The Hazards of Sleeping Alone (24 page)

Bea turns. “Thanks for the hospitality, Charlotte.”

“Wait!”

She pauses, looks at Joe reluctantly.

“Just one more question before you go. Just one.”

Bea raises her cigarette to her lips, then plants one hand on a hip.

Joe sits forward, leaning his elbows on his knees. “Do you?”

“Do I what?” she says, inhaling.

“Like life.” His voice is quiet, urgent. “Do you like life?”

Bea looks at him for a long moment, then says, “Yeah.” She exhales. “I do.”

Joe shakes his head and flops backward in his throne. “She does,” he says flatly. “She really fucking does.”

In that moment, Joe transforms completely from subject to object. Instead of condescending, he seems pitiful. A man who hates his life. This side of him, Charlotte thinks, this hardness, it never used to be there. He was always curious, always probing the world, challenging it, but it was never so negative. So bitter. Charlotte looks at Emily, so like her father in so many ways. She thinks of the unborn baby inside her, like those painted wooden dolls with the innocent faces, one inside the other, and wants nothing but to keep them all safe.

C
harlotte dreamed of becoming a grandmother. In her dream, the scene was always the same: the news was delivered over an elaborate Christmas dinner, at a long, glossy table set with silver bowls, white tapered candles, tasteful poinsettias. Though the table seemed to stretch forever, there were only ever three of them: Charlotte, Emily, and Emily's husband. The husband's face was never clear, but he had strong hands. A gold wedding band. A wool sweater. They'd been married a year and a half, trying to get pregnant for a month or two.

It was the husband who made the announcement. Emily leaned into his arm, her face glowing in the candlelight. He gazed at her as she spoke. She was pregnant, he told Charlotte. The baby was due in August. Which would mean Charlotte could help out in the hot summer months. Which would mean she could bring Emily peach sorbet and ice packs and hold cool washcloths to her face. And the husband would come home from work each night, wearily loosening his tie, saying, “Mom, I don't know how we would do it without you.” And when the baby was born, her middle name would be Charlotte.

Now, staring out her kitchen window, Charlotte feels her dream dismantled. Reduced to a slurring ex-husband with red-stained teeth. A daughter who lives in an alternative living arrangement five states away. And a son-in-law who is not a sonin law at all, but a twenty-two-year-old boyfriend with an earring in his eyebrow.

But at least they're having the baby, Charlotte reminds herself. There would be a baby. A grandchild. The rest of it she would just have to accept. Lately, her life had begun to feel like a continual process of revision; this was just one more story she would have to rewrite.

Suddenly Joe appears at the far side of the parking lot, a speck in gray T-shirt and black running shorts. As he gets closer, she can make out the bib of sweat on his shirt, the white-lettered
BERKELEY
stained darker in the middle. She watches as he jogs through the empty spot where the red station wagon was parked not two hours ago. Charlotte can't believe their visit is already over. Emily and Walter left for New Hampshire just before 11:00
A.M.
; Joe's flight doesn't leave until 2:30.

Joe slows to a walk as he nears L1. Charlotte notices he's carrying a brown paper bag. Did he pick up breakfast? Pastries, maybe? The top half of him disappears from view as he stretches, leaning his palms against the side of the house. Charlotte can see the backs of his legs only: calves flexing, heels digging into the lawn. He's wearing modern sneakers, shiny, puffy, laceless, like the ones piled by the door at Rita Curran's. They look like sausage casings, Charlotte thinks. Ridiculous, really. Really ridiculous on a man almost fifty years old.

The legs disappear, and seconds later, Charlotte hears the front door open. “Honey, I'm home!”

It isn't funny.

Joe strolls into the kitchen. “Hi,” he says, wiping the back of his hand across his upper lip. He props one sneaker on a chair, revealing a bare leg furred with damp blond hair. At least he isn't sitting
in
the chair, sweat dribbling onto the seat, joining the other permanent damage he's done since he's been here: spilled drops of wine on the table, nicks he caused dragging the wooden feet of the wing chair outside.

“Here.” He holds out the paper bag, sweat-darkened around what suddenly clearly resembles the neck of a bottle. “Peace offering.”

Charlotte extracts a bottle of champagne. Bad champagne. Even she can tell.

“Best the drugstore carried,” Joe says, and shrugs. “It'll have to do.” He drops his foot to the floor and starts humming as he pops the top cabinet open.

“What are you doing?” Charlotte says.

“Mimosas.”

“Oh, no. None for me.”

“Come on, Char, indulge me. All your required daily vitamins and nutrients in one glass.”

“I don't think so.”

“It'll help relax me on the plane.”

“I really don't drink in the mornings.” She takes a breath. “Besides, you don't need help relaxing.”

“Charlotte.” Joe shuts the cabinet, turns, and lets his arms droop at his sides. “I know I was an asshole last night. I just want the weekend to end on a good note.”

At least she agrees with him there. On both counts.

“Fine,” she sighs. “A small one.”

He yanks open the refrigerator door.

“Juice is on the—”

“I got it,” he says, waving her off. “You go. Meet me on the patio before all the good seats are taken.”

With his hair damp, Charlotte thinks, the thinning is much more obvious. She walks out of the kitchen, past the sofa bed and bedding that has been perfectly remade and refolded. She pulls the patio door open, blinking into the chilly sunlight. Funny how two weeks ago she'd never used the garden patio, didn't even like looking at it. Now, as a porch chair deflates beneath her, she feels relieved to be there.

Charlotte absorbs her backyard. Dry russet leaves cling tenuously to the trees. Cool sunlight filters through the branches. She spots a bottle cap on the ground and a forgotten hairband on the table. It's one of Emily's, a thin pink elastic tangled with a single strand of brown hair. Suddenly Charlotte misses her daughter with a sharpness that almost takes her breath away. It feels like Emily and Walter's visit was a dream—something she blinked and missed. This morning, they'd said they needed to leave early, that Walter had to get back to “apprenticing,” but Charlotte suspected they just wanted to get away. Away from the divorced parents, the drunk father, the awkward conversation. Their decision was made, their job done. They hadn't needed adult guidance after all; they acted more adult than Joe did.

She couldn't talk them into breakfast, not even coffee. Emily, now decisively pregnant, thought she was feeling a little morning sickness. Walter ate a piece of toast standing up. Their goodbye, by the car, was less dramatic than their arrival. Joe hauled himself up from the sleeping bag, mussed but coherent. He padded outside in bare feet, chewing noisily on gum. Walter offered him a stiff handshake. Emily hugged him tightly as ever; maybe to her, his behavior was normal, and she'd just never mentioned it before.

As Charlotte said her good-byes, she wanted to say something about the baby, tell them they'd made a good decision, the right decision, but she couldn't find the words. It was all too flurried, too fast. They hugged her, kissed her, thanked her, a series of doors opening and slamming, then they were driving away, Emily flashing a peace sign out the window. Charlotte had wondered, watching their receding bumper—a virtual collage of stickers for bands and beliefs and causes amassed over the past seven years—if they were frustrated there hadn't been more discussion of the baby. That the enormity of their decision—the reason for their coming—had been diluted by Joe's behavior. If Walter was saying right then, as he honked and pulled out of the driveway, “Well, that was a waste.”

Charlotte hears a noise behind her. Joe, still in jogging gear, is carrying two of her grandmother's wineglasses. Each is nearly full of a frothy orange concoction. “For you,” he says, as Charlotte extracts one from his fingers.

“Thank you,” she says, then wishes she hadn't. What was she thanking him for? Making her drink bad champagne before noon?

Still standing, he lifts his glass. “To grandparenting.”

“Yes. To grandparenting.”

They clink. Charlotte takes a sip; it's surprisingly good.

Joe sinks into the other chair and stretches his legs out long before him, gazing at his feet. “Grandparents.”

“Yes.”

“Can you believe it?”

“No.” She smiles. “Not really.”

She glances at Joe, and he's smiling too, but his gaze looks distant, vaguely unsettled. Charlotte wonders if he's thinking about Valerie and the abortion. She realizes his initial reaction,
his wanting Emily to have the baby, makes more sense now. Maybe he sees it as another shot—his only shot—at having another child in his life.

Joe lifts his head abruptly and looks out into the yard, as if returning to the present, then sighs through his nose.

“It's no ocean view,” Charlotte commiserates.

He looks at her, then bursts into a laugh. “What makes you say that?”

“Because.” She feels herself blush. “I heard about your house in Seattle.”

“Yes?”

“With the deck. And the ocean view.”

“Ah.”

“It sounds lovely.”

“Well, my dear,” he says, crossing his feet at the ankle, “things are not always as they sound.” He holds the stem of his glass between two fingers and twirls it slowly, methodically, staring inside it like a kaleidoscope. “I don't know what the hell got into me last night, Charlotte.”

It catches her off guard. Suddenly she wishes someone else were there.

“I think I scared your friend.”

“She's not my friend,” she says quickly, as if in consolation.

“Even better.”

“She's just my neighbor. I hardly know her,” she rambles, then shuts her mouth. She hopes Bea didn't hear.

“Well,” Joe says. “Apologize to her. Whoever she is. I don't remember details, but I'm sure I was out of line.”

He's still staring into his glass, but it's stopped turning. The smile is gone. “Valerie thinks I drink too much.”

Charlotte pauses. “Do you?”

“I don't think so.” He sets the glass down carefully on the table. “Honest. I don't. It's not a problem—just a, I don't know, a hobby.” He smiles, sadly. “I drink, she does yoga. She sees a psychic, I see a shrink. We all have our coping mechanisms, right?”

Charlotte wants to ask more about the shrink—why he goes, what he says—but Joe is looking at her with a familiar expression. She senses an interrogation coming on.

“What are yours?”

“My what?” she asks, playing dumb.

“Coping mechanisms.” Like a reflex, he crosses one leg over the other, a pose that looks even more ridiculous in running shorts. He leans forward just slightly, assuming all the affectations of “professor,” but it seems halfhearted. It lacks conviction. As if he's only asking the questions to confirm his own answers.

“I don't know,” Charlotte says. “I don't think I have any.”

“You?” Joe says. “You, Charlotte, have coping mechanisms. You of all people.”

“What does that mean, me of all people?”

“It means you're good at coping mechanisms. You're the
queen
of coping mechanisms.”

His tone, after less than five minutes, has taken on a kind of easy familiarity, as if recycling a conversation they've had a hundred times before. They could be an old married couple sitting on their back porch swing, poking fun at each other tiredly, affectionately, having used up all the heated dramas years ago. It's as if they've managed to compress the entire arc of a marriage into just under two weeks.

“So?” he says, raising his eyebrows.

Charlotte sighs. She has no choice but to play along. “Well, organizing is one, I guess.”

He ticks off one finger.

“And cleaning.”

“Yes.”

“Cooking. Grocery shopping.”

“Yes. Yes.” He adds, “Checking things off lists.”

He's right, she thinks. She's surprised he knows this, and surprised it should surprise her.

“What else?”

“I don't know. I think that's it.”

“Come on. One more.”

“One?” Charlotte tilts her head back, considering the sky. “Getting my nails done.”

Joe looks at her in amazement. “You still do that?”

She drops her chin, picks up her glass.

“Oh, don't be like that. Please. At least your coping mechanisms are practical. They get the tub clean and the nails filed. Mine just get me incapacitating headaches and piss off my wife.”

It's the first time Joe has acknowledged any real trouble in his marriage, and Charlotte can feel the shift between them, teasing yielding to something more real. She swallows, feeling her pulse thump, wondering what to say next—should she ask what's happening with Valerie? is that the reason he mentioned her?—but any potential awkwardness between them is drowned out by Joe's loud, sudden groan.

“Ah, Charlotte.” He sinks down in the chair until he's practically sitting on his tailbone, like Emily used to in junior high. (Charlotte, having flashes of scoliosis, would beg her to sit up straight.) Joe spreads his hands dramatically across his face, then peers at her through splayed fingers. “Tell me. How the hell is it we were ever married?”

Instantly she hears it as a criticism, as a comparison to Valerie:
How could I ever have been married to you?