Wishful Thinking (18 page)

Once she had finished recording her voice memos for the day, Jennifer checked the time: 7:55 p.m. She rose from her chair, stretching, and headed to the stairs. Time to go back in time, where she would meet Melissa and the boys, go to guitar with Julien, and then rendezvous with Melissa and Jack at Vinita’s house for her weekly checkup and dinner. (Jennifer had told Vinita she’d managed to get Bill to let her out of work early on Fridays, given how late she stayed every other night. Another white lie.) She walked into the secret bathroom and shut the door behind her. Holding her phone in her right hand and waiting, she could not help but wonder, as she often did,
What if I dropped my phone in the toilet right now? What if I let the wormhole come and go?
And then she reminded herself that
there could be no what-ifs. She had already done it. She had already been at Vinita’s house, had already undergone her examination, including that painful poke to the ear. She couldn’t
not
go. But how could it be that she didn’t have a choice?

“‘The only solutions to the laws of physics that can occur locally in the real universe,’” Dr. Sexton had intoned, quoting a paper by somebody named Novikov when Jennifer had posed just such a question, “‘are those which are globally self-consistent.’” At the time Jennifer had only half listened to what Dr. Sexton had said. But when she’d returned to the office after the visit with Amalia (Alicia, very sensibly, had headed straight home from the towers), and after Tim and Bill had left for the day, Jennifer had tried to find a YouTube video explaining it. Unfortunately, searching for
Novikov self-consistency principle
had yielded nothing but two teenagers pretending to be physicists in the hallway of their high school, doing cartoonish Russian accents and referencing
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
. As she contemplated the concept of free will from her seat on the counter of the bathroom sink, however, the clock struck eight, and there it was again: the yawning wormhole, the atomic squeezing, the coming to. Today her destination was the broom closet of the West End School for Music and Art, a sentimental favorite as her first Wishful Thinking destination ever. She had the coordinates down pat, though occasionally somebody stored a mop bucket in a new place and she ended up with her foot in it. This arrival, however, went smoothly, and, after making sure the coast was clear, Jennifer slipped through the door and into the hallway outside.

As always, she had to walk into the waiting area in the front of the school as though there was nothing unusual about her being in a building without ever having entered its front door. Nobody ever seemed to notice, but Jennifer still fretted
over it. Slipping her earbuds into her ears, she took a seat on a pale green bench by the window and leaned her forehead against the icy-cold glass. She pulled up the voice memo she had recorded yesterday and pushed
PLAY
. “You promised Jack you would take him for frozen yogurt. Pay Melissa back for the pizza she bought Monday. Julien needs a long-sleeved black T-shirt for a project at school. Caroline told you her best friend from high school has skin cancer.” Jennifer couldn’t believe she had to record things like the last one. But she’d learned from her mistakes: with her mind so overloaded, she had completely forgotten one mother’s tearful confession that she and her husband were taking a “break” (as a known Divorced Mom, Jennifer was on the receiving end of a lot of those), and the next day at drop-off, when Jennifer had received a mournful shrug in response to her perfunctory “How are you?” she had blithely asked, “Is something wrong?” causing the woman to shoot her a look of wounded incredulity.

When the list ended, Jennifer pulled out the earbuds and took a moment to sit in silence, soothed by the everyday kid traffic around her. Outside, the air was gray and dense with the heavy portent of snow—which would begin to fall, Jennifer happened to know, in about an hour. She did her best to ignore all happenings in the outside world until she was on her second and last version of a particular day, but she could not tune out the weather, and in truth she loved being able to bundle up her children, or provide an umbrella, at just the right moment. It felt like the all-knowing, mother-as-god kind of thing she had never been able to pull off before.

She had a good view of the sidewalk and within minutes spotted Melissa, Jack, and Julien as they turned the corner, holding hands as they headed west on Warren Street. As she rose from her seat, her boys in her sights, everything felt right again, the worries of the day gone. Jack broke into a run,
despite Melissa’s protests, and Julien couldn’t help grinning at the sight of her standing in the window. As she waved and waited, she reveled in the unabashed expressions of adoration she knew her boys would outgrow before she ever tired of them. She opened the door for them and then knelt down to wrap her arms around Jack’s puffy-jacketed body, pressing his pink, frosty fingers against her cheek. Julien hung back a little, guitar case in hand, but when Jennifer stood he went for her waist, sliding an arm around it and pressing his face against her belly.

“I feel like I haven’t seen you guys
all day
!” Jennifer said.

“You saw us at breakfast!” Julien cried.

“I know,” she said. It had been all day for her, of course. It was her private joke to herself.

“He-
llo
, Mama,” Jack said carefully, emphasizing the
l
he had finally found after weeks of painstaking work with Jennifer and the speech therapist. Though she hated to admit it, it made a difference for her to do it with him, rather than Melissa (she did not like to think that before the app, she’d been failing him), especially because she’d been able to work with him one-on-one.

Jennifer greeted Melissa, giving her a quick squeeze. She had been easy to forgive once Jennifer had achieved super-woman status, and, she also reasoned, Norman had probably put Melissa on the spot anyway. After a few minutes chatting about the day’s logistics (they were all to meet at Vinita’s place at five), Melissa and Jack left to go to the library, and Jennifer and Julien headed for the practice rooms downstairs. Owen wasn’t there yet, but he would be soon. At the thought of his arrival, a different kind of anticipation gave her heart a little jolt.

It had taken a few weeks after her promise, delivered so sincerely at Julien’s recital, for her to come to a guitar lesson.
But when she’d walked into the practice room for the first time a little more than a month ago, so nervous that her eyes had darted between Owen, Julien, and the floor, she’d known immediately that the surge of electricity she’d felt when Owen touched her shoulder the day of Julien’s recital had not been a fluke. It was obvious in an instant, that rare surge of warmth and recognition between two people who hardly know each other, the way they smiled an extra beat before looking away, the way their bodies practically shot out crackling zaps every time they came into each other’s orbit. It was the kind of chemistry that doesn’t grow over time but is (or isn’t) there from the beginning. Jennifer couldn’t help but wonder if it had ever been there with Norman. It was so hard to say. Her attraction to Norman was a memory now, buried under years of animosity, and even that negative passion had since faded into neutrality, spiked only occasionally by moments of sharp distaste.

As Jennifer and Julien waited in the practice room for Owen to arrive, Jennifer’s thoughts went back again to that first day. The practice rooms at the West End School were cramped, and Owen, she remembered, had gone to a lot of trouble to find an extra folding chair so Jennifer could sit with them, rather than wait upstairs. When Jennifer had sat down, her chair had been so close to Owen’s their knees had almost touched. And toward the end of the lesson, as Jennifer had watched Owen taking Julien through a new song, observing the respectful way he listened when Julien talked and his gentleness as he guided Julien’s small, pale fingers on the frets with his own huge, callused ones, her knees had knocked against the music stand, sending the guitar book sliding onto the floor. They’d both gone to pick it up, and his wrist had grazed the back of her hand. It was the first time they’d touched since the recital, and even though the moment of
contact was over almost before it had begun, the current that had leaped from his body to hers had been so strong that the rush of blood she’d felt, from her cheeks to her toes, had nearly taken her breath away.

Pulling away, she’d let Owen pick up the book. He’d tried to make eye contact with her as he did, but she’d looked away. Owen was Julien’s guitar teacher, she’d admonished herself. For a few years, in fact, Owen had been one of the few stable men in Julien’s life. Surely she possessed enough self-control not to mess up such a good thing! Since that first lesson, five weeks before, Jennifer had managed to avoid any further physical contact. Fridays with Owen, she had resolved, were a weekly treat and nothing more. But as her attraction—and his, she thought, she hoped?—grew, it was getting harder and harder to ignore.

T
ODAY
O
WEN WALKED IN
a few minutes past their regular start time, with a little duck of his head to avoid hitting the door frame. “Hey,” he said. “So sorry, the train.” He was wearing a worn-out-looking baseball cap, which he removed as soon as he sat down. Jennifer loved that he was not wearing, nor had she ever seen him wear, one of those limp ski hats drooping off the back of his head just so, the kind that New York hipster dudes wore even in the summertime. Owen was a grown-up, not a little boy showing off for his friends, or so it seemed, anyway. These past few weeks her reserve had been such that she’d learned nothing personal about him except that he was from Austin (he’d worn an Austin City Limits shirt one day), an origin that explained some of the unhurried friendliness she found in his eyes. He took his guitar—dark red, solid-bodied, and glossy with good care—out of its worn black case.

“Has it started snowing yet?” Jennifer couldn’t help asking.

“No,” he laughed, “but you are definitely my best source on the weather. I can’t believe you called that rainstorm last Friday! Out of nowhere!”

Jennifer smiled. The boys weren’t the only ones she played her weather trick on.

“So, how are you?” Owen said. He looked right into her eyes when he asked, seeming to want to hold her there for a minute while Julien took out his guitar. There was something different about him today, she thought. A little nervousness. A little question. Was it a question for her?

“Good,” she said cheerily, holding his gaze. “You?”

Julien plugged into the amp and hit an ear-splittingly loud G chord. “I wrote a song!” Julien said. “It’s called ‘T. Rexes Have Bad Breath.’”

“Let’s hear it!” Owen laughed.

They got started. The lesson was going well, as always, when right in the middle, Julien, who had been squirming since he’d sat down, despite strenuously denying having to go to the bathroom, confessed his need. Owen, laughing, grabbed Julien’s guitar. “Go, little man!” he said. “We’ll be here when you get back.”

As Julien walked out the door, Jennifer surreptitiously ran her hands through her hair. She had touched up her makeup, at least, before diving into the wormhole, and was wearing black leggings and a long gray sweater: not bad. Her legs looked good in tights. But
Owen’s
legs. Oh my. Owen was so tall that when he sat on the piano bench, his knees were higher than his ass. And those white creases around the seams of his jeans, running along his thighs, his quad muscles filling up the denim till it was tight …

“Julien is doing so well,” Owen said, smiling. “I showed a video of him to a friend the other day. I hope that’s okay,” he said quickly. “I wouldn’t show it to a lot of people. But the way
he concentrates! He’s such a natural.” Jennifer smiled back. It was almost sad how much she loved hearing this from another adult, how much she missed being able to talk with somebody else who appreciated her children, who gave her the slightest opportunity to say out loud how wonderful they were, to tell the little stories only parents have patience for. Her mother had been that person for her after Norman wasn’t anymore, and now it was Melissa, but it wasn’t the same.

“Do you think so?” she gushed. “He’s really into it right now. He woke me up the other morning, playing.” Better not to go on too much, she thought. “He used to cry when I sang to him when he was a baby,” she added. “That’s how I knew he was musical. I’m a totally terrible singer.”

“Oh, I bet that isn’t true,” Owen said warmly. “Anyone can sing. You might not end up being the
best
singer or anything, but you could do it.” He was looking at her again. Really looking at her. Her forearm erupted in goose bumps. “I sing with my band,” he said. “Just harmonies, but I had to get over my fear of it. It can be really hard if you’re shy.”

Owen was shy. Jennifer was just thinking how cute this was when she registered the other part: Owen was in a band. Of course. A grown man in his forties, teaching music to third graders and singing in a band. Jennifer felt her heart sink. She couldn’t help thinking of Norman. Actor, artist, lost boy, and now teacher. Was Owen Norman all over again? Everything told her no, but … guys in their mid-forties who were in bands and who had never been married? Major red flag.

“Have you ever been married?” Jennifer burst out, to her immediate regret. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I even asked you that,” she said quickly. “I wonder where Julien could be.” She looked at the door, trying to conceal the rip-roaring blush that had overtaken her face.

“It’s okay,” he said. “And yes, I have. But not anymore.”

“Me too,” Jennifer said. “I mean, me neither. I mean, I’m divorced too. You know what I mean.”

“I do,” Owen said. “Know what you mean, I mean.” They laughed, then were silent. Owen was about to say something else, when Julien walked back inside. She didn’t know whether to be grateful or relieved that he hadn’t.

For the second half of the thirty-minute lesson, Owen put the book away, as he always did. It was time for Julien to work on his “fun” piece—Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here.” After a few tries, Julien mastered the opening lines. He was just starting to work on a complicated chord when Owen looked at the time. It was almost four. “Maybe I can record my playing it?” he said. “So Julien can practice at home?” He took out his phone. He’d done this before: recorded an audio file and emailed it to her. But today Jennifer had a better idea.