The Leftovers (40 page)

But what if it is, Kevin? Then what?

I wish you every happiness. You were good to me, but I was beyond repair. I really did like it when you danced with me.

Love,

N

*   *   *

GRgrl405 (10:15:42
P.M.
): how r u?

Jillpill123 (10:15:50
P.M.
): just chillin. u?

GRgrl405 (10:15:57
P.M.
): thinking bout u (:

Jillpill123 (10:16:04
P.M.
): me 2 (:

GRgrl405 (10:16:11
P.M.
): u shld come 4 a visit

Jillpill123 (10:16:23
P.M.
): idk …

GRgrl405 (10:16:31
P.M.
): ull like it here

Jillpill123 (10:16:47
P.M.
): what wld we do?

GRgrl405 (10:16:56
P.M.
): sleepover (:

Jillpill123 (10:17:07
P.M.
): ???!

GRgrl405 (10:17:16
P.M.
): just a night or 2—c what u think

Jillpill123 (10:17:29
P.M.
): what wd i tell my dad?

GRgrl405 (10:17:36
P.M.
): yr call

Jillpill123 (10:17:55
P.M.
): ill think about it

GRgrl405 (10:18:08
P.M.
): no pressure when ur ready

Jillpill123 (10:18:22
P.M.
): im scared

GRgrl405 (10:18:29
P.M.
): its ok 2 b scared

Jillpill123 (10:18:52
P.M.
): maybe next week?

GRgrl405 (10:18:58
P.M.
): that wd be perfect (:

I’M GLAD YOU’RE HERE

TOM WAS TELLING CHRISTINE ABOUT
Mapleton as he drove, trying to sell her on the idea of an extended visit with his family, rather than an overnight stopover on the way to Ohio.

“It’s a pretty big house,” he said. “We could stay in my old room for as long as we want. I’m sure my father and sister would be happy to help with the baby.”

This was a bit presumptuous, since his father and sister didn’t even know he was on the way, let alone that he had company. He’d meant to give them a heads-up, but things had been pretty chaotic in the past few days; he figured it made more sense to play it by ear, keep his options open until they got within striking distance. The last thing he wanted to do was get his father’s hopes up and then disappoint him, as he had so many times in the past.

“It’s really nice there in the summer. There’s a big park a couple blocks away, and a lake where you can go swimming. One of my friends has a hot tub in his yard. And there’s a pretty good Indian restaurant downtown.”

He was improvising now, not sure if she was even listening. This side trip to Mapleton was a Hail Mary on his part, a way to buy a little more time with Christine and the baby before they drifted out of his life.

“I just wish my mother was still there. She’s the one who really—”

The baby let out a wail from her bucket in the backseat. She was a tiny thing, barely a week old, and didn’t have a lot of lung power. All she could produce was a strained little mewling sound, but Tom was amazed by how viscerally it affected him, jangling his nerve endings, filling him with a sense of urgency just short of total panic. All he could do was glance at her scrunched, angry face in the rearview mirror and plead with her in a syrupy voice that was already starting to feel like a second language.

“It’s okay, little one. Nothing to worry about. Just be patient, sweet pea. Everything’s copacetic. You go back to sleep now, okay?”

He pressed on the gas pedal and was startled by the engine’s eager response, the heroic leap of the speedometer needle. The car would’ve been happy to go even faster, but he eased off, knowing he couldn’t afford to get pulled over in a BMW that was either borrowed or stolen, depending on how the Falks chose to look at it.

“I think it’s about ten miles to the next rest area,” he said. “Did you see the sign a while back?”

Christine didn’t respond. She seemed almost catatonic in the passenger seat, sitting with her feet up and her knees tucked beneath her chin, staring straight ahead with a disconcertingly placid expression. She’d been like this the whole way, acting as though the infant in the backseat were a hitchhiker Tom had picked up, an unwelcome guest with absolutely no claim on her attention.

“Don’t cry, honey bun,” he called over his shoulder. “I know you’re hungry. We’re gonna get you a baba, okay?”

Amazingly, the baby seemed to understand. She released a few more sobs—soft, hiccupy whimpers that sounded more like aftershocks than actual protests—and then fell back asleep. Tom glanced at Christine, hoping for a smile, or even just a nod of acknowledgment, but she seemed just as oblivious to the quiet as she’d been to the noise.

“A nice big baba,” he murmured, more to himself than his passengers.

*   *   *

CHRISTINE’S INABILITY
to connect with the baby had begun to frighten him. She still hadn’t given the child a name, rarely spoke to her, never touched her, and avoided looking at her whenever possible. Before leaving the hospital, she’d gotten a shot that stopped her from lactating, and since then she had been more than happy to let Tom handle all the feeding, changing, and bathing duties.

He couldn’t blame her for feeling a little shell-shocked; he was still a little shell-shocked himself. Everything had fallen apart so quickly after Mr. Gilchrest’s guilty plea and humiliating confession, in which he publicly outed himself as a serial rapist of teenage girls and begged for forgiveness from his “real wife,” who he claimed was the only woman he’d ever loved. Furious at his betrayal, Christine had gone into labor the very next day, shrieking in agony at the first contraction, demanding that she be taken to the hospital and given the strongest drugs available. The Falks were too demoralized to object; even they seemed to understand that they’d reached the end of the road, that the prophecies that had sustained them were nothing but pipe dreams.

Tom stayed with Christine throughout the nine-hour labor, holding her hand while she drifted in and out of a drug-induced delirium, cursing the father of her child so bitterly that even the delivery room nurses were impressed. He watched in amazement as the baby squirted into the world, fists clenched, puffy eyes glued shut, her jet-black hair plastered with blood and other murky fluids. The doctor let Tom cut the cord, then placed the child in his arms, as if she belonged to him.

“This is your daughter,” he told Christine, offering the naked, squirmy bundle like a gift. “Say hi to your little girl.”

“Go away,” she told him, turning her head to keep from looking at the Miracle Child who no longer seemed like such a miracle. “Get it away from me.”

They returned to the Falks’ the following afternoon, only to find Terrence and Marcella gone. There was a note on the kitchen table—
Hope it went okay. We’re out of town until Monday. Please be gone when we return!
—along with an envelope containing a thousand dollars in cash.

“What are we gonna do?” he asked.

Christine didn’t have to think for long.

“I should go home,” she said. “Back to Ohio.”

“Really?”

“Where else can I go?”

“We’ll figure something out.”

“No,” she said. “I need to go home.”

They stayed at the Falks’ for four more days, during which Christine did almost nothing but sleep. That whole time, while he was changing diapers and mixing formula and stumbling around the dark house in the middle of the night, Tom kept waiting for her to wake up and tell him what he already knew, which was that it was all okay, that everything had actually worked out for the best. They were a little family now, free to love one another and do as they pleased. They could go barefoot together, a band of happy nomads, drifting with the wind. But it hadn’t happened yet, and there weren’t that many miles between here and Ohio.

*   *   *

TOM WAS
aware of the fact that he wasn’t thinking clearly. He was too exhausted for sober reflection, too focused on the baby’s bottomless needs, and his fear of losing Christine. But he knew he needed to prepare himself for the ordeal of going back home, the questions that would arise when he pulled up in front of his father’s house in a German luxury sedan he didn’t own, with a bullseye on his forehead, accompanied by a severely depressed girl he’d never mentioned and a baby that wasn’t his. There was going to be a lot of explaining to do.

“Listen,” he said, slowing down as they approached the entrance to the rest area. “I hate to keep bugging you about this, but you really need to give the baby a name.”

She nodded vaguely, not really agreeing, just letting him know she was listening. They headed up the access ramp to the main parking lot.

“It’s weird, you know? She’s almost a week old. What am I supposed to say to my dad?
This is my friend, Christine, and this is her nameless baby?
”

Traffic had been light on the highway, but the rest area was packed, as if the whole world had decided to pee at the same time. They got stuck in a slow parade, no one pulling in unless someone else pulled out.

“It’s not that big a deal,” he went on. “Just think of a flower or a bird or a month. Call her Rose or Robin or Iris or April or whatever. Anything is better than nothing.”

He waited for a Camry to back out, then slipped into the space it had vacated. He put the car into park but didn’t shut off the engine. Christine turned to look at him. There was a maroon-and-gold bullseye on her forehead—it matched his own and the baby’s—that Tom had painted on in the morning, right before they left Cambridge. It was like a team insignia, he thought, a mark of tribal belonging. Christine’s face was pale and blank below it, but it seemed to be emitting a painful radiance, reflecting back the love he was beaming in her direction, the love she refused to absorb.

“Why don’t you choose,” she told him. “It really doesn’t matter to me.”

*   *   *

KEVIN CHECKED
his phone. It was 5:08; he needed to grab something to eat, change into his uniform, and get to the softball field by six. It was doable, but only if Aimee left for work in the next few minutes.

The sun was low and hot, blazing through the treetops. He was parked near the closed end of the cul-de-sac, four doors down from his own house, facing into the glare. Not ideal, but the best he could do under the circumstances, the only vantage point in Lovell Terrace that allowed him to keep tabs on his front door without being immediately visible to anyone entering or leaving the house.

He had no idea what was taking Aimee so long. She was usually gone by four, off to serve the early birds at Applebee’s. He wondered if she was under the weather, or maybe had the night off and had neglected to mention it. If that was the case, then he’d have to rethink his options.

It was ridiculous that he didn’t know, because he’d just talked to her on the phone a few minutes ago. He’d called for Jill, as he often did in the late afternoon, checking to see if they needed anything from the grocery store, but it was Aimee who picked up.

Hey,
she said, sounding more serious than usual.
How was your day?

Fine.
He hesitated.
Kinda weird, actually.

Tell me about it.

He ignored the invitation.

Is Jill there?

No, just me.

That was his opening to ask why she hadn’t left for work, but he was too flustered for that, too distracted by the thought of Aimee alone in the house.

No problem,
he said.
Just tell her I called, okay?

He slumped down in the driver’s seat, hoping to make himself a little less conspicuous to Eileen Carnahan, who was heading down the sidewalk in his direction, taking her geriatric cocker spaniel for his pre-dinner stroll. Eileen craned her head—she was wearing a floppy tan sun hat—and squinted at him with a puzzled expression, trying to figure out if something was wrong. Pressing his phone to his ear, Kevin fended her off with an apologetic smile and a
can’t-talk-now
wave, doing his best to look like a busy man taking care of important business, and not a creep who was spying on his own house.

Kevin comforted himself with the knowledge that he hadn’t crossed any irrevocable lines, at least not yet. But he’d been thinking about it all day, and no longer trusted himself to be alone with Aimee, not after what had happened that morning. Better to keep his distance for a while, reestablish the proper boundaries, the ones that seemed to have dissolved in the past few weeks. Like the fact that she no longer called him Mr. Garvey, or even Kevin.

Hey Kev,
she’d said, wandering sleepy-eyed into the kitchen.

Morning,
he’d replied, walking toward the cupboard with a stack of small plates balanced on his palm, still warm from the dishwasher.

He wasn’t aware of anything flirtatious in her voice or manner. She was wearing yoga pants and a T-shirt, pretty tame by her standards. All he registered was his usual feeling of being happy to see her, grateful for the jolt of good energy she always provided. Instead of heading for the coffeemaker, she veered toward the refrigerator, opening the door and looking inside. She stood there for a while, as if lost in thought.

Need something?
he asked.

She didn’t reply. Turning away from the cupboard—just trying to help—he drifted up behind her, peering over her head into the familiar jumble of cartons and jars and Tupperware containers, the meats and vegetables in their transparent plastic drawers.

Yogurt,
she said, turning and smiling up at him, her face so close that he caught a subtle whiff of her morning breath, which was a little stale but not unpleasant—not at all.
I’m going on a diet.

He laughed, as if this were a ridiculous project—which it was—but she insisted she was serious. One of them must have moved—either he leaned forward or she leaned back, or maybe both those things happened at the same time—because suddenly she was right
there,
pressing up against him, the warmth of her body passing through two layers of fabric so that it felt to him like skin against skin. Without thinking, he placed a hand on her waist, just above the gentle flare of her hipbone. At almost the same moment, she tilted her head back, letting it rest against his chest. It felt completely natural to be standing like that, and also terrifying, as if they were perched on the edge of a cliff. He was intensely aware of the elastic waistband of her pants, an intriguing tautness beneath his palm.