So I sit there too, the silence in the car building until it becomes so deafening, I squirm in my seat, searching for something—anything—to say to break the weird tension that’s settled in the air around us. Then Eric clears his throat.
“You know, one time when Ellie was little—like six months old—I took her over to Dinesh’s apartment.”
I stare at him. “Dinesh?”
He glances in my direction, as if he’s just realized I’m there. “Aja’s dad,” he says. “My best friend. Well, he was my best friend.” He turns his gaze back out the windshield.
“Anyway, we were still in college and I wanted to prove to him that fatherhood hadn’t changed me—wasn’t going to change me—so I packed all her stuff in a diaper bag and went over there to watch soccer, like we always did, maybe have a beer or two.
“About halfway through the match, Ellie has this massive blowout. I mean huge. Poop was everywhere. All up her back, over her legs, it was getting all on Dinesh’s bedspread where I was trying to change her.” Eric chuckles. “I remember he was standing behind me yelling, ‘Mate! Mate! Get her off! That’s where the magic happens!’
“So I need to wash her off, right? That’s the only way I’m getting her clean at this point. I take her into Dinesh’s bathroom, sit her in the sink, and turn on the water. It’s freezing cold and she starts screaming. I mean, she’s so loud and I just want to make it stop and the poop is everywhere, so without really thinking I just turn off the cold and turn on the warm. But I didn’t remember that Dinesh’s water got hot, like scalding hot, really fast. And then Ellie starts screaming again. And when I realized what I’d done, I snatched her out of the sink, but her skin was already burned. Not third degree or anything, but it turned bright red. I wrapped her, poop and all, in a towel and just held her, telling her over and over again how sorry I was, until she finally started to calm down.”
He turns to me again. “What I’m trying to say is, there is nothing worse—I mean nothing—than seeing your child in pain. And knowing you caused it? I still feel the guilt for burning her like that. And I can hear her screams plain as day.”
“But she was OK,” I say.
Eric nods. “Yeah, thank God. Listen, I don’t know your mom. But I do know, if doing something that minor to Ellie made me feel like that, I can’t imagine what it would be like to know your actions could cause something worse to happen to your child. And to know that she did hurt you, for years, before you got diagnosed. That her just loving you was causing you pain.” He shakes his head.
I stare at him, feeling like Mary when she sees the secret garden for the first time. Eric has given me a perspective I’ve never considered before—maybe she was so scared of hurting me again that she couldn’t bring herself to touch me at all. It sounds so nice, like such a plausible explanation, and I want to believe it with all my might. But I can’t get Mr. Walcott out of my head: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
And then something else occurs to me. I narrow my eyes. “How did you know that? That it took years to get a diagnosis?”
“I, ah . . . Aja showed me that article about you. In the Times.”
I look down at my lap, my face getting hot. He starts the car and puts the gearshift in reverse. “He thinks you’re famous.”
I clear my throat. “Yeah, well, he also thought I was an X-woman or whatever you call them,” I say. “He’s got quite an imagination.”
“Tell me about it,” Eric says, pulling out of the library parking lot.
We ride in silence for a minute, until I muster the courage to tell him what I’ve been thinking. “I, uh, I didn’t really expect you to come today.”
“Why not?”
“The way I acted on Saturday? I wasn’t exactly . . . kind.”
He shrugs. “I told you I’d give you a ride home until you get your car fixed. I keep my word.”
I nod, unsure how to respond. What did I expect him to say—I couldn’t stay away from you, like some cheesy line from a movie?
He takes a deep breath and runs his hand through his hair, mussing it even more. “Listen, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I almost . . . well . . .”
I lean forward an inch, my breath held tight. Almost kissed me. Say it.
He doesn’t.
The awkwardness sits between us—the proverbial elephant in the car.
“Well, I won’t . . . I promise I’ll keep my distance from now on. You don’t have to worry about me.”
I sit back, wondering why I’m not relieved by his assurance. “So where’s Aja?” I ask, changing the subject. “Why didn’t he come today?”
“He had therapy. It’s usually on Thursday, but it got changed.” Eric glances over at me and sees my raised eyebrows. “It was mandated, from the near-drowning-incident thing. Connie took him. I had a meeting I couldn’t get out of.”
“Ah.”
“I was going to tell you on Saturday, but then . . .”
“Right.”
A pause, and then Eric says: “You know, you’re really good with him.”
“He’s a good kid. Smart. And funny! God, that story about how he got his name?”
“The goat thing?” Eric smiles. “Yeah. I couldn’t believe Dinesh and Kate named him Clarence. I gave him such a hard time for—” He stops talking abruptly. Turns to me. “Wait. How do you know that story?”
I shift in my seat under his gaze. “He told me.”
“He did?”
“Yeah.”
He massages the side of his face again and exhales.
“Eric, what’s the—”
“He won’t talk to me. I mean, really about much of anything, but definitely not about his parents. The one time I tried—well, it didn’t go well. I don’t know how you do it.” He says the last sentence more to himself than to me.
I shrug, wishing I had the answer he’s looking for. “I just talk to him.”
“No. It’s not that.” He turns the wheel and exhales again, puffing out his cheeks. “Believe me. I’ve tried that.”
A few minutes later, he pulls the car into my driveway and turns off the ignition. He looks at me, and I wonder if he feels the tension between us. “Are you going to be OK? About your mom, I mean.”
“Yeah,” I say, nodding. “I will.”
He nods. “Well, same time tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” I agree, opening the door and stepping out into the cold night.
“Hey, Jubilee?”
I still my hand from shutting the door. “Yeah?”
“So we’re, um . . . we can be friends?”
My gaze travels from his olive-green eyes to the stubble on his cheeks to his dry lips, and then back up to his eyes.
“Friends,” I say, and shut the car door behind me.
I know I should be happy. It’s a good thing: I can still have Eric and Aja in my life, and they know about me, so it’s safe. But as I unlock the door to my house and walk into the dark den, dropping my bag on the ground, I can’t understand why I’m not relieved. Why it feels like each heartbeat is pulsing one specific emotion through my thrumming veins, and it’s not happiness. It’s disappointment.
nineteen
ERIC