October 2001
At dinner with Claire and Ben one evening in New York, Alison and Charlie made plans to go away with them for an October fall foliage bed-and-breakfast weekend upstate. Charlie made reservations at what turned out to be a dilapidated bed-and-breakfast he’d chosen from an out-of-date guidebook he’d found remaindered at the Strand—typical of him, as Claire said when they got there. “Charlie’s such a cheapskate,” she grumbled to Alison as they followed the ancient proprietor up the rickety stairs to their rooms. “We should never let him make the plans.” (Charlie was a cheapskate, but Alison knew that he felt acutely the difference between his nonprofit job and Ben’s salary as a corporate architect.)
Charlie had left work early and taken the subway to a bus to the least expensive car rental place he could find, near the river on Thirty-first Street. He secured a shiny white Ford Focus and drove up West End Avenue to pick up Alison. Meanwhile, she had packed their bag. He had left a sloppy pile of clothes on his dresser—khakis and a moss green sweater, boxer shorts and socks and a few white T-shirts, a leather utility case containing a frayed toothbrush, a flattened tube of toothpaste, and a sample-size yellow moisturizer from a makeup promotion. She scanned her closet for something, anything, that wasn’t black. They were going upstate. People wore colors there.
Alison was standing in the lobby, chatting with Frank, the part-time doorman, when Charlie pulled up in front of the building. It was a cold, windy day. Frank carried her bag despite her protests, and she rolled her eyes at Charlie as he watched them coming to let him know that she had no choice. Charlie was sensitive about treating their doorman like a serf.
“Frank,” he said, scrolling down the passenger’s window and leaning across the seat, “you didn’t have to—”
“It’s a pleasure to serve such a lovely young couple, sir, a pleasure. A good weekend to you.”
Frank was from the old school, and all you could do was nod. Even Charlie realized this, and he waved good-bye with a pained smile, which Frank returned with a brisk salute.
“I suppose when we have a baby we’ll actually need a doorman,” Alison said as Charlie pulled into traffic.
“Umm,” he said.
“But I like it now, too,” she said. “It makes me feel safe. And packages—it’s useful for packages.”
“Actually,” he said, slowing to a stop at a red light, “I was reading that people in doorman buildings get lulled into complacency. Anyone can talk their way in, or slip past when the doorman isn’t looking.”
“It’s green,” Alison said. They picked up speed over the next few blocks—Seventy-fourth, Seventy-third, Seventy-second, down into the Sixties, until they hit a snarl of traffic around Lincoln Center. “I don’t care if it’s an illusion,” she said as they sat stalled at an intersection. “I like to feel safe.”
He looked over at her with an amused smile. “Well, aren’t you conventional all of a sudden. Next you’ll be wanting a white picket fence in Connecticut.” This was a game they played, accusing each other of bourgeois aspirations. It was their way of dealing with the legitimate fear that their lives were becoming demographically predictable.
“Let’s not rush things,” she said. “First the Jack Russell. Then the baby. Then the house.”
He glanced at the digital clock. “I can’t believe you told Claire we’d pick them up, Al. They could easily have met me at the lot. It’s adding an hour to our travel time.”
“So?” she said. “It gives us some quality time together, right?”
“Quantity time, maybe,” he said.
Charlie was right; it took twenty-five minutes just to get through Midtown traffic. There was much to talk about, but little was said. Sighs and mutterings, attention to traffic. As they passed through Times Square, neon rinsed the dashboard, splashed in their eyes.
When they got to the warehouse on Seventeenth Street, Charlie jumped out and rang the buzzer.
“Benjamin, sir,” he said with exaggerated formality, “the car and driver are downstairs.”
Charlie got back in the car. He and Alison sat in silence for a few minutes, waiting. She adjusted some knobs on the dashboard, turning down the heat. The street was quiet. Cars were double-parked on one side, sharking for a space; every time a truck came along, Charlie had to circle the block.
Alison put her hand on Charlie’s leg, just above the knee, a peace offering of sorts, though she wasn’t quite sure why she felt she needed to offer one. “What,” he said in a neutral voice, neither a question nor a demand.
She pulled her hand away.
“Did you pack my green sweater?”
She nodded.
“Good. It’s going to be cold.”
“I love you,” she said.
After a moment he said, “I know.” Then, as if realizing that wasn’t enough, he said, “Love you, too. Here they are.”
There was a hard rap on her window. “Hey, guys.” It was Claire, all sparkly hazel eyes and dangling earrings and big crimson mouth, wearing a black cashmere turtleneck and modishly faded jeans. Alison unlocked the doors, and Claire slid in. Ben rapped on the trunk, a thump that vibrated against Alison’s feet, and Charlie triggered the lock. Ben fiddled in the trunk for a moment, then slammed it shut. Alison looked back at Claire, and Claire smiled and squeezed her shoulder. “An adventure,” she said. “This is just what we need.”
Out of the city, trees were everywhere. The colors reminded Alison of New York magazine’s fall fashion color palette: sage green, burnt sugar, cinnamon, yellow apple, moss. The fact that she even saw it that way, she thought ruefully, meant that she’d probably been living in the city too long.
Later, Alison framed a snapshot from that weekend of the four of them sitting on the pebbled beach of a lake. It was a cold morning; they all wore mismatched scarves and mittens borrowed from the garrulous proprietor of the bed-and-breakfast. In the photo they’re all laughing, but it’s as if they’ve been laughing too long; their smiles are held in place like the afterimage of a bright light in a dark room. You can tell there’s been some self-conscious arrangement: Alison is leaning back against Charlie, who has his arm draped over her shoulder, and Claire and Ben are tilting their heads together. It was only when Alison examined the picture closely that she noticed Claire’s arm on Charlie’s knee, and his fingers touching hers. She might have seen it at the time, but if so it didn’t register.