When they climbed the steps of the porch, there was the same humid air as the previous evening. They’d arrived from the city in the same spot just over twenty-four hours before, and it felt as if time had become tangled. Sarah realized that she’d seen this weekend as some kind of test, as if the past were no more complicated than an exclusive club, and by reconnecting to Kiki and Arman, they might gain some access.
But in the aftermath of the day’s outing, feeling both disappointed with herself and dizzyingly unmoored, she had what felt like a presentiment: Kiki and Arman would refuse to answer the door. No matter how much Sarah and Matthew knocked or how long they stood there, Kiki and Arman would turn up their music and ignore them. They would or wouldn’t send out their bags. She could easily picture Arman doing a sweep of the guest room—tossing most items in the trash and the choice ones in a box for the basement. He and Kiki had been stoop-sale pros when they’d lived in Brooklyn, and Sarah pictured her soft cotton pants on a hanger with a sticker, her gold hoops displayed near the cashbox on a scarf-draped folding table.
As she knocked on the door one more time, she realized she might have tried to stick around to see how nervous that woman at the lake really was. She’d been laughing, sure, but there’d been something sinister about that man. Leda could be in a similarly volatile situation somewhere. Leda could be tethered to some jerk in the middle of the woods, and Sarah would not want a stranger to simply look the other way. She thought of one of the support group members. Still grief-stricken after a decade, the woman talked exclusively about her daughter, who’d been trying to get to the next level of whatever godforsaken course she was taking when the daughter had become gravely ill. Evidently she’d asked for medical attention and someone had read her the Vedas.
Just as she was about to suggest to Matthew that they walk into town and find any form of distraction, Arman opened the door and let them in. They followed him toward the living room. The air was stale. Kiki was on the floor with Sylvie, who was sitting up and smiling and waving her hands, happy to see them.
“I’m sorry,” Sarah rushed to say, her voice suddenly choked with tears upon seeing Sylvie smile. “I’m sorry for being such a pill.”
“It’s no big deal.” Arman shrugged, which, at least for now, was all the reassurance she needed.
“I mean—” Sarah stammered, “what even happened back there? Those mosquitoes really put me over the edge.” She found herself searching their faces, wanting more than ever to connect.
“What happened?” Kiki repeated, with her eyes fixed on Sylvie, reaching for her fingers and making her giggle. “You were irritable. We can take it.”
“How about a drink?” said Arman.
Everyone nodded.
He headed into the kitchen, and as Sarah watched him go, she wondered whom he’d been speaking to in his car in the middle of the night. She impulsively took Matthew’s hand. Sometimes the urge to show him affection came on so strongly; she was always slightly surprised. If he had walked away before she could grab his hand, she would have followed her husband—the same husband toward whom she’d recently felt such anger, even hatred—across the room to touch him. They stood looking down at Kiki and Sylvie, who were passing a stuffed mouse back and forth.
“Sit down,” said Kiki. “Now you’re making me nervous.”
“Sorry,” Sarah said. She and Matthew sat down on the couch. “I’m sorry.”
Kiki shrugged before pulling Sylvie onto her lap as she leaned against the base of a leather club chair.
Arman came out with a bottle of tequila, grapefruit juice, a bucket of ice, and four glasses. She loved how he hadn’t asked what anyone wanted. This was exactly what she wanted. As he fixed the drinks, she offered a habitual silent prayer of gratitude that she was not an alcoholic and could therefore enjoy this drink. During Leda’s first stint in rehab, she and Matthew had each taken a hard look at their habits, their history, and their families’ histories. They’d browbeaten and theorized and she’d given up all alcohol for several months to see if she was secretly dependent, even though she had a low tolerance and rarely had more than some wine with dinner. After she was sufficiently sure that she wasn’t addicted to alcohol, she gave up sugar, gluten, dairy, then finally welcomed it all back, deciding never to give up anything again unless there was an absolute medical necessity.
Sarah sat back on the couch. There was a prolonged moment of pouring and stirring; no one spoke. Kiki cuddled Sylvie. A tree branch scraped gently against the window screen; there was the repeated faraway honking of a horn. As Sarah’s gaze traveled over everyone’s heads and through the windows, she could see the stone wall and outdoor table; the leaves on the verdant trees. She let her vision narrow and all she saw was green. She could feel the man’s fingers almost gentle on her stomach, the twilight of the park two nights ago now as her face hit the ground.
She touched the cut on the bridge of her nose.
“What’d they take?” asked Kiki.
“What?” Sarah asked, confused.
“When you were mugged.”
“I told you.” Sarah was perfectly aware she had no business being irritated, that if there was any moment to let details slide, it was now. “My phone.”
“That’s it?”
“I have a lot on my phone.”
“No backup?”
Sarah took a longer drink. “No, not really.”
“You mean like notes? Did you lose notes?”
Sarah nodded.
“Are you working on something?”
“Sort of, but what about you?” Sarah asked, as if none of the visit had happened yet and they’d begun with chitchat after all. “I haven’t even asked about your work. Your website is beautiful.”
“Thanks; I need to update it.” Kiki nodded to Sylvie on the floor. “I’ve been pretty neglectful.”
Arman sat down in the club chair above Kiki. He put his hands on her shoulders. “You haven’t been neglectful.”
“Not with Sylvie.” She balked. “My work.”
“Oh.”
“He barely realizes I have a business.”
“Come on,” Arman said lightly, “I do, too. I love her designs. You should have seen our place in L.A.…”
“You know, I finally saw your second film,” Kiki said.
“Why?” Sarah said. “It’s terrible. I told you it was terrible.”
“I didn’t recognize it as yours.” Kiki said to Matthew, “I didn’t recognize her in it,” as if this were something over which they might relate.
Matthew, smart man, didn’t reply.
“Well,” Sarah said, “it wasn’t my script. You know that, right? I was hired to direct it.”
“I just didn’t feel you in it at all.”
“Even if it’s not your script, it’s still your film,” Arman added. “I mean, don’t you think? Shouldn’t it—theoretically at least—have your stamp?”
“Did you see it, too?” Sarah asked him.
“No. You asked us not to watch it. But theoretically—”
“Theoretically?”
“Sure, theoretically. Theoretically, it’s your film.”
“Okay,” said Sarah. “Sure.”
“It was just amazing to me that you directed it,” said Kiki.
“So if you didn’t see my stamp … is that a compliment because it’s such a bad film or…” Sarah let out a brittle laugh. “I can’t tell.”
“You know what,” Matthew said carefully, “I think…”
Was he going to actually try answering not only for her but also for Kiki?
Then Sarah saw that Matthew looked distracted or maybe even worse, and she knew there was more going on. “I think,” Matthew repeated slowly, “I—”
“You think what?”
Matthew looked right at Sarah, as if no one else were there. “I think I might have to go lie down.”
“Oh?” She erupted into hollow laughter.
Matthew looked at her and then at Kiki and Arman. “I’m just suddenly really exhausted.”
“Is this about before?” Sarah asked.
“Before?” Matthew’s tone was somewhere between aggressive and genuinely confused.
“Yesterday. Because I’m going to,” Sarah said quietly. “I told you I will.”
“You guys,” said Kiki uncomfortably, “maybe you want to take a walk or something?”
Arman stood up. “My God”—he looked at Kiki with naked exasperation—“you’re so afraid of confrontation.”
“Don’t raise your voice,” Kiki said.
“I’m not raising my voice. All I’m saying is, let them fight a little. Let them air their bullshit. We have ours. They have theirs. People don’t always need to get along. Everything doesn’t have to be okay. And they know that. They understand that. And that’s why they’ll be fine.”
“Fine seems pretty relative.”
“Fine is pretty relative.”
Kiki stood and picked up Sylvie. “I’m going to put her down. I don’t want her hearing all this.”
“She’s eight months old,” cried Arman. “She’s hearing noise.”
“It’s upsetting her. I can tell. She understands more than you think she does.”
“I was raised in a house where no one ever spoke in a neutral tone of voice. Everyone yelled. Everyone yelled all the time!”
“Well, I don’t love that paradigm. Sorry, it’s not 1975.”
And Kiki left the room with beloved and hard-won Sylvie Jane Simonian. Bless her, Sarah thought. Please. Bless her and keep her safe.
“She’s not even tired,” Arman hollered after Kiki. “Her sleeping is messed up enough as it is.” They could hear Kiki’s footsteps going up the stairs and padding across the hallway. “What?” he said to Sarah. “Don’t give me that disapproving look. It is. She read this book about babies needing twice as much sleep as previously thought. Did you ever put your eight-month-old to sleep whenever she seemed remotely tired?”
“It doesn’t matter what I did.”
Matthew opened the door.
“Where are you going?” Sarah asked. “I thought you were exhausted.”
He ignored her and stepped outside.
“Matthew,” she called after him; the screen door slammed shut.
Arman was shaking his head, suppressing a grin.
“Don’t shake your head at me,” she said lightly, before realizing how insulted she was. “We aren’t getting along. It’s a little ugly. I know that.”
“You know ugly?”
“I do.”
“Real ugliness?”
“Yes,” she said quietly, “I know about that, too.”
“Why do I doubt that?”
“I don’t know.” She twisted her hands together, squeezed until her rings dug into her skin. “I can’t help you there.”
“You know, when we moved up here, I wasn’t exactly prepared for the poverty. It’s real.”
“Of course it’s real. This was news to you?”
“People are pissed.”
“As they should be.”
“People are really pissed. The factories are all closing, there’s meth everywhere, and the heroin—”
“And what?” she asked, while getting a handle on his tone, which was increasingly condescending. “You identify with these people in crisis?”
“I do, actually.”
“You do.”
He nodded. “I mean, I get it. I get why they resent me and what I look like.”
“And you look like what—a movie star?”
“Some guy wouldn’t sell me firecrackers last month because he thought I was ‘an Arab.’”
“Jesus. That’s infuriating.”
“I’m no movie star, Sarah. We both know that.”
“Ah, aha. But you look like one.” She smiled.
Arman shook his head with a laugh that seemed distinctly bittersweet. “They see me as an outsider and threatening.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“They want to protect what they have. What little they have.”
“We both know this story and how it ends. Every day there’s a retelling of this story. Please don’t tell me you’re sympathetic to—what do they call it now?—racial resentment? Racial anxiety?”
“You don’t have any idea. You just don’t.”
She was disturbed by where this conversation was headed, that he seemed hell-bent on exposing her privileged cluelessness, but she was also afraid of how angry Matthew was. He usually took a run or a walk to ward off rage and despair. She looked out the window. He was nowhere in sight. She kept thinking she should go find him, but she also knew that if she did, that if she tried to question him right then, he would leave her. Somehow she knew he would.
“I’m no fucking movie star. Why would you say that? Why would you say that to me? It’s humiliating.”
She turned and looked at Arman sitting on the couch. He put his head in his hands. It was eerie how much he looked the way he had outside in the middle of the night. She found herself wondering, Do we all repeat the same gestures every day? If we stripped away the words, the weather, and the noise, would our days be nothing but repetitive choreography?
The neighbor—he had seen her with Arman. He had stuck his fingers beneath her bathing suit and pulled. He had seen them talking outside and made an assumption.
Why had she pretended to be Kiki?
Why not? she answered herself immediately. Why not be Kiki if the option presented itself? At least for an afternoon?
Unable to commit to either standing or sitting, she leaned against the wall. “I’m sorry.”
Arman shrugged it off. “It’s okay.”
“No, I’m really sorry.” Though she hadn’t exactly intended it, she recognized she was offering a larger, more all-encompassing apology, one for how she’d opted out of their lives. “I mean, I realize it’s probably too late. I realize you probably don’t give a shit.”
He scratched his beard. “I do.” His bluster was suddenly gone. “I do give a shit. Come here. Come sit down.”
She walked over and sat on the other side of the couch.
“Look,” he said.
“What?”
“I don’t want to fight with you.”
“You don’t? You sort of seem to.”
“I do?”
She nodded.
“Well, I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry, too.” Arman looked, for the first time, like … a dad. A worn-out dad on a Sunday.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Really, let’s just stop.”
He nodded and stretched his wrist out. He did a trick with his hands that made it look as if he’d cut off his thumb. He’d performed this trick years ago for Leda, who’d loved it and giggled, but Sarah had screamed so loudly that no one had ever let her forget it.
“Arman,” she warned now. “Stop!”
He gave her a smile as if he was giving her a gift, but at least for the moment she did feel more relaxed.
“So, I know it wouldn’t occur to Matthew,” Arman said, in a weird sort of hurry, “but he shoots so many ads, so many, and even one national ad—just one—I mean, do you understand how much actors get paid for one ad—even the voice work?… It just—I—” Arman shook his head.
Sarah blinked, then blinked again; she needed to take out her contacts. She remembered being fitted for eyeglasses in the fifth grade. The case was blue. She wore them on the trip home. While sitting in the back seat of the car, she looked out the window. It was as if the world had suddenly announced itself in every leaf on every tree. She hadn’t realized that one could actually see the shapes of leaves, that it was even possible from a distance. The ordinary view was crystalline suddenly and all too much. She remembered now the sound of her father’s gravelly voice and the static on the radio; she remembered returning the glasses to their blue suede case. She’d closed her eyes for the rest of the trip. This, she realized, was how she felt just then.
“Sarah? Did you hear what I said?”
She nodded. “I’ll be right back.” Then she got up and walked upstairs.
Kiki was on the window seat, surrounded by books. She had enormous headphones on, plugged into her phone. From the way her whole body was vaguely grooving, Sarah imagined she was listening to music, but Kiki looked like that even when she was making a list of errands. For all Sarah knew Kiki could be tuning in to a political podcast, a Spanish lesson, white noise.
She registered Sarah standing there and didn’t appear surprised. She took a moment before removing her headphones.
“Sylvie’s sleeping?”
Kiki nodded. “She was exhausted.”
“All that sun,” Sarah said dumbly.
Kiki nodded, unplugging the headphones and wrapping the cord around and around until it was neat and secure.
“And all that tension,” Sarah added. “Of course you’re right about that. I’m sure she felt it.”
Kiki nodded again.
“I’m sorry. And I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to understand why you got in touch.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m sorry. I understand now. I spoke to Arman and I get it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I guess I was so happy when you reached out that it didn’t occur to me to think about why. I’d always wanted to contact you again, but it felt like the window had closed. I was just happy to hear from you. To be honest, I was exceptionally happy. It was overwhelming.”
“What are you talking about? I told you why I finally got in touch. Because we had Sylvie.”
Sarah shook her head.
“Leda was the first kid I’d ever really spent time with. I loved her. I loved being around the three of you. Even if it took me too long to understand this, being around you and Matt and Leda made me think differently about having a family. Why don’t you seem to want to hear that?”
Sarah couldn’t stop shaking her head.
“What are you thinking?”
Sarah turned from Kiki before any tears came. She bounded down the stairs and steeled herself. She knew Kiki was following her. When she reached the living room, Arman was gone.
Kiki stood beside her. “Where did he go?”
Through the screen came the scent of sun-blasted grass.
“Is that them?” Sarah pointed toward the footbridge, where two men were crossing.
“No. No way. Those guys are younger and better looking.”
Sarah laughed. “You got in touch with us again because you need money. I’m just embarrassed I didn’t put it together before now. I’m sorry I’ve been so dense. Arman shouldn’t have had to ask.”
Kiki’s brow furrowed and her forehead creased, and for a moment she did look her age. “You think that’s the reason I invited you here?”
“It’s weird but I don’t mind. I just wish you’d been up-front about it.”
“I am up-front about it. We need money. We’re in serious debt. How much more up-front can I be? But that’s not why I got in touch.”
“No?”
“No.”
“You’re going to tell me that Matthew’s success did not pass through your mind as you wrote that first e-mail?”
Kiki shook her head. “This is really insulting.” She shook her head more vehemently and then stopped, looking confused, as if she’d somehow shaken off whatever she’d actually wanted to say. Then she looked out the window. “When you’re desperate, you think about everything.”
“Yeah. I know that.”
“You do?”
Sarah nodded.
Kiki’s gaze became assiduous, as if she was taking in the full meaning of what Sarah had implied. Desperate? She could almost see Kiki’s brain at work. What on earth did Sarah have to be desperate about?
“So…?” Sarah encouraged.
“So, yes, it passed through my mind that maybe Matt might be able to introduce Arman to some casting directors or at least offer some connections in order to break into voice-over work, which for some reason has always strangely eluded him. Don’t you think he has a great voice? Distinctive?”
“He does. It’s always reminded me of my father’s. He did voice work. Do you remember?”
“Of course. Of course I remember. Look, I don’t know, maybe I fantasized that you’d fall so in love with Sylvie that I’d ask you to be her godmother and you’d—I don’t know”—Kiki pulled at her knotty hair—“I don’t know—pay for her nursery school like in a fucking modern-day fairy tale. Would you judge me? Do you judge me for that fantasy?”
Sarah thought about it briefly. “No, I don’t.”
“Of course you do. And, anyway, it’s all ruined now because I told you!”
Sarah started laughing. “I forgot how funny you are.”
“That’s because I’m not.”
“But you always end up making me laugh.”
The room was getting darker. Leda was probably not in this time zone, but somewhere, at some point this month, she sat in a room and watched the light drain out of it.
“Where are they?” Sarah asked.
Kiki shrugged.
Sylvie let out a brief cry but then quieted immediately.
How tense Kiki had looked at the notion of Sylvie’s waking up, how tense and genuinely frightened. Being a mother, Sarah reflected, was all too often like starring in a horror film. Then the screen door screeched open, and Kiki hissed, “Shh,” at Matthew, then Arman behind him.
Matthew nodded. He stood up straight and cracked his neck. “Okay,” he said to Sarah. “Let’s move on. It’s over.”
Sarah went to him, put her hand in his. He didn’t shake it off.
“Um,” asked Kiki, “what’s over?”
“Our fight,” Sarah explained. She gave Matthew’s hand a squeeze.
“Okay, good.” Kiki brightened. “So, before I lose my nerve—Matt, I’m going to ask you a favor. Okay?” Her hands were balled into fists, Sarah noticed, as if someone had told her to stop talking with her hands. “Arman, I’m asking.”
Sarah looked at Matthew hopefully but he didn’t meet her eye.
“We’re all right,” Sarah whispered to Matthew. “We are.”
“I can’t believe you,” Arman addressed Kiki heatedly. “I cannot believe you are doing this.”
This seemed only to embolden her. “Arman went into the city yesterday not to shoot a film but because he couldn’t deal with seeing you. He called me from his cell phone at four or five this morning, too stressed to come inside the house because he didn’t want to reveal any of this to you and he was afraid that he would.”
“Reveal what?” Matthew asked.
“That’s who you were talking to,” Sarah said, genuinely relieved that Arman wasn’t cheating on Kiki.
Arman walked outside, the door banging shut behind him.
Kiki continued as if she barely noticed. “He thought he’d crack and let you know what’s going on with us, how deep in the hole we are, and he’s too proud to admit any of it. He was so angry that I invited you here.” Her face twisted up into a painful grin.
“Why did you tell us he was on a film set?” Sarah asked.
“Have you never told a lie?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means give us a break,” Kiki said. “I’m asking you to understand. Maybe you can’t, but—”
“No,” Sarah said, “of course I can.”
“How much money do you need?” Matthew asked.
“I want to be clear,” Kiki said. “That’s not why you’re here.”
“Okay,” Matthew said.
“That isn’t why I got back in touch.”
“I don’t care,” he said. “Just tell me.”
Sarah found herself opening the screen door, careful to avoid the screech and slam. She looked outside and found that Arman was standing down by the water, across from the flag. She thought about going down to get him, but remembered what he said about being raised in a house of yelling. “Arman,” she called out, “come back here.”
When he didn’t respond, she went back inside. Matthew was listening to Kiki, hushed and solemn. She was explaining the IVF, the insurance, and the debt.
“You did the right thing,” Sarah interrupted, sounding angry and impatient. “Stop beating yourself up about it.”
“You don’t understand,” Kiki muttered.
“We’re going to help you.” Sarah asked Matthew, “Right? All right?”
He nodded.
“So we’ll help you. You’ll figure it out. Just—please,” Sarah begged, then again, “please.”
“Please what?” Kiki asked. “What?”
Sarah thought of the tent in the woods; she thought of the man in the tent. He’d leaned her against a tree and she’d walked away unharmed. She’d courted danger and avoided it. It had made her feel better.
“Please stop wasting time.”