some of this he chalked up to his mother's illness and his grief over losing her (and certainly, after spending so much time with Mom over the years, Patrice grieved too). But when they began sniping at one another – something they'd never done before – it became impossible for Tyler to ignore the fact that something had been eating away at their relationship from the inside. It meant a lot to him that they still loved each other enough to end it before it got ugly. Still, what remained was a feeling that Patrice had left him behind. That she'd been in the process of distancing herself for a while. That in her mind he was gone before he was gone.

A customer came out of the store and held the door for him. Tyler considered that an invitation and fought the last bit of trepidation he'd been feeling. He walked in.

A half-dozen people were in the store. Patrice was attending to a couple of them while the others browsed displays of chocolates, sugar confections, glazed fruits, and boxed assortments. The Halloween display took up the entire front table with marzipan jack-o-lanterns, gummy spiders (and this year's new addition,
sour
gummy spiders), white chocolate ghosts, and dark chocolate vampires. Tyler glanced at the displays for a minute before walking over to the counter. Patrice didn't seem to notice him until she completed the sale she was working on. When she did, she seemed pleasantly surprised.

“Do I still get free candy when I come in?” Tyler said with a little more tightness in his throat than he'd anticipated.

“Dark chocolate butter toffee?” she said, smiling.

The smile warmed him. “With almonds?”

Patrice walked down the counter to get him two pieces. She handed them to him, reaching over to kiss him on the cheek as she did so. “How have you been?”

“I've been good. Just took some new shots that I really like, doing a bunch of other stuff. How about you?”

“I'm good. Frantic, a little. You know what this place gets like in the fall.”

As if to punctuate the point, a customer walked up with two boxes and ordered a pound of truffles. Tyler took a bite of his candy while he waited, watching Patrice the entire time. At one point, she looked up to let him know she'd be right back. She never used to do that. Even in the early days when things were insanely passionate between them, Tyler became invisible when a customer showed up.

“You look good,” she said when she returned. “Lost a couple of pounds?”

“I think I might have. I'm doing a lot more walking now that I'm closer to town.” The fact that he was also doing a lot less eating and a lot more worrying since he moved out was something he didn't feel the need to mention.

“You look good,” she said again.

“Thanks. You look spectacular, as usual.” Patrice always looked beautiful to him. Even as he packed to move out, he saw her face and thought about how beautiful she was.

“Thanks,” she said with a demure smile that only made her look more appealing. “You like your new place?”

“It's really nice. Older than our place, but really well maintained. You'd hate the kitchen, but it's fine for me.”