“I’ll go out and get some,” Graham said. “I don’t mind.”
He just had time to walk to the bakery on the corner. They closed at six. He took the Tupperware container into the kitchen and opened it. Even cold, it smelled delicious.
He walked back along the hall toward the door. He could hear Julio and Matthew in Matthew’s room. Julio was speaking in a mock-tough voice, “What’s this shit about you watching porn on the internet? You better not do that while I’m here.” Matthew’s laughter was soft and pleased.
Graham had never wanted a big family—all that noise and disruption—but maybe he’d been wrong about that. Maybe he just wanted a family that consisted of people who’d already grown to adulthood, of kind and funny young people who had been expertly raised by women thoughtful enough to send whole meals. That kind of family would suit Graham just fine.
Outside, Graham walked through the warm evening air to the bakery. He pushed open the door, and even this late in the day, there was a line of people waiting and the smell of fresh bread was everything you wanted love to be, but it so often isn’t: hot, sweet, comforting, full of promise, and so heartwarming it made you want to do nice things for other people.
He had read once that everyone responded to the smell of freshly baked bread that way—that it was merely a common physical reaction to the aroma of fermenting yeast and not anything to do with a sentimental flashback to one’s grandmother’s kitchen. But knowing this didn’t make Graham appreciate it any less. He inhaled deeply.
How strange. How strange. Here was Graham smelling fresh bread and Elspeth was doing nothing at all. She wasn’t chopping celery or doing her taxes or drinking wine or yelling at a cabdriver. Graham felt a second of sorrow, but it was like a spark from a campfire—shrinking to a pinpoint and then blinking out. You couldn’t even see where it had been.
Graham sighed, which caused the woman in front of him in line to shoot him an annoyed it’s-not-my-fault look. But Graham didn’t see her. He was thinking about the time Matthew had gone through a period of intense infatuation with geocaching, and Graham and Audra had had to spend all their weekends hiking through the woods, searching for worthless trinkets and leaving their own trinkets there for others to find. (It was either geocaching or origami—when would Matthew become a sullen teenager who spent his free time getting stoned on the fire escape? It couldn’t happen soon enough.) Graham thought his relationship with Elspeth was a little like geocaching. They went long periods without speaking and then one of them would leave some sort of emotional coordinates (a phone call or an email), and sometimes the other one followed the coordinates and located the treasure, and sometimes they didn’t. But Graham had assumed that the treasure would always be there, that it was just a matter of finding a free weekend to track it down. He didn’t know until now that sometimes it just stays hidden, forgotten—that it will always remain something you meant to do.
Chapter Nine
Everywhere Graham turned, relationships were crumbling, hearts were shattering, romances were dying—the fragile golden fabric of their lives was being ripped apart by giant, uncaring hands. (Audra said that last part.)
But it was sort of true.
First of all, Lorelei and her husband were moving to Boston.
Audra couldn’t get over it. “But we only bought this apartment because Lorelei lived here,” she said.
This was, amazingly, true. They had moved out of the apartment Graham had originally shared with Elspeth and had actually bought a piece of Manhattan real estate and undertaken all the responsibilities that went with it—maintenance fees and school districts and property taxes—because Lorelei lived on the third floor and Audra had wanted to live in the same building. It was like being married to someone in junior high.
“I can’t believe she’s going to move because of her husband’s stupid job,” Audra kept saying. (Graham felt that it was likely that if he were transferred to Boston, or anywhere else, Audra would stay in New York to be near Lorelei—it was extremely likely.)
Second, Matthew wanted to quit Origami Club. He had told Graham and Audra he didn’t want to go to the meetings anymore, he didn’t want to get the newsletter, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to do origami at all anymore. Graham’s first thought was entirely selfish: No more Origami Club! No more conventions! No more origami people!
But Audra had looked dismayed. “Who’s going to tell Clayton?” she’d whispered.
Oh. That was a good question. Clayton and the other members of the Origami Club would be so disappointed. They would have to be let down easily, with many flattering and completely untrue excuses. (Dealing with the Origami Club was also a lot like being in junior high, come to think of it.)
Third—and by far the worst—Derek Rottweiler appeared to have broken up with Matthew. No argument, no insult, no explanation—just all of a sudden Derek wouldn’t sit with Matthew at lunch or talk to him on FaceTime or accept his invitations to sleep over. Matthew said Derek’s best friend now was some kid named Mick Blackburn, who was the meanest, worst-behaved kid at school.
“It scares me to think that there is a child meaner and more badly behaved than Derek Rottweiler,” Audra said.
Matthew came straight home from school now and went to his room. He said he didn’t want to go to that school anymore. He said he didn’t want to have other friends over. He said he missed Julio, who had moved back to his own apartment. He didn’t want to go to the movies, or watch TV, or go buy candy at the store. He didn’t want anything but to be Derek Rottweiler’s best friend again. This was also a lot like junior high, but since Matthew was actually in junior high, that was probably to be expected. Still, Graham doubted if Matthew realized life would always be this way, pretty much.
—
Audra told Graham that she thought she could heal the rift between Matthew and Derek Rottweiler by calling Brenda Rottweiler and persuading her to speak to Derek about it privately. And so with a kind of serpentine wiliness, Audra called Brenda under the guise of asking her about the School Fundraising Plant Sale. Graham was sitting on the sofa next to Audra, reading the newspaper. Matthew was still at school.
Brenda answered in her usual shy, scared voice—perhaps she feared every call would be the school telling her that Derek had scalped someone. “Hello?”