“Oh, do you live here?” The surprise in the woman’s voice is undisguised.
“Since before you were born, probably.” At this, Lori shoots him a look.
The wife nods at John. There is something appraising in her face that makes him uneasy.
“I think you’ll love it here,” he goes on. “It’s a great school system. I’m on the school board myself, making sure of it.” He glances at her belly and attempts an avuncular grin. “Girl or boy, do you know?”
The woman’s smile dims. “It’s a surprise.”
“I have a daughter.” John hears his voice echo in the kitchen. “She’s in the high school now.”
The woman nods. She now strikes him as much older than before, too old to be having a baby.
“We have a terrific theater program,” he continues aimlessly, “and the football team does very well.”
Again, the dim smile.
“All I can say is, enjoy them when they’re little. You’ll see how fast it goes.” As John speaks, he feels a thickening at his tonsils. Bethany’s childhood has sluiced past like water.
The husband has come to his wife’s side now. Neither of them responds to John’s last comment, and he can’t blame them. He always hates it himself, when others proffer such insulting banalities. Children grow up, everyone knows that. He feels humiliation brush his cheeks like sandpaper. The prickling migrates to his neck and chest, inflaming the skin beneath his shirt.
Husband and wife lean together against the granite countertop, unfazed by the radon progeny that may or may not be forming a particulate cloud around them. It is now clear to John that these are unapologetic members of the city rich, that breed of newcomers who’ve been slowly infiltrating the town, contracting showy new construction or transforming the abodes of the dead and elderly. John has watched modest, well-loved homes grow extra limbs overnight, become burdened with columns and porticos, moated with wrought-iron gates. He’s seen bumper-stickered Volkswagens give way to army-sized SUVs. And in his rearview mirror, more and more often, he finds shadowed drivers behind gleaming windshields, clutching cell phones, tailgating.
“So, what’s next?” the man asks. His arms are crossed over his chest, and the vulnerability in his eyes has vanished. This is a man in control of his life, proprietor of home and family, and John feels the cool, professional distance between them.
He leads them back through the icy living room and into a smaller room with a piano and built-in window seats. This room, some kind of parlor, is obviously another addition. It is crisp, with unclouded windowpanes that give an impartial view of the outdoors. The window seats are covered with blue velvet cushioning suitable for a royal family portrait. It is difficult to believe that the same wife responsible for the stiff orange sofa has chosen the upholstery here. Just as Diana loved to do, this other woman must have sat with fabric swatches and held them to the light. Whenever he came upon his wife in such a pose, he would be struck by the distant focus in her eyes, as if she were envisioning a life somewhere beyond the walls of the room, a life more captivating than her own, a life that he suspected did not include him.
It’s impossible to think their bond had been so tenuous. After all these years, Diana’s insistence that there was a fault line all along—that they communicated poorly, that he’d always been self-involved, unromantic—does not jibe. Her dissatisfaction had congealed too suddenly; her voice was too sharply contemptuous. Any man would be suspicious. And then, in January, the odd phone calls in the morning began, followed by lengthy, unfruitful trips to the mall. John had more than once thought of trailing her car, but resisted. What a pathetic thing it would be to usher his proud GMC behind her Impala. And worse than the ugly possibility of being detected, of course, was the calamity of being correct.
So he did nothing, and in March the paperwork appeared on his night table on the letterhead of their family attorney. Diana did not come home from work. Prowling the hallway in the night, stunned and sleepless, John found a strip of light beneath his daughter’s door. Entering the room, he met Bethany’s eyes where she lay propped in bed with a book. The look she gave him was flatly unsurprised and, he swore, held a glint of mockery.
John bends to check the electrical outlets beneath the velvet window seats: three-pronged and modern. As he stands, he sees the husband tentatively run a finger over the glossy fall board of the piano and catches the private smile his wife gives him.
“He used to play,” she explains, then looks back to her husband. “We could get a piano and put it right here. We should do it.”
“What a wonderful idea,” Lori chimes.