Erik’s ex-wife phoned as we were driving into Milwaukee for dinner. “Crap,” he said, relinquishing my hand. “Let me make sure everything’s okay with the kids.”
“Of course.” I leaned against the seat back, taking in the tiny details I already loved: his strong hands and laugh lines, the openness of his face. It was our sixth date, and I wondered when I would stop counting. Was there a magic number—ten dates, twenty?—when I would finally believe that what we both felt was…what? Lasting? Real? Already I could see glimpses of how our lives fit together: running after work, cooking dinner, making love.
The traffic had slowed, four lanes merging into two. “We’re downtown,” Erik was saying to Annabelle. A crane dangled a block of concrete overhead, the blue sky radiant. “The Mexican place by the lake.”
I glanced at him as he talked. The conversations I’d heard him have with Annabelle always seemed perfunctory: How was everyone? Could she put the kids on? Or when was he taking the girls to McDonald’s? Could he pick up Spencer from school? Still, he ate dinner at her house a few times a week. It was easier for the kids, he said. Breaking Spencer’s routine caused him so much distress—and why do that to him?—plus, the girls were so young. It made sense, though I felt a pang on the nights he was there. I imagined the five of them siting around the table, a family.
The first time I spent the night with Erik, she phoned, and I could hear her crying. She couldn’t calm Spencer; could Erik come over? He apologized profusely to me—I can’t believe, of all the nights—but he didn’t hesitate, and again, though I understood, it scared me. “I don’t want to be a fool,” I told him when he returned. “If there’s unfinished stuff with you and Annabelle…”
“Her timing sucks, Claire, but it’s not like she knew you were here.”
“Was Spencer okay?”
The bed creaked as he turned to face me. “Sometimes when he gets agitated…it’s hard to describe, but he doesn’t just bounce back. I guess Phoebe accidentally turned off the TV when he was watching and it just—Annabelle put it right back on, but he was inconsolable. And the poor kid, he was trying to explain why—I think he felt like he was restarting in the middle of the show, and he can’t. He really and truly can’t. His brain isn’t wired that way and it…it breaks my heart.” He paused. “Annabelle really did need help.” He leaned up on one elbow, his eyes dark pockets. “Please don’t be jealous.” He brushed his thumb along my lip. “I promise you there’s no reason.”
I thought of this now as I watched him on the phone. “No, you can’t talk to her! Jesus, we’re on a date.” He let out an exasperated breath, eyes flicking to the rearview as he switched lanes, but he looked happy.
I leaned forward to close the vent, the air-conditioning suddenly too cold, then reached for Spencer’s book of maps tucked into the door pocket. Road Atlas of Waukesha County. Erik had told me how, even if they were just driving from Annabelle’s to his house or to school, Spencer traced the route on his map. I flipped through the pages, aware of Erik’s eyes on me. I’d read that after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and again after the attack on Normandy, Americans bought in a matter of hours as many maps as they would have bought in an entire year during peacetime. Europe felt too close, and they needed to see where they were in relation to it. I felt like that about Annabelle. She was near in a way I didn’t yet understand.
By the time the traffic started moving and we exited at Wisconsin Avenue, the sun had dipped behind the buildings, bathing everything—sky, park, lake—in a soft impressionistic light. I felt sad and out of sorts, though I knew some of it stemmed from the anniversary of the accident the day before. It always set me back. I had told Erik I’d be busy and might not talk to him—back-to-back meetings, an after-work party, none of it true, but I knew if we spoke, he’d hear things in my voice I wasn’t ready to explain.
At the lakefront, the water was crowded with sailboats, cyclists whizzing by on the bike path, a group of shirtless guys playing Frisbee on the lawn.
“Sorry about that,” Erik said when he hung up.
I nodded without looking at him. Annabelle seemed like the kind of mom I’d imagined I would be. Practical and organized and matter-of-fact, juggling a thousand details for her kids—schedules, logistics, concerns—but making it seem easy.
Erik put his hand on my knee. “Talk to me.”
But I could feel myself shutting down. I stared at the lake, remembering how, when I first moved here, people told me it was so vast that it would feel like the ocean, but it never did. Although I loved running here, which I did most weekends, the first time I saw it, I felt bereft. It was a flat desolate gray, so completely not the ocean in the same way that my life was so completely not my life. I felt that way again now. I wished I were more confident, more relaxed, more sure of who I was, but I’d lost that surety ten years ago.
After a moment, Erik lifted his hand from my knee. “I feel like a jerk,” he said. “Talking to her when I have this gorgeous woman whom I’m absolutely smitten with sitting beside me.”
I shifted in my seat to look at him. “I’m smitten with you too,” I said. “And I’m not upset you were talking to her. You’re a good dad, Erik.”
“I’m not so sure about that.” He sighed. “She’s having a rough day, I guess, and wanted to know if we could stop by and have dessert with her and the kids. And the invite was for us both.” He lifted his hand from the steering wheel in a gesture of helplessness.
I reached for his hand. “Do you want to have dessert with them?”
“Actually, no, I don’t. I’ve been looking forward to this dinner all day.”
“How often do they stay with you?” I’d asked Erik the first time I went to his house and he showed me the kids’ rooms. Beauty and the Beast wallpaper in the girls’ room, matching cribs, sheets patterned with dancing teapots. In Spencer’s room, a lighted globe, a map of the United States on one wall, a huge atlas on his dresser.
“They don’t stay here,” he said. “We tried it. Once. It was a disaster.” He glanced around Spencer’s bedroom, which smelled of new carpet. “Spencer couldn’t sleep. And Hazel woke from a bad dream and wanted Annabelle, and there wasn’t one thing I could do to comfort her, which set Phoebe off. I ended up driving them home at three in the morning.” He scrubbed his face with his hand. “I felt like an ass. Why do that to them just because I want them here?” He flicked off the light in Spencer’s room and shrugged as if it were no big deal.
“Does she want them to stay with you?” I’d asked.
“Trust me, she’d love a break,” he said.
I believed him; I knew how hard it was to be with a young child all day, and she had three kids, one of them with special needs. Only a saint wouldn’t have wanted a break. But I also knew—all too well—that motherhood and fear often go hand in hand, and I would come to learn that Annabelle was terrified of not being there for her kids, even if that meant something as simple as letting them stay with their dad for the night.
Erik found a parking space a block from the restaurant. He turned off the car but didn’t move to open the door. “I feel like I’m screwing this up.” He reached across the gearshift for my hand. “Maybe I’m rushing things. I want you to meet my kids, but that means meeting Annabelle. I wish that weren’t the case, but with the girls so young and the complications with Spence…”
“Meeting Annabelle makes me nervous,” I said.
“Why?” He looked surprised. “She’s going to love you.”
But I didn’t want her to love me. I didn’t want him to want that. I was getting the impression that Annabelle was a package deal with him, the way the kids were, and it felt odd, vaguely incestuous, to be friends with his ex-wife. I already have friends, I told myself. My mom and Margaret. I didn’t need more. “What if she doesn’t like me?”
“She will. I know her. And she’s not trying to interfere, Claire. It probably seems that way, but once you meet her, you’ll realize she means well.”
And she did. I would learn this too: What Annabelle wanted more than anything was to have her family around her, and if that meant including me—so be it. Later, we would laugh about the beginnings of our friendship, when she had no choice but to put up with me and I had no choice but to put up with her. Still, I often think of that night, out to dinner with Erik, when the possibility of being friends with Annabelle first arose, and I resisted so fervently. Long before Annabelle and I met, long before she became my closest friend, long before that last summer together, did I somehow intuit that history was already repeating itself?