Maura turned the key in the door and slipped it in her purse. The sun was midway in a pale, egg-blue sky, and the temperature was well above freezing. The late afternoon light had begun to thin and wane early now, and Maura was dreading the winter. But it felt good to be heading out to run a few errands. Grief had shrunk her for too long now, it had circumscribed her life like the aperture of a camera. But she was feeling stronger. Maybe she would take a walk or possibly even head to a stretch class at the gym. No, actually not the gym, too many people. A locker room of familiar peppy faces in exercise clothes was still too much to bear. The thought arrested her for a moment that the last time she’d felt vibrantly alive was that final day, five months ago, the last week of walking the kids to school. The memory of her excitement then hit her like a punch.
Maura shook her head. She would not do this to herself today, would not marinate in her own sorrow and guilt and end up somewhere between the couch and the kitchen counter, dreamily lost in the tar pit of her own melancholy. She would go out. Get outside, maybe even to the beach. Her mother was happy for her to drop Sarah off at the house for a few hours after preschool, and Ryan was at school until 3:00 P.M.
Walking to her minivan she felt hesitation turn to a renewed burst of energy, almost as if the molecules of air outside the house propelled her forward. First, she would head to the post office to return a pair of running shoes Pete had ordered online, a package that had sat, neglected on the front hall table, for almost three weeks. She would bring Rascal with her too. They both needed a change of scenery.
In town, the storefronts had turned their focus from Halloween to Thanksgiving, and most of the branches were bare. She was not prepared for winter, not ready for the early arrival of darkness, the plummeting temperatures and the unrelenting wind off the lake. Her mother, the inveterate Weather Channel watcher, had told her they were predicting it would be an unusually harsh season this year.
The post office was crowded, clearly a busy time of morning to be here, but she had come this far. She could wait. Three counter windows were open, and the clerks seemed to be in no particular hurry, chatting with the customers as an occasional chuckle echoed in the marble interior. Standing obediently in line Maura observed a grandmother and a boy of perhaps eleven by the wall of individual mailboxes. He was small, dark hair falling in shaggy layers to his collar, with striking wide-set eyes that lent him the appearance of extra innocence.
The boy was flipping through the “FBI Wanted” pages, hole punched and bound together by a silver circular binder clip and attached to the bulletin board, next to the metal PO boxes with tiny combination locks. He seemed fascinated by the Xeroxed pictures, and as he turned each page he would stop at one that interested him and ask the older woman to pronounce the name, and then repeat it slowly after her. His grandmother, bent slightly at the waist to view the paper, read each word patiently in a tutorial tone, with the cadence of devotion. She patiently corrected him when his tongue stumbled over a syllable.
There was something wrong, Maura realized, something off or slightly dull-witted about the boy, who was much more childlike for his age than his height or weight suggested. Perhaps it was a kind of autism or other disability. “What’s this word, Grandma?” he asked flatly.
“Un-law-full …,” she said, pointing at the word with a gnarled finger and tracing each syllable. A starburst of gratitude, a guilty relief spilled out inside Maura that her children, despite all of their little idiosyncrasies, were healthy. And then the realization caught her ferociously in the throat, like a fishhook, yanking her to the surface of sudden remembrance, that her perfect family was not whole. Her eldest boy was gone.
She understood then just how lucky that grandmother was, because she, Maura, would resurrect her son under any condition, even if he were a silhouette of the boy that she knew. She would desire him under any circumstance, through any illness, difference, or disability and under any terms, so long as he was alive.
The earlier hopeful feeling of the day wobbled, and everything inside Maura’s chest squeezed like a fist. It never ceased to amaze her how grief could suddenly bubble up like a spring or pack the wallop of a sucker punch. She tightened her grip on the package, shouldered her purse, and pushed through the heavy glass doors of the post office lobby and out into the late fall air. She would not cry, she told herself.
Back out in the car she paused, her sterling Tiffany-heart key chain in her hand, as she struggled to keep emotion in check. Each of us held things that weighed us down, to different degrees, she thought. No one was exempt. All of us whizzing by one another on a city street or highway, wearing our polite public masks, while the internal scars, the transgressions and the sadness of egregious loss, clung to us on the inside like trace elements.
As she was about to turn the key in the ignition, her cell phone rang, jolting her out of her reverie and back into the present, still such an unfamiliar sound. It was Pete’s number, and she flipped open the phone and tried to add some enthusiasm to the tone of her voice.
“Hey!”
“Hey, Maura.”
“I’m downtown right now. Just got out of a meeting.”
Maura braced for the inevitable excuse, the backtracking to get a night out with the boys.
“I’m walking right by that indoor farmers’ market. You need anything for dinner tonight? There’s some amazing-looking fish and another stall with fresh bread.”
Maura was stunned for a moment. This was not what she had expected.
“Uh. Sure. I haven’t thought ahead to dinner yet. Fish would be great, fresh bread too, maybe a baguette? Thanks, Pete.” She smiled for a moment, warmed by his uncharacteristic thoughtfulness.
She started the car and began the short drive home, feeling buoyed by Pete’s call. She would return the package another time; it had already waited this long.
“Why do they want O’Connor for the final part of the contract? I’m a senior partner.” Roger’s voice was rising despite his effort at control, and he felt suddenly frantic. The contract was almost inked, he had been the point of contact on the deal, and yet the client was requesting that additional team members fly to Tampa.
“I think they feel more comfortable with a big team,” Bill Kindler offered reflexively. “They just want a few more of us represented in the final negotiation.”
Roger understood instantly that this was a face-saving response from the way Kindler looked down, avoiding his eyes and focusing on meticulously straightening a pile of papers.
“Look, I’m not going to pretend I’m happy about this,” Roger remarked. “I’ve been putting these kinds of deals together since O’Connor had Johnson’s baby soap in his ass crack. This is my territory. And let’s not forget I brought this deal in. It was my original connection through Tom Hiltz.”
“That was the father, Roger, and now his son Jay is running the business.” Kindler smiled patronizingly and looked down again, letting Roger fume. The message was clear, and although it was obviously uncomfortable for both men, Roger felt no upper hand. He nodded slowly, regrouping, and softened his voice.
“I’m sorry, Bill. This isn’t your fault,” he said. “But it’s tough to be a senior member of the team and have a client ask for a pinch hitter at the ninth hour.”
“I think you’re overreacting, Roger. They just want to be wooed, to see all we’ve got. The full complement of the team.”
Roger nodded again, appearing thoughtful, as if this all made perfect sense. As he wandered down the hall and sat back in his own office, infuriated and humiliated, he absorbed the full impact of the insult. Was this what happened? What thirty years at the same company did to you? In the past decade he had been acutely aware of the thundering herd behind him, nipping at his heels. But this? It felt like being cut from the team or, at the very least, third string on the bench.
Roger knew that there was information below sea level, underneath the tip of the firm’s iceberg, to which he was no longer privy. In the heyday of commercial real estate, he had helped to build this firm, cutting deals and paving the midwestern suburbs with a series of strip malls back when even village idiots could make money in the game.
But the market had changed; the commercial real estate business had been a roller coaster lately. And there were younger partners now, in bespoke suits with different connections to corporate bloodlines that fed the income stream. With their technological gadgets and savvy PowerPoint presentations, Roger understood it was a new playing field, with new rules.
The old ways of selling and of relationships and deals by handshake had given way to a cutthroat price-driven age. There were times Roger felt as if he were keeping current only by his fingernails. Hell, he still quietly dictated things to Cristina, his secretary. He had never quite learned to type proficiently on a keyboard once they’d all made the leap to personal computers.
Unbelievable, he thought. Roger sat back in his chair and let out his breath. After all his preliminary work in Florida, he would not be the lead on the Crown deal. He set his face in an even expression and headed back out into the hallway and toward the lunchroom to get a cup of coffee. He felt his heartbeat ratchet up, driven by an internal suppression of rage like steam in an espresso machine. He was damned tempted to walk out the door right now, grab his briefcase, and leave for the day. But that would only give them more of a reason to nudge him further aside. He needed to mark his territory and hide any signs of weakness.
Kindler was spouting bullshit, the same crap that had come out of Roger’s mouth when he himself had been subtly putting older colleagues out to pasture back in the day. Roger poured a styrofoam cup of coffee in the office kitchenette and noticed a brief unsteadiness in his hands, a quivering as a splash of brown liquid hit the Formica countertop. He leaned against the lunchroom table momentarily and closed his eyes.
What had they seen at the firm? Were his memory lapses noticeable to his colleagues? he wondered nervously. Roger let himself panic for a minute as he scrolled through moments in internal and client meetings over the past few months. Had they been picking up on times when he might have forgotten something, missed information, scrambled an issue or a detail? This self-consciousness and insecurity, to which he was largely unaccustomed, hit with a jolt. The thought that he had possibly been a topic of discussion in this manner had not occurred to him before, and it blunted his anger, suddenly humbling him. He worked to back himself away from this paranoid line of thought as he shuffled down the office hallway back to his desk.
Relax, he told himself, back in the confines of his office. This isn’t personal. This isn’t about anything other than the youth culture that’s pervading all of corporate America. Companies in every sector were throwing away their greatest resource. Men his age, who knew where the skeletons were buried and how to make the clocks run, were in the process of being devalued after decades of loyal service for the younger, more cost-effective model.
Maybe it really was time to think about a retirement timetable. Hell, he was sixty-five, and although that still felt mentally young, he knew some of their friends were beginning to have health issues. God knows Margaret had been talking about trips she wanted to take. Images of tour buses, chirpy guides with flags, and pasty couples with cameras and bulging waists and buttocks filled his head, depressing him further.
Roger thought briefly of calling Julia. She would make him feel calm, powerful, and in control. In the past her voice had contained the power to reassure him, to disconnect him from the silly urgencies of his job that sometimes clouded his visual field with false importance. Or that had been how it used to work, anyway. Now, he realized, calling Julia would only conjure up complexities and emotions that he wasn’t prepared to deal with. He lacked the energy. Roger only wanted to close his eyes in the privacy of his office, to reorganize his thoughts and regroup.
Clearing his throat, he drew a deep breath of air into his nose and let it out in one uninterrupted stream from his mouth. This simple relaxation technique Margaret had once taught him calmed him. Hell, work was important but it wasn’t everything. Maybe he didn’t have the lead on the Crown deal, but he’d had a long and successful career at the company, was a member of a country club, a scratch golfer, a friend, a loving father and grandfather. He’d been a steady provider as a husband, although he knew that on balance his role as a devoted spouse was perhaps less than stellar. Roger could feel his heart rate settling back down to normal as he worked this mantra like the stations of the cross. He tipped his head back against his chair and closed his eyes.
His cell phone’s ringtone broke the momentary silence. It was Julia. Roger marveled, as he often had, at her uncanny ability to call just when he was thinking of her. A range of emotions competed with one another, from excitement to joy, and then trepidation as he pressed the answer button without thinking, an involuntary reaction.
“Hi there,” he said with manufactured warmth, rubbing his temple.
“Hello, stranger.” The tone of her voice reached for an easiness he knew she didn’t feel. He understood how much it must have taken to call him yet again. It had been at least two weeks since he had initiated a call to her, probably since the middle of November.
“I have been a stranger.” Roger sighed. “I’m sorry. Would you believe I was just thinking about you?” The words sounded hollow, and he felt stuck.
“I don’t believe it. We haven’t spoken in a week. But I’m ready to forgive you.” She was Julia again, without any overt sense of petulance that he could detect.
“But can I forgive myself?” he said suddenly, as if the words had just slipped off his lips, unconnected to his brain. Perhaps she hadn’t understood.
She was quiet for a moment and then she piped up, a trace of anxiety straining her voice. “What do you mean, Roger?”
“I just … don’t … I don’t know, Julia …” Roger blurted out unthinking. “I don’t know where I am right now. The world is such a different place for us than it used to be. There are people … people here who need me.”
“I need you too,” she said simply, and let it fall flat. He pictured the tanned backs of her hands, the long, talonlike nails, which were always painted a bright pink or coral, so different from Margaret’s earth-chafed fingers.
“I know you do. And I need you too. I do. I’m just dealing with so much here. Maura … her family, the other kids.” There was an apologetic smile in his voice and he was mindful not to throw his wife’s name into that litany.
“It’s been months, Roger. Almost three months since I’ve seen you, and that was only one night. Five months since everything happened with your grandson. I have tried to give you space.” Julia’s voice lacked patience now. It was rising slightly, generosity spent. “Surely your daughter and your family are getting stronger, moving down the road to recovery?”
Her innocently pat question made Roger bristle. It would be so easy to flare up now, after the disastrous meeting he’d had with Kindler. How simple it would be to erupt, to rise up and just smote this connection from the center of his heart. Who were they exactly to each other now? A fading affair? It had felt like something more before the accident, something with interesting possibility. Now he felt spent. For the moment Roger wrestled with an explanation for how Julia fit into his life. She was not a mistake exactly, certainly not something he regretted. But things had changed. What possible benefit could he provide in her life?
She had once told him that her romantic options were limited to a stream of widowers looking for someone to care for them and men in loud shirts who loved betting on the greyhounds at the track. This parade of “factory seconds,” as she called them, held no real interest for her. Julia assured him she would never marry again. She liked their arrangement just fine, she insisted, although he believed she secretly desired more from him, even a commitment. But frankly, what she chose to do during the in-between time was none of his business, although he assumed she had been faithful.
The truth was, he still wanted her physically. Guilt, desire, spontaneity, and need were all bundled into one large cable connected straight to his heart and groin. Seeing Julia would be his consolation for getting screwed over at work, he rationalized. This was what all hardworking executives deserved after a lifetime of servitude. A little pleasure. And no one got hurt. He could so easily book a trip to Tampa, drum up a reason to drop in on the Santy/Gruber folks and solidify a few relationships.
“I can’t come down to see you right now, Julia. I can’t. But I’ve just gotten out of a meeting, and it looks like I’ll be down in the next two weeks.”
“You can’t come or won’t come?” The pouty childish petulance had crept back into her tone. “You were always able to find some excuse to run down here in the past.”
“There’s a deal here in Chicago that needs me. A big deal,” he lied. “And then the girls, Maura the most. And of course, Margaret.” There. He’d said it; he’d uttered her name. “She needs my presence in a way that she didn’t before the accident. She’s more … fragile.” He had searched for a word and found one that didn’t fit Margaret precisely. But it sounded convincing to him. He hoped it would sound right to her too.
Julia sighed. “I understand. I really do.”
“I hope you do,” said Roger. “Because I love you.” And he meant it.
“I love you too. I’m going to call you soon. Or maybe you call me. That would be nice. Can you call me?”
“I will,” Roger promised. “I will.”
“I love you,” she said again with a tinge of pleading.
This sidewinder conversation made him feel just the tiniest bit conniving and dirty. Hanging up with Julia he felt a new sensation, as if he had done something in a subtle shade of wrong, like he’d walked out of a convenience store inadvertently clutching the newspaper after only paying for the soda.
He couldn’t fight the feeling of overall damage and impotence, coming at him now on the heels of the meeting with Kindler. Did he even have the desire to keep all of those balls in the air? Roger had always been an expert at maintaining separate chambers in his heart. But Julia, her unabashed expectations and all that she offered, were suddenly, inexplicably overwhelming to him. It was as if at any moment, walking this tightrope wire of an act, he could fall to one side without knowing if either Margaret or Julia would be there to break his fall.