“We’re going to be late,” Matthew said worriedly.
“Just fashionably late,” Audra said. “I tell you, these shoes looked so cute online! Who knew they’d be impossible to walk in?”
Graham and Matthew exchanged a look—the shared knowledge that it would be wiser not to answer that.
“Anyway,” Audra continued, “Matthew, would you like to invite Theo to go to the Natural History Museum with us tomorrow?”
“Derek Rottweiler can’t go to the Natural History Museum at all anymore,” Matthew said, “because he took a slingshot into the butterfly conservatory.” He spoke in the sorrowful voice of someone who has known great love and loss, and for whom there can be no one else.
“Well, all the more reason to invite Theo,” Audra said.
“Maybe,” Matthew said. “I don’t know.”
It took them fifteen minutes to walk the five blocks to Theo’s apartment building. The doorman called ahead, and when Graham pressed the buzzer on Theo’s apartment door, it was immediately opened by a smiling man with hair sticking up like bulrushes, and wide-open eyes. He looked like he’d just escaped from a psychiatric ward (a medium-security ward, where everyone was pretty high-functioning, but still).
“Hello!” Audra said. She put her hand on Matthew’s shoulder. “This is Matthew. Is Theo here?”
The man smiled even more broadly but said nothing. Graham wondered if perhaps he was a deaf-mute.
Fortunately, a plump woman with dark hair came bustling up from behind the man and said, “Hello, Audra! Hi, Matthew!”
“Hi, Marcia,” Audra said. “This is my husband, Graham.”
Graham shook hands with Marcia, who said, “And this is my husband, Steven.”
“Hello!” Steven said with eager happiness. (Apparently he wasn’t a deaf-mute.) He didn’t offer to shake hands.
“Theo’s in his room, Matthew,” Marcia said. “He’s building something with Legos. Do you like Legos? We didn’t know if you liked them. I told Theo you might want to play something else. I said, ‘We don’t know Matthew very well yet, maybe he wants to play a different game.’ Graham and Audra, do you want to come in for a drink? Or maybe you’re on your way out. I told Theo I didn’t know if Matthew’s parents would stay or not. I said, ‘Maybe they’re on their way someplace.’?”
She was clearly one of those people who chased themselves through conversations—asking questions, answering them, explaining their reasoning—and never realized that their words were like a revolving door spinning faster and faster while the person they were talking to waited in vain for a chance to step in. Graham had met others like her; he knew the type. But Steven—beaming benevolently at them—seemed to be a whole new level of peculiarity.
Marcia finally paused for breath, and Audra quickly spoke up and gave Marcia a pre-playdate rap about Matthew: he had already eaten dinner at home, he really doesn’t like loud noises, and he could call them on his phone if he wanted to be picked up before seven. Marcia had a little Q and A with herself about children and cellphones—“Are you glad Matthew has an iPhone? Has he lost it? I’m afraid Theo would lose it. I told Theo, ‘I’m afraid you’ll lose it’?”—while Steven fixed Graham with the most intense look of benign craziness imaginable, like a smiling Phil Spector.
A boy’s voice called, “Hey, Matthew, come here!” from inside the apartment, and Matthew squeezed between Marcia and Steven and ran down the hall. Graham and Audra said goodbye and left. They left. They left.
Just think about it: If Steven interviewed for a job at Graham’s office, Graham wouldn’t give it to him, even if it was a very menial job, because Steven was so odd-seeming. Graham would not lend Steven money, or trust Steven to house-sit his apartment, or valet-park his car. But leave their only child with him for two hours? Oh, well, sure, no problem! Here you go, his name is Matthew and we’re pretty attached to him, so try not to traumatize him, okay? This sort of trust is one of the great paradoxes of parenting, similar in importance to Galileo’s paradox of infinity, and no one tells you about it ahead of time. (No one tells you shit about parenting ahead of time, really. Well, they do but not anything useful.)
As they walked down the stairs in front of Theo’s building, Graham said to Audra, “Didn’t Theo’s father strike you as a little—off?”
“Hmmm?” Audra reached the bottom of the stairs and gave a slight lurch, like someone starting to hula-hoop, while she gained balance on her shoes. She slid her hand into the crook of Graham’s arm. “I think he was just shy.”
“People over forty can’t be shy,” Graham said.
“What are you talking about?” Audra asked. She looked at him, amazed, and a stray lock of hair blew across her face, as curly and delicate as a sweetpea tendril. “All sorts of people over the age of forty are shy! What about Mr. Calkins?”
“Who’s Mr. Calkins?”
“He lives in our building, on the second floor,” Audra said as they began walking. “And he’s too shy to answer the phone in case it’s a stranger. You have to call him and hang up and then call back, so he knows it’s you. Also, Julio told me Mr. Calkins doesn’t trust the postal service and won’t open any letters unless they’re addressed to him with his middle initial.”
“That’s what I mean,” Graham said. “I think at a certain point, it stops being shyness and becomes something else, some sort of actual disorder.”
Audra looked unconvinced. “Anyway,” she said. “We should probably have Theo’s parents over for dinner. You could make spaghetti marinara with garlic bread.”
There are not really words to describe how depressing Graham found this idea. Spaghetti marinara with garlic bread was his all-purpose crowd-pleasing picky-eater dinner. Spaghetti marinara was like taking a girl on a first date, actually: nothing fancy, no surprises, best foot forward. The second date would be like golden chicken with coconut rice—a little fancier, but if you encountered some pushback about the flavored rice, that would be a bad sign. The third date should be something like chile-blackened catfish fajitas—hot and spicy, definitely a flashier and more impressive effort. But be open-minded—check with the date first—because not everyone likes spicy food and, you know, you’re invested at this point, and are probably liking the sex. The fourth date is the true test of compatibility, and the future of the relationship hangs in the balance: moules farcies and vichyssoise. Can she eat cold soup? If not, you have to stop seeing her and pretend to be your twin brother when she calls.