Three days after we met, Annabelle phoned me at work as I was finishing for the day. “I just made a pitcher of margaritas,” she said. “And Erik took the twins to The Emperor’s New Groove, so it’s just me and Spence. Please say you’ll stop by.” She sounded nervous.
I hit save and closed the document I’d been working on: a brochure for an assisted-living facility. All day my memories of the hospital had been too close. “A margarita sounds great.”
“Hooray!” she said. “I was afraid you’d think it was weird, but this way, you can get to know Spencer a little more.”
As soon as I rapped on the screen door, she yelled at me to come in. “Salt or no salt on your margarita?”
“No salt,” I said as I walked into the kitchen.
She wrinkled her nose. “Yuck, really?” She was wearing cutoff jeans, running shoes, and a plain white T-shirt, and when she glanced up, all freckles and curly hair and the glint of a silver cross at her neck, I was struck by how naturally beautiful she was. Next to her, I felt matronly in my khaki skirt, cardigan, and ballet flats. I wished I’d gone home and changed.
I looked around the kitchen as Annabelle rinsed the blender, noticing things I hadn’t the other day: the “It’s all about me!” magnet on the fridge, the old-fashioned teapots atop the cabinets, the whiteboard on the wall by the table. “That’s Spencer’s,” she said. It was a day chart with squares for each hour, some filled with rudimentary drawings, some smudged. “If I can show him ahead of time what’s going to happen, our lives are much easier.” She handed me my drink and took a sip of hers. “That’s you.” She pointed to a stick figure with long brown hair. “As soon as we got off the phone, I drew you in, then showed Spencer.” She licked the salt from her lips, then nodded to the crooked numbers written next to each hour. “The temperature. It’s the first thing he does in the morning.” She stared at the board, something sad in the shape of her mouth. “He checks constantly, if he’s having a bad night. I’ll find out it was seventy-one degrees at three in the morning, sixty-nine at four. It’s his way of preparing for the day.”
She glanced at the ceiling. “We’re painting his room, so we’ve had a few rough nights lately. It’s a major change, and any change, for Spencer, is traumatic.” She took another sip of her drink, and I noticed the bruised shadows beneath her eyes.
“Is there a reason you’re painting it?” I pictured his empty bedroom at Erik’s.
“A couple weeks ago he started saying the colors in his room hurt. It’s always been blue and yellow, so I have no idea what’s changed, and he can’t explain beyond telling me that much, but he starts crying when he goes in there, which he now refuses to do.” She cocked her head at the sliding glass door. “He’s outside. Do you mind sitting out there?”
“I’d love it,” I said. “I’ve been in a cubicle all day.”
“Hey, Spence!” she yelled to the boy jumping on the trampoline. His arms were spread straight out, as if he were flying.
“So what color are you painting his room?” I asked once we settled on chaise longues.
“It’s pretty, sort of chocolate brown.” She smiled. “And speaking of pretty, you should see my painter.” Her face grew animated. “I should be shot for thinking the stuff I’m thinking because he’s just a kid—well, not really, but in his twenties. I want him to paint my whole house.” She laughed at herself, and I thought how easy she was, how real.
I laid my head against the chair back. The grass was lavender colored with dusk, the trees limned in sunlight. Spencer hadn’t stopped jumping, doing so in such an even rhythm, those arms spread wide. It was mesmerizing. “Doesn’t he get tired?”
“It calms him.”
And her too, I thought, something sweet in her expression as she watched him.
Without turning, she said, “He’ll love your sweater, by the way. Wednesdays are green—actually blue-green, but you’re close enough.” She pulled a cigarette from the pocket of her T-shirt, then turned from the trampoline to light it. “The kids don’t know I smoke,” she said as she sat back, and blew out two smoke rings. She held the cigarette low between inhales. “It’s my last vice. One drink and I’m done, chocolate isn’t a vice, and sex? I don’t remember what that is. Well, except in my mind.” She laughed again. “My painter and I have been having quite the torrid romance.”
The second mention of her painter, and I wondered if she was trying to reassure me about her and Erik.
“So, what does that mean exactly, Wednesdays are blue-green?” I asked. “Is it some kind of synesthesia?”
She looked surprised, then said, “I forgot. You’re an artist. Of course you’d know. But yeah, that’s exactly what it is. Sounds, colors, textures—they’re entangled in Spence’s brain. He hates red, for example, because it’s too fast, he says. Other colors are too sharp, which is what I assume is happening with his room.” She sighed. “Hopefully the brown will take care of it. He told me yesterday it’s the same color as silence.”
“I have a quote over my desk at work that says ‘Colors exert a direct influence on the soul.’ Kandinsky. It sounds like that’s what colors do to Spencer.”
Annabelle looked at me, then nodded. After a minute, she said, “Thank you for that.”
“For what?”
“You get it, Claire. Which means you get him. Most people don’t. Or can’t. Or won’t.”
I didn’t say anything, but I sensed she didn’t need me to. We both just watched Spencer as he jumped, a steady rhythm, arms at his sides now.
“Our voices have colors too,” Annabelle was saying. “Mine is dark blue, with a thin line of purple at the edge. Unless I yell, and then my voice gets purple with black bars across it.”
“And he’s only six?”
“I know.”
He was just a dark silhouette, a blur rising and falling against the backdrop of pine trees. A dog started barking next door, racing along the fence where I couldn’t see it. The light was fading—it occurred to me that the dark blue sky was now the color of Annabelle’s voice, the horizon just a thin strip of purple. “So, what color is Erik’s voice?”
“Rust-colored,” she said. “The same color as Sundays.”
“It fits.”
“Doesn’t it?” She glanced at her watch. “They should be back soon. Wait till he sees your car. He’ll be surprised.”
“Wait.” I sat up. “He doesn’t know I’m here?”
“Oh, don’t look like that. He gave me your number. I just wasn’t sure what I was doing until after he’d left. I needed to see how Spencer was. I never know until…” Her voice trailed off. “It’s hard,” she said quietly.
I nodded, though I felt tricked, my face burning. What was I doing here? I was sleeping with her ex-husband. I was falling in love with him.
“The girls will be thrilled to see you. It’s been nonstop Claire for three days. ‘Claire’s pretty. Claire’s hair is longer than yours, Mommy. Where is Claire’s house?’ ” She glanced at me, then turned back to Spencer. He was a black shape against the navy-blue sky. “I need to get him in,” she said, but she didn’t move, just fingered the silver crucifix at her neck. “It’s important that my kids like whoever Erik is with.” Her voice sounded wistful, and I wondered what color Spencer would say it was now. “It’s scary, having to share your kids with another woman.” She was staring straight ahead. When she held a newly lit cigarette to her lips, her hand trembled.
So, this was why she’d invited me over.
She swung her legs over the side of the chair and called, “Five minutes, Spence!”
When he didn’t answer, she stood. “Spencer. How many minutes?”
“Five minutes, then four, then three, then two, then one,” he called between jumps.
She sat back down. “Erik probably told you I didn’t want Spencer at first.”
“No.” I pulled my cardigan tight. Why would she tell me this?
“Four minutes, Spence!” she called, then said, “We do the countdown a lot. Any abrupt change, mostly between activities, freaks him out.” She glanced at me. “I didn’t mean to shock you. Saying I didn’t want him. Erik says I have no filter.”
“It’s fine,” I said, but my skin felt prickly. The conversation was too close.
“I guess I just want you to know I understand how you might have times when the last thing you want is my kids in your life. I mean, if I’m their mom and I’ve felt that…” She sighed. “Everybody thinks a baby will bring you closer. But I resented Spencer for coming between me and Erik. Suddenly, all we were was parents. All I was was a mom. Not a wife or Erik’s best friend or…or anything! I loved Spencer so so much, and obviously, I was depressed, but he was born, and I felt like my life was over.” She looked at me, then laughed sadly. “Oh my God, you’re thinking, No wonder Erik divorced this horrible woman—”
“No.” I shook my head. My heart was pounding with fear and recognition and grief. How could this woman I barely knew be speaking so casually of these feelings that had always filled me with such shame?
“Three minutes, buddy!” she called to Spencer. The darkness was complete now. All I could see was the glint of her cross. “I know what I’m saying sounds awful,” she said. “And I can only say it because I love that boy more than life itself.” She bent to retrieve our empty glasses and stood. I did too. “But it’s a struggle. This isn’t how I pictured my life.” She glanced at her watch. “Two more minutes!” she called into the blackness. She handed me the glasses. “Will you take these in, while I get him?” Before I could answer, she said, “I have a feeling you’ll be spending a lot of time with my children, and I want you to know it’s okay if you don’t always like them. Believe me, those little girls of mine will run you ragged. And you haven’t met stubborn until you’ve met Phoebe.” She laughed that plaintive laugh again. “In fact, any parent who doesn’t admit to not liking her kids now and then is full of it.”
From the front of the house, I heard the slam of car doors and the shrieks of the girls. “Oh good, they’re back,” Annabelle said, and then, “Don’t get me wrong, Claire. When it comes to my kids, I wouldn’t change a thing, but you’re lucky, in a way, that you didn’t have any.”