Who Do You Love (33 page)

I could have told you,
is what I should have said.
I felt that way, once, but not about you. About Andy.

I'd planned on staying in bed indefinitely, but now Nana was here, ushering the girls into my bedroom, where they found me showered, in a clean nightgown, on clean sheets.

“Mommy!” cried Delaney, racing across the room to vault onto the mattress and into my arms. Her hair was done in a fancy French braid—courtesy of Aunt Katie, I assumed—and she was wearing strawberry-scented lip gloss and her favorite maxi-dress.

“Why are you in here?” asked Adele, whose book-crammed backpack was still hanging from her skinny shoulders.

“I have taken to my bed. It's like an in-service day.”

“Yay!” Delaney whooped, and went dashing to her bedroom. Delaney was a pistol. Older people said she looked like Shirley Temple; people my age saw a brunette Annie. She was delightfully plump, with light-brown ringlets and a constant smile, the adorableness of which was only enhanced by the gap where her front teeth used to be.

“You want us to wear our nightgowns in the daytime?” asked Adele. She had the same light-brown hair as her younger sister, only hers was thick and straight, cut, at her insistence, in an old-fashioned ear-length bob. She'd been sober, reserved, thoughtful, and cautious ever since she was an infant, when she'd squirm away from hugs and cuddles in order to gaze at dust motes in a beam of sunshine, or a bug batting itself against a window, or her own baby fingers wiggling in the air. Some days I thought she'd be a scientist, because of the way she'd assess every situation, considering every potential outcome before committing, whether the action in question was jumping into a swimming pool or blowing out the candles on a birthday cake.

Some days I wondered what had made her such a pessimist, perpetually braced for disappointments: the wrong kind of sandwich in her lunchbox, the wrong color tights laid out on her bed, the scary sixty-year-old first-grade teacher instead of the pretty Miss Rose, who had a tiny, glittery stud in her nose and a tattoo of birds on her shoulder. Delaney loved sweets; Adele had been known to dismiss desserts as “too rich.”
Delaney
left a litter of toys and shoes and clothing wherever she went. Adele kept her room hospital-neat, and had told me more than once that we didn't need to spend money on a cleaning lady when we could just clean up after ourselves. On vacation,
Delaney
adored ordering room service, and would watch eagerly while the waiter wheeled the white-draped cart into our room, then opened up its wings, turning it into a table. Adele, meanwhile, would scrutinize the bill, purse her lips at the 18 percent delivery surcharge, and tell her sister that it would be much less expensive to just eat in the restaurant. “Or we could just bring food from home!”

Once, after a five-year-old classmate's birthday party where Adele had refused to play in the ball pit—“because there are germs in there,” she'd earnestly explained, “and because also, what if somebody pees?”—I'd been so concerned that I'd taken her to a therapist, who reassured me that children were different, that to a large degree their personalities were hardwired, and that I should love Adele the way she was while doing my best to show her that the world was not a terrible place full of bad things just waiting to happen. I wondered how I could get her to believe that now.

“Why do we need our nightgowns?” she asked.

“We are taking to our beds,” I repeated. “Well, my bed, technically.”

“I have homework,” Adele protested.

“You are lying,” I said. “I know for a fact that your teachers didn't give you anything over the weekend.”

Adele fidgeted, frowning. “I want to read ahead.”

“Can I watch
Victorious
?” Delaney wheedled, skipping back into the bedroom in her flannel Lanz nightgown with the iPad already in her hand. I shut my eyes. I couldn't remember if that was a show we let her see or something we'd decided was too mature, but I knew that Jay and I had discussed it, probably in this very bed. Probably I hadn't been paying attention. More likely than not, I'd had my phone on and my earpiece tucked into my ear and I'd been solving some other mother's problems.

“You're in charge of the entertainment,” I told Delaney, ignoring her big sister's gasp. Then I pointed at Adele. “You're in charge of dinner. You can pick what we're having. There's money in the cookie jar.” “Seriously?” Amy had once asked when I'd told her I kept my money in the cookie jar. “That is so 1950s.”

When Delaney was engrossed in her program and Adele was sorting through menus, her straight hair obscuring her cheeks and the tip of her tongue poking out, I found Nana in the living room. She was dressed in one of what I'd always thought of as her New York outfits—tailored tweed pants, low-heeled leather boots, a cream-colored pullover, clothes she'd bought at Saks Fifth Avenue when she came to the city (there were, of course, Saks stores in Florida, but Nana said they didn't have the inventory of New York City). I looked at myself, in my stretched-out ten-year-old nightgown and my hair that I'd washed and combed but hadn't dried or styled.

“I have a suggestion,” she said. “When is their school year over?”

“The first Thursday in June.” The date—ridiculously early, in my opinion—had been on my mind for weeks as I'd scrambled to find day camps that started before July.

“Why don't you take some time off and come to Florida?” she asked. “I'm sure your boss will let you take a few weeks' leave, all things considered.”

“All things considered,” I repeated, and struggled to push the words through my brain. It was like shoving clumps of
Delaney's
Play-Doh through the plastic extruder, hoping they'd yield some meaning.

“I will help Delaney pack,” said Adele, who'd come into the room with a pad and a pen, ready to take dinner orders. A judgmental tone crept into her voice. “Last time all she put in her suitcase was stuffed animals and glitter glue and three princess costumes.”

“I remember.” Last time had been in November, when we'd made a pilgrimage to Disney World to celebrate Delaney's fifth birthday. While Jay tried to coax Adele to ride at least one of the roller coasters, I'd taken Delaney for her big present, a session with a stylist at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique. Her “fairy godmother in training,” a heavyset teenager in a blue-and
-w
hite gown and apron combination, had asked, “Did you make your list for Santa yet, princess?” Delaney's nose wrinkled as she considered the question. “I did NOT make a list for Santa,” Delaney finally said, in her sweetly piping voice, “because I am a Jewish princess.” I'd laughed so hard that I'd inhaled some of my soda and Delaney had stared at me in alarm and irritation, demanding to know what was so funny. Later, in our suite at the Polynesian Village, with fireworks blooming outside in the dark and the girls asleep on the bed, Delaney still dressed as Cinderella, with glitter in her hair, and Adele clutching her Mickey Mouse ears, Jay had put his arm around my waist and said, “This is so great.”

Had he been with Amy even then? And what would I do about work? There was only room for one of us at FAS, and I hoped it would be me. I loved my job. Maybe that had been the problem. Defying Jay's wishes, I'd gone back to work after six weeks at home with each of my girls, leaving them with an extremely capable nanny for eight hours a day, and unlike my husband, I'd never learned the trick of leaving my work at the door. Jay would set his briefcase down in the entryway and not utter a word—or, as best I could tell, entertain a thought—about his clients or cases, or his annual performance evaluation, whereas I was always dragging messy stacks of folders into the living room, and leaving my cell phone on in case my clients needed to reach me. I thought that Jay's nonchalance was the byproduct of working at his father's firm. Even if he failed to meet the benchmark for billable hours, even if he screwed up spectacularly and got himself accused of malpractice, as one of the partners once had, he'd never lose his job. I didn't think I'd ever lose mine, either, but I knew that my clients needed me available and at my best. Maybe a son had been arrested; maybe the gas had been shut off; maybe a woman who'd already put in a twelve-hour day needed help finishing her homework for the class she was taking at night.
A woman of valor
, I would think sometimes . . . and when Jay chided me for staying up late or texting one of my ladies when I could have been joining him in whatever he was currently watching, I would tell him that it was important for the girls to see me do my job, to know what I did, to know who I worked with and that not everyone was as privileged as they were.

“What about after?” I asked Nana, who patted my hand reassuringly.

“You'll get through it,” she said, leaving out the part I already knew—
because you're a mother now. Because mothers don't have a choice.

Andy

2014

New York

M
r. Landis?”
Andy's
latest hire, a kid named Paul Martindale, was standing in front of him looking even more nervous than he normally did. Paul was nineteen, a part-time student at CCNY, tall, pimply, and terrified. If a woman asked him where to find the lightbulbs or the paint display or the gardening mulch, he'd look at her like she'd pulled a knife out of her diaper bag, and if a man asked him anything, he'd stammer, “Let me get the manager,” and run.

“Yes, Paul,” Andy said patiently, and wondered, again, whether moving him from the overnight shift to days had been a mistake.

“Phone call for you.”

“I'll be right there,” said Andy, and walked toward his office at the back of the store.

Andy had come to Wallen Home Goods five years ago, not hoping for much but telling himself that he had to start somewhere. Years ago, the home-goods chain had announced a policy of hiring Olympic hopefuls, giving them flexible schedules so they could keep up with their training. Andy hadn't known how they would feel about hiring a disgraced ex-Olympian, but he'd decided it wouldn't be a bad place to try.

His interview had been scheduled for 8:00 in the morning. He'd been in the parking lot at 7:00 a.m., sweating behind the wheel of the sedan that he'd bought for its trunk space and the easy access it offered to the front seats. On weekends he went to Philadelphia and drove Mr. Sills wherever he wanted to go—to junk shops, to bookstores, to church, to visit family and friends. It was Mr. Sills who'd encouraged him to get a job—because, he said, Andy needed purpose, and structure to his days. Routine, respectability, the first step on the road back to not hating himself quite so much.
Andy's
first thought had been coaching, but after he'd written to Roman Catholic and gotten a form-letter rejection, he'd decided that if his alma mater didn't want him, no one would.

“You always were handy,” Mr. Sills had said. Andy had wondered if he could be a superintendent for an apartment complex or even work as a handyman, but then he'd thought of Wallen and imagined a big, anonymous store, different faces every day, not the same small handful of people in a neighborhood or apartment building, who'd have too many questions, and decided to try. They offered benefits, he vaguely remembered, and they had classes there, in plumbing and painting and basic repairs. Maybe someday he'd teach them.

He remembered how hot it had been that morning, the air almost liquid, a heavy soup you had to push through to get anywhere. As he sat behind the wheel, his muscles clenched in a familiar knot, as if he was waiting for a starter's gun that would never go off. His right leg jiggled and jumped; his toes flexed and curled; his fingers were rattling on the dashboard. In spite of the air-conditioning and the liberal application of deodorant, he'd already sweated through his undershirt.

That was just one of the post-scandal adjustments—the new clothes he'd had to buy. Khakis and jeans, shoes that weren't sneakers, shirts that had long sleeves and weren't made of wickable, odor-fighting fabric. On Interview Day, he'd worn Dockers, a white button-down, and the only tie that he'd kept, a heavy red-and-gold silk one from Hermès that Maisie had bought him for a birthday. With the fifteen pounds he'd put on since he had made what would be his final magazine
appearance
—
Newsweek,
six weeks after the revelations, had put the runners on the cover, beneath the single word
DISGRACE
—he no longer had an athlete's leanness. He looked like every other clock-bound couch rider, like a guy who put in maybe three halfhearted days a week at the gym, and who'd get winded after a single turn around a track.

How do you act when you've lost everything?
he'd wondered, walking through the parking lot to the front door. He'd kept his medal, but all of the prizes were gone: the endorsement deals, the pricey restaurants, the fine wines and fancy friends, actors and politicians who liked to collect athletes the same way they collected vintage cars and Impressionist paintings. And Maisie, of course. Maisie used to laugh and roll her eyes at the phrase
trophy girlfriend. So I'm just another one of your things,
she would tease, usually while she was naked, lying on the bed, long, smooth legs stretched out on the duvet cover, hips angled just so. She would act offended, but Andy thought that she enjoyed being the female equivalent of a gold medal.

He wondered what Maisie would make of his Brooklyn apartment, which could fit, in its entirety, into their Manhattan living room; what she'd say about his new clothes, not to mention his new body. He wondered, too, about Rachel—if she'd gotten married, if she was still doing social work, if she'd ever had kids. He'd wanted to see if she would call or write in the wake of the scandal—maybe to sympathize, maybe to gloat—but she hadn't, and he'd never tried to find her, never hunted her down on Facebook or punched her name into Google. He imagined her husband, probably a guy with the right kind of background, upper-middle-class and Jewish, someone who'd make her parents happy. He thought that she would have had children and be good with them, her social-worker training combined with her good instincts and big heart. A happy, normal life. That's what she deserved, and he hoped it was what she'd gotten.

He'd walked into the manager's office holding his résumé, sad thing that it was, trying not to sweat on the paper. In a perverse way, he was proud of it. The résumé was a triumph of creativity, the first fiction he'd ever written. Describing his years as a paperboy, Andy had promoted himself to an “employee of the distribution department of a major news organization.” He had written that he'd been “self-employed as an independent contractor working around the world” for the last ten years, without saying that he'd been a runner, and if the manager asked him about the years between losing that job and applying for this one, Andy would simply say that he'd been a freelance consultant and then shut his mouth and hope that the follow-up question wasn't “Consulting about what?” He'd also have to hope that the manager wouldn't instantly know who he was.

Short answers,
he'd told himself as he walked into the air-conditioning, down an aisle of lawn mowers and hedge trimmers. If Andy was hired, he'd be working the midnight-to-eight shift. Night stocker. The thought made him smile, and think, as jokes sometimes did, of Rachel, who would have laughed.

He found a door labeled
EMPLOYEES ONLY
, pushed through it, found another door with a strip of plastic reading
JACK KINCAID, STORE MANAGER
, and knocked. A voice yelled, “Come on in!” Andy walked into the office and saw a man struggling to get up from an ergonomic desk chair. Jack Kincaid wore steel-rimmed glasses, a dark-blue shirt, pleated khaki pants, and work boots. A pocket protector held half a dozen ballpoint pens, and a cell phone was holstered to his brown leather belt. Toothpick legs floated inside of his pants; spindly arms poked out of the short sleeves of his shirt. Between them was what looked like a giant inflatable sphere, perfectly round and looking as hard as a basketball, bulging at the buttons of the shirt (the bottom two, Andy noted, were unbuttoned, the cloth gaping to reveal a white undershirt).

Mr. Kincaid finally made it to his feet. “Andrew Landis?”

Andy had offered his hand. Jack Kincaid shook it once, gripping hard as he looked at him more closely. Andy tensed his muscles and braced for the inevitable.

“Not
the
Andy Landis, are you? Andy Landis the runner?”

“Yessir,” he said. He hated the servility in his voice, the fresh sweat underneath his arms, the way his body was still wound tight, desperate for motion. “Andy Landis,” he said. “That's me.”

“Well,” said Jack Kincaid. “Well, well, well.” He rocked back on his heels. Given the belly, Andy half expected him to tip onto his back, but Mr. Kincaid, like a Weeble, wobbled but did not fall down. He took a seat, laced his fingers across that formidable gut, and looked Andy over, from the top of his head to his feet, encased in blameless brown loafers from the Hecht's in Cherry Hill, where he'd taken Mr. Sills to buy clothes for his newest grandnephew.

Andy waited for
Lo, how the mighty have fallen.
He waited for
Crime doesn't pay
or
Actions have consequences
or
Serves you right.
He waited for the man to tell him to get the hell out of his office and never darken the door of a Wallen Home Goods ever again.

Jack Kincaid finally spoke. “Need a job, huh?”

Andy nodded and sweated.

“Didn't save any of that PowerUp money?”

“I paid my sponsors back, as much as I could.”

Jack Kincaid went quiet, pausing for what felt like forever. The office was small and airless, a concrete cube lit by fluorescent tubes, with a metal desk, cinder-block walls, and a plain office calendar thumbtacked to a bulletin board on one wall. On the desk, Andy saw family photographs—Jack Kincaid with his wife, adults who Andy supposed were his children, and little kids who had to be grandchildren.

“You have a beautiful family,” Andy said.

“Got any kids?” the other man asked.

Andy shook his head.

“You and your wife break up?”

Another nod. No sense correcting the man, telling him that Maisie had never been his wife. The news of their split had appeared in
People
magazine. Maisie had posed for a picture, barefoot in a lacy white sundress.
Running Free,
read the headline. The piece had been a roundup about the wives and families of the Athens Nine. The quote that Maisie had given, printed in big letters, read,
Andy Landis wasn't the man I thought he was.

Kincaid picked up
Andy's
résumé and flapped it in the air a few times. “You're overqualified.” He gave a dry, chuffing laugh. “Hell, probably a monkey would be overqualified for this. It's midnight to eight in the morning. You'll run a flat-loader and a forklift. Break down boxes, build endcaps, get contractors' orders ready to go. Dust the stuff on the high shelves, dry-mop the floors, recycle the cardboard, clean the restrooms, make sure everything's shipshape in the morning. No customers.” He considered, giving the hard mound of his belly an affectionate pat. “Probably that's for the best. It's minimum wage, and I can't offer more, so don't ask. You don't have any injuries, do you? Back's okay?”

Andy shook his head. “No injuries.” His back was fine. He'd had three operations on his right knee, but that, too, was fine, at least for work like this.

“We drug test, you know. Probably not for the stuff you were doing—we don't have many clerks on steroids—but everything else. Booze, too. Don't even think about showing up loaded.”

“I don't drink.” This was another part of the mythology that the publicists had cultivated: Andy Landis as a clean-cut, square-jawed, All-American boy who wouldn't celebrate a victory with so much as a beer. That, of course, had only added to the irony when it turned out the all-American boy was a doper. Kincaid gave him a dubious look before folding the résumé in half, then in quarters, and setting it in the middle of the empty blotter at the center of his desk.

“I believe in second chances,” he said. “Show up on time, do your work, don't make any trouble.”

“I can do all that,” said Andy, and backed out of the office before Jack Kincaid could change his mind.

•••

On his first night, Andy met the two men whom he'd go on to work with for years. There was Martin, a skinny black guy in his twenties who talked nonstop, and Arturo, who was middle-aged and Mexican and barely spoke at all. Martin had a carefully tended puff of an Afro and wore jeans that drooped low enough to display six inches of blinding-white boxer-briefs. Arturo wore jeans, too, only his were stiff and new-looking, cinched with a leather belt with a giant buckle that, per its engraving, he'd won riding bulls.

“Hey, man, welcome,” said Martin, and Arturo lifted a hand and gave a quiet “Hello.” Andy had introduced himself, and they'd gone right to work restocking the garden center, two hours of lifting fifty-pound sacks of mulch and peat moss. Martin plugged in his earbuds, bobbed his head, and chanted rap lyrics under his breath. Arturo, too, had an iPod, but he hadn't turned the volume up enough so that Andy could hear what he was playing. They didn't talk much, other than the necessary exchanges about when it was time to wheel over another pallet of bags, until 3:00 a.m., when they stopped to eat.

There was, as Mr. Kincaid had promised, a break room in the back of the cavernous store, with a microwave, a machine that sold sodas and another that sold snacks, four round tables with folding chairs, and a refrigerator where they could keep what they'd brought from home. Martin went to the fridge and pulled out a plastic bag from 7-Eleven filled with half a dozen Slim Jims, a box of Nutter Butter cookies, a quart of Pepsi, and a bag of Funyuns, which Andy hadn't seen since the 1980s and didn't realize people were still eating. Arturo walked to the front of the store, unlocked the doors, and came back with a thermos full of steaming coffee and two cardboard trays loaded with enough food for half a dozen men. “Please,” he said, offering Andy the trays. Andy saw stacks of foil-wrapped tortillas, containers of beans and rice and garlicky pork and chicken in a rich-smelling brown sauce, guacamole and salsa with chunks of pineapple and cilantro. It all smelled amazing, but he had packed himself a pair of clumsy peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches, a bag of baby carrots, an apple, and two bottles of PowerUp. “I'm okay,” he said.

Arturo then offered the trays to Martin.

“You know this stuff gonna give me the runs.” Martin shook his head, then selected a tortilla and layered on cheese and beans and spicy pork.