“Hey, peach face.” I bent down and hurled Emma high in the air. Liz had brought her on three or four visits, but we were always separated by glass. After a while they stopped coming. I squeezed her and held her close. I hadn’t had a hug like that in years.
“Mommy, Daddy’s home. Daddy’s here!”
I stepped inside and Liz came out of the bedroom. Our eyes met, Emma still hoisted in my arms. Any nerves I was feeling melted. It was like I was seeing her there for the first time, and also seeing why I’d fallen for her. In a pretty navy dress, a lace collar unbuttoned at the top. Her brown hair was in a bob, which I knew from newsreels and the occasional Hollywood magazines that made it to me was now the fashion of the day. She didn’t approach me. She just stood there, clearly unsure herself, her hand on the floral chair by the love seat in the tiny sitting room—tinier even than our first apartment on Eighty-eighth and York, before everything fell apart. She gave me a faint smile, the best she could do. Who knew where we even stood now? The name next to the buzzer downstairs made that clear.
“Charlie.”
“Boy, you’re both a sight for sore eyes,” I said. I cradled Emma in my arms. “You can’t even imagine how much I’ve looked forward to seeing you, peach face. And look how big you are now.” I put her back down. “Six. A real lady now.” I rubbed my knuckles softly against her cheek. “You too, Liz. You both look great.”
“I’m glad to see you’re out,” Liz said, neither sympathetic nor cool. “Eddie called me.” There was a measure of hesitancy in her voice, an edge of distrust as well. And why not? I’d put her through the wringer. She’d had to raise Emma on her own these past two years. All I’d done was leave her in a big hole.
“I wish you could have come,” I said. “It would have been nice to, you know, see someone there. It really is like in the movies. They give you your possessions back. In a brown paper bag. Your watch. Whatever money you came with or earned inside. Then they open the big iron door and suddenly there’s a loud clang behind you and you’re on the other side. Uncle Eddie was waiting for me. In that beat-up old jalopy of his. I guess Mom and Pop, they…” They hadn’t been so well since Ben had died. “We hardly exchanged ten words on the way down. But it sure is nice to see my angel now!” I said, cupping Emma’s happy face to my thigh. “Hey, I brought you something.” I handed her the gift bag. The toy store owner told me it was all a boy or girl of her age wanted these days. It and the flowers for Liz had cost me a chunk of the money I came out with. “And Liz, here…” I handed her the roses. “I got these for you.”
“Thanks, Charlie,” she said with the slightest smile. “They’re really lovely. I’ll put them in some water.”
“Do it later,” I said. “Right now, I just want to take a look at the two of you.”
“Look, it’s a View-Master, Mommy!” Emma said, brimming with excitement. Plastic binoculars in which you inserted a disc of photo images and one by one, as it rotated, it made it seem like you were there. Live. The store said it was all the rage now for kids her age.
“I see, honey. That’s nice, Charlie. It really is.”
“They have discs for Africa, and Europe. And the Ten Wonders of the World … And the Far East,” I said, “inside.”
“I love it, Daddy. Millie Richards has one. Are you going to be around now, Daddy?” Emma asked.
“Didn’t Mommy tell you? I sure am, honey. I am most definitely going to be around. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Daddy’s going to be back now, Mommy,” she said. “See.”
“We’ve had this conversation, Charlie,” Liz said, with a bit of exasperation in her tone. “Emma, why don’t you give Mommy and Daddy a few minutes together and play with your View-Master in the bedroom.”
“You’ll still be here, won’t you, Daddy?”
“Of course I’ll be here, honey.” I winked at her. “Promise.” Emma smiled and went inside.
Yes, we had had the conversation. Though it was behind a glass wall and in whispers. And I always had the hope that once I was out I could show her differently.
The real Charlie.
The window was open, but there was no breeze. “I see you’re still in Yorkville,” I said. “Eddie gave me the address.”
Liz put the flowers down at the sink and shrugged resignedly. “Yes, we are. But as you can clearly see…” Her eyes drew me around the place.
It was even smaller than where we used to live. A tiny open kitchen off the sitting room and what appeared to be two small bedrooms. The furniture was sparse and unfamiliar—a love seat, a worn print chair, a plain coffee table with some art books on it; it all must have come with the place. On the wall, though, there was the little Monet reproduction of the cathedral in Rouen we bought in France on our honeymoon. About the only thing that looked familiar. I went over and put my hand to the frame. We stayed in this little place in the place overlooking it. We got drunk that night, enough pastis to last a lifetime. “I remember this.…”
“I had to get rid of a lot of stuff,” she said. “None of it would fit.”
I turned and let my eyes drape over her, like silk to a form. She was still beautiful. “You do look great, Liz. I can say that, can’t I?”
“Sure, you can say it, Charlie. And you too. You’ve lost some weight.”
“Well, I never heard of anyone who went in there for the food,” I said, hoping for a smile.
She complied with the smallest one. “You want some coffee?”
“Sure. I don’t want you to go to any trouble though.”
“It’s no trouble.” She bent down, took out a kettle from under the stove, filled it with tap water, and placed it on the burner. It took three or four times for the flame to catch.
“We are still married, Liz.” I so wanted to go up and give her a hug, but I knew she wouldn’t let me. We had talked about it. The last time she came to visit, back in March. Four months, thirteen days ago. Without Emma there. “I saw the name downstairs. But I am still your husband.”
“We’ve been through all this, Charlie. You know this. I’ve moved on. I didn’t want to make it harder on you by taking it any further while you were still inside. Though everyone told me I should. But now … I know I said I would think about it, the last time I was up there, and I have. I have thought about it. I know the nightmare you’ve been through. But it hasn’t been easy for me either.”
“I know it hasn’t, Liz.…” I went up to her and placed my hand on her waist. All I wanted was for one moment to feel attached the way we used to, to the life I had wrenched away from her so violently. From both of them.
But she pulled out of my grasp and reached for two coffee mugs from the cupboard. When she turned around, whatever softness that was in her eyes and voice a moment before were gone. “You destroyed our lives, Charlie.” There was the flicker of a tear in her eye—not from tenderness, but anger maybe. “I can’t forgive you for that. Everything’s changed. I work in a dress shop now. My folks help out, but I have to support us. We live in this tiny place. With furniture that isn’t even ours.”
“I can help support you now, Liz. I’m not the same man who hurt you. I know how hard it is to see that now, to fully believe that. But I’m not. I haven’t had a drink in over two years. Obviously, where I’ve been,” I shrugged, “the choices of alcohol were just a tad limited. They didn’t have my brand.…”
All I wanted was one small sign of what it used to be like between us. And she gave me a softened look—as if for a moment she could forgive me. But then she merely nodded and her eyes deepened almost like she’d aged ten years in front of me. “It’s not going to work, Charlie.”
“What?”
“Us. What I know you want.”
“Liz, look, if there’s one thing I’ve had an abundance of these past two years, it’s been time. Time to think about what I’ve done. The choices I made. You read my letters. Both to you and Emma. And to that boy. You have to know, if I could go back somehow and take back that punch, I’d give everything up to do so.”
“The punch…” She looked at me, and this time her eyes did fill with moisture. But it was more like the sorrow of someone saying, Don’t you even understand? “But you can’t take back that punch, Charlie. And you still don’t see, it was more than just the punch. A lot more. For me. The punch was just the way it all just crashed to an end. You can say you’re sorry to that poor boy’s mother for that punch a hundred times … But not to me.… It was more than that punch.” She reached for a scissor from the drawer to trim the stems, and found a vase. “Thank you though, for these. They’re beautiful.”
The punch was just the way it all just crashed to an end.
She meant Natalie.
“I’ve told you, Liz, that thing with Natalie was the biggest mistake of my life. By then, it was just the alcohol doing the thinking, not me. And that part’s gone now. It’s a condition of my parole. I’m back. The real me. Charlie.” She was looking at me but there was virtually no connection in her gaze. Like we had never laughed together, never made love. Made a child. What could I expect? Her parents were professors at Michigan. Her brother was an attorney. They hardly wanted her burdened with a self-destructive lout like me.
She shook her head finally. “I’m not though. I’m sorry, Charlie. I’m not back.”
I took in a breath, stung, and sat down. “Do you have a guy?” I asked.
She shrugged. “There’s someone I occasionally see. He works for an advertising company. Emma takes up most of my time. And there’s my job. At the shop.”
“What about your work?”
“My work? I just told you.”
“Your real work, Liz. Chopin.” Her thesis was the most important thing in her life.
“This is my real work, Charlie. All that, that was a long time ago. Another world. But we’re not going back to it. Look, I trust you’ve changed. I can hear it in your voice. I see it in your eyes. And I’m happy for you, Charles. I really am. You still have your own life to live. But trust … it just isn’t something you can just pick up where you leave off, like a book you put down for a while. Like nothing’s happened in between. You may want to, but I’m sorry, you just can’t. You can’t.…”
I picked up a salt shaker in the center of the table and tapped it on its side. “I understand,” I said, nodding resignedly. “I know I have to live with what happened then. Everything that happened. And believe me, Liz, I see the image of that kid lying there on the pavement every day. Who won’t get to live out his life. That’s the sight I see every night before I go to sleep. Other than yours and Emma’s. I know I have a lot to make up for. And I accept that I can’t just show up, and do it in a day. But all I thought about these past months, you know, is maybe, just to have the chance. The chance to try and prove myself to you again. To the two of you. That would mean everything to me, Liz. I know how you feel. I saw the name you go by downstairs on the door. But you can’t blame me for fighting for that. For my life.”
She arranged the roses prettily in the vase and placed them in the center of the tiny sitting table. “You can’t really love me anymore, can you, Charlie? I mean, really love me. Not just the idea of being a husband again. Or a father. And trying to put the whole thing back together.”
“I will always love you, Liz. I’m sorry, I can’t help that.”
That seemed to touch her a bit, get past the shield she’d put up to push me off, and for a moment I saw a glimmer of the Liz I once knew. In her eyes. We’d been happy. How I had been a knight to her and she an angel to me.
Then the kettle sounded. Steam poured from the spout. It seemed to break the spell. She looked over at it and shook her head. “I’m sorry. But I can’t. I just can’t.” There was finality to it this time. She looked at me as if it was a broken vase we were talking about, a family keepsake, and it was futile to put the pieces of it back together. “You still want that coffee…?”
“I understand,” I said, nodding. “But I need to see Emma. My parole officer says I can. As long as I’m sober. And we are still married. At least for now.”
“You were always a good dad.” She smiled. “Through it all. That’s one thing I can’t take away from you. She loves you to death, Charlie. And she’s missed you terribly.”
“And I could be a good husband again,” I said. “Like before.”
“Before…” She gave me the tightest, most begrudging smile, more a ray of fondness and remembrance than promise, and I saw there was no turning back. “Do you have a place to stay?”
“A friend from Columbia is letting me flop on his couch,” I lied. I was sleeping in my car.
“That’s good. That’s good.” She didn’t even ask who it was. She said, “It’s best if you come by in the afternoons, after Emma gets out of day camp. Mrs. Shearer picks her up at three and stays with her until I get off work. That’s around six.”
“Okay.” I got up.
She picked up the box from the View-Master and placed it on the counter. “I’d appreciate it if when I got back from work you were gone.”