“We could have waited, maybe this was all because we rushed them. We could have moved in together once they’d all left home and it was just us—why didn’t we wait?”
James had been shaking his head, disagreeing before she’d even finished. “Life is so damn short. I didn’t want to date you, I wanted to make a life with you. This life, the life we have. Every day I didn’t wake up next to you was wasted.” He seized her hand. “With you I’m who I’m meant to be—you teach me how to be. Your honesty, your gentleness, your generosity—I’ve never known anyone who loves like you do; you give with your whole self. It’s humbling, and you do it so quietly, and utterly without guile. You know, when I first met Philip, before he even told me you taught piano or suggested I take lessons, he had already told me a story about you. He said that you’d been dropping by with meals for more than ten years and not once had you ever said you’d cooked for him, always that you’d made too much by accident and he was doing you a favor. ‘She’s terrible at judging quantities, my daughter-in-law,’ that’s what he said, and he said it with such love and I remember thinking, now there’s a woman with grace. And I was right. And I found you and in every way you’re more beautiful than I ever could have imagined and somehow, impossibly, it turns out that I’m fifty-five when I’m sure last week I was twenty-two, and I’m not waiting around . . . and yes, I could have moved out when we found out about the kids—we could have said okay, we tried, we’ll go back to our apartment and I’ll come for dinner every Tuesday and Friday or whatever and keep the kids apart that way and when they leave home I’ll move back in, but we made a commitment to be a family. And don’t forget we said that was an important lesson for them, too; you don’t just quit when things get hard. We live together now, we work through our shit as a family. If we’d waited, we would still be waiting.” For a moment James closed his eyes. “You know what, I actually can’t pursue it. We did the right thing for us, and in any case what’s done is done. I’m sorry, baby, can we just not? I cannot think about them any longer, not for one damn second. Can we just get this”—he glanced down at the dessert menu—“can we just get this Ferrero Rocher ice cream, and focus on that instead? I’m having a Sauternes.”
In the early days, Julia remembered, they had planned for family harmony and anticipated it with patient conviction—the initial disruption and eventually a grudging, more settled, united normality. Love invites magical thinking. But how did we believe such a fairy tale? We had no alternative better than wild, empty hope as we careened toward a cliff edge. Yet—I wanted. I want.
She kissed his rough knuckles, where they still held her own hand. It pleased him when she showed her commitment to this evening, and so she asked for a rhubarb crumble that she did not want and saw his brow clear, as she’d known, or hoped, it would. She then excused herself. In the bathroom she checked her messages, where a text from Gwen said with unsophisticated yet devastating efficacy, I hope you’re having fun, I love you, Mummy. Unwilling to be manipulated and manipulated nonetheless, Julia buried her phone back in her bag and returned stiffly to James. When he asked whether she wanted to see what was on at the Everyman Cinema she shook her head and said she was sorry but she was really a little tired. It had been a very long week. “It’s been wonderful,” she told him, stroking his clean-shaven cheek. “Really.” She pretended not to see the look of disappointment on his face, and when he asked for the bill she did not protest.
? ? ?
IT HAD NOT BEEN their most successful dinner but it had not ended in a row, and at present that was the best for which either of them could hope. James and Julia walked home hand in hand, in an easier silence.
As they passed Parliament Fields the floodlights were on, and what appeared to be a women’s athletic club had colonized the grassy slope and field. Four runners in striped club Lycra crouched in the starting blocks while the rest zipped themselves in and out of tracksuits, tightened fluorescent shoelaces, touched toes, stretched impressive, geometric calf muscles. The gun fired, and James and Julia paused, leaning on the railings to watch as young legs pounded the baked rust of the track and young arms pumped with savage determination. A hush had fallen among the spectators.
Nearest to them sat a dark-browed girl with tight black curls, waiting alone, knees pulled up beneath her chin, skinny arms wrapped around them, her face tense with concentration as she watched her teammates, or rivals, hurdling below. She reached up to retie her ponytail and something in the gesture was so familiar, the stern contracted eyebrows, the spread-palmed, businesslike gathering in of unruly corkscrews, that Julia caught her breath. James made to move, but Julia put out a hand to stop him. She wanted to see this girl run.
Between races there were long breaks; the coaches began an intense discussion by the far bend, heads together over a clipboard; no one moved to right the hurdles that had fallen. After a while James pushed himself back from the railings and said, “I don’t know how long middle-aged men are meant to watch teenage girls doing calisthenics in tiny shorts, you know, if they’re not actually racing. I’m starting to feel a little creepy,” and Julia dragged herself away. As they left, the black-haired girl remained apart from the others, bending to stretch the back of her legs, pulling her nose toward her own shins with fierce, quick little bounces. As they reached the footbridge, they heard the starting gun.
? ? ?
THE SHOPS OF QUEEN’S CRESCENT stay open late, offering a charade of purpose to the gangs of teenagers who patrol it. The chicken shop serves chips and battered sausages till the small hours; with the radio tuned to the muezzin, the halal butchers do intermittent business until midnight, two brothers beneath the buzzing fluorescent light strips behind a display of lamb shoulders and blood-dark livers glossy as polished glass. Next door the greengrocers play the cricket coverage with equal reverence, their narrow doorway flanked by plywood steps heaped with taro, okra, yams, jackfruit, as well as plastic buckets filled with less exotic fare—red peppers, granny smiths, pale tomatoes—on sale, along with booze and cigarettes, straight through till morning. To this strip of scrappy, eclectic commercial enterprise come local kids to meet and mate, retiring to its darker side streets for interludes of tender privacy.
When they turned off the Malden Road, James halted. He took Julia’s elbow, slowing her, turning her, pulling her back toward him. “There’s no rush,” he murmured, into her hair. “Home’s not going anywhere.”