I heard Vic’s truck pull up before I was awake. Its sound was as distinctive as the UPS trucks and at least as loud. He and Robin had had only two kids when they bought it. That seemed like a hundred years ago now. The door slammed. Vic must be picking up the kids for the weekend. I got out of bed.
“Elise isn’t ready.” It was Mike’s voice. “Her hair is getting fixed. Mom said could you throw our stuff in the back.” I could hear stuff hitting the bed of the truck. Why didn’t Vic say hi to Mike?
“Dad?” Mike said. “Are we going to the beach?”
“We’ll see. I have to stop by work for a couple of minutes.”
“No,” Mike whined. “I don’t want to. We did that last time, and it was all day.”
“You guys can play on the computers!” Vic said with feigned enthusiasm.
“We don’t want to.”
“You want to go back to the apartment and stay with Sandy?”
There was a long pause. “Can’t we just stay here with Mom until you’re done with work?”
“Nope.”
“No fair.”
Maddy and Ray were outside now. “I want to sit in front!” Maddy said.
“You’re not old enough,” Mike explained. “Elise isn’t even old enough, but Dad lets her. If he didn’t, we wouldn’t get to go.”
Ray said, “I don’t want to go!”
“Don’t say that, Ray,” Maddy said. “You’ll hurt Dads feelings.”
“Get in.” Vic opened the door. “Where’s Elise? Elise!”
“She’s almost ready!” Robin called back.
A few seconds later, two doors slammed, first the house, then the truck.
“Mommy!” Ray yelled at Robin. “I don’t want to go!”
Then there was a minute or so of stuff I couldn’t hear, except that Ray was crying.
“Make sure they’re back by five tomorrow!” Robin said sharply. “They need to get their hair washed and their—”
“Fine,” Vic said.
“Have fun, guys! See you tomorrow! I love you!” Robin was yelling in a cheerful, upbeat voice as the truck backed up.
“Bye, Mommy!” two of the kids called. Ray was crying, probably leaning out the window as the truck backed up.
I didn’t look out the window, but I pictured her standing there, waving in her bathrobe. How could she let them go with him? They’d be gone for two whole days, and she’d be miserable. Robin and Vic had been saving for a house, she told me. They were going to buy a new place in one of the northern suburbs when Vic suddenly lost sight of the master plan. He got involved with someone from his office and left Robin with the kids so he could move in with the other woman.
I heard the sound of the truck engine fade into the general traffic noises. The crying would start any second now. As if I had stepped on a nail, I sprang into action. I was going to stop the crying before it started. At that moment, I was willing to do just about anything not to hear that sound. In three giant steps I was in the kitchen filling my new coffeepot. I dumped water in the tank and grabbed a filter. I scooped some coffee out of the bag and pressed the button. I pulled on some pants and a T-shirt, raked my fingers through my hair, and went next door.
She was just starting to tear up when I got there. It wasn’t the bathrobe today. She was wearing an old pair of jeans and a work shirt over a white T-shirt. “Hi!” I said a little too loudly. “I just— I don’t know what I was thinking! I measured out too much coffee. Do you want a cup? Just to, so I don’t waste it?”
She wiped her face on her sleeve. “Uh, coffee?” she said.
“Yeah, coffee,” I said, “That hot brown stuff people drink in the mornings?”
“Uh. Yeah. OK. Sure.”
“Two minutes!” I said.
I went outside and grabbed two plastic chairs from the garage. Former tenants had left them here. There was a square of uneven bricks with grass growing between them that joined the entrances of our two apartments. I always thought Jeanette’s husband had laid them, and it was his first bricklaying experience, maybe his last. I put the chairs on the bricks, where they teetered on the lumpy surface, I went inside and got down two coffee mugs. I always use the same one, but I had to wash the other one, as it had a dead moth in it. Then I poured the coffee in.
“Robin?” I said at her door.
“Yeah?” She came from inside somewhere. She had brushed her hair.
“Want to sit outside? I found some chairs.”
“That sounds nice.”
Slowly, carefully, as if recovering from an illness, she came outside. She sat in a chair, and I handed her the coffee cup. “I hope it’s not too strong.”
“I like it strong,” she said.
“Oh!” I said. “I didn’t bring any milk or sugar.”
“I have some,” she said. She stood up and then turned around. “Oh. Do you want anything in yours?”
“No,” I said. “I’m OK.” It was real coffee, so I wasn’t planning on drinking mine. I had bought it for the real-life act I had planned for Diana. The coffee was just a prop.
Robin went inside and put stuff in her cup. I heard her getting a spoon out of a drawer, stirring. She came back out, sat down, and took a sip. “Mmm,” she said. She closed her eyes. “The kids went with Vic this morning.”
“Oh? Really? His weekend, I guess, huh?”
“They’ll be back tomorrow.”
“You can live it up!”
“Luckily, I’m working all day. I hate it when they’re not here,” she said, biting her lower lip. “I just hate it.”
“Well. You get a little free time for yourself, though, that must be—”
“I don’t like time for myself,” she said, “It just leads to thinking, and thinking leads to regretting and worrying. I try to avoid free time as much as possible. For all the time that I’m not working, I try to get a lot of videos.”
I nodded. I decided to stop pretending that she was going to have fun without the kids, to stop acting as if I didn’t know anything. “I understand completely. I spend a lot of time trying not to think myself. I’m something of an expert. But I have a whole row of guitars, instead of four kids. I’m not sure that they work as well.” Without thinking, I took a sip of my coffee. “Hey!” I said. “That’s pretty good. I didn’t know I knew how to make real coffee.”
She laughed. A little. Sort of.
Then we sat there for a few minutes not saying anything. I didn’t really have anything to tell her or ask her. I just didn’t want to hear her crying. That was all that had brought us together, and so far, it was working. I drank the whole cup of coffee.
“What about you?” she said.
“What about me, what?”
“What are you going to do today?”
“Oh. Play my guitar. And, I don’t know, work on some songs maybe.”
She nodded and sat there a minute. Then she drank what was left in her cup. “Well, that was excellent. Thank you.” She handed me the empty cup. “I think I’m going to take off now. I’m a couple of hours early for my shift, but Saturdays if I get there early, they usually put me right on. I can use the money.”
“That sounds good.”
“Enjoy your day!” she said, just the way they did in the grocery store.
“You too!”
She made a brief groaning sound. “I’ll try.”