They didn’t talk about Noah. Neither of them wanted that fight; there was no winning it and no end to it. When spring rolled around and the idea of visiting Noah intruded into her thoughts as she went about her day, she’d pushed it aside at first, afraid to upset the new and delicate balance at home. She’d sent Noah a gift instead, on Tommy’s birthday, though she hadn’t mentioned that in the card.
She had talked to Noah a few times on the phone those first few months, but it was usually a disaster; whether that was due to the boy’s youth and natural impatience with the telephone or the oddness of the circumstances, she wasn’t sure. He’d been eager to talk to her for the first five seconds, often pestering his mother to make the call. Yet he answered her questions about kindergarten in a shy, monosyllabic way and (after reviving briefly to ask about Horntail) was clearly relieved to get off the phone a few moments later. It always took her the rest of the afternoon to recover from the intense feelings that followed. After a while, the calls had tapered off.
By summer she was determined to see Noah in person. She thought she could handle it now. Janie had agreed to it, though she sounded cautious: “He doesn’t really talk about Tommy very much,” she’d said, and Denise thought that was just as well.
She booked the ticket before telling Henry. Charlie had a job at the Stop & Shop bagging groceries and another as a lifeguard at the pool, so he couldn’t come. When she told Henry she was going to New York to see Noah, he stood there wincing at the name, and she wondered if the risk was too great.
“I’ll go with you, then,” he’d said at last, as if he’d suddenly become somebody else’s husband. “If that’s all right? Got a couple old friends I want to look up.”
He had spent a few years there, when he was young and a promising bass player.
She let him come. She didn’t ask any questions. She didn’t want to know, maybe, what his real motives were, and she wanted his company. She had never been to New York.
Another thing she hadn’t expected: to have so much fun with him.
Their first night in the city they went to the Blue Note and got a seat right by the stage. They drank glowing blue drinks and listened to Henry’s old friend Lou tearing it up with his sax and then afterward they went out somewhere else with the band, laughing and drinking and eating cheap, good food ’til the early morning, listening to the musicians’ easy banter and their stories about staying in somebody’s cousin’s house on the road with the smell of chitlins blasting from the kitchen, their tales of tightwad band leaders and musicians who stumbled out of the bathroom with their noses dusted white and their pants down, and that time Lou’s Seattle girlfriend flew out to see him play in San Francisco and ran into both his Oakland and Los Angeles girlfriends that same night.
Back at the hotel she and Henry hungered for each other like the old days. The force of it surprised her. It was nice to find out that was still possible, after everything that had happened.
She hadn’t expected Henry to come with her to Janie’s apartment the next day, or that Janie’s apartment would be so small and old-fashioned—she’d imagined a big modern loft, like those New York apartments on television, not this quaint place with its ornate woodwork like something in her mother’s house.
It was a hot day. When the two of them straggled in, Janie took one look at them and said, “Let me get you some water. Or would you like ice coffee?”
Denise shook her head. “Wish I could. If I drank coffee now, I’d be up ’til dawn.”
While Janie went to get their drinks, Denise stepped into the living room, where Noah was.
He was almost six, that tender age when the baby plumpness starts to melt away from children’s bodies and you can see, in their newly angular faces, the people they might become. He was absorbed in a book, sitting cross-legged on the couch, his hair bright and wild on his head. (Why didn’t she ever take that boy in for a haircut?) He didn’t seem to notice them.
“Noah, look who’s here,” Janie said when she came back with the waters, and he looked up.
Denise stood in the middle of the room, clutching the gift she’d brought, feeling her mouth go dry as Noah met her gaze with cheerful, unrecognizing eyes.
She hadn’t known until that moment how deeply she had cared. She hadn’t expected that at all.
“This is your Aunt Denise, don’t you remember?” Janie said, stepping forward.
“Oh. Hi, Aunt Denise.” He smiled politely, accepting her present and her presence in his life the way a child did, not questioning where she’d come from.
She sat down and cradled the icy water in her two hands as somewhere far away from her Henry introduced himself to Noah, and the child ripped the wrapping from the box in two quick strokes. Inside was Tommy’s old baseball glove.
He pulled it out with a cry—“Hey, a new glove!”—and she took pleasure and pain in his open, uncomplicated glee.
*
They walked to the park. It was a bright day, the air kicking with a bit of wind.
“So. I’ve got one question for you,” Henry said to Noah, as they walked. He turned to the boy with his gravest expression.
“Yeah?” Noah looked up worriedly.
“Mets or Yankees?”