You Only Live Once. That’s what people said, as if life really mattered because it happened only one time. But what if it was the other way around? What if what you did mattered more because life happened again and again, consequences unfolding across centuries and continents? What if you had chances upon chances to love the people you loved, to fix what you screwed up, to get it right?
They were outside her brownstone now. The gas lamp flickered in the night like a friend happy to see her. She paid the driver and hauled her heavy, sleeping boy in her arms and out of the cab, feeling stung with gratitude that they were home, and lived on the ground floor.
In their apartment, Janie carried Noah straight into the bedroom and put him down on his bed without turning the lights on. She curled up beside him, facing him in the narrow bed, and pulled the comforter over them both. He stirred and rubbed his eyes, yawning.
“Hey, we’re home.” He sighed, and nestled up against her. He threw his foot over her hip, placed his forehead against hers. He put his hand on her shoulder in the dark.
“What part of the body is this?” he whispered.
“That’s my shoulder.”
“This?”
“That’s my neck.”
“And this is your noggin, noggin, noggin.…”
“Yes.”
“Mmmm.”
Silence. Then a sound from deep beneath the bedcovers. A sleepy grin. “I farted.”
And, like that, he was asleep again.
Janie slowly got out of the bed. She moved quietly across the room and paused in the doorway.
Noah shifted; he was on his back, now, sleeping under the stars. They glowed above him, all the man-made constellations, that map that was all most of us could handle of the universe that went on and on without end. Years ago, she had placed the plastic decals up there, creating Noah’s own big dipper, his own Orion, thinking that for the rest of his life when he saw the stars he’d feel at home. She tried to remember herself as she had been then, but she couldn’t go back, any more than she could mistake the pasted-up stars for the real.
Noah’s lips slid upward, as if he was having a very pleasant dream.
She stood in the doorway for a long time and watched him sleep.
Epilogue
Nothing about the trip to New York was what Denise had expected.
For instance, the fact that Henry decided to come with her: that had floored her.
You never knew what you’d get lately with Henry. There were days when he woke up whistling “Straight No Chaser” and made blueberry pancakes on Sunday mornings for Charlie and her. Other times he stayed up all night, drinking beer in the living room, the TV on loud on any dumb show, and if she got up to check on him or ask him to turn it down, he growled at her to go back to sleep. She always made an effort the next morning to wake early and get herself together and go over her lesson plans for the day, because she knew it would take a while, pushing him out of bed and making sure he got himself dressed and on his way. Sometimes it felt like she had two surly teenagers in the house. It was amazing the three of them ever got to school on time.
“This is me now. You want me, fine, this is what you get. You don’t, that’s fine, too,” he’d said when he offered to move back home. His face was hard and he’d shrugged as he said it, as if it didn’t matter much to him either way, but she’d seen right through him, as if he were one of her own children, saw plain as anything how much he wanted her to take him back. And how much she wanted it, too.
She was happy to have him back. He had that heaviness in him from Tommy’s death, she didn’t expect that would ever go away, but he could savor a plate of good food, and she found herself loving again the simple pleasure of cooking, putting a little of this in with some of that and having it come out of the oven steaming, the whole house smelling delicious, and then eating every bite of it. “You’re putting meat on your bones again,” that’s what Henry kept saying, poking her in the new soft layer over her ribs. And it was good for Charlie. That was clear. The boy was a clown, always had been, and she could see now how much artfulness there was in it. There was nothing she liked better at the end of a long day than seeing Henry throw his head back and send that belly laugh of his out over the dinner table after Charlie had said something funny, and the flush of pleasure stealing over Charlie’s face as he ducked his head shyly, taking it in. Sometimes after dinner they played together in the garage, Charlie on drums and Henry on bass, the sounds vibrating through the walls and out into the neighborhood, drowning out even the neighbor’s dog, and she felt that everything was probably going to be all right.