I try to pretend this is a ridiculous question. Will he let me? As though this is 1955. I roll my eyes. But I don’t answer.
“Ha, you won’t tell him.” Her voice is flat. “Seriously, Zo? What kind of marriage is it where—”
“You act like he’s abusive.” I push my plate away and it clatters against the table. Lydia doesn’t understand relationships, the give-and-take, she never has. I think of the parade of men, tall, short, thin, stocky. She didn’t subscribe to any particular “type.” She consumed men, devoured them, until she was their world. As soon as any of them ever asked anything of her—to change in any way, even if just to be around them more, maybe not work twelve to fourteen hours at a flower shop, because, let’s face it, we weren’t saving lives—she’d be gone. And if asked, she’d reduce them to nothing with a little sideways twitch of her nose, like they’d never existed. Oh, Carl. Eye roll. Simply because they wanted her too much. It was exhausting.
“No, I just think he likes to be in control.”
I push down a flash of anger. “Lydia, stop. He’s protective. He has a right to be. He’s been traumatized by his past.” I lower my voice. “He was married before but she died in a car accident.”
She clamps her mouth shut in a thin line. She wants to ask details, I can tell, but she doesn’t. Good thing, because I don’t know any. He still has nightmares about it, kicking the sheets and shouting her name in his sleep. Tara.
Sam hovers near the cream and sugar counter, feet from our table. He fiddles with all the lids, stacking them one way, then the other, and when he can’t seem to find a reason to be there any longer, he turns and heads back to the kitchen. The music volume drops to a barely audible level.
“We had so much fun in that crap apartment in Hoboken,” I say. I remember the cramped quarters, only a hanging sheet separating our beds, a thin guise of privacy in anticipation of all the single activities that were sure to come. By the second week, we’d tied it back against the wall, tacked with kitchen twine and a pushpin. The apartment contained only a living room, big enough for a single plaid monstrosity of a couch that we dragged in from street pickup, and a kitchenette fit for a child.
“Hey, did you ever find Carolyn?” She cocks her head to the side, her eyes brightening. When I met Henry, I was immersed in the search. Lydia and I had scoured newspapers from San Francisco, Internet websites on adoption, even cold-called some long-lost aunt of Evelyn’s. Lydia was a perfect companion, her lust for mystery and her creativity propelled me long after I might have given up. We never found anything. Lydia knows about my adoption, but not about Mick.
And only Mick knows what I did to Evelyn.
Then I got caught up with Henry and gave up. My earlier conversation with Cash echoes back to me. I shake my head. “I haven’t looked again, isn’t that weird? I sort of just forgot. I still think about it sometimes, but not enough to actually do anything about it.”
I’m suddenly struck with the need to have a biological connection to someone, an unbreakable tether that might keep me from flying away in Henry’s wind.
Two conversations about my mothers in one day is enough to cause panic.
Sam appears at my elbow, brandishing chocolates. We each take one. The candy coats my tongue, sweet and feathery. Decadent. He wisps away, leaving a trail of Polo in his wake.
“I can help you look.”
I shrug and flit my fingers at her. She leans back and folds her arms across her chest.
“You’re just so fucking different, now.” She says this as though it isn’t a matter of opinion and is also no big deal. “What is that, silk?” She touches the sleeve of my blouse with her pinkie. I yank my arm away, involuntarily. I hate being scrutinized, studied. I’ve lived so long feigning normality, invisibility, I forget how it is to be conspicuous. With Lydia, suddenly, I feel conspicuous—uncomfortable in my own silk blouse. “Your hair is all one color. And it’s so damn long.”
This is true. I’ve gotten compliments about my hair from strangers in public. The short, angled, punk bob I kept when Lydia and I lived together has grown into a thick chestnut mane that flows just to my shoulders. I don’t say it’s because Henry likes it to tickle his face when I slide on top of him.