“I’d love to,” Julio said, not looking up from his phone.
Graham envied him suddenly. Julio could drift in and out, partaking of family life, and yet leading his own romantic life (he was frequently out all night). Julio could stay on the surface, where everything was fine, where the happy family watched movies and ate dinner and sat around in cozy clusters. Julio never had to look deeper and examine the foundation. That was Graham’s job.
—
Graham was standing at the kitchen counter, trimming the fat off the pork chops for dinner, when Audra appeared in the doorway. She was wearing jeans and a bright red flannel shirt that he’d always liked.
“You’re going to think I’m a horrible person,” she said.
No, he wouldn’t think that. Or maybe he thought that already.
“But someone just called to say she was bringing two hundred pork sausages for the England Room, but the England Room already has tons of food. Do you think anyone will notice if I put the sausages in the German Room and call them wurst? Because the German Room hardly has any food at all.”
Graham decided to cut up the pineapple. It was nice and noisy and required lots of attention. “No, I’m sure no one would notice,” he said.
“Graham—” Audra began, and then stopped.
He kept cutting the skin off the sides of the pineapple, concentrating on making the knife follow the curve. He could tell she was still standing in the doorway.
But when he finished with the pineapple and looked up at her, she had already turned to go, her shirt leaving an afterimage of red that hurt his eyes.
—
Graham and Julio were assembling an IKEA bookcase for Matthew’s room.
“Shit,” said Julio. “I think it’d be easier to build one, from scratch, with no instructions, than to follow these.”
They both squinted at the instructions spread out on the floor between them, along with the little plastic bags of screws and bolts, and those maddening Allen wrenches.
Graham had grown very fond of Julio, although he knew better than to get too attached to houseguests, which he and Audra seemed to have perpetually. Julio was moving back to his apartment next week.
“Well,” Graham said, “we could just wait until Audra and Matthew get back and then have Matthew put it together. He’ll take one look at the instructions and just know.”
“Yeah, I remember he fixed Mrs. Allman’s dryer down on Four,” Julio said.
“Before we had Matthew to do this,” Graham said, “I used to tell Audra that I would divorce her if she brought home another piece of flat-pack furniture.”
And then he wished he hadn’t said that because it made him think of the time when marital troubles were something they laughed at, nothing to do with them.
He realized Julio was watching him closely. “But you don’t want to do that—divorce her,” he said. “You and Audra, you’re good together.”
“You don’t understand,” Graham said flatly.
“Oh, I understand enough,” Julio said. “I know that when you two sit on the couch, you leave enough space for, like, an invisible person to sit between you. I know that when we watch some shit on TV and one of the characters is having an affair, you grab hold of the arms of the chair like you’re an astronaut in liftoff. I see Audra walking around looking like a dog just before someone shouts at it. I know what’s going on.”
“Well, then,” Graham said, annoyed, “you know how I feel.” But Julio didn’t know how he felt. Julio couldn’t imagine the effort it took just to carry on this conversation.
“But that shit doesn’t mean anything,” Julio said. He saw the startled look Graham gave him and went on. “I mean, I know it means everything but it doesn’t really mean anything.”
It was yet another irony, Graham thought, that something so inarticulate should make so much sense, and that it should turn out that Julio would be the one to understand exactly how he felt.
—
The phone rang at six in the morning on United Nations Day, with the news that some woman had burned ninety Swedish meatballs and didn’t know what to do.
“That’s easy,” Audra said. “Just buy frozen meatballs from the supermarket and we’ll stick toothpicks with little Swedish flags in them and no one will ever know any different.”
She hung up and said to Graham, “Honestly, do you think people bother Ban Ki-moon with nonsense like that?” And she flounced off to take a shower.
A little while later she came into the kitchen, where Graham and Julio were sitting at the counter, drinking coffee. She was wearing jeans and a purple silk shirt and long dangly earrings. Her clothes were casual and yet she looked vaguely corporate. Graham supposed that was just her determined expression.
“Have you made Matthew’s lunch?” she asked abruptly. “Have you made sure he’s awake and started his breakfast?”
“Am I supposed to take Matthew to school today?” Graham asked.
“For God’s sake,” Audra said irritably. “Yes. I have been telling you for weeks that I was going to leave before seven today. Do you just sit there and think about porn while I talk?”
Now, why was it exciting to hear a pretty woman say the word porn, no matter what the context? Graham glanced at Julio and saw that his eyes had unfocused slightly, too. Evidently it was a common phenomenon.
“Okay,” Graham said finally. “I’ll get Matthew going.”
Audra and Julio packed up and called questions to each other while Graham made Matthew’s lunch.
He went into Matthew’s bedroom to wake him. “Hey, buddy, time to get up,” he said, poking Matthew’s sleeping form. He opened the curtains to let some light into the room and saw Audra and Julio on the sidewalk below, setting out for United Nations Day. Audra was walking ahead, carrying a single tray of cookies, while Julio followed, loaded down with bags and boxes in a way that reminded Graham of a Sherpa guide.
He felt very sorry for Julio, who had taken a day off work to help Audra, and then he experienced a rush of relief that he was able to feel something—anything—for another person at all.
—
Graham was already home from his office, pouring himself a glass of wine, when Audra got back. He heard the door open, and Audra sigh and dump her bags on the floor with a muffled clatter. He didn’t call to her.
She walked past the kitchen into the bedroom. Graham followed, still holding the bottle of wine and the glass.
“How was it?” he asked.
“It was horrible,” she said. She looked tired. The purple silk shirt was rumpled and the auburn highlights in her hair seemed to draw all the color up and out of her face.