Tapestry of Fortunes A Novel

THE NEXT AFTERNOON, I FIND A STACK OF MAIL ON THE WELCOME mat. Our neighbor had been keeping it for us; she must have seen that I’m home. It’s the usual assortment of junk mail, junk mail designed not to look like junk mail, and bills. But then I spy a postcard, addressed to me, a picture of a Métro stop in Paris. On the back, these lines in his customary black ink:

Well, croissants and cobblestones and lace curtains and breathtaking beauty almost everywhere you turn. I’ve been assigned a couple more things to shoot, shouldn’t take more than a day or two if the weather holds. And then you know what comes next. More or less.

À bientôt.

I put the postcard in my purse and head over to the Arms. I’m really looking forward to seeing Michael again.

Annie is with someone when I arrive, and I wait for her for a while, then decide to go up to Michael’s room. The door is closed, and I knock softly. It is opened by Phoebe, and what I see in the room behind her takes my breath away. There are long pieces of sheer white fabric tacked up on the walls, which makes for a softening effect, an ethereal effect, and there are candles everywhere. It’s a cliché by now, an overabundance of candles, but here it just seems right. They are white candles, all the same size, and they are all lit already, though the ceremony is twenty-five minutes away. Phoebe puts her finger to her lips: I can see that, behind her, Michael is sleeping. She points to the hallway and I follow her out there.

“I’m so glad you came,” she says. In the light of the hallway, I can see better the simple but very pretty long dress she is wearing, white lace, sleeveless; and she has flowers in her hair. My eyes fill with tears and she takes my arm and says, “Don’t cry, or I will,” and I get hold of myself immediately.

“How are you?” Phoebe says, and I say, “How are you?”

She takes a big breath in, shakes her head, and smiles. “There’s so much.”

I say nothing, wait.

“I … Did you hear that I’m pregnant?”

“Yes, Annie told me. I hope that was okay.”

“It’s fine. I love that I’m pregnant. I’m so happy I’m pregnant. It’s something Michael and I had agreed upon, that we’d use artificial insemination; he donated sperm before he started his treatment, we did all the paperwork and signed all the forms so we’d be all set whenever we decided the time was right. And I went for the appointment we’d made two days after we came apart. I couldn’t reach Michael to see if it was still okay with him; he wouldn’t talk to me. So I just did it on my own. I figured I’d give it one try, and if it worked, it was meant to be.”

“How is he?” I ask.

She looks over at me. “Maybe a week. When he’s awake, we talk. It means everything. When I kept trying to see him, it was because I wanted him to know about the baby, yes, but mostly I just wanted to talk to him. Talking to Michael has always felt to me like … like being held. I knew as soon as I met him that he was the one for me. I knew it right away. And so did he. We moved in together two weeks after we met. Everyone said we shouldn’t, but I’m so glad we did.”

She looks at her watch. “It’s almost time. Would you go and see if the minister is there? I just want a minute alone.”

“Of course.” I go into Michael’s room and find both the minister and Annie with him. Michael looks like he has just woken up.

“Hey,” he says, smiling. “You want to be my best man?”

“Absolutely.”

I stand by Michael’s side and I watch his face as Phoebe comes in, watch him as the minister says the few brief things he has to say: True love’s fullness is not bound or measured by time; we are here to bear witness to an occasion of joy, et cetera, et cetera. I watch Michael slide a thin gold band onto Phoebe’s finger and watch her slide a matching band onto his. It’s too big for him, I can tell, but it will stay on. I stand back as Phoebe gently kisses his mouth, then his cheek, then his forehead, then his mouth again, weeping, smiling, and then I look away because I can’t look anymore, it’s like staring into the sun.





IN THE MORNING, THE MAIL ARRIVES EARLY. I REACH INTO THE box and find another postcard from Dennis. This one, still postmarked Paris but with no date, says:

Late flight out of Paris in a few days. Can’t quite imagine what it will be like to see you again. Not for lack of trying.

I read the message again. Flight to where? Cleveland? Minneapolis? When the phone rings, I answer excitedly. It couldn’t be him yet, could it?

“What are you doing?” Joni asks.

So it’s not him saying, “I’m at the airport; come and get me.”

“Making breakfast.”

“We just had breakfast—at a spa! It was a such a beautiful breakfast I photographed it. Lemon ricotta pancakes, very light, with blackberries and strawberries and boysenberry syrup and edible flowers, too.”

“Lovely.”

“We miss you. Fly out here, and we’ll drive back together.”

“No, I … I’m going to stay here now. I got a postcard from Dennis. I think he’s coming here.”

“When?!”

“I don’t know. He sent a postcard but didn’t specify dates. So how’s Renie doing at a spa? She told me she hates spas.”

She laughs. “Not anymore! She got a hot stone massage yesterday. I think she has a crush on Loni, one of the masseuses. Well, we all do. Later today, we’re going to the Pool of Rising Consciousness, and then we’re going to get a seaweed wrap, and tonight it’s candlelight yoga.”

“Oh? Well, I’ll be cleaning the house later, so you’re not the only one who knows how to have fun.”

“How was the wedding, Cece?”

“It was beautiful.”

She waits, but I don’t want to say more.

“Listen,” she says. “We’re going to stay another day here and then start back. So look for us in … maybe three or four days? If Dennis comes, hang a flag outside if we need not to come in.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m serious. Oh, and guess what. Lise called Steve and he might be coming to see her soon. They’ve been talking and talking. Okay, I have to go. We miss you, we love you, we’ll see you soon!”


THE NEXT MORNING, I put on a Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys CD, change into an old black T-shirt and jeans, put a bandanna over my hair, and go out into the garden. The crew I hired to help me did a fabulous job: I love the blue delphinium next to the sea of lavender. Wildflowers surround the flattened boulder I thought would be good for sitting on to meditate, or just sitting on, period. I work the soil a little, stake up some of the taller plants, do a little deadheading. It’s a warm morning, in the eighties, and I can soon feel sunburn starting on my cheeks, across my nose.

It’s beautiful out here. Just as good as your other garden.

“It will be. It needs more time.”

I love the daisies.

“I put them in for you.”

I know.

“Do you know?”

Nothing.

“Penny?”

I work for another hour or so, then sit down on the top front porch step to think about whether I might want to go to a movie tonight. I’m just about to go inside to see what’s playing when a car pulls up to the curb. I watch as the man in the car sits still for a minute, then opens the door and gets out.

Dennis.

I yank the bandanna off my hair, fold my hands tightly together in my lap. As advertised, he’s missing most of his hair. But there are those eyes.

I watch him come toward me and everything in me goes quiet. I feel like a stopped clock.

Just before he reaches me, I stand up.

But he sits down and stretches his long legs out before him. He’s wearing a blue-and-white-striped dress shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms, faded jeans, and black cowboy boots. He stares straight ahead to say, “I thought I’d shine my boots before I ask you to go dancing, but I’m going to have to ask you for the polish.”

I sit down beside him and I can see the tension in his jaw. And at that moment, all my own fear goes away. I am his lover and his sister and his mother and his brother and his friend. I couldn’t look worse and it couldn’t matter less. All that matters is here we are. I say, “I’ve got polish. The rest, you don’t have to ask for.”

He smiles then.

We sit out there talking until there’s a red sun hanging low in the sky. Then I take his hand and pull him up. There are eggs we can fry for supper. After that, I’ll take a bath. And we’ll see.

After he comes into the front hall with me, I say, “How about if we—”

“Yes,” he says.


I COME INTO MY bedroom from my bath with a towel wrapped around me. Dennis is sitting at my desk, reading a book I keep on my nightstand, letters van Gogh wrote to his brother. “Listen to this,” he says. And he reads me a quote: “I have a terrible need of—shall I say the word?—religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.”

I nod, my throat tight, my heart full.

He turns off the overhead, and in the light of the moon, he takes his clothes off. And then he opens his arms and says, “This is how I was born.”

I drop my towel.

He comes over to me and starts to lift me up—that same romantic, sweeping gesture—and drops me. We both fall to the floor, laughing.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“I’m fine,” I say, still laughing. “Are you?”

He puts my face between his hands and kisses me so sweetly I’m glad I’ve already fallen down.

Then he takes my hand and pulls me up and leads me to the bed. I’d thought, Never again, but I am so spectacularly wrong.





TWO DAYS LATER, I BRING DENNIS TO MY MOTHER’S FOR BREAKFAST. I’d called and asked her if I might bring someone along for her to meet.

“Oh God, the hippie?” she asked.

“His name is Dennis, Mom. He’s a photographer.”

“Oh, my. He’s back in town.”

“I think you might like him if you give him half a chance.”

“Well, do you think he could take a photo of me and Early Nelson?”

“Sure. What for?”

She doesn’t answer.

“What for, Mom?”

“Now, we’re just talking about it. But this way we won’t have to pay someone on the day.”

When we arrive and she opens the door, my mother gives Dennis a big smile, then a hug. “Well!” she says. “You turned out just fine!”

“Thank you,” he says. “So did you.”

She comes out into the hall with us, speaks quietly. “I want you two to meet Early. Don’t say anything about our getting married, though. We agreed that we would give each other time to think. We’ve agreed on forty-eight hours.”

“That’s not much time,” I say, laughing.

“We haven’t got much time,” she says, not laughing at all.

She turns to Dennis. “Honestly, though. Didn’t you turn out just fine. You know, I have to tell you, I thought you’d still have that long hair.”

“Wish I still did, I could paste some up on top,” he says.

She opens the door wider, calls out “Early? Sweetheart?” and it doesn’t bother me at all. She calls Early “sweetheart,” and I imagine my father smiling.


DENNIS AND I have just come back from grocery shopping when the phone rings. I answer it expecting it to be my roommates; I’m going to share with them the news that Dennis has arrived. But it’s not them; it’s Annie. As soon as I hear her voice, I know.

“Was Phoebe with him?” I ask.

“Yes. It was very peaceful.”

I swallow, start to cry, and I think, I hate this. I hate this yin-yang life that is always pulling the rug out from beneath your feet. I feel an odd rush of heat coming up my back and into my neck.

Dennis stops unpacking the grocery bags and comes to stand beside me.

He knows about Michael. He knows about how I want to continue to volunteer at the Arms. But now I tell him, “I’m not going there anymore. I’ve had enough. I’m not setting myself up for any more of this.”

He says nothing, which I think means he’s thinking the same thing I am: Yes, you will.

“It’s so unfair!” I say, and what can he say to that? It’s true.

Once, after one of my more bitter breakups, I sat slumped on my sofa with a pile of sodden Kleenex at my feet. It was three in the afternoon and I was still in my pajamas. Penny was trying to console me. “What’s the point in loving anything when it will just change or be taken away?” I asked. And she said, “The point in loving is only that. And when you lose something, you have to remember that then there is room for the next thing. And there is always a next thing, Cece. I wish you would believe me.”


LATE THAT NIGHT, I’m out sitting on the boulder in the garden. I’m thinking about a story I once heard about a woman who was told by a psychic that her death would be by water. The woman packed up and moved to the desert: no chance of drowning there! Instead, she ran out of water and died of thirst.

What good does it do to try to be master of your fate if it’s the other way around?

And now I think of Penny, of the times since she died when I’ve felt so sure that she was near. It’s not always hearing her voice, sometimes it’s only a sense of something, as though she has just brushed by me or just left a room I’ve entered. How much of that is real and how much is just something you want so much you make yourself believe it’s true? I don’t know. If you asked my mother if those we’ve lost are still among us, she’d be as matter-of-factly sure of it as she is about the price of coffee. Once I said, “Well, if that’s true, why doesn’t everyone have the experience?”

“The dead don’t come if they’re not welcome,” she said. “Not everyone wants to experience such a thing. Not everyone can handle it. Also they don’t come if your reasons are suspect. And believe me, they know.”

The morning after Dennis arrived, I was standing at the bathroom mirror and Penny came.

Good for you.

“Do you like him?” I asked my own image, and in my own eyes I saw her swirling around and around, her head back, something she called her happy dance. Then she stopped and leaned in very close to me, and I could see the gold flecks in her brown eyes, I could see them again.

Still. What good is it to believe in any kind of afterlife in the absence of hard evidence?

Oh, come on. Hard evidence is overrated.

I look up and smile, as though she might be standing there before me.

The best things in life have no hard evidence to support them. Hope. Faith. Love.

“I suppose that’s true.”

What are you doing out here all alone?

“I’m trying to figure things out. Help me.”

I think you’re doing fine on your own.

I hear the screen door bang shut and here comes Dennis, moving toward me in the darkness.

He says nothing, just sits next to me.

After a while, I say, “What do you make of death?”

He shrugs. “I think people see death as the hunter, but it’s just the ticket taker, the timekeeper. It’s the sound of a record playing in the background.”

I nod. Then I say, “Maybe it’s also there to remind us to do what we ought to.”

“And what should you do, Cece?”

“Be here. Give more.”

“What else?”

“I don’t know. What do you think? What else should I do?”

“Be with me? Finally?”

I feel myself starting to cry and I put my hands over my face. He puts his arm around me and rocks me side to side, slowly, gently.

I think about the fortune Cosmina gave me, so long ago, which I have never forgotten: Your task will be to learn in what direction to look for life’s greatest riches. I take my hands away from my face and look into his.

Fate is a part of our lives. Another part is choice. But the biggest part is the mystery, the great unknowable, about which we feel so many things, including joy.





IT’S BEEN A LITTLE OVER A YEAR SINCE I GOT THE POSTCARD from Dennis that inspired the road trip. Dennis and I are living in a coach house behind a big old house near Lake of the Isles, and it’s full only of the things we really love and use.

A lot of people worry about how a new relationship between older people can work when those people are so set in their ways, as they say. At least for now, I can report that it works beautifully: the only fight we’ve had of any note occurred during a vacation we took right after we moved in together, and like most spectacular fights, it was about something stupid, I can’t even remember what. We’d gone to Rockport, Massachusetts, which is an artists’ colony; I thought we’d both like it there. And we did, we had a wonderful time, except for the day we so bitterly argued. I think we were both just scared about having moved in together, thinking, What in the hell have I done?

We went our separate ways that day. I walked for miles along the ocean, and as the sun was beginning to set, I went back into town to eat some dinner. I went into a small restaurant on Bearskin Neck with a wooden sign proclaiming that the very best clam chowder in the world was served there. When I walked in the door, I saw Dennis sitting alone at a table, bent over his dinner. He didn’t see me until I was upon him, until I tapped his shoulder. When he looked up, I said nothing. He gestured to the chair opposite him, and I sat down. “I’ll give you a bite, and you can decide for yourself,” he said, holding out a spoonful of the chowder.

“I’ve already decided,” I said, and he gave me one of his famous penetrating gazes and said, “Yeah. Me, too. I decided a long time ago.”

This morning, in a chatty reverie, I told Penny about something Dennis said to me the other day. We were talking about photography and he said, “The greatest understanding of a thing is when you can’t reduce it any further.” For me, those words reverberated in so many directions at once.

We’re hosting a potluck dinner tonight, Dennis and I. We’re eating outside under the maple trees, at a long wooden table covered with a few of my sturdier quilts, set on point. When I first laid them out and stepped back to see how they looked, it was like seeing a row of people waiting for a show to start: sitting up straight, happily expectant, chatting quietly among themselves. I’d put out vases of peonies and roses, a candelabra. Now it’s time to light the candles against the gathering dusk.

I go inside to the kitchen, for matches.

In the gloaming. We always liked that phrase.

“We always liked that time of day, the golden hour.”

Yes, we liked how the colors changed, how they always seemed their richest selves, then.

I hear a burst of laughter and look out the window at the crowd of people, all so dear to me. There’s Lise and Joni and Renie and their new roommate, Paula Martinez, a stained-glass artist. Phoebe and baby Michael, who is my godson. Marianne Florin, a young woman who teaches photography with Dennis, and Jeanne Murphy, a woman with whom I work at the Arms. We’ve become very good friends, we are each other’s go-to girls. My mother is there with my stepdad; they’re seated at the head of the table, and I’m sure it’s a story my mother told that precipitated that laughter. She overdressed for the occasion in a flouncy turquoise chiffon blouse and white linen slacks and silver sandals, but I have to say she looks absolutely beautiful. There was a time when she appeared for a moment to choke on something, and Early laid his hand on her back, and looked over at her. She nodded, I’m okay, and he nodded back, and I thought my father was right to suggest she avail herself once more of the comfort of having someone to watch over her, and of watching over someone in return.

Dennis is out there, too, of course, charming the dickens out of everyone.

In the drawer, I find some matches. They’re from Fabulous Fern’s, a restaurant Penny and I loved. I put them in my pocket with misplaced tenderness.

I used to talk to Penny about a certain kind of discontent I was having in my work. I believed I was doing exactly what I wanted; yet there was something missing, there was always something missing. On a hot day in the last summer we had together, we sat on my porch drinking lemonade, the box of fortunes open, the contents spread out all over the table. I was searching for something I couldn’t name, and on this day everything that I consulted offered me exactly nothing.

“Well, look,” Penny said. “Maybe your message is off point. What is it that you really want to say? What are you just dying to tell other people? It has to be honest in order for it to really work. It has to be urgent.”

I shrugged. I had no answer.

Now I look again at the people gathered in my backyard, feeling a deep appreciation for the events that brought us all together. We are a convergence of fates, a tapestry of fortunes in colors both somber and bright, each contributing equally to the Whole.

I see how the corner of the Compass quilt lifts in the breeze and resettles itself. How, beneath the long table, you can see Riley sleeping. How people have slipped their shoes off, the better to feel the grass between their toes. How baby Michael, his blue eyes wide, has used his palm to plaster banana in the general vicinity of his mouth. How the blush of the peaches looks against the green of the bowl and how the blackened red peppers laid out on a white oval platter glisten with oil. How the tree branches filter light into an unduplicatable pattern. How a solitary lightning bug has appeared to illuminate the base of a bellflower. How plates have been emptied and filled, emptied again and filled again, and how there is still more.

This is what I want to say. This is what I want to tell. But there are no words for it. There is just the tightening of hands, the spread of an odd pressure across the chest. There is just hope.

And faith.

And love.

“Cece?” Dennis calls.

“See you,” I tell her.

I go out.





BY

ELIZABETH BERG

Tapestry of Fortunes

Once Upon a Time, There Was You

The Last Time I Saw You

Home Safe

The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted:

And Other Small Acts of Liberation

Dream When You’re Feeling Blue

The Handmaid and the Carpenter

We Are All Welcome Here

The Year of Pleasures

The Art of Mending

Say When

True to Form

Ordinary Life: Stories

Never Change

Open House

Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True

Until the Real Thing Comes Along

What We Keep

Joy School

The Pull of the Moon

Range of Motion

Talk Before Sleep

Durable Goods

Family Traditions





ABOUT THE AUTHOR




ELIZABETH BERG is the author of many bestselling novels, including The Last Time I Saw You, Home Safe, The Year of Pleasures, and Dream When You’re Feeling Blue, as well as two collections of short stories and two works of nonfiction. Open House was an Oprah’s Book Club selection, Durable Goods and Joy School were selected as ALA Best Books of the Year, Talk Before Sleep was short-listed for an Abby Award, and The Pull of the Moon was adapted into a play. Berg has been honored by both the Boston Public Library and the Chicago Public Library and is a popular speaker at venues around the country. Her work has been translated into twenty-seven languages. She divides her time between San Francisco and Chicago.



Prologue


You know before you know, of course. You are bending over the dryer, pulling out the still-warm sheets, and the knowledge walks up your backbone. You stare at the man you love and you are staring at nothing: he is gone before he is gone.

The last time I tried to talk to David was a couple of weeks ago. We were in the family room—David in his leather recliner, me stretched out on the sofa. Travis was asleep—he’d had his eleventh birthday party that afternoon, the usual free-for-all, and had fallen into bed exhausted. The television was on, but neither of us was watching it—David was reading the newspaper and I was rehearsing.

Finally, “David?” I said.

He looked up.

I said, “You know, you’re right in saying we have some serious problems. But there are so many reasons to try to work things out.” I hoped my voice was pleasant and light. I hoped my hair wasn’t sticking up or that my nose didn’t look too big and that I didn’t look fat when I sat up a bit to adjust the pillow.

“I was wondering,” I said, “if you would be willing to go to see someone with me, just once. A marriage counselor. I really think—”

“Samantha.” He said.

And I said, “Okay.”

He returned to the paper, and I returned to lying on the sofa, to falling down an elevator shaft. There were certain things I could not think about but kept thinking about anyway: how to tell the people I’d have to tell. How lonely the nights would be (that was a very long elevator shaft). How I believed so hard and for so long that we would be able to overcome everything, and now I would have to admit that we could not. How wrenching it is when the question you want to ask is "Why don't you want me?" but you cannot ask it and yet you do not ask—or talk about—anything else.

“David?” I said again, but this time he did not look up.





1


I dress to bring in the morning paper. The new me. I once read that Martha Stewart never wears a bathrobe. Not that I like Martha Stewart, nobody likes Martha Stewart, I don’t think even Martha Stewart likes Martha Stewart. Which actually makes me like her. But anyway, maybe she’s onto something. You get up, you make your bed right away, you shower and dress. Ready. Armed. Fire.

I go into the kitchen to make a strong pot of coffee and to start Travis’s breakfast. French toast he’ll have today, made from scratch, cut diagonally, one piece lying artfully over the other; and I’ll heat the syrup, serve it in the tiny flowered pitcher I once took from a room-service tray. I’ll cut the butter pats into the shape of something. A whale, maybe, he likes whales. Or a Corvette. If that doesn’t work, I’ll make butter curls with a potato peeler.

I lay out a blue linen place mat at the head ofthe dining-room table, smooth it with the flat of my hands, add a matching cloth napkin pulled through a wooden ring. Wedding gift. I center a plate, lay out the silverware, then step back to regard my arrangement. I really think Travis will appreciate this.

My head hurts. My head hurts, my heart hurts, my heart hurts. I stand still for a moment, which is dangerous. So I go back into the kitchen, pull a dusty wineglass wedding gift down from the high cupboard above the refrigerator, wash it, and bring it to the dining room to center directly over the knife. Then I go back in the kitchen and select three oranges from the fruit bowl. I will squeeze them for juice just before he takes his seat.

Actually, Travis doesn’t like fresh orange juice, but he’s got to get used to elegance, because that’s the way it’s going to be from now on. Starting today. Well, starting last night, really, but Travis was asleep when the revolution started. I went to Bloomingdale’s and charged a few things last night; that was the start; but when I got home, Travis had gone to bed.

I stand straighter, take in a deep breath. This is the first day. Every day that comes after this will be easier. Later, when I think of Travis sleeping, the thought will not pick up my stomach in its hands and twist it.

All right. Butter. The whale shape does not work, nor does the Corvette, but the butter curls do, more or less. I lay them carefully over ice chips in a small bowl, then bring them out to the dining room and place them to the right of his spoon. Is that where they go? There must be some incredibly expensive Martha Stewart book on table settings I can buy. Perhaps I’ll hire a limo to take me to the bookstore, later—I don’t really feel like driving. Perhaps I will take the limo to Martha’s house. “I understand you’re divorced,” I’ll say. “You seem to be doing all right.”

Back in the kitchen, I gulp down another cup of coffee. Then I mix eggs and milk in a blue-and-yellow bowl that tiny shop in Paris, our weeklong vacation there, I stood at the window one morning after I’d gotten up and he came up behind me and put his arms around my middle, his lips to the back of my neck, add a touch of vanilla, a sprinkle of sugar. I put a frying pan on the stove put his lips to the back of my neck and we went back to bed, lay out two slices of bread on the cutting board. These hands at the ends of my wrists remove the crusts. I’m not sure why. Oh, I know why. Because they’re hard.

I sit down at the table. Stand up. Sit down. Concentrate on my breathing, that’s supposed to help.

Actually, it does not.

I check my watch. Good, only five more minutes. I take off my apron and go upstairs to my bathroom. I brush my teeth again, put in my contacts, comb my hair, apply eyeliner, mascara, and a tasteful shade of red lipstick. I straighten the cowl neck of my new sweater. It’s red, too—cashmere. I dab a little Joy—also new—behind my ears and on my wrists. Then I stand still, regard myself as objectively as possible in the mirror.

Well, I look just fine. Okay, circles under the eyes, big deal. The main thing is, what a wonderful change for Travis! Instead of him seeing me in my usual old bathrobe with the permanent egg stain on the left lapel, I am nicely dressed, made up, and ready to go. Everything will be different, starting today. Everything will be better.

I go into Travis’s room. He is messily asleep; covers wrapped around one leg, pajama top hiked high on his back, pillows at odd angles, his arm hanging over one side of the bed.

“Travis?” I say softly, raising his shade. “It’s seven o’clock.” I sit down beside him, rub his back. “Travis?”

“I’m up,” he says sleepily. Then, turning over quickly, eyes wide, “What stinks?” He puts his hand over his nose.

I stand; step back. “Perfume, it’s … Listen, get dressed and come down for breakfast, okay? I’m making French toast.”

No reaction.

“I mean, not the frozen kind. From scratch.” Please, Travis.

He sits up, rubs his head. Two blond cowlicks stick up like devil horns. He is wearing one of David’s T-shirts with his own pajama bottoms. The bottoms are too short for him, I see now. Well. No problem. Today I will replace them. Maybe Ralph Lauren makes pajama bottoms for kids. Silk ones. Monogrammed.

Travis yawns again, hugely, scratches his stomach. I look away, despairing of this too manly movement. It seems so recent that I had to step around imaginative arrangements of Legos—jagged-backed dinosaurs, secret space stations, tools for “surgery”—to wake him up. Now he hides a well-thumbed issue of Playboy under his bed. One day when Travis was at school, I inspected Miss August thoroughly. I felt like putting in a note for the next time he looked at her:

Dear Travis, Please be advised that this is not a real woman. These are bought boobs, and pubic hair looks nothing like this in its natural state. This woman needs to find her life’s work and not spend all of her time in front of a mirror. If you went out with her, you would soon be disappointed. Signed, a caring friend.

“I don’t want French toast,” Travis says. “I want Cheerios.”

“You have Cheerios every day.”

“Right. Because, you see, I like them.”

Sarcastic. Like David. But he is smiling, saying this. It is David’s smile, born again.

“Well, today is a special day,” I tell him.

“How come?”

“We’ll talk about that later.”

“Okay, but I don’t want French toast.”

“Why don’t you just try—”

“Pleeeeeeeease????”

My God. You’d think he was begging for a stay of execution.

“Fine.” I make my mouth smile, make myself walk slowly down the stairs, one foot, then the other. I am wearing panty hose under my new jeans, and I feel the fabrics rubbing together as if each is questioning the other’s right to be there.

I go into the family room pipe tobacco and turn the stereo on to the classical station. Ah, Mozart. Well, maybe not Mozart. But close enough. It’s one of those guys. I’ll take a music appreciation class. Somewhere. Then, getting ready to sit down to dinner with Travis some night I’ll say, “Some Verdi, perhaps?”

“That’s an idea,” he’ll answer. “But maybe Vivaldi would be better with lamb.”

“You know, you’re absolutely right,” I’ll say. I will have taught him this exquisite discrimination. As a famous man, Travis will say to the interviewer, “My mother changed wonderfully when my father left us. Our circumstances actually improved. Naturally I owe her everything.”

In the dining room, I remove Travis’s plate from the table, then go into the kitchen to pour Cheerios into a bowl. Too plain. I’ll slice some banana on top in a most beautiful way. I pick up a knife, and some feeling comes over me that has me rush over to the kitchen table. I sit and hold the knife and try very hard to stifle a sob. Not now. Later. And then something occurs to me: David may change his mind. That’s why he didn’t insist on telling Travis himself, right away. He’s not sure he even wants to do this. This is male menopause, early male menopause, it could be that, they get that just like they get their own version of PMS, they just don’t admit it. He’s been so moody, I haven’t been good about listening to him, I haven’t been willing to talk about a lot of things I do wrong. He could very well have needed to just act out this way, scare himself a little—well, scare both of us—and now he’ll come back and we’ll just straighten this out. Men! I get up, Lucy Ricardo.

I take a banana from the fruit bowl, slice it evenly, ignore the feeling of a finger tapping my shoulder. Sam? He’s not coming back.

I look at my watch, pour milk into the pitcher I was going to use for the syrup. Then I pick a pink blossom off the begonia plant on the kitchen windowsill to rest beside his plate. I carry everything out to the dining room, carefully arrange it, then lean against the doorjamb. Outside, the sun shines. Birds call. Cars pass with the windows down, people’s elbows hanging out.

I am exhausted.

It will be a few minutes before Travis comes down. I need to do something.

I go into the basement to start a load of wash. When I begin separating, I find a pair of David’s boxer shorts, the blue ones, and, God help me, I bury my face in them for the smell of him.

I look up and see my sewing machine. I bring his shorts over to it. Then, using a hidden seam, I sew the fly shut. With great care, I do this, with tenderness. Then I go back to the pile of laundry and get some of his fancy socks and sew the tops of them shut.

I have a lot of David’s clothes to choose from; he packed last evening like he was only going on a business trip for a couple of days. And I sat on the bed watching him, thinking Why is he packing? Where is he going? Why must he do it like this, does he think he’s in a movie? What can I say to stop this, isn’t there something to say to stop this? But I couldn’t say anything. I felt paralyzed. And when he finally stood at the doorway of the bedroom and said, “I’ll call you,” I’d waved. Waved! Then, from the bedroom window, I’d watched him drive away, marveling at his cool efficiency in signaling at the corner.

I could not stay in the house alone. I would not stay in the house. Travis was gone—he went to his friend Ben’s house every Thursday after school to eat dinner and do homework. He liked going there because that family had three dogs and a cat, whereas, as Travis frequently liked to point out, he had nothing, not even ants. I called my mother, telling her briefly what had happened and asking her to come over and wait for Travis to get home. And then I got in the car and drove to the mall and charged and charged and charged.

When I got home my mother assured me that, as requested, she had not said anything to Travis. Amazingly, she said little to me, either. “We’ll talk later, honey,” she said, and I answered in what I hoped was a noncommittal way. I was so grateful she had come. I wanted so much for her to go.

I come up from the laundry room and find Travis seated at the dining-room table, delicately picking the banana off his Cheerios. “How come I’m eating out here?” he asks.

“For fun.”

“Can I have some orange juice?”

“Oh! Yes, I forgot, I’ll go make it right now.”

“… You’re making it?”

“Yes. You’re having fresh-squeezed orange juice.”

“I don’t like fresh-squeezed orange juice. I mean, I’m sorry, but you know I don’t like it. It’s got all that stuff floating around that bumps into your teeth. Plus I don’t like bananas on my cereal, either.”

“Travis. Listen to me. You must try new things every now and then. Sometimes you have learned to like things in your sleep.”

“Are we out of Tropicana?”

“Yes, we are.”

He gets up and goes to the refrigerator, peers in, triumphantly pulls out a carton of juice. “It’s right here, Mom, practically full! We’re not out of it! See?”

I take the carton from him, upend it over the sink. “Now we are.”

We stand there. Finally, “Jesus!” he says. “What’s wrong with you?”

Let’s see. Let’s see. What to do.

“Come with me,” I say. I lead him to the dining room, point to his chair. “Finish your cereal, okay? It’s almost time to go.”

I sit down with him, take in a breath. “I’m sorry about the orange juice, Travis. I’m really sorry I did that. That wasn’t right.”

I clasp my hands together, stare at him. He has a bit of sleep stuck in one corner. “Wipe your left eye,” I tell him. “You need to wash your face a little better in the morning. And, listen, I don’t want you saying ‘Jesus’ like that.”

“You do.” He wipes at his right eye.

“Other eye.”

“Dad does. He does it all the time.”

I sit still. Outside, I see the wind lift up a branch, rock it. Then let it go.

Finally, I say, “I don’t care who does it, Travis. It’s not okay for you to do it. Don’t say it anymore.”

“Fine.”

I lean back in my chair, sigh.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“There is something wrong.”

“I said.”

“Right. But I don’t want you to worry. I’m going to talk to you about it, okay? But I think it would be best if we waited until after school.”

“Are you … going somewhere, Mom?”

I don’t answer right away. I don’t know. Am I?

Worried now, “How come you’re all dressed already? Are you going to the doctor or something?” Someone in Travis’s grade had lost his mother recently. The knowledge festered among the kids, spooked them terribly despite the carefully planned programs presented by the guidance counselors.

There, I am suddenly grounded. It is such sweet, wavelike relief. “Oh, sweetie, no, it’s nothing like that. It’s nothing like that! I’m sorry, I know I’m acting … I’m just tired. But we’ll talk later. It’ll be fine.” I smile brightly. “So! Did you like eating breakfast this way?”

“What way?”

“Well … You know, out here in the dining room. Fancy dishes …”

“Yeah, I guess so. Yeah! It was nice. Thanks, Mom.”

Oh, what am I doing? Why am I making him take care of me?

Travis picks up his book bag, then shifts his shoulders, seeming to adjust himsel finside himself, a gesture I love.

“Can I kiss you good-bye?” I ask.

Our old joke. Every morning I ask him this, and every morning (since he turned nine, anyway) he makes a face as though I were asking him if I could spoon cold oatmeal into his ear. But now he nods yes and my stomach does an unpleasant little somersault. I put my lips to his cheek. And he kisses me back—pecks at my cheek and then quickly turns away.

So. He knows. They are absolutely right, kids always know. When he comes home from school today and I tell him that David has moved out, he will nod sadly and say, “I thought so.” And then he will start making Fs.

I watch him walk down the sidewalk toward school. His jacket collar is half up, half down. His jeans are slightly too long; they bunch up over the top of his sneakers. His book bag carries papers with his earnest script, his own thoughts about the material he is assigned to read. He is just beginning to become himself. He is too young to have to face what he is going to have to face, it will shape him too much, quash his tender optimism. It’s unfair, it’s so unfair! That’s what I should have told David: do what you have to do, but don’t walk out on Travis. For God’s sake. Ruin my world if you have to, but don’t ruin his, too.

Back in the kitchen, I take a sip from my coffee. It’s gone cold; a ring of congealed cream visible at the outside edge. Look how fast things turn. I dump the coffee out, then throw the cup in the trash. I never want to see that cup again. “David,” I say, very softly. Like a prayer. “David,” I say again, and lean against the wall to cry. It helps. It’s so funny, how it helps. Stress hormones get released when you cry, that’s why it works. It’s amazing how smart the body is. Though maybe we could do without loving. I think it’s overrated, and I think it’s too hard. You should only love your children; that is necessary, because otherwise you might kill them. But to love a man? It’s overrated, and it’s too hard and I will never, ever do it again.

Well. What I will do now is make a list. There’s a lot to think about, so much to do. I’ll go outside, I’ll sit out there where it’s so much bigger, where there is no roof to fall in on your head and make you brain damaged, should you survive.

At three-thirty, I am sitting on the sofa in the family room, waiting for Travis. I’ve had a nap, I’m fine. Well, I’ve had a couple of naps. The waking-up part, that’s hard. What’s …? Oh. Oh, yes.

One thing I want to be sure of is that Travis does not blame himself in any way. I believe I should start with that. Out loud, I practice, “Travis, sweetie, I need to tell you some things that will be hard for you to hear.” Yes. Good. “But what I want you to understand, and to remember the whole time I’m talking, is this: all of this is about your father and me. This decision. It has nothing to do with you. You are such a good boy.” Yes.

No. No. This is starting with a negative. It will scare him. Start with something positive. “Travis, as I’m sure you know, both your father and I love you very much.” No. That will scare him, too. Oh, what then? Guess what, Travis? Your father left us and now we get to have a whole new life! Do you want a dog? I was never the one who objected to pets, you know. Do you want a Newfoundland? I think they weigh about five hundred pounds, do you want one of them?

The door opens and Travis comes in, sees me from the hallway. “Hi, Mom.” The last normal thing.

“Oh. Hi! Hi, honey.”

He regards me warily. “Are you …?”

“I’m fine!”

He nods, heads toward the kitchen.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting a snack. Do you want some pretzels?”

“No, thanks.” I cross my legs, fold my hands on my lap. Uncross my legs.

“Travis?”

“Yeah?”

“Why don’t you put your pretzels in a bowl, okay?”

Silence.

“Travis?”

He comes into the room, holding the bag of pretzels. “What do I need a bowl for? The bag is fine, I always eat out of the bag.”

“Well, it’s …” Inelegant, is what I want to say. I would like to say that, I have always liked that word. And I have to tell him that we need to make some changes here; things are going to change. But, “The bag is fine,” I say. And then, “Could you come here, please?”

He walks over slowly, sits beside me, offers me the bag of pretzels.

“No, thanks.”

“They’re a little stale.”

“Travis,” I begin.

“I know. You’re getting a divorce.” He looks up at me, sighs.

I sit back, smile.

“Aren’t you?”

“Well, yes, we just—”

“I figured.”

“… You figured.”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

He puts his finger in his ear, experimentally, it seems. Twists it.

“Travis?”

“Huh?”

“Why did you ‘figure’?”

“I don’t know. Everybody gets divorced.”

“Oh no. Not everyone. There are many, many happy marriages. I’m sure you’ll have one. But your father and I have decided that … yes, we want a divorce, and so we’re going to be living apart from one another. Starting … Well, actually starting last night.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s close by, he’s at a hotel in town, he called me this afternoon. And he’ll be calling you tonight, Travis, he told me to tell you he’d be calling you after dinner. And that he will be seeing you very soon.”

“What time?”

“Pardon?”

“What time will he call?”

“I don’t think he said that. I think he just said after dinner.”

“Yeah, but what does that mean, what time does that mean?”

“Um … Okay. It must … I think about seven, right around seven. All right?”

“Why is he at a hotel?”

Beats me. “He … Well, you know, honey, when people decide they aren’t going to be together any longer, they often need a little time apart, to think about things.”

“But you’re getting divorced!”

“Yes.”

“So you’ll be apart!”

“Yes, but—there just sometimes has to be this—”

“Whatever. I don’t care.”

“Oh, Travis, I’m so sorry.”

He shrugs, inspects his thumb, the wall. “It’s all right.” His right knee starts bouncing up and down and I have to stop myself from stopping it.

When Travis was six, he fell off a jungle gym and hurt his arm. The X-ray technician kept telling him to hold his arm a certain way—it required a kind of twisting. Travis kept saying he couldn’t do it, and the impatient tech finally went into the room with him and made his arm go the way she wanted it to. “Now, keep it like that until I get the picture,” I heard her say. When Travis came out of the room, he had tears in his eyes, and when he saw me, he began crying. A little later, when the X-rays were hung, the doctor saw that there was a break right where the tech had been twisting. “That must have hurt,” the doctor said, “holding your arm that way.” Travis nodded gravely. He wasn’t crying anymore. He’d been given a lollipop and a sticker that said I just got an X-ray!

“Travis, it’s not all right. I want you to know that Dad and I both know that. And we also want you to understand that this decision had nothing to do with you.” I just got taken off the hook for my parents’ divorce!

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah. Why would it have to do with me?”

“Well, that’s absolutely right, Travis. We both love you very much, and we will both continue to be your parents. It’s just that Dad and I can’t live together anymore.”

“Why?”

“Well …” Sometimes people, even when they really love each other, they kind of grow apart. And it becomes very hard to … “Because your father is a very, very selfish person who thinks only of himself. Always has, always will. He deserted me, Travis, just like that. I had no idea he was so unhappy. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know what to do. I really hate him for this. I hate him!” I put my hand to my mouth, start to cry. “Oh, Travis, I’m sorry.”

“I’m going upstairs to my room for a while.”

“Wait. I—”

“Mom, please?”

“Yes, all right.” A weight attaches itself to my chest, sinks in. And in. Maybe it’s a heart attack. I hope it is.

Travis walks quickly up the stairs. I hear his door close. I hold one of my hands with the other, stare out the window. Sit there. Sit. When I see the sun beginning to go down, I head up to his bedroom. On the pretense of asking what he’d like for dinner.

Tomorrow morning I will call someone for help.

To think that I asked David to let me be the one to tell Travis, and to let me be alone, telling him. I should have known better. I don’t blame David for leaving me, I would like to leave me, too. I would like to step into the body of a woman who does not get lost going around the block, who does not smell of garlic for three days after she eats it, who can make conversation with David’s clients at a restaurant rather than going into the ladies’ room to sit in the stall and find things in her purse to play with. David has never liked my mother, who is just plain foolish, or my best friend, Rita, who does not censor her thoughts enough to suit him. Gray hair is popping out all over my head, I have become intimately acquainted with cellulite, and just last week, I awakened to hear myself snoring. I want to leave, too. But I can’t.

I go upstairs and knock on Travis’s door. There is a moment. Then he calls, “Come in,” and I can feel the relief clear to the edges of my scalp.