I fixed Annie and Zach paper plates of food, but it wasnt long before they started showing signs of utter fatigue; Zach lay across my lap, sucking his thumb, holding his Bubby, his name for his beloved turquoise bunny that had long lost all its stuffing, and Annie was amped up, running in circles, which she frequently did right before she passed out. Come on, you two. Tell everyone good night and Ill tuck you in.
No! Annie whined. Im not tired.
Honey, youre exhausted.
Excuse me? Are you me or am I me? She had her hand on her jutted hip, and the other finger pointed to her chest. Paige peeked around the corner.
I took a deep breath. Annie could sometimes act like a six-year-old adolescent. The truth was, we were all exhausted. You are you. And I am me. And me is Mommy. As in Mom. And I pointed to my own chest. Me. I stood up. And what Mom-me says, you do.
She laughed. I sighed relief. Good one! she said, delighted. You got me on that one. I looked over to see Paige turning away. The kids made their good-night rounds, Paige hugging each of them and crouching down, talking to them. God, it was weird to see her there, in our house, chatting with our people, holding our children.
In the old rocker in their room, the kids climbed onto my lap and I read to them and stayed until they fell asleep, which was only about five minutes. I noticed a crate of old books that Id stuck in the back of the closet, now sitting by the rocker. Had the kids dragged that out, looking for something? Most of them were books theyd outgrown or just got bored with, but maybe they seemed new to them again. Or maybe Annie had shown them to Paige.
I slipped out, quietly closing the door. David handed me a shot of Jack Daniels and whispered, She left. Shes outta here.
I wasnt much of a Jack Daniels drinker, but I raised the shot and gulped it, then grabbed Joes down jacket and went outside. The fog had unfurled, chilling the air and sending home everyone but the closest friends and family, who had crowded inside, looking at photo albums and getting drunk. Through the picture window I watched them, a portrait of a family enduring; the warm lamplight surrounded them like soft, old worn-in love.
I pulled on Joes jacket and headed for the garden. I wanted the company of tomatoes, of scallions, of kale. I craved lying down between their rows, burying my face in their fragrant, damp dirt. Maybe later Id go down to the redwood circle and lie there, in the middle of that dark arboreal cathedral, Our Lady of Sequoia sempervirens. Joe had told me that the Pomo Indians believed that on a day in October, the forests could talk, that they would give answers to the peoples wishes. But October was still a long way off.
Lucy came running up behind me. No wandering off alone.
Pray tell, why not?
You need a friend. And a good bottle of wine. Even better, a friend with her own vineyard. She held up a bottle of wine without a label; the designer was still working on it.
Okay, but let me bum a cigarette.
She shook her head. Dont have any.
Liar. Youre PMSing. Id kicked a vicious habit fifteen years before in Advanced Biology at Boston U when they showed us a smokers lung. Id transformed into a typical ex-smoker: a zealot who self-righteously preached about seeing the light of not lighting up. But that night a cigarette sounded like salvation. And Lucy was one of those rare breeds who could smoke a few cigarettes a few times a month when she was stressed, usually right before her period. I knew her cycle because it was the same as mine. Moon sisters. Wed met only when Id moved to Elbow, but we immediately fell into an easy alignment that went way beyond our cycles. She had long black hair, but she said she should have been the redhead because her name was Lucy. Sometimes she called me Ella Mertz. She and David had become my closest friends. Besides Joe.
We ended up sitting on the bench by the garden, smoking without talking. The cigarette hurt my throat, made me light-headed. She handed me the bottle.
What, no glasses? Is this the latest craze in Sonoma wine tasting?
Yeah, but usually we wrap it in a brown paper bag too.
Distinguished. I tipped the bottle back and took a swig of pinot noir.
A voice came from behind us: I just wanted to say good-bye. I jerked around to see Paige, who reached out her hand to me. I couldnt extend my own because I was holding the bottle of wine in one hand and a Marlboro Light in the other. Class act if there ever was one.
Oh, sorry, here I stamped out the cigarette and shoved the bottle back at Lucy. I thought you left.
I realized I hadnt said a word to you since we got here, so I wanted to thank you for letting me come over. I know this must be a difficult time for you.
I studied her, saw the origins of Annies eyes, Annies wilful chin, Zachs noble forehead. Thanks.
Youve done a good job with the children, she said, her voice cracking the slightest bit, a hairline fracture in the marble goddess. I should be going.
I stood. She raised her chin. I did not want a hug from her and figured she probably did not want a hug from me. But we had been hugging people all day it was what you did at times like this and so we gave each other stiff pats on the back, a stiff not-quite hug. She did smell good, much better than I did. Better than cigarette smoke and booze.
When I finally made it to bed, both kids had already left theirs and climbed into ours mine and were asleep. I was glad for their company. About two in the morning, Annie sprang up in bed and cried out, Hi, Daddy! I jolted awake, expecting to see him standing over us, telling us it was time to get dressed and head out for a picnic.
Annie smiled in the foggy moonlight, her eyes still closed. I wanted to crawl inside her dream and stay there with her. Callie sighed and laid her head back down over my feet. Zach sucked noisily on his thumb while I tried to let the rhythm lull me back to sleep. Exhaustion had settled into my muscles, bones, and every organ except my brain, which zigzagged incessantly through moments of my life with Joe. Now I tried to guide it to the few conversations wed had about Paige, digging up the same information Id once tossed into the No Need to Dwell pile. Back then, I didnt want to live in the past, not his or mine. I didnt ask the questions because I didnt want to know the answers.
But I had wanted to make sure their ending was final, that there was no chance they could get back together. The last thing I wanted to be was a home wrecker.
At the house that first night I met Joe, the only evidence of Paige that Id noticed was her bathrobe, and when I returned the next evening after a day of job hunting, the bathrobe was gone. Joe must have emptied the house of everything Paige, because I never found another indication that she existed, except for the one photograph of her pregnant.
Four months ago, Joe had said in his one offer of explanation soon after we met, while the kids and I were at my moms for Sunday brunch, she packed up all her things. We had been lying in bed, a candle flame still creating moving shadows on the wall, long after our own shadows had stilled. She took all her clothes except her bathrobe, which shed practically been living in.
He said Paige had been depressed. She got to the point that shed forget to change clothes and take a shower. She went to live with her aunt in a trailer park outside of Las Vegas, so at least he knew someone was taking care of her. It was hard for me to imagine someone choosing a trailer park in the desert, leaving behind all the natural beauty of Elbow, the cosy home, let alone Joe and Annie and Zach. But she wouldnt see him, wouldnt talk to him. Shed left him a Dear Joe letter.
She said she was sorry but that she wasnt meant to be a mother. That the kids would be better off without her. She said she loved them but she wasnt good for them. She told me she knew I could do this, that I was a natural father in all the ways she wasnt a natural mother, that my family would help me blah, blah, fucking blah.
Its ironic, I told him. I thought about keeping my own failures, well, my own, but Id already blown every dating rule, so there was no point in stopping then. Ive wanted to have children, but I havent been able to. I was depressed and lethargic, too My ex-husband could tell you similar stories about me wearing the same clothes for three days and forgetting to bathe.
I told him about the five babies that didnt make it. We held each other tighter, as if our embrace could serve as a perfectly fitted cast that could help heal all the broken parts of us.
My mom had slept on the couch, had a fire going in the woodstove, and was already making coffee and oatmeal, toast and eggs, when I got up. My mother stood in my kitchen in her robe and moccasins, looking like an older version of me tall, slim, a bit of a hippie except her braid was salt-and-pepper. I got my red hair from my dad. She held out her arms to me, her silver bracelets clinking, and I entered her hug. Because her husband my dad had died when I was eight, shed been through this, she knew things, but some of them couldnt be spoken. I loved my mother, but wed never had the kind of mother daughter relationship my friends shared with their moms. Id never screamed that I hated her; we didnt go through that necessary separation of selves where I declared my individuality, because, truth be told, the shadow cast by my fathers death always loomed between us, keeping us polite and slightly distant. Still, I loved her. I admired her. And I wished, in a way, that Id felt passionate and comfortable enough to dump my rage and teenage angst on her. Instead, Id pecked her on the cheek and closed the door to my room and finished my biology homework.
I poured myself coffee and refilled my moms cup. Outside, the fog hadnt budged since the previous night; the cold grey shroud wrapped itself through the trees, as if trying to comfort them from the very cold it was inflicting upon them. The house, though, literally sparkled. Id inherited my lack of housekeeping skills from my mother, so she hadnt had much to do with the cleaning. The night before, Joes mother had crouched on her arthritic knees, wiping the hardwood as she crawled out of the front door. Shed washed all the dishes, emptied the compost bucket, and thrown the bags of recyclables into the recycling bin. The only remnants of the funeral were the stuffed refrigerator, the stack of sympathy cards from old friends and new, and the proliferation of calla lilies, irises, lisianthus, and orchids that lined the counters and the old trunk we used as a coffee table.