The desk clerk was already greeting the next customer, his scratchy voice cheerful and confident. Well, he didn’t have to go up and face Elspeth. But then, neither did Graham.
His cellphone was still in his hand. He hesitated for a moment and then typed out a text: I’m sorry. G. He didn’t add any sort of explanation, not because there wasn’t one, but because she wouldn’t want to read it, she wouldn’t care to read it. And if you didn’t believe that, you didn’t know Elspeth as well as Graham did.
—
Graham left the hotel and walked all the way home, sixty-two blocks, his heart as heavy as his shoes.
Was he doomed to be never faithful, but never unfaithful? But that was ridiculous. He had been faithful, for years and years, and he had been unfaithful, too, also for years. So why now did it seem like he was caught in some horrible limbo where he was destined to disappoint everyone? Perhaps that was why some men got married five or six times. Everyone hates uncertainty.
He headed down the block toward his apartment building and realized that even though he would be home hours earlier than he had said—he would tell Audra the dinner was awful, a waste of time—it was still after eight, the time that Papa Stan and Noah and Brodie left. There was no loss without some small gain.
He realized suddenly that his feet were sore and his ears were cold and his stomach was empty and he wanted a drink so badly that his throat clicked drily when he swallowed. Food, shelter, alcohol, love—he wanted it all and he wanted it now. And yet he paused in front of the door to the lobby, his breath making white plumes in the air. He was suddenly afraid that no one would be home or, worse, that no one would recognize him, that his key wouldn’t open the lock, that strangers lived there now and they wouldn’t let him in.
—
This is what life had taught Graham about houseguests: they drained your batteries. The very best of them left you a little juice, just enough to miss them once they’d gone. He suspected that everyone felt that way about houseguests. Except Audra. Then why had he married her? Sometimes that was an impossible question to answer.
Graham let himself into the apartment and did a quick emotional survey. Did he miss the click and scrabble of Brodie’s claws on the floor? Did he miss Papa Stan’s wheezy greeting? No, on both counts. If he had hooked himself up to an emotional battery tester, the needle wouldn’t have moved at all.
Still, the apartment was too quiet. Graham checked the bedroom and then went to Matthew’s room. Matthew was sitting at his computer, a peanut butter sandwich on a plate at his elbow.
“Where’s Mom?” Graham asked.
Matthew took a bite of his sandwich. “Up on the roof.”
Graham hesitated. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Do you miss Noah?”
Matthew glanced up at him and nodded. “It was so much fun to have him here.”
Fun. Wasn’t that really the beauty of childhood? That you measured experiences by how much fun they were, not by how much work or inconvenience or tedious conversation they caused you? Of course you didn’t think of the tiresome things if you were a kid, because you didn’t have to do them. And that was just as it should be, in Graham’s opinion.
But still he could not bring himself to be sorry Papa Stan and Brodie and Noah were gone. Apparently there were limits to what you would do for your child. Graham had never realized that before. He leaned down and kissed the top of Matthew’s head.
Graham went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of wine, but suddenly he could not stand to be in the apartment. He left his wineglass on the counter, grabbed his coat, and went up to the roof deck.
Audra was there, standing coatless at the railing, slender and pretty in a powder-blue sweater and jeans. She looked over at him and smiled. It had started to snow, just a few thick shaggy flakes that looked more like ash than like snow. Graham was reminded of a nuclear winter, a long volcanic season, sunlight blocked for years.
Audra never altered, Graham thought. Infidelity, illness, houseguests, natural disaster, the end of the world—it would all wash over her and she’d still be there, looking fresh as a flower and wondering if there were any blueberry muffins left. It was the very best and the very worst thing about her.
Suddenly, Graham yearned for her. She would rescue him from this terrible feeling of not belonging, of being adrift. She always had. She was an absolute certainty in a horribly uncertain world. Other people could try to make sense of the world by doing crossword puzzles and installing dead bolts and eating peas one at a time. Graham only needed Audra.
He had paused in the doorway, and she started toward him, snowflakes catching in her hair and glinting on the shoulders of her sweater. She would reach him, Graham thought, and he would hold on to her. As long as he held on to Audra, let the world try to do its worst. Just let it.
Chapter Seven
The problem with so much makeup sex, Graham thought, was that sometimes it led to a makeup baby. At least that’s what Audra said. She said she was almost certain. She said she’d walked past a hot dog vendor and the smell made her want to throw up and that meant definitely. But then again she said maybe not, because the other two times she’d been pregnant, she’d had a sexy dream about Anthony Hopkins very early on and she hadn’t had the dream yet. (Graham trusted this person to manage birth control; sometimes he shocked even himself.)
He was standing at the kitchen counter, pouring himself a glass of wine and struggling to comprehend what she’d said—trying to gather up her sentences like someone trying to gather up the loops of a garden hose—when she called out, “Matthew! Be sure to pack long underwear!”
How could she think of something as mundane as long underwear when they may actually be expecting another child? Was her mind that compartmentalized? What about the compartment that monitored the birth control? Perhaps she had been thinking about long underwear or frozen burritos when she should have been concentrating on putting her diaphragm in correctly.
It was the last day before spring break and Matthew was leaving for sleepaway camp—a unique sleepaway camp where all the kids had special needs, all the kids were like Matthew. And apparently, at this camp, Matthew would learn to love hiking and swimming and canoeing (which were all things he did not care for), and learn not to mind mosquitoes and wasps and mud between his toes and freezing cold water and being away from his family (which were all things he minded a lot). This was what everyone said. Other kids from Matthew’s school were going, and Matthew had wanted to go, too. So why was Graham so scared, so certain that Matthew would be the camp’s first failure?
And then the phone rang and it was Mr. Sears, the principal of Matthew’s school. Mr. Sears was calling, he said, to tell them that Matthew and another boy had used a school computer to access porn.
The evening was off to a very poor start, in Graham’s opinion.
—