A Song in the Daylight (30 page)

“Well, look, I took half of your advice. I pampered myself. I didn’t make it all the way back to Short Hills.” She shrugged. “I had the greatest day, though. I wanted to try something else, find something around here that was kind of fun. I drove around everywhere. I explored.”

“Oh yeah? Where’d you go?” He was absent-minded. Game must be tied.

“Guys, I have to take you to this place I found. I was on I-80, Jared, and I needed to use the bathroom, plus I was thirsty, so I stopped off at one of the Pocono resorts.”

“Which one?” He looked back toward the den. Tied game must be in late innings.

“Split Rock. Do you know it?”

He crinkled his nose. “Isn’t it cheesy?”

“No! The kids would love it. It’s got an indoor waterpark, and boating…”

“Indoor boating?”

Larissa pinched him. “It’s got bowling and Scrabble tournaments, and family sing-alongs. I brought home a brochure so you could see. It looked amazingly fun. It was filled with happy families. Maybe we can go for an afternoon?”

“Maybe,” said Jared, skeptically and noncommittally.

Emily and Asher began fighting over the brochure. Jared shook his head. “Kids, stop it. Or I’ll rip it in half. Go finish Scrabble. It’s almost time for bed. Go! Let me talk to Mom.”
Still fighting over the brochure, they rollerballed into the den and Jared and Larissa were left alone. “You look tired. You okay?” He touched her face, her hair.

“I’m great. Yeah.”

“So what did you do there at this Split Rock? Don’t tell me you went to a family sing-along.” He smiled.

“Well, of course not. I didn’t have my family with me. But I walked around, window-shopped. They have some nice stores. A book store. I had a beautiful long lunch. And then I went to their spa. It was quite something. They had a few openings for a facial, for a massage. I only had to wait an hour or so. I sat in the sauna, I think I fell asleep there. I went in the Jacuzzi. I had a great ninety-minute massage.”

“Mmm,” he said, rubbing her neck as she stood close to him. “With a female, right?”

“Of course.” Larissa smiled. “As always. Michelangelo sleeping? Did he go down okay without me?”

“Well, not okay. He went down. I read him four books. He didn’t like any of my choices. I sang him ‘Rocky Raccoon’ five times. He told me you lie down with him for twenty-two hundred hours. I said that can’t be right.”

“No, that’s about right.” Wanly Larissa stared at Jared.

“But you still didn’t get a bathing suit? What are you going to do?”

“I guess I’ll wear the terrible one I bought yesterday. Besides,” she added, walking into the kitchen, “I’m gaining weight. Everything I tried on looked terrible on me. Terrible. I became so depressed.”

Emily and Asher were fighting over a word in the other room. Asher was accusing his sister of cheating; she was telling him to not be such a sore loser. The ballgame was on, the windows were open. Dusk was settling, and the sky was deep violet, like Lillypond.

“Michelangelo caught a big fish.”

“Oh, yeah? What kind? And I thought you were going to go mushroom picking today.”

“Dunno. Big kind. We ate him for dinner. Kids loved it. And we did pick mushrooms. We had a whole full day. We did both.”

Larissa sank down.

“Are you hungry?” Jared asked. “I saved you some fish. You don’t mind it cold, do you? It’s cooked.”

“No, I’d love some food. I’d eat the fish raw at this point. I’m starved.”

Jared put a thick piece of fillet in front of her, some cold potatoes; she inhaled it, not looking up. He got her a drink of water, a glass of wine. She gulped gratefully.

“You’re not gaining weight,” he said, coming around the butcher block island to inspect her. “What are you talking about? Just last night I was noticing how slim you were.” He put his hands on her hips. “I meant to tell you.”

“I look like a fat hog in those fluorescent fitting-room mirrors,” said Larissa.

“Can’t believe you didn’t buy anything.”

“You mustn’t be so surprised. I often go to the mall and don’t buy anything. We’d go broke if I bought something every time I went shopping. You should feel blessed.”

“I do feel blessed.” He patted her behind, kissed the back of her head. “I’m going to check on the game. It’s 4-4 in the eighth. I’ll be right back.”

He didn’t come back. Larissa finished eating alone, staring at the wood-grain island top. Her soul, full just an hour ago, was already being drained of life. She couldn’t stop thinking either of him, or of Simi and her dead baby. Simi’s story felt like a separate sorrow that happened to a whole separate human being. But that was
his
baby that died! He hooked up with a troubled stranger and almost got a baby out of it. A child. He wouldn’t be a kite on a bike now, he’d be a father
of a little girl. Larissa mustn’t think this way. Had Simi and Eve survived and got dry and clean, Kai wouldn’t be in Summit on his Ducati. Simi had to be doomed so Larissa could fall. Incongruously this girl’s fate, her baby’s fate were tied up with Larissa’s. Had Simi escaped injury on Kai’s old motorcycle, maybe Kai would not have felt so responsible for her, so personally liable for her untenable recovery. He was going to marry her because it was the right thing to do. What a fat lot of conscience for a twenty-year-old.

Larissa trudged upstairs to her rustic boudoir and had a shower. When Jared came upstairs, she pretended she had fallen asleep on top of the still-made bed, and he covered her quietly and went back downstairs.

The week creaked by. Larissa busied herself with cooking, with cleaning, with doing the family’s laundry. They swam, fished, rowed their little boat. They went for walks and blueberry picking, they played hide-and-seek in the abundant woods and built a water park for the twenty frogs the kids caught and named them all. She baked. For this she needed supplies. Cake flour, baking soda, cardamom, Arborio rice, raisins, brown sugar. This allowed her to drive to the country store in nearby Nanticoke across the Susquehanna River, and to call him from her cell phone. Unfortunately Emily wanted to come with her, and there was no good reason to say no. Larissa managed to get away for a minute, “to use the facilities,” to call him.

“Hey. It’s me.”

“Hey, you.”

Briefly, painfully they talked about the impossibility of taking another day like the one they had.

“Every day now feels like seven years,” she said.

“I can come to Sugar Notch,” he said. “Just thirty minutes away from you up river. I can come Monday afternoon.”

But Monday afternoon Maggie, Ezra, and Dylan were going to be here, staying for the week.

“You can’t get away? Not even for an hour?” For the first time he said to her, “I wish you could get on my bike right now.”

“Me, too, Kai.”

“I’m not being metaphorical, Larissa. I mean, really. Get on my bike, we speed away from here.”

“Speed away from here to where?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know the way out. No one knows where they’re going. As long as I’m with you, I wouldn’t care.”

Larissa lived on those words, flew on them, as her house filled with guests, and what should have been, and always had been a pleasure—them together, relaxing under the stars, under the sun—instead became torture, as she tried to make herself more present, yet failed at everything, even dinner conversation.

5
The Cagesweepers

“M
an is not free. Freedom is an illusion. Who is free?” This is what happened when the evening ran long, when the children were happy and entertained in the other room watching a Jim Carrey comedy and Riot was asleep under their feet. This is what happened when Ezra had too much of Domaine de la Romanee-Conti.

“You’re being ridiculous,” said Jared, loosened up on Romanee himself. “Right, Lar?”

“Right, darling.” She was barely paying attention.

Ezra turned to Larissa. “Larissa, can you not pick up the kids from school? Can you not cook dinner? Well, maybe Maggie over here can
not
cook dinner, but all the other wives, like you, can
they
?”

“Ezra, you’re being a pedant,” said Jared. “I’m talking about big things, not stupid bullshit.”

Ezra shook his head. “Picking up kids from school is not stupid bullshit, Jared.” He shook his head, swirled the wine around in his mouth. “No one is free. Not you. Not Larissa. Not me.”

Maggie was pensive. “Ezra, that’s not what Jared means. He’s saying at any time we can change our life, if we put our minds to it.”

Ezra laughed. “You think so?”

“I
know
so,” said Jared. “Larissa and I were trapped in a life that was wrong for us. It started out pretty good, and then soured real quick. So what did we do? We didn’t sit and whine about it. We changed our life. So the answer to your question is yes. We really think so. Right, Lar?”

“Absolutely.” She couldn’t connect the threads of the words.

Ezra snorted. “That’s not freedom,” he said. “You’ve just switched cages.”

Jared laughed, unbaited. “Well, give me the cage of Lillypond and Bellevue Avenue any day of the week.”

“I’m not saying life is not good in the cage,” said Ezra with an agreeable nod. “Life is very good. The cage is clean. The straw is fresh. You can even see the outside if you come real close to the bars. And every once in a while you can go out for a walk. Are you free to just keep on walking?”

Larissa was silent. That she heard.

“Exactly! Not in any meaningful way are you free to keep on walking. Loosening the bonds is not possible. This is your life. Accept it.”

Jared and Larissa and Maggie exchanged an inebriated, exasperated glance.

“You can do many fun things in your cage,” continued Ezra. “You can watch T V, you can paint, like Maggie here, you can read, keeping your mind fresh, thinking up ideas.” He swallowed the rest of his wine. “Honestly, I think it’s impossible to lead a life
too
examined. I don’t think a spiritual death is leading an
un
examined life. I think a spiritual death, and many other kinds, is leading a
too
examined life. That’s when people go nuts.”

“And you’re the proof, man,” said Jared.

“Ezra, are you really saying there is no way out?” asked a skeptical Larissa.

“I am saying,” Ezra replied, “that there is
no
way out. Pass the wine, Jared.”

“It’s all gone, dude. The good stuff is gone. Down your gullet. I have beer.”

“Chasing down a two-hundred-dollar bottle of Romanee-Conti with Bud? There’s poetry in that. I’ll take a cold one.” Ezra turned back to Larissa and Maggie. “In all ways, girls, in your small yet delightful ways, you are free to make your corner of the world liveable. That’s about all you can do. Here’s my final statement on the meaning of life: Drink with grace from the cup you’ve been given. Both of you, by the way, excel at that. We picked ourselves some fine women, Jared.”

Jared came back with two Buds, two glasses, patting Larissa on the shoulder as he passed the beer to Ezra perching on the bench next to his wife.

“But, say, you don’t have a family or kids like us,” Larissa said pensively. “You’re alone. You and your guitar. A hitchhiker by the side of the open road.” She managed a small smile. “Aren’t you free then? Free to think only of yourself?”

“No!” Ezra was jolly like Roger. He took a swig of Bud. “You’re much worse off.”

“Get out. Worse off
without
the kids?”

“Of course. Then you’re just a slave to
your
needs. You’re a slave to your petulant wants, different every day. Every day you’ll want another thing. There’ll be a new desire you must satisfy at all costs. Now that you’re not swayed by the needs of people who depend on you, you’ll be corrupted by your moral emptiness, because you’ll be drowning in yourself with the full approval of your so-called conscience. Are drug addicts free? Are thieves, petty con artists free? Are prostitutes free? Alcoholics?”

“He’s like this every day,” said Maggie to Jared and Larissa. “It’s stand-up every night at our house.”

The uneroded Ezra continued. “This freedom business is the wrong approach to figuring stuff out. It’s bound, by the limitations
of its own argument, to lead us to destruction or manic depression. It’s much better to focus on other things. Which are: how closely does the life I’m living resemble the life I’ve always wanted to live? Am I making the best of the hand that’s been dealt me? Do some of the things I do every day bring me joy? Is there something more I would like to do, would like to be?” Ezra nodded. “
Those
are good questions. Unlike those false choice Scruples questions you keep tormenting us all with, Margaret.”

Larissa knew how much Jared loved evenings like this, spent renegotiating the motivations of Othello’s murder of Desdemona, debating free will and the fifth proof of objectivity of the existence of God. Jared’s mind was filled to the brim with the details of his work, weekend and weekday, and he loved it except for the gray erosion of the cliffs of soaring argument that had once allowed him to shine like the intoxicated Ezra, to talk with reasonable likable people about things that mattered most.

Larissa knew these evenings were Jared’s way of drinking with grace from the cup he had chosen. Jared, in a crisp white tee and a gray sweatshirt, his gray-brown hair shaggy all month, the eyes inside his black frames so smart, so sparkling. She put her arm around her husband, smiled, and raised her own emptied glass to her lips for the last red swallow.

Every time she went to the store, Maggie said, I’ll come with you. And of course, why shouldn’t she? They went out to lunch. Once they went to the movies. They played gin rummy and Scrabble, watched the Yankees and
Die Hard
. They swam. They fished. Not a day of rain, except the down-pouring in Larissa’s heart. The prepaid cell phone criminally without signal, except when she’d go to Naticoke, and
there’d be ten text messages from him that she would read and one by one erase. And once she was in produce, getting peaches, thinking of him, of his back, of the small scars that adorned him, of the one long scar, her hands were on his stomach feeling it, moving lower, as she was in the store buying peaches! and the ding dong of the text message sounded, and Maggie, right by her side, said, “Look, you got a message.”