I lingered until a security guard told me to leave. I bought a postcard of that painting in the gift shop, and when I got back to my homestay, I tacked it up on the wall next to the photograph of my mother, the one I’d found a few weeks before. My mother as a younger woman, before her life had solidified onto its current course. Every morning during that semester in Paris, those images were the first things I saw when I opened my eyes. I began to think of them as a pair, as a symmetry. The past, the present. They reminded me of the gift I’d been given: time. Time to do nothing, or time to do whatever I wanted. I didn’t need to have it all figured out. The uncomfortable feeling that had plagued me through sophomore year, that had made me feel strange and restless—it had taken a while, but it had finally evaporated. I was okay, right where I was.
Mrs. Baldwin was regarding me with a quizzical expression.
“I’m sorry?” I said, emerging from the undertow of memory.
“I said, you’re living with your boyfriend in New York, isn’t that right?”
“Right. Right, yes. We went to college together. He works in finance.”
Those data points rendered him acceptable. Mrs. Baldwin didn’t need to know any more. She started telling me about her son’s wedding over the summer—it was just the loveliest wedding, they were married at the Cloisters, the bride’s parents were famous-ish, and the mayor came. I refilled my wineglass again, then again. The memories of Paris had made me melancholy, had reignited a longing for some vanished chapter of my life. It was a feeling too big to hold on to.
“You okay?” Elizabeth said between dinner and dessert, after we had gotten up from the table to load the plates into the dishwasher.
“I had too much wine.”
She snorted. “Sitting next to Mrs. Baldwin? Next time I’d go for something stronger. Heroin, maybe.”
“How was your end of the table?”
“He kept touching my hand. Like, to make a point in conversation. But he was leaving it there a little too long.”
“Dr. Baldwin? Ugh. Creepy.”
My parents waved good-bye to the Baldwins as their car backed out of the driveway. When the front door closed, I noticed a slump in both of them. The mask dropped, the smile loosened. They didn’t particularly enjoy the company of the Baldwins any more than Elizabeth or I did. But they did see the utility of their company. The Baldwins were the right kind of people with the right kind of connections.
“Just leave it,” my mother said when Elizabeth and I started clearing the dessert dishes from the table. “Let Jasmine get it in the morning. I’m going to bed.”
She trudged up the stairs. My father retreated to his study off of the kitchen; always more work to be done. Elizabeth shrugged and went up to her room, too. Pepper had been in his crate all through dinner, and no one made a move to let him out. So I unlatched the door and fed him a scrap of piecrust from Mrs. Baldwin’s plate, then took him for a long walk through the dark and sleepy neighborhood.
Chapter 11
Evan
Roger caught me earlier that day. “Trouble in paradise?” he said, clapping me on the shoulder.
I jumped in my seat and exited the browser where I’d been looking at apartment listings, but I felt the heat rise in my face. Roger sat down across from me, grinning with glee at his discovery. “The wife mad that you’ve been spending so much time in the office? She kicking you out?”
“Shut up, Roger.”
“Oh, wow. Did I hit a nerve?”
Several hours later, Roger was gone. Everyone was gone, except for me. The streets were quiet when I finally left the office around midnight. The scattering to home had begun that afternoon. The only signs of life in our neighborhood were the divey Irish bars jam-packed with city kids who were home for the holidays from college, drinking with friends.
In the bathroom, brushing my teeth, I heard a strange noise. A mechanical chirp. After a minute of confusion, I finally saw it on the ceiling: the smoke detector, flashing a yellow warning light. I dragged a chair over and disconnected it, took the battery out, and it went silent. It was too late to go out and buy a new battery. I’d have to survive a night without it.
But I couldn’t fall asleep. The whole apartment felt unsettled—it had ever since I’d gotten back from Las Vegas. I’d taken to lingering longer and longer at the office to avoid it. At least I could still feel normal at the office. Even when she wasn’t around, the feeling of Julia clung to the apartment. I’d started checking online apartment listings in my spare time, furtively, clearing my browser history afterward like I’d been watching porn. The options beckoned: sexy, seductive, a fresh start. Rents were loaded with incentives, post-crash. The new glassy, high-end buildings on the far West Side were perfectly affordable for a young finance bachelor. Then I’d shake my head. I wasn’t a bachelor. Julia and I were still together, after all.
I kept tossing and turning that night, thinking I was hearing the distant chirp of the dead smoke detector. I finally drifted off, but I woke a few minutes later with a start. I thought I smelled smoke, but I knew it was nothing.