“Well, not all the time,” Tommy said, rolling his eyes. “Can you imagine? How embarrassing!” He was making a joke, but the joke made Alice feel ill. “Is this a weird way of telling me that you want to buy another fucking house? Zillow is not your friend, Alice. Just put the phone down in the middle of the night. One country house is plenty.” As Tommy talked, Alice could picture it—a white house behind a hedge, a gravel driveway. Someone else cutting the grass. “Plus my parents’. And they’re having the pool redone this year; the kids will love it.”
Alice had overheard sentences like these a thousand times. The way she had survived life at Belvedere was by channeling her envy into superiority. Two-thirds of the student body would have described themselves as middle class, a category that Alice did not think usually included access to privately chartered airplanes and houses on Caribbean islands, cottages on Long Island, or full-time help in the home. Leonard had told her, flat out, that he made more money than most of his friends but they had less money than most of her friends, because his money was their only pot, so to speak, and most of the kids at Belvedere were sitting on several generations’ worth of booty. New Yorkers were experts at flipping their everyday struggles (carrying heavy bags of groceries, taking the subway instead of driving a car) into value points, and Alice had years of experience making herself feel better because she didn’t have a family compound in Greenwich or a horse or a Range Rover. Now that she seemed to have all these things, in addition to a sweaty Tommy Joffey in their shared bedroom, Alice didn’t know quite what to do. This was how all the time travel movies she’d ever seen ended—in 13 Going On 30, Jenna Rink came out of the house in a wedding dress. Bill and Ted passed their history class. Marty McFly got a Jeep. Then the camera slid backward, revealing the whole, perfect scene, and faded to black. In Time Brothers, in between rescues, Scott and Jeff went to their favorite pizzeria. No one was ever standing in their pajamas, trying to remember their life.
The bedroom door swung open, whacking Alice’s right side.
“Mommmmmmy!!!” A small body was attached to her shins. It felt like being attacked by a friendly octopus—there couldn’t be only two arms. Alice thought she might fall over, but she didn’t, bracing herself against the wall. The child was clamped on tight. Alice set one hand lightly on the top of its head. Was this the boy or the girl in the photo? Alice knelt down to get a better look.
“Hello there,” Alice said. It was a boy—not the boy she had interviewed at Belvedere, but close. His eyes were the same—Tommy’s, on a smaller face—and the thick, beautiful hair. Alice looked for herself in the child’s face but could not find herself anywhere. It felt like complimenting someone on their resemblance to their child only to have them say, Well, you know, they’re adopted. “What’s your name, again? Firetruck, is it? Xylophone? Remind me, will you?”
The boy giggled. “Mommy, it’s me, it’s Leo.” He burrowed himself into the tiny shelf of Alice’s lap, knocking her gently to the ground. Despite having apparently given birth to two humans, Alice’s body felt tight and strong, stronger than it ever had before. She wondered how much money she’d spent on personal trainers, but decided it was better not to know.
“Oh, yes, that’s right,” Alice said. “Leo. And what about your sister? Umbrella? Zimbabwe?” She could feel the name rolling around in her head—Alice could almost see the letters swimming into place, like alphabet soup. These children were hers, no doubt about it. Hers, and Tommy’s. Alice was a mom. Mommy? Mama? Her own mother had eventually decided that she preferred being called by her first name, because there was only one real mother—Gaia, Mother Earth. Alice felt the skin around her neck go blotchy with panic.
Leo giggled again, his soft, damp hands now pressing against Alice’s cheeks. “Poopyface,” he said. The boy was so lovely to look at, like a little Italian putto, and Alice liked the way his hands felt on her skin. She put her own hands over his. Alice didn’t know if she could talk to Tommy, but she could talk to Leo. This was what she was good at—crouching low, feeling the warm breath of a small person. Leo was probably four. No—he was definitely four. Alice knew. It was the same feeling as waking up in a hotel room and not remembering where exactly you were, or where the bathroom was.
“No, no, it’s not Poopyface,” Alice said. Leo scrambled off her and ran down the hall, screaming “Poopyface” over and over again.
Tommy peeled off his shirt and then balled it up and tossed it into a hamper. The shorts and boxer briefs were next. It was nice to see him in an adult body again, but Alice looked away. It was too intimate, too naked. Standing nude in the lamplight, inelegantly bending over to pull off one’s underpants—there wasn’t anything more naked than that. Sex required closeness, and therefore a limited view. Here, from across the room, Alice could see everything. She shut her eyes and pretended to have something stuck in her eyelashes.
“Are you still going to go for a run?” Tommy asked. Alice heard him go back into the bathroom, and then the sound of the water in the shower.
“Yes,” Alice said. She was desperate to get out of the room, the apartment—she wanted to go back to Pomander. She wanted to call her dad. “Can we, uh, just talk about the plan for the day? I’m feeling a little, I don’t know, foggy.”
“You know, I thought I could avoid this problem, marrying a younger woman. I didn’t think the dementia was supposed to start quite this early.” His voice bounced off the tiled walls.
“Come on,” Alice said. Tommy’s birthday was only a week after hers. She would always remember it, so close to her own, hovering there on the calendar as if it were written in invisible ink that only she could see. Was this how they talked to each other? Alice felt like she was still in teenager mode, unable to say how she really felt about anything, capable of only sarcasm and feigned irritation. She looked at the date on her phone—it was October 13. The day after her fortieth birthday. The chute had spit her out at the same time she’d gone in, only now, she had managed to knock the car at least partially off the track. Alice wanted to call her dad, but she was afraid. She wanted to call Sam, but she was afraid. Mostly she wanted to do both those things in private, because she wasn’t sure how they were going to go, and Alice didn’t think she was a good enough actress to play off her reactions. If her father was fine, would she know it? If he was dead, would she know that? Alice didn’t know anything for sure, not yet. Tommy emerged from the shower, a towel around his waist.
“Okay, okay. Forty is the new thirty.” He put his hands up in defense and leaned away from her. “I’ve got Leo and Dorothy for now, you’ll hang with them after your run, then Sondra is coming at ten. You go visit your dad, then the party is at seven. Whatever else you want to do, up to you!” Tommy kissed her on the cheek. He was being cheerful because it was her birthday week. Somehow this was clearer to Alice than anything else.
“Dorothy,” Alice said. “Got it.” There was a window on the far side of the room, and Alice walked over to look out of it. Below her, Central Park stretched out like a carpet. The lake, a part of the park Alice had never paid much attention to because it seemed like it had been built for tourists, was right below. To their left, she could see one pointy tower. One tower out of two.