In March, a snowstorm cloaks Connor’s downtown Minneapolis apartment in a foot of powder, persuading Vanessa, who ate dinner with him, to stay over. He puts bed sheets, a quilt, and a pillow on the volcanic gray polyester couch in his spacious living room. The sliding glass doors to the balcony grant a tenth story view of the frozen Mississippi, a milky cataract of stilled rage riving the city in two. He lets her use his toothbrush, gives her sweatpants and a sweatshirt.
Just after midnight, cool drafts lusting along the hardwood force Vanessa off the couch. She walks barefoot into his room and closes the door behind her. He sits up in his boxers, squinting to make out her quilt-wrapped silhouette in the darkness.
“How’s Dean?” he asks.
She throws the quilt over him. “Shut up. I’m cold.”
He pulls the comforter back, she slides into bed, and he drapes it over her. They lie on their backs, staring upward.
“I’m worried we’re moving too fast.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m going to sleep. Don’t try anything,” he says.
“I didn’t last time.”
“You did, though.”
She turns onto her side, facing away from him, and he puts his arm around her. Her recently cut hair is short in the back. When he begins kissing her nape, she reaches behind her and squeezes his naked thigh.
“Tell me more about Dakota County?” he asks.
“I’m getting used to it.”
He takes her hand from his thigh and leads it up to her chest, hugging her.
Minutes pass in silence before she says, “There’s a lot of dead weight wandering the halls. Most of the longtime employees are burned out. Then there are the budget cuts—I feel like a clerk at a store without merchandise. Anyway, I’m serving clients who wouldn’t want what we can provide even if we had the best to offer, because there’s this incredible gap between me and them. Some are there to fix their problems. Some. The rest hate me. And no one trusts me.”
“You’re an extension of the state. You locked them up and threw their kids out of school or took them away. You harassed them to begin with. What, did you…”
“It’s not like Hennepin or Ramsey counties. Most of them are white. What have they got to bitch about?”
“I don’t know. Ask them.”
“Anyway, I understand all that. It’s just not what I expected.” She kisses his fingers.
“Then again, what do I know about it?” he says. “Give it time. Before long you’ll be another zombie with a pension.”
She rolls over and glowers at him, her peach lips and buttercream cheeks turned to shades of gray in the darkness. “I’ve been thinking. You want to know what’s wrong with us? By and large, our generation grew up with as much good fortune and opportunity and safety and security as any in history. So, we’re learning more deeply than any before us just how unfulfilling lives of American materialism are.”
“Oh?”
“Sex, drugs, and rock and roll used to be escapes for the rebellious. Now they’re prisons for the compliant.”
“So, you do or don’t want to sleep with me tonight?”
She leers at him.
He shakes his head at her. “Stop that.”
She frowns, plays dumb.
“This could be a regular thing, you know.”
“It’s not, for a reason,” she replies.
“It’s like we’re cheating on each other with each other.”
“You really need to learn to enjoy yourself.”
She kisses him. Her tongue tastes of spearmint. He slips his hand into the band of her sweatpants, but she stops him.
“I have an early morning,” she says as she rolls away from him.
He kneads his pillow until his head fits just right. “Me too.”
“In another life, you and I would work out,” she says.
“Be nice to me; I’ve been good to you for the most part.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“How’s Dean?”
“Goodnight.”
Every weekday morning, Connor selects from his closet a chic combination of slacks, button-up and tie, and dress shoes, then drives his red Honda Accord to a strip mall slapped in the middle of an upscale suburban neighborhood. After parking in one of the spaces farthest from the entrance, he walks across the lot to a stretch of businesses segregated by faux stone chimneys and split down the middle by an arched portico and brick clock tower. Between a nail salon and a bakery that lures the neighborhood in with scents of cinnamon and maple and fried dough, he enters the smudge free glass doors of Chalmers Investments, chin high, a newspaper tucked under his arm.
From nine until five, he services client accounts via a single-ear headset, either seated at or standing near his partitioned L-shaped mahogany desk in the carpeted lobby, as he doodles on his cellphone or lint-rolls his sleeves or listens to political podcasts playing on the bud in his other ear. When possible, he leaves his headset charging next to his slim computer monitor and meets his clients for coffee or lunch to discuss their portfolios, advise investment strategies, and ensure proper transaction documentation. Whether out of appreciation or to impress him, they present him with expensive wine, brandy, cigars, and restaurant gift cards. At his six-month review, his boss and principal, Mrs. Irene Chalmers, the fifty-two-year-old daughter of retired founder Charles “Chucky” Chalmers, divulges that she doubted Connor would pass the licensing tests required for him to maintain employment.
“It’s not that I thought you were dim, of course,” she tells him, standing before her office desk in her petite pantsuit, wearing many sparkling rings and smelling of jasmine perfume. Arms crossed, one shoulder cocked higher than the other, she poses like a TV trial lawyer. “But, as you know, the tests require studying and attention to detail, and you seemed…disinterested. I thought maybe your heart wasn’t in it. I apologize, I like to be direct. I find that full disclosure is always best.”
“I’m glad I passed, and I want to thank you again for the opportunity to…”
“Bah, bah, bah,” she replies, flicking a finger at him. “If you hadn’t panned out, your father would’ve owed me one. Now I owe him. I hope you’re beginning to see the good you can do for others if you’re willing to listen. When people talk about money, they tell you exactly what’s in their souls. So it’s important that they have somebody to listen carefully. Also, you’d be surprised how quickly someone, even a complete stranger, will put their faith in you simply because you provided sound financial counsel. I once had a man confess to having killed his brother-in-law over an infidelity.”
“What did you do?”
“I bought an eighteen-millimeter Pico Beretta and hid it in a three-ring binder in my desk.”
“You notified the authorities, though?”
She winks at him. “Eventually.”
“Can I ask why I never see you sitting down?”
Her little eyes, crammed too close to her nose, bug out, and he shifts in his seat. “Connor, I don’t expect you to understand this, but in this line of work, and, I suspect, in others, women who spend too much time sitting around are considered weak, and women who spend too much time standing are considered bitchy. I decided to take my chances on the latter. My little halfwit brother, rest in peace, used to work at your desk, and I couldn’t allow my father to promote him to the position I’d earned just because he had one thing I didn’t. You understand?”
He nods. “I’m sorry to hear about your brother.”
“Oh, he’s alive. I just haven’t spoken to him in a decade.”
On weekends, he plays racquetball at a fitness center near the U of M and, as spring nears, golfs the circuit of Twin Cities courses with James and Bill. They three make prop bets involving fed interest rates, the Twins bullpen ERA, and whether Charlotte and Bill’s baby will arrive early, late, or on its precise due date (December 19th). Connor, who golfs only to spend time with his father, steals glances at the aging man meandering from hole to hole. With ruddy half-moons under his eyes from long hours at the office, and raspberry cheeks from sunscreen-less afternoons on the links, Bill smiles at the trees and sand traps, enchanted.
“You’re not drinking too much?” Connor whispers to him post-round, both seated on clubhouse barstools, drinking iced tea.
“Just enough. Do I seem…off to you?”
“No, no. You seem happy.”
“I am,” Bill says. “Aren’t you? It’s been a perfect spring.”
“Definitely. A lot of blessings since I came home.”
“Work is well?”
“Everything is well,” Connor says. “Everything is great.”
Bill squeezes Connor’s forearm.
Connor attends work-comped networking conferences in northern Minnesota resort towns. He fishes and jet skis, plays tennis and volleyball with colleagues, and loots the mini fridges of lakefront log cabins. He schmoozes with young salespeople and bullshits with middle-age managers, all male, some repairing marriages by inviting wives, some damaging them by inviting mistresses. (The women cross paths shopping at quaint seasonal stores that sell knickknacks, antiques, clothes, and candy.) When the final night devolves inevitably into scandal and debauchery, Connor has dinner alone, then returns to his cabin to watch a movie or call Vanessa.
“You’d like it here. It’s relaxing,” he says.
“Who is this?”
“Don’t be mean.”
“What else can I do with you?”
“Really, it’s nice here.”
“So much fun that you decided to call me? What happened, you got booted from the orgy again?”
“Unfortunately.”
“I’m sure they just didn’t want to make you feel bad about your performance.”
“I miss you.”
“I’ve been working,” she replies.
“Put it away for a minute.”
“What do you need?”
“I’m starting to think things are getting serious with Dean,” he says.
“Suppose they were; why would I talk to you about it? Anyway, if you’re compelled to feel jealous, let your imagination run wild.”
“It’s your life.”
“Got to go.”
“Fine. How’s work?”
She emits a long droning hum and says, “It’s paperwork, mostly. Then suddenly a woman on my caseload walks into my office and says her husband came home from the hardware store with three pounds of screws in a paper bag. She was frying fish in oil on the stove. He told her the house smelled. She said he was just coming down and the house didn’t smell that bad. He flipped out on her, beat her till the bag ripped apart and the screws flew everywhere. Oil from the frying pan spilled onto the kitchen floor, melted a plastic trainset, just missed burning the boy she was babysitting. She thought she picked up all the screws, but every other day, she steps on one. Oh, and she won’t press charges because she can’t afford to have him lose his job as a welder and she’s worried it’ll just make it harder to get her kids back. Plus, she can’t babysit the boy anymore—parents were pissed about the trainset—so she’s lost that income. That’s, like, Monday.”
“She wants her kids back, but then she tells you all that?”
“In her world, it’s not a story about chaos or danger in the home, it’s about what she has to deal with, how hard she’s trying to fix her life.”
“Think of what she left out.”
“I do.”
“So, what did you do?” he asks.
“I listened. I wrote a report. Same as usual.”
“She wouldn’t have told you that if she thought you didn’t care enough to listen, if she thought you didn’t care about her.”
“Maybe.”
“No question.”
“I have to go, Connor.”
“Can we have lunch soon? I’ll drive somewhere close to your office.”
“Okay, but we’re not talking about him anymore.”
“About who?”
“We’re not talking about us, either.”
“Okay.”
“You know, there are tons of great girls in this city.”
“I know.”
“You want my diagnosis?” she asks.
“Probably not.”
“You want my heavy-handed, no-nonsense opinion?”
“No,” he replies.
“I think you’re too small for your big plans. Most people would give up if they were you, see the writing on the wall, find someone else. But you get infatuated with women, God knows why.”
“When do you want to have lunch?”
While sailing Lake Calhoun with his colleagues, a team-building outing, Irene corners him on the ship’s bobbing bow and guilts him into a blind date with her niece Marie, whom he meets for a sunset dinner the following week. The bar and grill in Uptown crawls with college students and tattooed hipsters, yoga pants and bicycles. He wears jeans and a collared white shirt with vertical blue stripes. Marie, a thirty-six-year-old mother of two teenage boys, wears a snug black dress, cardinal-red lipstick, and thick eyeliner.
They sit at a table on the sidewalk out front. She smokes cigarettes and, legs crossed, bounces the suspended toe of her heel side to side in sync with the pop music playing inside. What begins as a pleasant evening of political talk and cell phone pictures of her “handsome little gingers” mutates, after her fourth gin and tonic, into morbid death and divorce monologues from which Connor is too polite to excuse himself.
By dessert, cheesecake with strawberry drizzle, she sits with her legs open, hunched over, her elbows on her knees, drawing figures in the dark with the tip of her cigarette, a sarcastic sparkler she eventually snuffs out in the cake crust. In search of a restroom, she ventures inside the bar and grill now throbbing with bass, and when after twenty minutes she hasn’t returned, he enters as well. He finds her arguing with a group of teenagers on the pulsating dance floor, one of whom, a beefy seventeen-year-old in a hockey jersey with wavy carrot locks flowing to his shoulders, socks him in the jaw.
In the morning, Connor sits on his cutting board kitchen countertop, holding a bag of frozen corn to his face.
He schedules as many out-of-office meetings as possible and, whenever Irene drops by his desk, fakes phone calls. When he finally breaks the news to her that, though he had “the most excellent time” with Marie, “an amazing woman and mother,” he has fallen in love with someone else, his workload spikes. She even tasks him with taking out the trash. But he doesn’t complain, and by the start of the next workweek, all is forgiven.
Soon his salary climbs. He starts an aggressive student loan repayment plan and a mutual-fund account for the down payment on his first home. He buys a home entertainment system, new running shoes, yoga garb, and dress clothes. Two hundred dollars for baby shower gifts. Another four hundred for Christmas presents. He frequents local breweries and beer gardens, trades in his Accord for a sporty black CRV, dines with friends and coworkers, dates his yoga instructor and another financial advisor he meets at a conference. Following monthly Mall of America walks with plump, radiant Charlotte, from whom he keeps few secrets, he sends her waddling to her parked car with an array of baby outfits.
On a showery late summer day, Vanessa stands him up for lunch, then calls him just before dinner to see if he’s still free. He dresses up, makes lasagna and bruschetta, opens the windows to cool his apartment off, and sits on the couch with a glass of wine. He listens to the rain while he waits, and as he wonders if he should start eating alone, she arrives wearing a short sundress covered in pink and Carolina-blue flowers beneath her raincoat. He hangs her coat on a hook by the front door and they sit across from each other at the kitchen table.
“Sorry about earlier. I’ve been flaky lately,” she says.
“It’s okay.”
“And sorry I was late. The lasagna looks wonderful, by the way. Very sweet of you.”
“You look thinner than the last time I saw you. You eating? Stressed?”
She sets her fork down and reaches the fingers of her right hand around her skinny left forearm, as if measuring to see if he’s mistaken. Then she shrugs, picks up her fork again. “I heard you’re golfing a lot.”
“It’s basically part of my job description.”
“Noble of you to suffer like you do,” she replies. “You wear those silly checkered pants and shoes, too?”
“Nobly.”
“As long as you’re happy.”
“I’m not sad,” he replies.
“Why would you be?”
“Say, what happened to the woman with the screws?”
She frowns. “Who?”
“The woman who kept stepping on the screws in her house? The hardware store? Frying fish?”
“Them. He’s in jail. She’s in treatment. Everything works in a cycle. Two steps forward, one step back. Two steps back, one step forward.”
“You sound defeated.”
“I don’t mean to come off that way; that’s not how I feel. I’m just tired, thinking too much these days, a little spacey. I should’ve called you about lunch. God, I almost didn’t come to dinner. I feel bad that you’re getting the leftovers tonight.”
“I’d take that any night.”
Mid-yawn, she smiles at him, her cheeks barely lifting, then her eyes fall to her plate.
She hasn’t touched her glass of wine. “I can make coffee,” he says.
“No, thank you. Did I tell you I might go to law school? It has nothing to do with being defeated, either. I’d do it while working. Nights and weekends. The more I’m with my clients, the more I’m able to do for them. Every client’s different. Different needs. Different ways of communicating and asking for help. Different defense mechanisms. Concerns and goals and…but they’re kind-hearted. Most people are. I think that was always a fear of mine, that I’d start seeing only the worst in people and get jaded. Sorry I’m rambling…”
“Not at all…”
“Is there coffee already made?”
“Keep talking,” he replies as he goes to the kitchen counter to start a fresh pot.
She pours her wine into his nearly empty glass, then swallows a bite of lasagna, staring out the kitchen window. The rain has stopped. “There’s so much I don’t understand. I’ve never had a police officer come into my home. I’ve never been beaten or raped or molested. I don’t know what it’s like to have a suspended driver’s license, or go to rehab or lose your kids to the state. I’ve never even been to a funeral. There’s so much I’m ignorant about. It’s been humbling to realize that I can’t not be this sort of snooty bitch with a degree. But I’ve still been able to connect with people who have experienced these things, and that’s beautiful to me. It gives me hope because I have so much to learn from them.”
He brings her a cup of coffee and sits across from her again.
She says, “It’s frustrating to know that I could be doing much more.”
“Cream and sugar?”
“Please.” He brings her both and she stirs them in with a spoon. As they eat, she says, “Did you know that cops can legally search a vagina for drugs? It’s rare and they have to get a warrant, which is difficult to come by. Still, from a societal perspective, it’s almost more fucked up to think about than cases of police misconduct involving sexual or physical assault. Because there’s no ambiguity as to whether sexually or physically assaulting a suspect, even a convict, is legal. An officer would be fired and charged with a crime, depending on the strength of the facts surrounding the incident. But you can’t indict an officer for doing, with a signed judicial warrant, precisely what he’s paid to. So, however outrageous it is, poor women, typically women of color, can be subjected to these techniques. God knows, the police aren’t pulling over a senator’s daughter or the homecoming queen with a scholarship to Yale, prying their legs open. These girls would evade charges even if they floated around in a perpetual cloud of kush. And that’s exactly the point.” She sips her coffee, continues, “The law and order folks—well-to-do white men, typically—argue that, if you outlaw these types of searches, women—poor black women, typically—will hide drugs exclusively where cops can’t find them. They argue that women who don’t have drugs on them in the first place don’t attract the suspicion of the authorities and have, therefore, nothing to fear. These are the same people who want the government off their lands, away from their guns. They wouldn’t tolerate a day of the stop-and-frisk, search-and-seizure reality of the inner cities. What they mean when they say ‘law and order’ is ‘more law and order for them, less for us.’ The land of the free is a police state for some, and till that’s no longer so, there can be no America.”
“It’s gotten better, hasn’t it?” he says.
“Tell that to the quarter of the world’s prisoners rotting in American cells.”
“Arch of the universe.”
“Not if enough people don’t fight for change.”
“More lasagna?”
“I’m full. Thank you.”
He takes their plates to the counter and returns to his seat.
“Sorry to get heavy with you,” she says.
“You’ve been apologizing a lot tonight.”
“Making up for the apologies I’ve neglected to give you.”
“You don’t owe me any.”
“No?”
“No.”
“You act like I couldn’t hurt you even if I wanted to,” she says. “I told Dean about you, about what happened between us, your time in Chicago. He thinks you’re a kamikaze when it comes to women. I think he admires you.”
“What do you say I am?”
“I think you’re damaged goods.”
“Women?”
She looks down at her cup. “Someone told me you were in love down there. You told her how you felt about her and she crushed you, and that’s why you left.”
“Who told you that?”
She looks at him, her eyes golden orbs lit by the sun now streaming through the kitchen window. “A little birdie.”
He finishes his glass of wine. “I have ice cream, too,” he says.
She smiles, shakes her head. “Dean and I are looking at jobs in California. He has an offer out there already.”
“I don’t think you should leave.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’d miss you.”
“This is good coffee.”
“You sure you don’t want ice cream?”
“Okay, dish me up.”
On Halloween night, he answers the door in sweatpants and a white undershirt, expecting trick-or-treaters. Vanessa closes the door behind her, kicks off her heels, then grabs his head and kisses him as she pushes him down the hallway. She plops her wool overcoat onto the floor just inside his bedroom door, shoves him down on his bed, and removes her collared blouse. Unzipping her skirt, she twists her hips until it falls to her ankles.
“Vanessa…”
“Quiet.”
She climbs on top of him.
After sex, she dresses and they sit on the end of his bed in the dark. Not until she kisses him again does he realize she’s been crying. As quickly as she came, she puts her coat on and leaves.
She returns two weeks later but is so rough with him, scratching and biting and hitting, that he stops her and sleeps on the living room couch, leaving her his bed.
A week before Christmas, Connor drives to the hospital to meet his blonde baby sister, Melody. Bill, James, and Lisa crowd the hospital room, brushing shoulders as they take turns holding the sleeping infant and kissing the stringy hair atop Charlotte’s head. On the way home, Connor swings by a jewelry store to peruse the wedding rings. He departs with an expensive pair of blue rose-shaped earrings, larger and a shade darker than the ones Vanessa has. He wraps the box in white ribbon and keeps it in an empty fruit bowl in the cupboard above the fridge until, a few days after Christmas, Vanessa asks him to meet her downstairs in front of his building. He puts on his stocking cap and winter boots and slips the box into the front pocket of his knee-length wool coat.
It’s after dusk. Wet snowfall melts in her hair, clings to her scarf and earmuffs and the fur hood of her fluffy parka. As they start toward the Mississippi, she takes his hand. They reach a bridge along which stands a row of shepherd’s crook streetlights igniting flurries in the girths of their glows, like so many meteor showers.
“I’m pregnant. A few months along.”
“That’s good news, isn’t it?”
She doesn’t reply, then as they’re crossing the bridge, she says, “Dean’s going to California. I’ve been waiting around for him to change his mind and stay with us.”
He squeezes her hand. She doesn’t cry.
“Will you keep it?”
“I’ve thought so many different things the past few weeks, like, things I never thought I’d have to think about. Things I never knew anyone had to think about. I knew this could happen. All along, I knew. I still never thought…I don’t know what I’m saying. I will, though; I’m keeping it.”
“I can be a good friend, or something more, but I can’t be both.”
“I know.”
“I mean…”
“Connor, I haven’t told anybody else yet.”
“Your mom?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
Her voice is clear, her words rehearsed. “I fucked up and I’m embarrassed, and I could deal with the fallout on my own, the baby and being a single mom. All on my own. But I’ve thought a lot about it, and if I did that, it would only be to punish myself, not because it’s best for my child, not because I have no choice. This is too much to put on you. I just need to say these things…because, well, I just need to…it would be stupid of me, I think, stupid and selfish, to bring a fatherless child into the world simply out of stubbornness. Without asking…”
“I understand.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“And you were right,” she continues, “when you said you could either be a friend or a father. I won’t ask you to be both somehow.”
They reach the other side of the river. She stops and rubs his icy hands. “Take time to think about it,” she says.
“I don’t need to.”
“Really, do.”
“I would love being a father. You’ll be an amazing mother.”
She studies his eyes, draws a deep breath, and exhales. Her shoulders sink. “Okay,” she says.
Later in the night, while they talk on his bed, curled up beneath his comforter, he remembers the box in his pocket. When she opens it, she begins to weep.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just came prepared for everything else.” She wipes her eyes and says, “Did it ever occur to you that I wouldn’t take these? That I’d never want to be with you no matter how long you waited around?”
“Of course. But people who hedge on what they love don’t often end up with it.”
Soon, they fall asleep holding each other.
On New Year’s Eve he misses a call from Danielle. She leaves no message, so he doesn’t return it.
For months Connor doesn’t go an hour without thinking of the Fourth of July, Vanessa’s due date. In his dreams he smells firework sulfur, charcoal and barbequed ribs, campfire smoke, and the lush cologne of lawn and lakeshore after rain. He can feel the boy’s wiry fingers tightening around his pointer, a tender claw. He can see the boy’s first smiles, tears, steps. He’s certain the boy will have Vanessa’s honey blonde hair and copper eyes.
While looking at wedding rings on his work computer, Connor catches Irene’s reflection in his monitor. In a tan pantsuit, arms crossed, shoulder cocked, she remarks, “I don’t mind the personal stuff at work, really. I planned all three of my weddings from my office, and they turned out immaculately. That’s how I won over Gerald’s in-laws. He was my second. His sisters still call me on my birthday, and they haven’t talked to him in seventeen years.”
He spins in his chair to face her.
She says, “It’s none of my business, obviously, but if I’d known you were seriously with this other woman, I wouldn’t have been so pushy with Marie, which I shouldn’t have done in the first place. Being pushy is my sole shortcoming, my cross to bear. That and being nosey. Have you asked her father for her hand?”
“Haven’t met him yet.”
Her eyes bulge from their sockets. “I see you’ve planned all this out well. She isn’t pregnant, is she?”
“No, not at all,” he replies, caught off guard.
She looks around to ensure no one’s watching them, then whispers, “I think it’s wonderful news. Really, I do. I couldn’t have children, myself. In retrospect, I wouldn’t have liked them. Most are loud and smelly. But your secret’s safe with me.”
She pats him on the shoulder and scampers to her office, tapping her fingertips together before her puckered lips, as though plotting mischief. He spins back to his computer, glares at his reflection. Every few days, he finds magazine clippings of baby clothes on his desk.
He informs Bill and Charlotte over dinner at one of their favorite restaurants. He sits across from Melody’s stroller, Bill and Charlotte on either side of him. Weeks of sleep deprivation seem to have aged them years. In the well-lit restaurant, he can see strands of gray pulled back into Charlotte’s ponytail. After looking over the menu, Bill sticks his reading glasses into his uncombed hair. As Connor calmly relays the facts, Bill cringes, the wrinkles around his eyes flexing.
Connor says, “We were taking things slowly. It was unexpected.”
“You’re telling me,” Bill replies, his voice gravelly. “And how does her family feel about all this?”
“I don’t know. Just found out myself.”
“I forget, are her parents still together?” Bill asks.
“What does that matter?”
“And her parents, what do they do?”
Charlotte interjects, “You’re interrogating him, Bill.”
“It’s the only way to get information, it seems.”
Connor chuckles. “You’re worried they’ll think you raised a loser.”
“That’s not it,” Bill replies.
“You weren’t married when you got Mom pregnant with me.”
“That’s completely different. First of all, we were engaged soon after.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Second of all…?”
“Second of all, don’t change the subject.”
Connor turns to Charlotte. “He wonders why I avoid telling him things.”
“Bill,” she grumbles.
“It’s okay, Charlotte, he’ll get over it,” Connor replies. “It’s good news. Melody will be an aunt by mid-summer.”
Connor puts cash on the table for the flatbread he ordered, kisses his little sister goodbye, and drives home.
That night Bill calls to offer an apology, congratulations. “I always worry. Always. Sometimes it comes out in foolish ways. Soon you’ll learn about all the worrying I’ve done since you were born.”
“It’s fine, Dad. You’re going to be a grandpa.”
“That’s true,” Bill says. Connor can tell he’s smiling.
“Sometimes we mistake good news for tragedy.”
“Well, sometimes we’re stupid.”
Vanessa is reluctant to introduce Connor to her family. During lunch breaks, they stand outside their office buildings for privacy, apart from the smokers, stooping from the cold.
“I should’ve met them before they found out.”
“I thought…I mean, miscarriages happen. Shit, I should’ve known. My mom’s a schoolteacher, so she’s used to being around girls trying to hide it.”
“We have to break the ice somehow.”
“Not right away.”
“You think it’ll get easier?”
“It might,” she replies.
“I’m going to call them.”
“Don’t.”
“Do they hate me?”
“When I told my mom I might go to California, she was mad I was even considering leaving. Now that I’m staying, she’s mad I’m being kept from pursuing my dreams. That’s how she thinks. It’s just not a good time.”
“It’ll be fine. Everything will be fine.”
“You’re not nervous to meet them?”
“What are they going to do, murder me?”
A month later, they eat dinner at her parents’ modest suburban house. Pork chops, rice, and green beans. The day is cloudy. The dozen candles of an ornate chandelier hanging from a chain above the table illumine the gloomy dining room. Connor, his hands quaking in his lap, keeps glancing up at the drippy candles, expecting wax to overflow the holders and plummet into the rice plate. Throughout dinner, he smiles at his hosts, compliments the “beautiful home” and “delicious meal.”
Her parents, Ginny and Peter, sit on either end of the oval dining table. Ginny, with short blonde hair and hints of a Louisiana accent, is a fifty-five-year-old version of Vanessa. A plumber with a bad back, Peter shifts in his chair throughout the meal. He has a thick mustache and a receding head of black hair. His blue eyes are sincere, pained. Connor and Vanessa sit on one side. Vanessa’s older brother, Derrick, sits on the other. A built, buzz-cut thirty-year-old in an argyle sweater, he tried to smash Connor’s knuckles together when they shook hands.
“Bank work doesn’t really get your hands all that dirty,” he says to Connor.
“He used to work in a warehouse in Chicago,” Vanessa replies.
Connor, smiling at Ginny and Peter, explains, “I was avoiding medical school at the time.”
“How come?” Peter asks politely.
“Wasn’t sure it was right for me,” Connor replies.
Ginny chimes in supportively. “That was smart of you, then. And now you have a career for yourself.”
“Derrick here’s in the army,” Peter comments.
“Only because they told me the Seals were full,” Derrick jokes.
Peter closes his eyes when he chuckles.
Connor smiles at Derrick. “Thank you for your service.”
“Frankly, there’s a lot I can’t talk about,” Derrick tells him.
“He means, at dinner,” Vanessa clarifies.
“Vanessa…”
“You didn’t kill Bin Laden,” she calmly replies. “You’re a mechanic.”
The room is silent. When Connor, staring at his plate, clears his throat, they all look at him. He raises his head and looks sheepishly around the table. “Mrs. Walsh, this is excellent pork,” he says.
After pie, Peter puts on a black button-up polo, newly ironed, with a broad red stripe running up the middle and his bowling team’s insignia stitched on the breast, then drives the family to the alley. From the backseat, Connor notices Peter’s eyes kindling in the rearview mirror as he talks about the league, and as Ginny, in the passenger’s seat, gloats about last year’s championship.
However, Connor’s gutter balls at the alley, which with successive frames are harder and harder for him to laugh off, seem to drain the vigor from Peter’s face. Whenever it’s Connor’s turn, bowlers in the adjacent lanes pause their games to watch him roll.
Eating nachos on the paint-chipped wooden bench behind their lane, Vanessa kisses him on the cheek and whispers, “You can’t be serious.”
“Why didn’t you warn me? I could’ve practiced.”
“I had no idea anyone could suck this badly.”
“Can’t you miss some pins to make me look better?”
“I’m trying to.”
Between games, Derrick buys Connor a beer at the upstairs bar, where he asks, brow furrowed, eyes scrutinizing Connor’s, how much money Connor makes, if he has any tattoos or piercings, has ever blacked out from drinking or committed any crimes, has ever been married or fathered a child. By the time Vanessa finds them, Derrick is going over his workout regime and commanding Connor to feel his right pectoral.
“Derrick, we’re waiting downstairs,” she says.
Derrick downs his beer and rushes off whistling, satisfied with his inquisition.
“Good thing I came before he started showing off his thighs,” she says as she and Connor walk hand in hand back down to the alley.
In hopes of making his bowling respectable, Connor goes to the alley three nights a week, sometimes with Vanessa, though only the games she plays with her off-hand are competitive.
He attends Mass with the Walshes at a church not far from their home, as well as weekly men’s Bible study classes, which Peter leads in the undercroft. The ten participants sit on short in-facing pews arranged in the shape of a diamond. Out of respect for the parish’s utility costs, Peter doesn’t adjust the thermostat on cold evenings and lights the space with two small lamps placed in the middle of the pews. Darkness shrouds the distant brick walls. The echoes require them to speak in hushed tones, to lean closer to one another as the night stretches on.
“Everyone have a chance to read Daniel this week?” Peter asks the group one evening, wearing jeans and his finest black turtleneck.
After the men take turns giving various excuses for not doing their homework, he looks at Connor, who nods, sitting across from him in a scarf and overcoat.
“You mind filling these guys in on who was tossed into the fiery furnace?”
“That’d be Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.”
“Why were they thrown in?”
“They refused to bow down to an image of Nebuchadnezzar.”
“And what was Daniel’s interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream?”
Connor shakes his head. “I couldn’t understand all that.”
“Anyone?”
When no one answers, Peter explains the dream, reading many pages of prepared notes, speaking choppily, each sentence linked by ands, buts, and ums that buy him time to find his next phrase. He delves into the end of the Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Roman empires, and eventually stumbles into conspiracies about the downfall of America and the end of the world. The men scooch to the edges of their pews to be as near to him as possible.
“…The sins of our excesses has brought us to this time of apocalypse, and now we must give ourselves over fully to the ways of Daniel if we’re going to keep ourselves from the End of Days…”
When he finally ends his speech with an abrupt “amen,” the men watch Connor, who sits with his hands folded, staring down between his knees. His forehead and neck wet with sweat, he takes off his coat, loosens his tie, and undoes the top button of his dress shirt. When he looks up, he sees that they’re waiting to hear his thoughts.
“I…I didn’t quite read into it all that much, to be honest,” he says.
The men’s eyes pass back and forth between Connor and Peter.
“According to my research, there’s a lot there to read into,” Peter replies.
“Couldn’t the fifth empire to fall have been…some other one?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What about the kingdom of the Antichrist?” Connor sputters.
“You saying my research is wrong?”
“I think…” Connor clears his throat and brushes dirt from the top of his shoe. “Maybe, the end of the world isn’t…” He squirms, scratches his chin.
He looks up at stone-faced Peter, and Peter grins. “Connor,” he says.
The men break into laughter. Connor wipes his brow with his tie and lies back on the pew, drawing deep breaths and laughing along.
Peter apologizes. “They put me up to it.”
“I swear, if Pete brought a goat in, he could’ve got the kid to slaughter it,” one of them says.
Connor and Peter stay after and rearrange the pews to face one direction for the Sunday school class.
“Vanessa told me you bowl all the time now.”
“I’d rather not embarrass myself again.”
“I appreciate you coming to our group. She says you’re not too religious.”
“Not really, no, but I’m open.”
“Your dad goes to church?”
“Every week.”
“Don’t feel obligated. We’re not, Ginny and I…you know, worried about you and Vanessa, or about you, or anything. You’ve got a good job. You handle your own business. And you treat her well, which is the most important thing.”
“I appreciate that.”
After situating the last pew, Peter slouches down into it with his hands on his belly. Connor puts on his coat and sits beside him.
“Vanessa’s an atheist,” Peter says. “Did you know that?”
“I did, yes.”
“I don’t know why. Willful, I guess.”
Connor crosses his legs and relaxes into the hardwood. “She says God is a fiction men created out of fear and the need to manipulate other men. She says women aren’t as afraid as men or as interested in manipulating others.”
“She said that?” Peter says. “None of that makes any sense to me whatsoever. But, then, I never quite understood her. It’s okay if you’re one, too, you know: an atheist.”
“I’m not.”
“Okay.”
“I loved your daughter before she told me about the baby, but when I found out, my love was stronger than ever and I started thinking about our child. Like, a kid needs everything you can give it, a good mother and a good father and good grandparents, and everyone there to help it. I hope you find me tolerable, because that’d be best for the baby.”
“Of course. Ginny and I like you a lot. Derrick, too, though he’s a knucklehead at times, in case you haven’t noticed. When he first heard, the dummy wanted to hunt you down and…well, I had to talk him off the ledge. And Vanessa loves you. I’d say life is pretty good for all of us. Vanessa sat down Ginny and me—Jesus, I thought she’d gotten cancer or something. She was so sad. Ginny, too. ‘Oh, Pete, the girl’s going to kill me.’ I don’t get it. If this is what God has planned for us, I’d say that’s damn sweet. Plus, now Vanessa’s not going to California, either. Then, see, the other day I caught Ginny looking at baby toys. Wedding dresses, too.”
He looks sidelong at Connor, who pretends he didn’t catch Peter’s last comment.
“One thing at a time, huh,” Peter says.
“I’d have asked her a year ago if I’d thought she’d say yes.”
“Willful, no question.”
The men talk for some time, then Peter abruptly reaches inside his jeans pocket and hands Connor a jewelry box containing Peter’s deceased mother’s wedding ring, its small, recently cleaned diamond glittering.
“Always wanted one of them to wear it, her or Derrick’s wife. I’d give it to him, but that train is quite a way farther from the station, I’m afraid. Really, though, no pressure. Like you say, she’s maybe not ready for all that.”
Sensing Connor’s speechlessness, and nervous himself, Peter begins to reminisce about teenage Vanessa, how from time to time she snuck out of the house at night to see friends, how after she left one night he swapped out the spare key with the lawnmower’s, then listened to her scratch at the lock until she finally called the house phone to be let in.
“I doubt that stopped her,” Connor says.
“If you told her one thing, you could always expect her to do the opposite. Thing is, though, she wasn’t sneaking out to party or to meet up with boys, like you’d assume. She had a good friend who was thinking about committing suicide all that time. One night, the girl even took a bunch of pills and called Vanessa. Paramedics said, if Vanessa hadn’t found her, she’d have died. Ginny asked her why she didn’t just tell us what was going on instead of sneaking around. Vanessa didn’t want to out her friend like that. Even that thinking seems backward to me, but, thing is, Vanessa saved the girl’s life. Really, what else matters? The girl now has her own business, too, no shit. A salon or something.”
“Thank you for the ring.”
“Vanessa will recognize it. You’re skeptical, but I bet you anything she’ll be overjoyed to take it from you. Ginny says Vanessa’s never been happier and she knows her better than I do.”
In the spring, Connor and Vanessa buy a three-bedroom, two-bath, one story house in a South Minneapolis neighborhood, two blocks from an elementary school that after much research Vanessa prefers. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, the street drains tinkling with melting snow, their families help them move in. Middle class neighbors—Somalian and Guatemalan and Indian and third generation Irish and German—smile and wave at them. Connor and Derrick carry the desks, couches, dressers, bed, and heavier cardboard boxes; Bill, Peter, and Ginny carry the rest. Charlotte and Vanessa stay inside, directing and unpacking, talking and taking turns holding Melody. Afterward they all go to dinner at a steakhouse. Vanessa tears up when she stands to thank them all, raising her Diet Coke for a toast.
Bill, seated next to her, rises to hug her and kiss her on the cheek. “So many blessings,” he tells the table. Bill and Peter split the tab.
Connor and Vanessa return home and, overwhelmed by the stacked boxes lining the walls and with only enough energy left in the day to set up their bed, sit on the thick mint green living room carpet and share a pint of chocolate chip ice cream, her latest craving. He draws the dusty blinds over the large window overlooking the street. Two lamps in opposite corners light the room. It feels like a halfway house, as though they were fugitives ready to leave at a moment’s notice. She wears her grown-out hair in a short ponytail on the side of her head. Her belly rests in the pocket of her crossed legs. He kneels, ready to jump to his feet if she asks for anything.
“I know you know it’s a boy, but what if it’s not?” she asks him.
“It’s a boy.”
“Right, but what if it isn’t?”
“That’d be amazing. She could wear Melody’s hand-me-downs.”
She smiles, a smile that to him seems bigger every day, just as her bright eyes seem brighter. Only in seeing her so elated does he realize he’d never seen her so before.
Concerned that she’ll stop smiling, he says, “We have a house. A backyard and a garage and a lawn. And soon we’ll have a baby. We have our careers. We have money saved up in case of…whatever.”
“Look at you. You’ll be wearing dad jeans in no time. Coaching soccer and basketball.”
“I’d love all that.”
“What if the baby has Down syndrome or something like that?”
“I feel like we can handle anything.”
“Me, too.”
He looks at the blinds. “Our baby,” he says gently.
“What?”
“You said ‘the baby.’”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
He smiles at her. “I know. It’s okay.”
“Our baby.”
She groans as she slowly stands. With her usual droll leer, she leads him to the master bedroom down the hallway. He sets up the bed in the corner, away from the shutter-less window facing the neighbor’s. He lies down on the mattress and takes off his pants. She undresses, climbs on top of him, her belly resting on his.
Afterward she rolls onto her back and he places his ear against her belly, waiting.
“Your dad gave me your grandma’s ring.”
“Where is it?”
“I’m actually not sure where I left it.”
“Connor.”
He retrieves it from the inner breast pocket of a suitcoat hanging in the kitchen. She takes it from him and they lie side by side in bed, her head on his shoulder, looking it over in silence. He watches her put it on her ring finger, on her pinkie and thumb, hold it in her palm and place it atop her belly button. She nuzzles him.
At lunchtime the next day, Bill calls Connor to blab. “I bet it’s getting real for you. It’s getting real for us over here, I’ll tell you that. I can’t believe you’ll be a dad…and I’ll be Grandpa Bill! I haven’t been this wound up since…Christ, I don’t know! Probably since you ran away to dodge bullets in Chicago. At first, I was nervous about the Walshes. I don’t know why, just was. It’s good I got to meet them. They seem like a great family. A nice house. Derrick’s in the army. Vanessa’s an angel, obviously. If you raise a kid to give a shit about others like she does, you can’t be a bad set of parents. Charlotte and I are so happy for you. It seems like you’re really starting to figure life out. A new house in a fine neighborhood, a good paying job, not too much debt anymore. No riffraff knocking your teeth out. No working for minimum wage. Now you’re really growing up. What more could you ask for? I suppose you’ll get married soon enough. We’re so proud of you.”
Baby shower and housewarming gifts fill the house. He paints the guest room robin’s egg blue and lays a waist-high strip of wallpaper around the room, images from the Sistine Chapel. He dusts the ceiling fan, vacuums the carpet, and assembles a crib, which he pushes beneath the lone window that faces the backyard. He fills the dresser by the door with diapers and baby clothes, the antique crate in the far corner with toys.
He attends Vanessa’s doctor’s appointments. He chauffeurs her to her cravings. Smoothies, baked chicken, milkshakes, tomato bisque soup, fried green beans, frozen yogurt, hamburgers. Once, he helps her into her tennis shoes and takes her to a bar with a jukebox and small corner dancefloor. After half a dozen slow country songs, she’s tired and he drives them home.
Every Friday night, they babysit tubby, cheerful Melody, whose face one week looks to Connor like Bill’s, the next like Charlotte’s. Vanessa stresses about the temperature of the formula, the snugness of the diapers, the infant’s occasional insatiable wails, the tumbles, scrapes, and bonks on the head. But Connor feigns complete confidence in their babysitting abilities and Vanessa eventually relaxes around Melody, who soon hushes only when she rocks her.
One night in the final weeks of their pregnancy, while Connor reads in bed beside sleeping Vanessa, his phone rings, and glancing at the screen to see who’s calling, he accidentally answers. He closes his book, slips out of bed in his boxers, and lifts the phone to his ear.
After ten seconds of silence, as Connor reaches the kitchen, Danielle says, “Hello?”
“Hi, this is Connor.”
“It’s Danielle.”
He pauses. “Hi.”
“I felt dumb about not leaving a message before. I was going to do that now.”
“Oh.”
“I wanted to let you know that Gloria passed away. That’s all. The funeral was last December. She went peacefully. We were all there with her.”
“Sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks. Wanted you to know.”
“Okay.”
“I hope you’re doing well.”
“I am,” he replies. “Thanks for the call.”
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay.”
She hangs up and Connor stands in the dark kitchen for fifteen minutes before dressing and heading out for a six pack, which he drinks while watching TV in the living room.
“You up?” Vanessa asks, half-awake, when he returns to bed.
“No,” he replies. “Go to sleep.”
The next day he mails a sympathy card.
He and Vanessa wait for the baby, each day a torturous journey in and out of nerves and fear and excitement and dread. They binge TV shows. They take walks around the block and put together puzzles on a card table in the living room. June passes. Then the Fourth. Ginny calls her three times a day. Bill calls him every afternoon. Some nights Connor doesn’t sleep. When he does, he has nightmares, permutations of infidelity and tragedy.
One Friday morning, in the second week of July, Vanessa trips over the open dishwasher door and falls to her knees, catching herself before her stomach hits the linoleum kitchen tile. She kneels and closes her eyes, pressing her hands against her belly as if trying to discern if anything feels differently than it did moments ago. Connor helps her to her feet, then to the living room couch, where they call their doctor, a tall woman with a gentle voice. After asking several questions, she tells them not to worry. “You’d be amazed by the stories I hear. You’re nervous. Everyone who’s about to be a parent is. This is nothing to be worried about. Get rest.”
They schedule induced labor for the following Tuesday, and over the weekend he remains within arm’s reach of Vanessa at all times.
On Tuesday morning they meet Ginny and Peter at the hospital and Connor immediately forgets everything he learned attending Vanessa’s doctor’s appointments and reading two books on childbirth. Sitting next to Peter on the waiting room sofa, he drums on his thighs, startled every time another nurse comes into the room.
Ginny sits across from them. “Want some peanuts?” she asks Connor, digging through a backpack.
“No, thank you.”
“Licorice?”
“No, thank you.”
“Might be awhile, sweetheart.”
“Relax,” Peter whispers. He puts his arm around him. “Nothing’s coming out of you today.”
It is at once the longest and shortest day of Connor’s life. A seemingly interminable cycle of adrenaline, fatigue, and caffeine highs. He’s shaky, queasy, but has no appetite. He nods along to whatever the nurses tell him but can’t remember afterward what they said. Ginny holds his hand. Peter talks to him about baseball. When Bill and Charlotte arrive, Bill rubs his shoulders. Everyone tells him everything’s fine, but only the fact that no one else seems to be freaking out comforts him.
Then he’s suddenly in the room with Vanessa. She’s breaking his hand and yelling at him, her knees tenting her gown in the middle of her bed. The stench is overwhelming. Blood soaks her bedsheets, trickles onto the floor. He hears a doctor say “complication,” and they show him out of the room.
He walks back to the waiting room.
“What did they say?” Peter asks him.
“Nothing. Everything’s fine,” he says.
He stands outside her room, peers at her through the window. When they need to enter, doctors and nurses tap him on the shoulder and he steps aside. Suddenly he hears the cries of a newborn inside. He opens the door and the doctors wave him over. “You were right,” Vanessa tells him, her voice croaky. A doctor hands her the boy.
His anxiety does not fade. Not when the nurses take Eric away to wash him or bring him back to meet his family. Not when he and Vanessa take him home and lie awake with him, touching his soft feet, gently bouncing him as he squawks. Not when Eric breathes slowly or breathes fast. Not when Connor’s heart aches with bliss. Not when Eric struggles to latch onto Vanessa’s breast or sweats as he at last begins to feed. Not when his belly and legs swell and his skin turns an ashy bluish-gray. Not when they decide to take him back to the hospital a week after coming home with him.
Their regular doctor isn’t working, so another one informs them about the tests she will run. Still another delivers the results hours later in his office, along with a heart specialist, a sleepy, ostensibly unfeeling little man with round glasses and an Eastern European accent, who helps explain the problem and surgery options.
“It’s a malformation of the heart, specifically the aorta. It’s called ‘coarctation.’ This means that the heart is working extremely hard to get blood through a narrowed aorta. We treat this with a balloon angioplasty. Essentially, we employ a catheter with a balloon or stent to open up the aortic valve. We need to do more testing to confirm the severity and placement of the constriction before we can consult on what approach is best.”
After writing everything down in a notepad, Connor says, “Don’t you test for this type of thing?”
“It can show up later.”
“After a week?” Vanessa asks smartly.
“It’s rare, but yes.”
“Don’t let anything happen to him. I swear to God…”
“Ma’am, we will monitor your child closely.”
Bill, Charlotte, Ginny, and Peter return to the hospital. They wait and wait and wait. They drink coffee and talk about the especially hot summer, about the cost of keeping the courses green, about bowling and fishing. They pray together. They hug one another and slip away one at a time to cry.
Finally the specialist introduces them to the man who will perform the surgery. The thin surgeon takes Connor and Vanessa aside and explains in his high-pitched but tender voice “the immediate need to correct a severe preductal narrowing of the aorta.”
Connor writes everything down, the techniques, the tools, the post-op necessities, the lingo he later Googles in the waiting room. Before surgery, he and Vanessa watch their sleeping child in his tiny hospital bed. A tube attached to a ventilator covers his mouth and nose. No bigger than Connor’s balled fist, the boy’s bare chest rises and falls.
Surgery begins at midnight. Connor walks to the gas station for coffee and a pack of cigarettes, which he smokes in front of the hospital. The wind is warm, the sky starred, the crescent moon fulgent. Derrick keeps him company for a while. Then Charlotte comes out to hug him. Between smokes, Connor goes in to hold Vanessa.
“I should’ve gone to medical school,” Connor tells Bill when they’re momentarily alone.
“No, no, no. Why do you say that? It wouldn’t make any difference. You can’t think that way right now. Come on, let’s go to the cafeteria. Or else, I’ll run out to get you something to eat. What do you want?”
Connor shakes his head.
Bill orders pizza and the families eat in the waiting room. All but Connor, who stands out front, smoking. Peter brings him a plate stacked with slices, but Connor tells him he isn’t hungry. The two of them wait and pray. Wait and pray. Wait and pray. Connor throws up in the hospital bathroom, then returns to his cigarettes.
When the surgeon sits Vanessa and Connor down in his office and clears his throat in preparation for his worst duties, Connor’s anxiety dissipates, immediately succeeded by something much worse. He watches Vanessa sink in her chair, clutching her face with both hands. She gasps.
For months, Connor wakes each morning to the resounding funeral knell, and his eyes veil with tears whenever he looks at Vanessa. Hers, at him. So, for months, they do not so much as exchange glances. They take up vegetarianism and get a dog, a chocolate Labrador they name Cocoa. They speak to each other little.
One night, while lying beside him in bed, Vanessa suddenly whispers at the ceiling, “If there’s one thing that isn’t abysmally fucked: my clients look at me differently since the summer. I didn’t tell them anything, but they can tell something happened to me while I was on leave. Some of them show up more often, open up more. It’s all because they’ve been here before, down where I am. Like, if I can be hurting this badly, then I can’t possibly be the bitchy, arrogant girl they thought I was.”
“I’m proud of you. You’ve worked hard to have rapport like that.”
“I’m not responsible for that; it’s all because of him.”
Thanksgiving night, after they return from their respective families to share leftover stuffing and potatoes, is yet silent, dismal.
On the morning of the last workday before Christmas, Connor dresses for the office. He recently reached another, tighter notch on his belt; the neck of his button-up is unnervingly loose. Were it not for the wrinkles beneath his puffy eyes, his short beard and shaggy hair would make him look five years younger than he is. He brushes the snow from their cars, starts them up, and makes coffee and two bowls of oatmeal with walnuts and blueberries.
Vanessa meets him in the kitchen. She wears a gray wool skirt, an overcoat, black tights, and heels. She’s claw-clipped her newly highlighted hair, now shoulder-length, behind her head. She pours them each a cup of coffee and sits down across from him and he pushes her bowl of oatmeal toward her.
“No, thank you. I’m eating at work.”
“Susan says you don’t eat breakfast at the office.”
“Susan should mind her own business.”
“Eat.”
“Today I’m going to call about the last hospital bill we got. It should’ve been covered. It has to be,” she says.
“I thought I called on that already.”
“I thought you did, too.”
She reaches for a manila folder on the table, pulls out a stack of medical bills, and begins to look through them.
“Please eat,” he says.
She lifts a clump of steaming oats into her mouth. “So good. Thank you,” she says, watching Cocoa trot into the kitchen and bury her head in Connor’s lap.
“Our insurance should’ve covered this. I’m calling at lunch,” she says.
“I can do it.”
“You take the next one.”
She tucks the bill in her purse and the others back in the folder.
“I love you,” he says, as she puts on her coat and scarf.
“Love you, too. Thanks for warming up my car for me.”
She leaves with her oatmeal. As the sound of her vehicle fades, he plucks out his walnuts and blueberries, munches them down, and puts the bowl on the floor in front of Cocoa. Then he shuts off his car, undresses, and goes back to bed.
He wakes two hours later, puts on jeans, a fleece sweater, and a jacket, and takes Cocoa for a walk. On his way to the office, he smokes three cigarettes and purchases a bouquet of flowers. He arrives at the office just before lunch. His fresh-out-of-college coworker Clara, in a pencil skirt and blouse, smiles at him from her desk, next to his, and Irene rushes across the room. “For me?” she says, taking the flowers. “This makes up for calling in sick.”
“New pantsuits are too expensive.”
She goes to her office cabinet in search of a vase. Clara, full lips, large mocha eyes, and straight brunette hair that stretches to the middle of her back, sets her elbow on the desk and rests her chin on her knuckles when she leans toward him and says, “You heard her, too, huh? Just last week, she was complaining about how no one brings her flowers anymore.”
“It’s too bad,” he replies, watching Irene.
“Everyone loves getting flowers.”
He runs his fingers through his beard until Irene returns with a small wrapped box. “It’s not much,” she says, handing it to him.
He unwraps the present, opens the box, and pulls out an expensive stainless steel watch with a large face.
“Irene,” he scolds her.
She touches his shoulder, leads him toward the glass front door. “I also felt guilty; I should’ve made you take time off.”
“I didn’t want time off.”
“I know, dear.”
“This is too much. Thank you,” he says, snapping the watchband into place and setting the time.
“After you lose someone, Christmas is the worst time of year. What are you doing today?”
“Relaxing at home, then Vanessa and I are going Christmas shopping.”
“Take care of her, Connor.”
He buys coffee and a cinnamon roll next door and, returning to his car, finds that during his ten minutes inside he missed four calls, one from Bill, three from Vanessa. He starts the car, cranks up the heat.
“Where were you?” Vanessa answers on the first ring, frazzled.
“When?”
“When I was calling.”
“Away from my phone. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Did you call the hospital?”
“Not yet.”
“Let me do it, Vanessa.”
“Why?”
“It’s slow here. No one meets their clients just before Christmas.”
“Okay. But will you just keep your phone on you?”
“I will. I’m sorry. You busy there?”
“Some no-shows, but I’m going to the courthouse this afternoon. It’s this whole mess. A family that wants to adopt a toddler whose mom was on my caseload a while back. Remember Ruby?”
“What do you have to do with it?”
“Nothing, professionally. I want to scope them out.”
“Okay?”
“I’m just curious. Never mind. Shouldn’t have told you.”
“Vanessa…”
“What?”
“You torture yourself.”
“Shouldn’t have mentioned it. I know their lawyer from undergrad, so there’s that, too.”
“You eat your oatmeal?”
“You watched me take it with me.”
“I’m texting Susan after I hang up.”
“She’s out today.”
“I’ll find out.”
“What are you doing, then? Facebook and solitaire?” she asks.
“Basically.”
“Okay. You can call about the bill.”
Traffic is tight. He calls the hospital. Delores, the receptionist he’s spoken to many times now, reiterates that he must call his insurance company. He does. After fifteen minutes, a customer service representative at the insurance company answers, tells him to call the hospital. He calls Delores and demands to speak to the doctor. The doctor’s out. He calls the insurance company again, demands to speak to a supervisor. The supervisor, who sounds like an over-caffeinated preteen, tells him his dispute has been escalated to an “enhanced claim unit” that will give him a call back “confirming positive resolution” within two business days.
“Last time you guys said this, I didn’t get a call back.”
“This time I’m personally taking care of it for you. I will correct this and send you the amended bill. I promise you it’ll be taken care of before New Year’s.”
“We’ll see.”
“Sir, you have my word.”
He hangs up, smokes a cigarette as he exits the first ring of the northern suburbs. Traffic clears. Paved countryside roads abut frozen lakes flecked with icehouses and snowmobiles. He turns into an immense, nearly empty parking lot, puts on a baseball cap and sunglasses, pulls from his trunk an attaché containing his notepad from the hospital, and enters the casino.
The woman vacuuming the lobby, an unlit cigarette between her cracked lips, winks at him.
“Hi, Julie,” he says.
The palatial casino is stuffy, tobacco-fogged, reeking of mentholated cigarettes and tart perspiration, of cheap aftershave and toxic perfume. Elderly folks crank levers with all their tendon-taut ferocity. Rows of smog-faded slot machines lead to the poker tables and bar in the back. He buys a double gin and tonic and the most expensive cigar they sell. He sits at a slot machine in an empty row, lights his cigar, takes a few sips of his drink, and reads everything he’s journaled in his notepad since he left the hospital. When he reaches the end, he presses the pad against the flashing screen and jots down some thoughts: …when best to swallow up international equity still falling? Got a new watch today. Now three months without sex. She hasn’t left because…? The bills will work themselves out. She knows this. Made two thousand dollars at poker last week. Not bad. She’s so sad, she might work through the holidays. Must convince her to see her parents for Christmas. I remind her of him? She hates me for it. Loves me also…Charlotte calls, then Vanessa. He answers neither call and Vanessa immediately calls again.
“Sorry, I was in the bathroom,” he says.
“Did you get in touch with those insurance bastards yet?”
“I did. They said they’re taking care of it. It should be handled before New Year’s.”
“They said the same thing last time. I’m calling them now.”
“Let me handle this one. Relax. It’s almost Christmas, Vanessa. Forget about this one for a few days.”
“Those fuckers.”
“You’re right, they are, but there’s nothing more we can do about it now.”
“It’s an extra ten grand! We can’t afford that.”
“Vanessa. It’s fine. It’s fine.”
The line is silent.
“Vanessa?”
“Do you mind just—I know it’s weird, but indulge me—can you answer your phone? I’m sorry, Connor. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. I understand. I will. Promise me you’ll forget about the bills for now. I’ve got money. You’ve got money. We’re not paying ten thousand dollars over our max out of pocket. You know that. We’ll deal with the insurance people. In two weeks, it’ll all be out of our minds. Trust me. Tonight, let’s go to dinner. Let’s have some wine, plan a spring vacation.”
“Okay. I have to go.”
His cigar tip glows with each inhalation. The ice cubes in his drink melt, diluting the booze. He tucks the notepad into the side pocket of his attaché, purchases three hundred dollars’ worth of chips, and buys in at a table of three chain-smoking, vodka pineapple-drinking men: two brothers roughly his age and a seventy-year-old in a wheelchair, wearing a baseball cap that says, Veteran of Vietnam. Bloodshot eyes make the brothers look like they’ve been up all night; the vet, all year. His scruffy mustache hangs over his mouth, and the hair on his chest shoots from the top of his fern green flannel shirt. There’s a wine glass in front of him full of chewing tobacco. From time to time he pinches the rim with his pointer and thumb, lifts it to his mouth, spits his slobbery syrup brown chew, and wipes his lips on his shirt.
“Ricky, how are you?” Connor says, nodding at the dealer, who wears a bolo tie.
Connor stacks his chips in the shape of a pyramid and Ricky motions to a waiter, who takes their orders and returns with a tray of teetering drinks and two blonde women in identical jean-shorts, low-cut black tank tops, and thong sandals. Knowing Connor paid for the round, they gaze unabashedly at him. He ignores them and they shift their attention to the brothers and the vet. The younger woman caresses one brother’s neck, then sits on the other’s lap. The older, her shy smile hiding a snaggletooth, her leathery complexion caked with makeup, massages the vet’s shoulders, turns his hat backward, and kisses his cheeks. She tells him her name is Candice. “But you can call me Candy.”
The brothers explain that they’re “outstaters” staying at the casino hotel with their families for Christmas. They tell the table to be on the lookout for their wives, a couple of “hungover vixens who look angry as sin.”
“What are they so mad about?” Connor jokes.
Up two hundred dollars after half an hour, he notices the souring mood and buys the table another round to cheer them up. Ricky deals the next hand. As the vet tips back his next rum and cola, Connor watches Candice stealthily slide some of the vet’s chips off the table and onto the thin carpet, which deadens their landing. The vet sets his drink down, sucks on his rum-soaked mustache, and sees no further than her cleavage as she kneels to scoop up the chips beneath the table. She stands and winks at him. The brothers, distracted by the younger woman, pay no attention to her.
Connor strikes up a conversation with the shorter brother, who runs a kitchen counter installation business up north, and though he tries not to, he occasionally glances over at Candice as she rubs the vet’s shoulders and chest, fingering her way through the backpack hanging from one of his wheelchair handles. Connor collects another hundred and the brother sullenly withdraws from conversation. Emasculated by his losses and the drinks Connor bought him, he begins to cast paranoid glares at the other players, especially Connor, and insists on buying the table another round.
The taller brother snubs Connor’s attempts at small talk, and after winning a fifteen-dollar hand, he recognizes the chip-shaped bulge in the back pocket of Candice’s jeans. When he points it out, the women run off, their sandals slapping against the carpet. Just then, the brothers’ wives approach the table, carrying infants. Amid the shouting, Connor sweeps his chips into his attaché with his forearm. He drops his cigar butt into the half-inch remains of his drink and briskly escapes to a bathroom stall, where he thumbs through the news on his phone and texts Ricky for updates, waiting out the chaos.
He returns to the table to find Bill sitting cross-legged on a chair at the end of a row of slot machines. Bill smiles and waves. Connor slowly walks over.
“Let’s get some lunch,” Bills says before heading out to the parking lot.
While cashing in all but one of his chips, Connor considers sneaking out to his car and calling his father on the way home to tell him he’s feeling sick. Dreading the lie, he instead meets Bill in a booth at a nearby diner, where they order hamburgers and fries. Bill wears gray slacks and a pink dress shirt. When he hangs his long overcoat on a brass hook screwed into the end of the booth, Connor notices Melody’s spit up stain on the collar.
“You were working,” Connor says.
“No appointments. Just some paperwork.”
Bill looks around the diner, at the empty tables, into the kitchen.
“How did you know?” Connor asks.
“Vanessa.”
“How did she know?”
“Neighbors have seen you walking Cocoa.”
“She knew I’d be here?”
Bill grins. “She put it all together. She’s clever. Sixth sense, I guess.”
“I was waiting till after the holidays to tell her about all this. I don’t need to be gambling, although I’d hardly call it that. Been making good money. People are so dumb, they’ll just hand it over to you. And at least there’s some adrenaline, some excitement. Anyway, what’s the difference between handling client portfolios and playing poker? It’s all tricks with money, how the world turns.”
“Connor,” Bill rebukes him.
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re wrong.”
“How so?”
Bill shakes his head.
“It may be a stupid way to think,” Connor says, “but not that stupid when you’re going to do what you want to anyway. I’ll quit if it’s so bad.”
They’re quiet. Connor dries his sweaty palms with the paper napkin beneath his silverware.
Bill says, “Peter wanted me to tell you that the fellows at his church group ask about you. They’ve been praying. Not about you not gambling anymore, he didn’t say. I don’t think anyone knows about that. Just pray for healing. He also wanted me to tell you that they miss punking you.”
Connor chuckles, rubbing his eyes.
“Hell, Connor. Peter loves you kids. Ginny, too. We all do. All our hearts are broken, like yours, but I know it’s not the same. I don’t know what you’re going through.”
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
A film of tears darkens Bill’s eyes. He snorts to keep from crying.
“I’m sorry about Peter, too,” Connor says. “This isn’t what a father hopes for, for his daughter.”
“Stop that, now.”
Connor stares at the damp napkin in his lap.
“What time are you coming by the house on Christmas?”
“I don’t want to be a drag…”
“If you don’t, we’re packing Melody and our presents up and coming to your house.”
“I might be going to Peter and Ginny’s with Vanessa.”
“You are not. Vanessa said you want to stay in and watch movies, which I bet is code for coming back to the casino.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“I’ll come.”
“I’m serious. One way or another, we’re all going to be together for Christmas.”
“Okay, Dad.”
They devour their burgers, which Bill cunningly pays for when Connor is using the bathroom. Before they part, they hug in the parking lot and Bill says, “To be honest, I don’t give a fuck what you do with your time, or why you do it. I just want to see my boy and make sure my girl has an older brother who’s around for the holidays at the very least.”
On the way back, Connor spends his winnings on wrapping paper and Christmas gifts: toys for Melody, a driver for Bill, a computer case for Charlotte, and an expensive necklace for Vanessa, from which a ruby heart, Eric’s birthstone, hangs. Preparing to wrap the gifts, he scours the house for clear tape, which he finds in a kitchen drawer stuffed with stationery and spare batteries. At the bottom of the drawer, tucked in a cookbook, is an unopened card sent from Chicago. He wraps the presents in the living room, takes Cocoa for a walk, then makes vegetarian casserole and chills a bottle of white wine for dinner. He showers and shaves, dresses in jeans, a dress shirt, and slippers.
He opens the card. It reads: “With Deepest Sympathy.” Danielle, Charles, Erin, EJ, and Marquees signed the bottom. He slips the card into its envelope, the envelope into the cookbook, the cookbook into the drawer.
When Vanessa arrives, he’s seated at the dinner table. Next to a burning candle in the middle of the table is the chip he didn’t cash in. She places her purse and keys on the shelf by the door, takes off her heels and jacket, and sits across from him.
As they drink wine, she picks up the chip, examines it. “I’m sorry I’ve been shunning you,” she says.
“I didn’t notice.”
“I’m sorry for that, too.”
“No, no. I’m the one who fucked up here,” he corrects her.
He pulls the steaming casserole from the oven and places it on a potholder next to the candle. They lower their heads and eat. It’s silent save the sound of their silverware clinking against their plates.
“My dad took me to lunch,” he says.
“He said he would.”
“I was going to tell you everything after the new year. Didn’t mean for it to be a secret.”
“I don’t care about it.”
“I’m done with poker, although, compared to working for Irene, I’ve been pulling in twice as much in half the hours.”
“I wouldn’t mind if you didn’t want to work at all. I want you to feel good again,” she says. “I make enough for the two of us, as long as we’re prudent. You could volunteer, coach basketball, work for a nonprofit, or whatever. You don’t have a gambling problem—you’re just depressed, I think.”
“Volunteer? We need to put money into the house. Then there are the medical bills.”
“The bills will sort themselves out.”
“You were the one stressed about them all day.”
“Where did you get the watch?”
“What?”
“Your watch,” she says, pointing at his wrist with her fork.
He looks down. “This! Irene got it for me. I brought her flowers and she…”
“Thought that little cutie at work might’ve bought it,” she says, eyes closed, stretching her knotted neck by straining her ear to her shoulder. “This is delicious casserole, by the way. Thank you.”
“Clara?”
She rolls her eyes. “Could hardly blame you.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“How’s Irene?”
“Good,” he says. “Come on, we’re going to be fine. My review’s coming up. I could ask for more vacation time so you and I can travel. Paris, China, New York, anywhere. It’d be good for us.”
“I don’t want to travel.”
“What else, then?”
She shrugs and pours herself more wine. “Will you be with your dad and Charlotte for Christmas?”
“Not sure.”
“Connor,” she snaps, dropping her fork. “You haven’t cried in months.”
He frowns. “Isn’t that a good thing?”
“You’re not dealing with things well.”
“And you are?”
“I’m not drinking and playing poker in the afternoon.”
He throws his hands up in surrender. Softening his voice, he replies, “You’re right. I don’t want to argue. Vanessa, it doesn’t seem like it now, but I truly believe that, after some years, you and I will be so happy. When it’s right, we’ll get married. Then we’ll try again for a baby and we’ll look back on this as something that strengthened us. Really, let’s not fight.”
After another glass of wine, she says, as though to herself, “I sometimes wonder if you want to be with me. Aside from Eric and whatever you had in Chicago, I haven’t known you to want anything, really.”
“Please don’t talk like that. Everyone told us the holidays would be tough. Honestly, I think we’ve done better than most would. Neither of us are quitters, so we have that going for us, and we love each other. Tell me about Ruby. How did that go?”
“Parents took the baby home today.”
“Beautiful. It’ll be the best Christmas they’ve ever had. Think about that. And it wouldn’t be possible without people like you fighting for them every day. Right?”
“I…”
“That’s all there is to it,” he says. “You’re amazing.”
She looks up and narrows her eyes at him as if just noticing all the kind things he’s said to her throughout dinner.
That night, after making love for the first time in months, they resolve to focus on honesty and healing in the new year.
She goes home for Christmas weekend, and at her urging, he stays with Charlotte, Bill, and Melody on Christmas Eve. Connor promptly answers Vanessa’s “just checking in” phone calls, attends church with his family, and prepares dinner with Charlotte: ham, deviled eggs, au gratin potatoes, and cookies and brownies for dessert. When alone with Melody, she entrances him, as she sits on the living room carpet in her diaper, giggling, reaching for the red bow taped to the top of her head, and as she naps in her crib, the crusty boogers in her nose ripple with her every breath. While watching her open the first of many presents he bought her, visions of Vanessa and their future children overwhelm him so devastatingly, so quickly and thoroughly, that he excuses himself and steps out front for a cigarette. Charlotte and Bill say nothing when he comes in from the cold, or when after a bottle and a half of wine he admits he’s spinning too much to hold Melody anymore that night.
After the holidays, a bespectacled grief counselor, profiled by turgidly titled academic texts on the bookshelf behind her and wearing distractingly thick cherry lip gloss, manages in the span of two sessions to tell the couple everything they’re doing wrong, everything they know deep down is true but aren’t ready to hear. They don’t see her again but instead spend their counseling money on a weekend getaway at a North Shore cabin. They cross country ski, dine, and laze in the sauna. He tells her he wants to change careers and go to law school.
Glints of affection in her eyes, which he long feared he would never witness again, build his courage, and on the final night of their stay, while drinking coffee and brandy by their cabin fireplace, he proposes to her. Having left the ring back in the Twin Cities, he merely kisses her hand again and again. She accepts and, drunk on shared fantasies of philanthropy and volunteerism, of supporting local theater and gardening, of purchasing a country home in need of remodeling, tells him she wants to raise a big family with him.
Upon their return, the ring remains in its box in the kitchen drawer, next to the cookbook. She confesses their engagement to no one, and he tells only Charlotte, who replies that he should be “wary of making important life decisions while grieving.” Irked, he stops answering her calls.
Vanessa doesn’t comment on his occasional afternoons at the casino as long as he nurtures their new goals by studying for the LSAT. He saves up money for their wedding, bartending at a swanky French restaurant in St. Paul. Like his coworkers, he drinks at work and on slow evenings smokes pot out back. The hard drugs he avoids, along with the parties. Every week or so, Clara and some friends swing by the restaurant for a drink at the bar. He busies himself by wiping down the bar, pretends he doesn’t notice her looking for him.
Sustained through the polar winter by their mutual, unspoken expectation that spring will be the time to solidify all their future plans, he and Vanessa fall into an enjoyable husband and wife routine. Work night dinners, weekend takeout. Museums, plays, and movies. Daytrips and errands. Lunch dates and evening sex. They celebrate settling their hospital bills by donating a thousand dollars to Planned Parenthood. The next day, while commuting to the office, she rear-ends a Mercedes-Benz, and she and Connor immediately undergo another bout of insurance-related stress, a serendipity they laugh off.
When Vanessa doesn’t call him from work for an entire week, he assumes she’s put her anxiety behind her, but after one of her client’s teenage daughters goes missing and a member of the search party comprised mostly of the girls’ basketball teammates finds her in a man-made pond behind a suburban cul-de-sac, the victim of a rape and murder, Vanessa, gritting her teeth and swallowing down surges of anger, admits to Connor that a panic attack caused her car accident.
They talk everything through. She agrees to see a counselor, then balks. She works late hours. Every night, he waits up for her. They talk and talk and talk.
One Saturday morning in spring, they pack lunches and drive to Minnehaha Park to watch the thunderous bludgeons of melting snow crash against the rocks at the base of the falls. As they picnic, she suddenly says that Dean will soon be visiting from California.
“Okay?” Connor prods her when she offers no more.
“That’s what Susan said, anyway. It’s not important. It’s just…he’s been emailing me.”
“And you’ve been emailing back?”
“He’s been helping me get through things.”
“I’ve been helping you get through things; he’s living in California.”
“Of course you are. I’m just being honest with you.”
“Same here,” he says.
“Connor.”
“So, are you going to see him when he comes?”
“Do I need your permission to? He’s been helpful. He even offered to pay some of our bills.”
“You’re joking. You asked him to?”
“No, but I mentioned it.”
“How long have you been talking to him?”
“Only a few months. Are you going to forbid me to email him? What if I felt like I needed to go to California to find some closure with Eric?”
“That makes no sense.”
“My point is that you’re being controlling.”
“Maybe I don’t want us to lose another one of his kids.”
She walks away and calls an Uber to take her home.
For a few days he avoids home. He works, gambles, and picks up shifts at the restaurant, disregarding Vanessa’s phone calls and texts. He receives his below average LSAT results.
She comes home late one night and crawls atop him. He holds her. “I’m sorry about what I said,” he says. “I want to take you to Greece in the fall. I want to show you the islands. And the sunset. We need a break from all these conversations. I’m worn out.”
“Connor…”
“You’ll love it. It’s so beautiful.”
“Connor.”
“What, Baby?”
“I’m going to stay with Susan a few more nights. Just to clear my thoughts.”
“Okay.”
She kisses his cheek again and again. When she begins to undress, he gently pushes her hands away. They lie quietly, and after he falls asleep, she packs a bag and leaves.
He again immerses himself in work. Closing down the restaurant one night, he cuts his finger picking up broken glass. He washes his hands in the employee bathroom, and while holding a paper towel to the wound, he notices Clara standing in the doorway. She wears short jean shorts and a University of Minnesota shirt.
“You okay?”
“No,” he replies.
She steps toward him and he glances down at her tan legs and white tennis shoes. She takes a bandage from the box on the edge of the sink and puts it on his finger. “Irene told me about your baby.”
“She shouldn’t have.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Me, too.”
She stares at him. Her eyes are lively, sweet. “I have this problem with older guys.”
“So does my fiancée.”
She kisses him on the still lips, waits for him to finish his shift, then takes him home.
In the morning, walking from Clara’s apartment to his car, Connor looks over all his missed calls, one of which is from Danielle. After starting the engine, he takes a deep breath and calls her back.
“Connor?”
“Hi.”
“Connor, my God, how are you?”
“Good. Very good. How are you?”
“Fine.”
“I got your card. Thank you. Very thoughtful. How did you hear about Eric?”
“That was his name, huh.”
“Eric James.”
“Facebook. Terrible news. We’re so sorry. How’s your wife?”
“She’s good. Very good.”
“I can’t imagine, Connor.”
The line goes silent. Then they both begin to speak and both stop in unison.
“Go ahead,” he says.
“I’d been calling to tell you I’ll be in Minneapolis for a couple days.”
“I see. When?”
“Actually, I’m here now. Can I see you?”
“I’m very busy.”
“We’ll make it quick, then.”
He hopes she doesn’t call to meet up, but when she does two evenings later, he agrees to breakfast the following morning at a small café near his house.
He arrives early, dressed in khakis, a pink dress shirt, and a navy sport coat. Conversing retirees and families with rowdy children crowd the café. He sits at a stool with an open one beside it and orders coffee. While he sips, he reads a newspaper left by another customer and peruses a menu he already knows well. After five minutes, he glances around the café and finds her standing by a corner table along a wall of windows facing a busy street. A broad olive headband, knotted at the top of her head, bunches her curls behind her head and draws out her mascaraed eyes. In sneakers, faded jeans, and a Chicago Bears shirzee, she holds a car seat in one arm and a wooden highchair and tan tote bag in the other. The host carries away the chair nearest the window and Danielle skillfully overturns the highchair so its four legs point upward, then places the car seat securely atop it. She pushes the accordion-style cover back, peaks inside at the sleeping baby, and pulls the cover back over the seat.
As he nears, she catches sight of him. Her eyes widen in shock, as if she didn’t expect him to show up. She hugs him from the side, resting her head on his shoulder for an instant. “Look at these clothes,” she says as she tugs on his lapel.
Sunlight beats on the window. He removes his coat and hangs it from the back of his chair before sitting down. He eyes the car seat.
“I was going to leave her with my aunt today, but I changed my mind. Connor, this is my daughter, Cecelia.”
“Is she asleep?”
“It’s okay,” she says, inching the cover back.
He crouches beside the highchair, peering at Cecelia’s eyelids and lashes, her chubby cheeks and the thin curls atop her head.
“You see those pimples on her forehead,” Danielle says. “She’s breaking out from the heat a little.”
“We can wait for another table, or go somewhere else.”
“She’ll be fine.”
“Will she be able to sleep here? Is it too loud?”
“She’s okay, Connor.”
They order orange juices and omelets. A server brings him the cup of coffee he forgot at the counter.
“I don’t think she looks like you.”
“Everyone says she looks more like Charles.”
“How is Charles?”
“Charles is Charles. He’s out on his own again.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“He wanted me to tell you we prayed for you. The boys, too. We’ve all been thinking of you.”
“That’s nice of you all.”
“When I heard, I…” She shakes her head, biting her lower lip.
“How’s the center?”
“It closed. Budget cuts.”
“No.”
“Now I work as a paraprofessional at EJ’s school. It’s just managing behaviors, like I did at the center. I’m paid better now, though. Even bought Gloria’s house for myself, and a car.”
“Sounds like everything’s going great.”
She tells him she’s in town to see her aunt and uncle. “They’re getting up there and they’re trying to get rid of some stuff in their house, so I’m helping them with a garage sale. Thought I’d call you up.”
She bows to sip orange juice through her straw, then pops her head up. “Ah! I almost forgot.” She digs through her bag for an envelope, hands it to Connor. “Marquees made you something.”
He unfolds the piece of paper inside, a colored pencil drawing of a boy and a man standing side by side.
“That’s Marquees in the LeBron jersey, you in the Jordan jersey.”
“I see. Very sweet of him.” He folds the drawing up, tucks it into the inner pocket of his coat.
“I thought I’d meet her,” she says.
“Who?”
“Your wife?”
“We’re not married. Anyway, she’s busy today, unfortunately.”
“That’s too bad.”
They go silent and she says, “Maybe this is weird.”
“Not at all. Why would it be?”
“No reason. Although, I have to come clean about something. I didn’t learn about your baby from Facebook. It was your stepmom.”
“You talked to Charlotte?”
“A few times. We mostly text. I was worried, but I didn’t want to bother you. Charlotte’s great.”
“She is.”
“Maybe that was creepy of me.”
He finishes his cup of coffee and looks around for the waiter. “I’m sure it came from the right place. What else did she tell you?”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugs. They glance at Cecelia as she stretches her head out but doesn’t wake.
“She told me your job’s going well.”
“Everything is wonderful here. It was rough for a while, but I’m back on track these days. Vanessa and I are engaged. We have a dog. Look at me, I’ll be thirty soon and I’m fattening up like I’m supposed to.” He pats his belly.
The waiter brings their omelets and Cecelia begins to squawk. Danielle only takes two bites before she picks her daughter up and, gently bouncing her, carries her to the quiet café entrance. He looks at the empty car seat. A waitress fills his coffee cup. He doesn’t pick his fork up until Danielle comes back and lays sleeping Cecelia down in her car seat.
They eat, heads down. Here and there he glances up at Danielle. Sunlight gleams on her cheeks, exposing her nascent crow’s feet creases.
“I slept with a coworker last night,” he suddenly says.
Danielle sits up straight, swallows her bite.
“I think Vanessa’s going to California to be with Dean. She’s always been in love with him.”
“Who’s Dean?”
“I’m sorry, that’s Eric’s father.”
“Eric? Your son, Eric? I mean…”
He nods. “I’ve been working two jobs, gambling on the side, drinking too much. But I’m ahead on my mortgage and have enough saved up in case everything goes to hell, which God knows, it will. There, now you don’t have to wait to hear it from Charlotte.”
She glowers at him, then looks down at her plate. “I didn’t know all that. I could tell you didn’t want to do this,” she says softly.
“I don’t see what good it’s doing you, either. I’ll pay for breakfast.”
“I already did.”
“Even better.”
“I’m not done eating, though,” she says.
“Me, neither. Might even get more coffee.”
“I’ll call the waiter over for you.”
“Still stubborn, huh?”
“And you’re different now that your shirts have buttons?”
“I…” He stops himself.
“What?”
“Never mind. I don’t care,” he says.
“Yes, you do. So do I.”
Though the café clamor drowns out their raised voices, those at the tables nearest them, sensing drama, begin to listen in and watch them from the corner of their eyes.
“I’m sorry if this isn’t going like you’d hoped. Sorry if you’re embarrassed by me,” he says.
“Do I seem embarrassed?”
“No.”
“Anyway, that’s not what you were going to say.”
“What was I going to say?”
“Not that,” she replies.
“Why are you here?”
“Checking in on a friend.”
“Can this be the last time, please?”
“If that’s what you want.”
He leans in and lowers his voice. “I don’t know you and I don’t really want to anymore. Do I answer your calls? Respond to your texts? What, should I feel blessed by your sudden consideration for me?”
“It’s not sudden,” she whispers.
“What?”
“I said, ‘It’s not sudden.’ But I’m not here to go over all that.”
“Me, neither. I came to tell you that I don’t want you to contact me again.”
“I won’t then.”
“Good. Thank you,” he replies.
“Could’ve said that on the phone, saved us a scene.”
“I didn’t think it through.”
“I shouldn’t have brought Cecelia.”
“She has nothing to do with it. I just…”
“It’s okay, Connor. You don’t have to explain.”
“I want to.”
She looks at him, waiting, but he merely takes the last bite of his omelet and stares out the window. He finishes his second cup of coffee and says, “It’s not personal. I don’t want to see anyone.”
She waits for him to continue. When he doesn’t, she adjusts her headband and peaks in on Cecelia. Then she asks, “What do you want?”
“Wanting has never done me any favors.”
“Okay? What are you going to do?”
“About what?”
“About living?”
“Charlotte already told you: my job’s going well. And I got a dog.”
“That’s enough for you?”
“She’s a good dog.”
For the first time today she laughs, a delicate, mirthful chitter he recognizes. “I doubt it will be,” she says.
“Why not?”
“Right—I know nothing about you. You’ve completely changed into a completely different person.”
“Yes and no.”
She finishes her omelet and juice. He starts his third cup of coffee.
“Damn, this coffee’s burnt. So, you think you fucked up back then, is that it?”
“No. I did what was best at the time. You know, you could’ve called me,” she replies.
“You said not to.”
“I said a lot of things.”
He scratches his neck, yawns. “Well, it’s all over now. Tell me more about your job.”
“I did what was best.”
“Fine, you’re perfect. I’m the screw-up.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“It’s okay, I don’t care. Life’s too short. How are the boys?”
“You knew what you were asking me to do.”
“All in all, you were asking as much of me as I was of you. But it doesn’t matter. Let’s move on. I don’t want to rehash…”
“You don’t?”
He shakes his head, his lips downturned.
She grins at him. “Fine, then.”
“Good.”
“Connor, you look fatter.”
“And you look older,” he retorts.
“I am.”
“That must be it then.”
She talks about her battles with the teachers and administrators who are quick to kick kids out of her school, including EJ, now twelve years old. He has gotten into some scraps and is hanging out with older kids who “have nothing going on.”
When Cecelia wakes, Connor asks if he can hold her. They three leave the café, and for fifteen minutes Connor cradles Cecelia on a bus stop bench in the shade of an elm tree, again and again kissing the top of her head. Then he and Danielle hug goodbye.
“Stay in touch, if you want to,” she tells him.
Looking at Cecelia in her car seat, he smiles but says nothing.
He slips Marquees’ drawing into the cookbook in the kitchen, then braces for the drama he’s sure the following weeks will bring him.
On Monday, Irene drops a twenty-pound stack of folders on his desk, assigning him the office’s neediest, most aggrieved clients. Later, when he takes his watch off to rub his wrist and leaves it unattended at his desk, she takes it back. So, Connor is unsurprised when Vanessa learns about his night with Clara. The news aggravates Vanessa, not enough to confront Connor but enough to let it slip to Derrick, who, after leaving Connor some threatening phone messages, informs Peter and Ginny. By the time Connor sees Vanessa again the next weekend, it seems to him his coworkers and neighbors have recycled enough rumors to turn him into the most heinous man on earth. She neither apologizes nor asks him to, but informs him that she’ll be staying in Susan’s guest room indefinitely.
He spends his evenings gambling, drinking with strangers, and golfing with James, whose retirement has fostered crueler, more belligerent exposés on free market solutions to healthcare and immigration. Connor wants to call Peter, but doesn’t. He wants Vanessa to officially move out, but won’t ask her to. He wants to tell everyone the baby wasn’t his, but refrains. He gets kicked out of a bar over an argument about gun control, then returns the next night to argue with someone else, taking the exact opposite position, and gets kicked out again. He buys a two-thousand-dollar bike, an eight-hundred-dollar skis, and a four-hundred-dollar used dirt bike. He stops taking Cocoa for walks, so she defecates in the clothes hamper and under the kitchen table. He buys a video game console and stays in all weekend, smoking weed and ordering subs. He gets whooped by teenagers whose avatars are StrokeLord and FeistyGinger19. Then he takes the console back to the store two days later, argues with a clerk about the store’s return policy.
One night Vanessa calls to tell him she took another job and will be moving away in six weeks.
“What about your clients?”
“There are clients everywhere.”
“I suppose…”
“You don’t want me to stay here,” she says. “This is a good thing.”
“Okay. The job’s in California?”
“Cleveland.”
“Not the same thing.”
“Not at all.”
“I’m so sorry for everything, Vanessa.”
“It’s not all your fault.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too. I’m not mad, either. I feel like I’m holding you back.”
“From what?” he asks, incredulous.
“I guess you’ll find out someday.”
Clara invites him to a party at her college roommate’s townhouse, and from the moment he arrives, an hour early, already buzzing, he realizes he’s made a huge mistake. He drinks four beers alone by a backyard fire pit until a gang of jocks and college girls arrive. When the sun sets, the boys light a bonfire and tear up the grass with inebriated lawn games. Soon, their sidelong smirks at Connor evolve into a full-on roast of “Uncle C’s” desire for Clara, his “dad tennis shoes,” his too-loose jeans and too-tight dress shirt. Clara eventually shows up but stays for only ten minutes before departing with a lacrosse player, and Connor sticks around for another masochistic half-hour, drinking his fill and laughing off their slights, before taking an Uber home. In a pit-stained undershirt, he stands before his bathroom mirror, sucking his gut in and pushing it out.
He sleeps in late, showers, and heads to work at the restaurant. At the end of a quiet shift, he slips out back for a smoke and returns to find Charlotte seated at the end of the otherwise empty bar, wearing pajama bottoms, running shoes, and a hooded raincoat.
“Would you like to see a menu?” he asks cheerily.
“No, thank you.”
“Wine list? On tap we have—”
“Not thirsty,” she interrupts him.
“You look like a Sith. When did it start raining?”
“What’s going on with you?” she whispers, pulling back her hood.
“What do you mean?”
“Connor.”
“And why are you wearing pajamas?”
“Your dad doesn’t know I’m here. All things equal, I’d rather he not.”
“You snuck out?”
“I keep telling him not to worry about you, so I don’t want him to know how much I am.”
“You two are ridiculous.”
She runs her hands through her hair. Her narrowed eyes, swollen from motherhood stressors and long hours at work, spook him—he’s never seen her so angry.
He says, “Is this about Clara and Vanessa? Because that’s all over with, everyone’s moving on.”
“It’s about you,” she replies, her voice calm.
“It was a mistake. Did Vanessa tell you she’s leaving for Cleveland?”
“I’m not asking about her.”
“I don’t know what to say, Charlotte. I’m…” He shakes his head as he leaves to fill a drink order.
When he returns, she says, “I know Eric wasn’t yours.”
He pauses. “He was my son.”
“Of course he was, but Vanessa told me about what’s-his-face.”
“Why’d she do that?”
“Don’t ask me. She told me after he died. Guilt, maybe.”
“Whatever. It’s all over now.”
Exasperated, she taps her fingernails on the wooden bar, takes a deep breath. He stares across the restaurant at an old couple coming in from the rain.
She says, “I don’t understand how the man who did that for her, for your son, can stomach all the stupid bullshit you’re doing now.”
“It was one night.”
“I don’t care about that. Why are you spending so much time with my father?”
“I love your dad.”
“Not as much as I do, but if you end up like him, I’ll murder you.”
“He’s just loud,” he replies.
“He’s an asshole.”
“You think I’m an asshole?”
“Seems it’s what you’re going for.”
“He’s a good guy.”
“He is what he is; you’re better than that.”
“I see what you’re up to. Do me a favor and please stop talking to Danielle. She doesn’t need a briefing every time I screw up. I grew up without a mom; now I have more of them than I can handle.”
“I thought she could help you. If I think she can in the future, I’ll drive her up from Chicago myself.”
“Just focus on your kid, would you?”
“I am.”
He bites his thumbnail. She raps the edge of her cell phone on the bar top.
“Believe it or not, things are going well for me,” he says, filling another order.
“No, they’re not.”
“If it makes you feel better, I’ll tell you I’m even thinking of volunteering with a youth basketball league. Or else, I might apply to law school in the fall. Did Vanessa ever tell you about how the police can get a warrant to search a woman’s…you know? It’s not right.”
“You’re fucking hilarious.”
“I’m being serious.”
“Clearly, not serious enough.”
“Charlotte—”
She points her phone at him and raises her voice. “I’ll keep calling you, and if you continue to not answer, I’ll continue showing up here. And if you get another job, I’ll show up there. I’ll keep bothering you till you get your shit together. You want help with your résumé or an application, I’ll help. You want to talk through career options or need a ride to volunteer at a soup kitchen, anything. But, if I can help it, you will not be bartending and gambling four times a week much longer.”
A nearby waitress raises her head. Connor’s manager, a bony twenty-four-year-old with fifteen earrings and ong black hair in a man-bun, skulks over to observe.
Noticing him, Charlotte backtracks. “No offense. It’s a fine job, just not for him.”
She flips her hood over her head. The manager follows her to the door. “Everything okay tonight, ma’am?”
“Your bartender’s a prick. You should fire him,” she replies as she exits.
Connor and Vanessa put the house on the market. He gives Irene two weeks’ notice, and after a week of scowling at Cocoa and warding off Charlotte’s nightly calls with the repeated claim that he’s “thinking things over,” he sends her the confirmation emails for his online applications to seven law schools in the Midwest, three in Minnesota. He sells off the toys he recently purchased and mischievously offers Cocoa to Bill and Charlotte, aware of her tendency to lick Melody’s hair into spikes after they bathe her. A compromise, Charlotte begrudgingly agrees to take the dog.
Only two schools accept him, one in Iowa, the other in Chicago. When he has Bill and Charlotte over for dinner to tell them he’s leaving in the fall, she jumps up from the table, hugs him, and cries, “Oh, Connor, we’re so happy for you. What a great surprise! What finally made you decide to follow through?”
“Too bad you didn’t get in to any schools close by,” Bill says.
“Which will you choose?” she asks.
“Might be nice to go somewhere I’ve never been. Start over. The basic curriculum’s the same.”
“Go to Chicago.”
“Why?” Bill asks. “Last time, he never came back to see us.”
“He already knows some people there.”
“I’ll meet new people.”
“Starting over is hard. Anyway, you’re not a cornfields guy.”
Bill pleads, “Wherever you go, would you at least live in a nice area where we three can visit you? Please?”
“It won’t be like last time, Dad. You’ll see me as much as you do now.”
“It’s settled,” Charlotte says, folding her hands before her chin. “An excellent decision! My boy, my boy!”
Connor smiles at her, and Bill looks suspiciously at them, then shrugs.
A newlywed couple purchases Connor and Vanessa’s house. Peter rents a trailer to pick up the rest of her belongings plus everything the new homeowners don’t want as part of the sale, the dishware, entertainment system, furnishings, and kitchen table. While packing, the Walshes pretend Connor isn’t there. Derrick tells him not to help but doesn’t object when Peter’s back pain compels Connor to carry boxes to the lawn. While the Walshes eat ordered pizza by the trailer, Connor has a ham sandwich in the kitchen, chatting with Vanessa.
“Chicago’s not far from Cleveland, if you ever want to visit,” he says.
“Maybe. You never know.”
Peter and Derrick do one last sweep through the house, then she and Connor hug goodbye. On his way out, Peter squeezes Connor on the shoulder. “Take care,” he says.
Awaiting his move-in date, he stays with Bill and Charlotte for a week, his things packed in his car. Melody toddles around the house, throwing toys, fussing, and yammering. He takes her for walks around the block in her stroller and naps with her on the living room recliner. All through the morning of his departure, he holds her. When Charlotte finally pries her away, Melody’s tiny fingers, grubby from playing with him in the yard that morning, clutch his shirt sleeve. Driving south, he notices the smudged prints. He cries.
With only a carload of things to lug up to his second story studio apartment two blocks from campus, the move goes quickly. A bathroom, a tidy living room with a bed, a kitchenette. Midway through assembling a new shelf for his textbooks, he stops to drink a glass of water and rub his neck. His phone rings.
He sighs but answers. “Didn’t expect to hear from you.”
“I know,” Danielle replies.
“I’m sure you heard already, but I’m back in Chicago. I was going to call you. I didn’t want to run into you and have you think I was avoiding you.”
“Chicago’s a big city.”
“With my luck…”
“Worse things could happen to you,” she says. “Law school, huh? That’s great.”
They’re silent. He tickles his chin with his fingertips and says, “Can you do something for me? I don’t want anything but school. Don’t get me wrong, it was wonderful to see you and Cecelia—”
“It’s okay,” she interjects. “I just want to welcome you. If you need anything, you have my number.”
“Okay. Everything good there?”
“You really want to know?”
“Just this time.”
“EJ was picked up by the police yesterday.”
“For what?”
“They said they got him on camera, said he was involved in a riot. Some other boys got beat up pretty bad. One got stabbed. EJ will be in detention for a month before trial.”
“That’s a long time, especially at the end of summer.”
“If you plead guilty, you get released right away, but you’ll have it on your record. If you don’t, you have a shot at trial and a clean record, but you have to wait for it. He told Erin he didn’t do anything, so she won’t let him plead guilty like his friends did.”
“I’m sure he likes that,” he says.
“Nephew’s going to be bored as hell. I’m going to see him in a couple days.”
“I’ll be thinking of him. Tell him I said that, if it means anything to him.”
“It will. He won’t show it, though. He wants everyone to know how tough he is.”
A week passes. On the eve of the first day of classes, he joins hundreds of his first year classmates for a commencement gala in a sprawling campus ballroom lit by six identical chandeliers. Waiters in tuxedos and bowties serve champagne, crab cakes, and bacon-wrapped shrimp. Heavy forest green linen adorns forty circular high top dining tables. Pregnant couples show off extravagant wedding rings. Professors in matching blazers tell stories and answer curriculum questions. While listening to an anxious, shrill young man explain to him in detail why he didn’t enroll at a more prestigious school, Connor excuses himself and, secluded beneath a side exit archway, texts Danielle: where they keeping EJ?