“Oh, Lord, Alison. How terrible,” her mother gasped when Alison called to tell her parents about the accident.
“Yes,” she said grimly.
“That poor family,” her mother said. “How awful. Just awful.”
Alison could feel a surge of tears against the dam of her rib cage.
“Are the police … Are you being charged with anything?” her father asked.
“DWI. I was just barely over the legal limit.” Alison cringed at her own need to say this. “I’m not—technically at fault, apparently.”
“Uhh,” her father said, as if he’d been hit in the stomach.
“I really should have said something last night,” her mother said. “You were so rushed and harried on the phone. I just—I had a feeling. Call it mother’s intuition, I don’t know—I could tell something was going to happen. I was pacing around all night. Wasn’t I, Ed? Don’t you remember telling me to relax and sit down?”
“I always tell you that,” Alison’s father said.
“No, but this was different. I feel sick about it. I should have—could have—”
“Mom, don’t,” Alison said. It was just like her mother to insist that her witchy powers might have saved the day.
“Well, okay, but I regret not saying something. I knew you were in no state to be driving into New York by yourself. You seemed absolutely overwhelmed.”
Did I? Alison wondered, unable, as usual, to connect her mother’s interpretation of her mental state with how she’d felt. She had certainly been harried when her mother called the night before, but only because she was trying to get out the door at the last minute. Or was her mother right? Was it something more?
“Driving into the city by yourself on a rainy night—and to a party. You don’t even like to drive,” her mother fretted.
“June, take it easy,” Alison’s father said. “It was a party for Claire’s book. Alison had to go.”
“Well. Don’t even get me started on that book. It is a slap in the face to poor Lucinda, whether or not she realizes it. That girl should be ashamed of herself.”
“June,” Alison’s father implored.
Alison’s mother went on, ignoring him. Here it was, in a nutshell: their dynamic. “I have never, ever trusted Claire Ellis—there was always something devious about her. Why you’ve stayed friends with her, I’ll never understand. Haven’t I been saying that, Edward, for years?”
She had, in fact, been saying it for years. Perhaps in part because they were so much alike, June and Claire had never liked each other. Claire thought that Alison’s mother was a self-absorbed drama queen; her mother thought that Claire was up to no good. Of course, they were both right. What Alison resisted in her mother—the arrogance of her opinions, the calculated impulsiveness, the stubborn refusal to abide by others’ conventions, her narcissistic charm—she had always admired in Claire, in whom these traits were manifested as sly subversion.
“Alison,” her father broke in. His voice was grave. “What can we do?”
“There’s nothing you can do,” she said numbly.
“How is Charlie handling all this?” her mother asked.
“Fine. I mean, he’s been … helpful. He took the kids out for the morning.”
“How are Annie and Noah?”
“Why are you crying, Mommy?” Annie had wanted to know, standing next to the bed, her voice already, first thing in the morning, a needling, needy whine. Alison knew that her daughter’s concern was all about her own fear and discomfort, and she’d had to fight the urge to turn away. Instead, she pulled her close, under the covers. (Sometimes, Alison was aware, she expressed the strongest affection for her children when she was least sure of her own response.) Annie had stiffened against Alison’s embrace, pulling away to peer in her face. “Your eyes are all puffy, Mommy,” she’d said, her face scrunched in alarm.
“They know I was in an accident,” Alison said now. “Not the rest.”
“How are you going to tell them?”
“She doesn’t have to tell them,” her father said, at the same time that Alison said, “I don’t know.”
“Oh, Alison.” Her mother sighed. “We should fly up there. You’re in no shape to handle the kids right now. And as long as I’m being honest here I should tell you that I don’t like that babysitter of yours—what’s her name, Roberta.”
“Dolores.”
“Dolores. She’s snippy with me whenever I call there, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t give you all my messages, either. I get the distinct impression that she is not nurturing to those children.”
Alison closed her eyes and shifted the cordless phone to her other ear, as if it might also somehow shift the topic. It was true that Dolores, a former English nanny who for mysterious reasons had been reduced to babysitting by the hour, was imperious and controlling, but Alison didn’t know what to do about it. Frankly, she was intimidated. And she didn’t want to think about that right now. She took a deep breath, calibrating words and tone in her head, and then said, “Mom, I appreciate the offer, but I think we’re okay.”
“Honey, you’re not okay. You’re not okay at all,” her mother said.
Alison had been a curious child. When she was ten or eleven she would read her mother’s correspondence and her friends’ diaries as well as eavesdrop on conversations for a mention of her name. She wanted to learn who she was, reflected in the eyes of others. And then something happened: one day when she was in the eighth grade she read one supposed friend’s note to another in school—Alison G. wears such weird clothes—with the scrawled reply, Yeah, and she’s not as pretty as she thinks she is—and Alison took the words to heart. I wear weird clothes and I’m not as pretty as I think I am. After that she stopped wanting to know.
“You’re right. I’m not okay,” she said now.
Her mother was full of questions: How fast was the other car going? Was it a licensed vehicle? Was the road wet? Was Alison speeding? What in the world was that mother thinking, in this day and age, having the child on her lap?
After Alison hung up the phone she felt raw and light-headed. She’d been crying on and off for hours, but now her eyes were dry. It reminded her of how she’d felt after Annie’s birth: drained, bloodless, almost transparent, as if her body were little more than the empty husk of a cocoon.
WHEN SHE HEARD the knock at the back door, Alison was standing in the kitchen looking around at the detritus of Charlie’s effort to feed the kids breakfast—half-crushed Cheerios scattered across the floor, spilled milk on the table, the plastic jug open on the counter with its plug missing, sections of the Friday Times in piles, an apple with two small bites already turning brown on a chair. The coffeemaker was on, but the carafe was empty. She could hear Charlie and the kids in the playroom.
Somehow Alison had never gotten used to this. When she was with the kids, she was constantly picking up—wiping countertops, sweeping the floor, loading the dishwasher, folding mounds of laundry. Charlie just—played. And she came in later and cleaned up the mess.
Alison could see Robin’s curly blond hair through the small glass panes at the top of the door. She felt a quick panic—the last thing she wanted to do was talk to her neighbor. But it was too late; Robin had seen her and was tentatively waving the fingers of one hand, anemonelike, through the glass.
Alison took a deep breath and opened the door.
“Here. I made banana bread,” Robin said, handing Alison a foil-wrapped loaf. “It was all I could think of to do.”
The loaf was still warm, and somehow comforting in Alison’s hands: the solid heft of it, its mammal warmth. “Robin—thank you.” How kind. Alison felt a tickle in the bridge of her nose.
Oh no; she was going to cry.
“I won’t stay. I just—” Robin said.
Alison shook her head, clenching her jaw. Despite her efforts, her eyes filled with tears.
Robin took the loaf from Alison and placed it on the counter. Then she clasped her hand and led her to the table. “How about some coffee?” she said gently.
Alison nodded, unable to speak. She watched as Robin rummaged in the cabinet for filters, washed out the carafe, spooned coffee grounds from the bag on the counter into the filter, and then filled the carafe with water and poured it into the pot. Normally she would have talked to fill the silence, protested about being served, worried after her neighbor’s feelings, but she did none of this. She still felt hollowed out. Her eyes, her skin, her mouth and ears only an epidermal shell, the bones providing structure. Her brain reptilian, merely recording movement, sensing light and dark.
How could she go on?
Miraculously, Robin seemed to know exactly what Alison needed. She was quiet, watching the coffeemaker, glancing over to smile at her every now and then.
Robin was not Alison’s type. She was in the Junior League; her twin ten-year-old boys played golf; she and her husband belonged to the tony country club on the edge of town (though Alison knew, through the neighborhood grapevine, that Robin’s husband, a banker, had lost his job twice in the past three years). She was probably a Republican. Alison’s friends tended to be other women who felt adrift in some way, who’d gone freelance and were having trouble drumming up work, who found themselves unexpectedly pregnant again after a baby or two, who were as conflicted as she was about being a stay-at-home mother. Alison had often marveled at Robin’s seemingly unambivalent feelings about motherhood and work. She seemed preternaturally content—busy, involved in the schools (endlessly planning book fairs, movie nights, class parties), on the executive board of the PTA. Alison had not-so-secretly wondered what deep well of need Robin had that was so readily filled by the quotidian details of domestic life.
But now she was merely grateful.
Robin found a coffee mug, filled it, brought it to the table along with the milk. “Sugar? Sweetener?”
Alison shook her head. She poured milk into her coffee and took a long sip.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Robin asked. She fished a knife from the block on the counter and cut into the banana bread. Steam rose from the plate. She put it in front of Alison, who pinched off a bite. She couldn’t even taste it; the bread was like Styrofoam in her mouth. She had an impulse to spit it out but forced herself to swallow. “No,” she said.
Robin nodded. She sat down in the chair across from Alison.
“The boy died,” Alison said.
“Oh,” Robin exclaimed. “Oh, Alison”—putting her hand to her mouth.
“I … really … don’t want to talk about it.”
“All right.” After a moment Robin reached out and put her cool fingers on Alison’s forearm. “I’m here when you need me. Okay?”
She started to get up, but Alison said, “Please—don’t leave. Stay for a minute.”
“Sure. Of course.” Robin sank back into her seat.
Alison forced herself to smile. It felt as if her mouth were smiling on its own, a purely mechanical activity. Then she started to cry.
Robin sat at the table with Alison as tears streamed down her face. She cried and cried, until the fluid seemed to have been drained from her. Then she cried some more. Robin got up; even through her tears, Alison was aware that she was looking for a box of tissues, but she didn’t find one and ended up tearing off some paper towels and handing Alison a big wad.
Charlie came into the kitchen. He was clearly startled to see Alison sobbing wordlessly into a white muff, and Robin sitting there. “Oh, goodness,” he said, patting Alison’s shoulder. “Honey, can we let Robin get back to her family? I’m sure she has things she needs to do this morning.”
“Do you want me to stay?” she asked Alison.
Alison shook her head. She did want Robin to stay but was ashamed of being so inappropriately needy.
“Anytime at all,” Robin said. “Just call me.”
She gave Charlie a sympathetic smile, which Alison understood as: we will both take care of this person. No man should have to shoulder this alone; I can help.
And she wondered: Why didn’t Charlie marry someone like Robin? His life would be so much easier.
After Robin left, Charlie sat at the table with his entire hand covering the bottom half of his face. Alison recognized this as a rare but significant gesture in Charlie’s repertoire, signaling that he was flummoxed.
“I called a lawyer,” he said after a while. “Ben’s roommate from Harvard. Nice guy. Lives in Bergen County.”
Alison nodded.
“He said it sounds fairly straightforward. He needs—everything.”
She sniffed and cleared her throat. “Today?”
“No. Tomorrow is soon enough. The police report. Etcetera.”
She nodded again.
“We’ll get through this, Alison.”
“Will we?”
He looked her in the eyes, but his gaze was opaque; she couldn’t read what he was telling her.
She took a deep breath. “When I called you last night, the first thing you said was, ‘What did you do?’”
Charlie sat back. “Well. It was a shock, getting that phone call.”
“You were so—cold.”
“I was asleep, Alison,” he said tetchily. “You woke me up.”
“Still.” She could feel the tears gathering inside her again.
He wiped some crumbs into a pile.
“‘What did you do?’” she repeated in a self-pitying whisper.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said.
But she couldn’t let it go. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand where that came from.”
“There’s nothing to understand,” he said. “Don’t read too much into it. In fact, don’t read anything into it.”
She looked at him dully. She didn’t want to read too much into it. She didn’t want to read anything into it. But his halfhearted protestations weren’t helping much.
“We need to be thinking about the next steps,” he was saying.
Next steps. Baby steps, she thought. One foot after another, toddler steps. Phantom steps—steps the three-year-old boy who died would never take. Here I am, going to that place, the most maudlin place, she thought. But she didn’t care. She lived in that place now.