After You (8 page)

“So you’d be interested? He’s a great catch. And I’m not just saying that because he’s my brother.”

“Yeah, sure. What’s the worst that can happen?” I have a few answers for her: that she and Mikey could turn into my parents, or into Phillip and me, or that they could have an awkward dinner where the lack of conversation seems like code for your own inadequacy.

I keep my mouth shut. I know a rhetorical question when I hear one.

14

I
t’s nine o’clock, past Sophie’s bedtime, and she’s begging me to let her read one more chapter of
The Secret Garden
. Though I’m tempted—I love lying here, smushed up against the wall, feeling her warm back against my shoulder—it’s getting late. I’m no longer the old Auntie Ellie who used to annoy Lucy by serving Sophie fast food for lunch and running around with her before bed.

“Nope. Bedtime, missy.” I slip into sitcom parenthood again. “We gotta get you brushed up.”

“Let her read another chapter,” Greg says, startling us. He leans against the doorway and watches Sophie and me with a faux-bemused expression. We didn’t hear him come in, or up the stairs, and I wonder how long he’s been listening to our negotiations.

“Soph, I have an idea. Why don’t you read chapter six with your dad? Bring him up to date on our book. I’m getting tired.”

“But you said we have to read this together. You said it was a rule. Daddy, Auntie Ellie said it was a rule.”

“Did she?” Greg says. “Making rules already?”

His tone is jokey, not hard, and I wonder if he’s been drinking again. He’s probably just playing nice after our heated discussion this morning.

“I can make an exception this one time, right, Soph? I know your dad really wants to hear you read.”

“No, Auntie Ellie. You said it was a rule. Why can’t I read to the both of you?”

I look at Greg, waiting for my cue to stay or to go. The last thing I want to do is take away their time together. I already feel like enough of an intruder.

“Seriously, stay,” Greg says, and we make eye contact for perhaps the first time since I’ve been here. His look says,
I’m here and I’m trying, but I could use some backup
. “I’m sure you want to hear what happens next, don’t you?”

I’m stuck in this family scene, my presence a dissonant placeholder. Greg sits on the other side of Sophie, so he can read along with her. I push my body flat against the wall, trying to take up as little space in the mini-bed as possible.

“Daddy, guess what? We went to the zoo today, and Auntie Ellie came, and we saw gorillas and everything.”

“The zoo?”

“Class trip,” I say, just in case he thinks I took his child out of school.

“Guess what I said when I saw the alligators? Guess. I said, ‘See you later, alligator.’ And then Auntie Ellie said, ‘Not for a while, crocodile.’ It was so funny.” Sophie laughs, but it is fake laughter, like her father’s bemused expression: laughter intended for entertainment purposes only. She is performing for her dad, desperate for his attention. I hope he notices it; she needs him to notice her.

I have no right to do this on my own.

“Really? Lions and tigers and bears, oh, my!” Greg singsongs, playing his own part, the three of us all terrible and earnest actors.

“How’d you know? Lions, tigers, bears, giraffes too. I really liked the giraffes. And zebras. Which look like painted horses.”

“Sounds like fun. I wish I could have been there. By the way, sweetheart, it’s really nice to hear your voice.”

“Thanks. It’s nice to hear yours, too, Daddy,” Sophie says, and then picks up her book again. “Okay, can I read now?”

After we put Sophie to sleep, we sit in the living room, very adultlike and civilized, drinking merlot and resting our wineglasses on lime-green tiled coasters. We have survived a whole week without Lucy, the worst of it, and now we are sitting here, ready to discuss Sophie. Rationally. As if this is normal—Greg and I alone in his living room at ten o’clock on a Thursday night. This time we play our roles well: affected relaxation, swallowing our grief whole, so it’s locked away somewhere, far enough in the distance so it can’t sneak into our conversation. This is a part I’ve played before.

“So Claire gave me the name of a child psychiatrist for Sophie. He apparently specializes in this sort of thing.” I try again, leaving out the Darfur thing for now. No need to freak him out.

“You really think this is necessary? A psychiatrist? She’s eight.”

“I know. But what happened is as traumatic as it gets. I mean, not only did she lose Lucy, but, you know, she saw it.”

“Things are different here. One doesn’t just run to a psychiatrist when there is a problem. I mean no offense to your mum.” Greg’s accent is at once charming and too posh. The use of the third person, which seems to be a habit of the upper-crust British, annoys the hell out of me.

“This isn’t some little problem. She’s having trouble at school, which apparently started long before the accident. Last night she wet the bed. We need a professional.”

“I don’t outsource my parenting.”

“Come on, I’ve seen the wipe-it board.” Greg gives me a sharp look, which I do and do not deserve. Part of me wants to remind him that this is the first bedtime he’s made it to since I’ve been here. “Anyhow, this isn’t outsourcing. This is making sure your daughter gets the help she needs. And if she doesn’t like it, or you don’t think it’s helping, then she can stop. But it can’t hurt to go a couple of times. To see how it goes.”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s what Lucy would have wanted.” I know it’s manipulative, playing the Lucy card, but it’s true. It’s what Lucy would have done, had the situation been reversed. Sophie always came first.

A shadow crosses Greg’s face, almost rage, a surge at his temple, a flushing of his cheeks, but it’s temporary and it passes. I am not sure at whom his anger is directed—me, Lucy, the guy who did this to us, maybe God.

“Okay, she’ll go once and then we’ll reassess and strategize.” Greg delivers his verdict and, like Phillip, can’t help but slip into nonsensical business jargon when he feels powerless. “What else is on the agenda?”

He gives a half smile. An agenda, typed out with boxes for checkmarks, would make us both feel better.

“Well, we need to talk about me.”

“Therapy is probably not a bad idea for you either.”

“What?”

“I’m kidding.” I laugh a real laugh, not my actor laugh that I’ve been using for Sophie. He’s probably not wrong. The only problem is that, in my family, refusing to get therapy is one of the few ways left to rebel.

“What do you need to talk about?”

“Well, I’m thinking about staying here, in London, for a while. To be around Sophie. To help out. And I wanted to make sure that was okay. I don’t want to step on your toes or be in the way. Like this morning—”

“You can stay as long as you like. I meant what I said the other day. Seriously, we’d love to have you. I’m not so oblivious that I don’t realize Sophie and I need all the help we can get.”

“Thanks. I mean, okay. I don’t really know how long I’ll be around; I need to talk some more to Phillip and to work. But that kid … she’s just …”

“Amazing.”

“Yeah. She really is.”

We stop talking for a minute and sit in comfortable, contemplative silence. The mere recognition that we both care about Sophie, that we are on the same team here, takes the pressure off. We just want to make sure we say what needs to be said while we have the chance.

“Ellie, since you’ve already started making rules around here, may I make one of my own?”

“Of course.”

“While you’re here, staying in my home, please don’t judge me.” Greg’s voice is now free of anger. He is asking like it’s a favor—like taking Sophie to school or tying up the garbage.

“I’m not judging you. I would never—”

“No, you were. This morning. And I don’t blame you. I judge me too. But if I am going to survive this … I don’t know.” He drops his head into his hands. Greg—despite the suit and tie and neat cuff links—looks like exactly what he is, a grieving widower. “What I am trying to say is, I’m doing the best that I can here.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“Yeah, you did. And you were right. One shouldn’t be passed out drunk on the sofa when one’s beautiful daughter is having nightmares upstairs. I just don’t know … I’m not sure I can do this.” He’s talking to the floor, his head still resting in the pillow he has made with his palms. Greg looks like he is about to cry, and I don’t know what I’ll do if he does. He rocks his body forward and back. A ritualistic calming motion. A man at prayer.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to judge. I was just trying to, I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Greg doesn’t hear me. He’s too far lost in his own thoughts and doesn’t need my apologies. That wasn’t what he was asking for, anyway.

“I can barely even look at her. It physically hurts to see what she’s going through, and this is just the beginning. Sophie’s going to have to live an entire life without her mother, and I can’t fix it. I spent half an hour on the stairs today just psyching myself up to go into her room,” he says. “What does that say about me, that I can barely look at my own daughter?”

“It’s going to be okay.” If Greg wasn’t a grown man, almost forty, with a few speckles of gray in his hair, I would rub his back, like I do Sophie’s. He is not a child; he doesn’t have the luxury of other people’s indulgence or of abdicating responsibility. This house, the girl upstairs, this tragedy, all belong to him. His face is creased at his mouth, his eyes, the tips of his nostrils, all new lines that I don’t remember being there the last time I was in London. “I don’t know how just yet. But we’re going to figure this out. You can do this, Greg. I know you can.”

A pep talk almost identical to the one I gave Lucy eight years ago. That time I was more hopeful about life, about what we were capable of. That was back when I assumed we could do anything we wanted. This time, I believe my own words only because I don’t have any other choice.

15

F
or the next couple of weeks we pretend that we are an ordinary family, that a human-sized hole has not been blown into the fabric of this household, and that I am not an imposter mother and wife trying to fill it. That all of us, through sheer will and a new routine, can make things okay. Sophie wakes up every morning at four a.m., like a standing date, and Greg and I take turns comforting her and getting a fresh set of sheets and pajamas. I am on the Monday, Wednesday, and Friday shift.

The news vans have packed up and left, even the relentless Parisian who stayed a few days longer and peppered me with questions whenever I left the house. This makes the school run easier. So does Claire, who finds time to chat every time I drop Sophie off and pick her up. Her first date with Mikey, who has made me introduce him as Michael, is next week, and I’m more excited for them than I should be. A vicarious indulgence, considering I won’t be the one having drinks and possibly enjoying a delicious first kiss. I’ll be “at home,” reading more of
The Secret Garden
and tucking Sophie in.

Now that the nightmares and bed-wetting have become a constant battle, now that Greg has seen firsthand the look on Sophie’s face when she wakes up in horror—a knowing look that shows the spillover between dream and waking—Greg is fully on board with Operation Get Sophie Therapy. The earliest appointment we could get—even with Greg offering to double the guy’s normal charge—was next Thursday. We are praying the doctor can work miracles. During daylight hours, Sophie never mentions her sleep issue, and neither do we. And at night, when she wakes up screaming for Lucy, we tell Sophie she is safe, that her mummy is in heaven, that everything is okay.

Each evening, after Sophie gets tucked in and before her terror begins, I call my husband, and for half an hour I return to the life I used to live. We talk about what Phillip will eat for dinner—will he take in Chinese or Thai?—and Phillip’s work, and some of our friends, and does he know our car insurance bill is due soon. He asks about me—how I’m doing, have I been to the Tate Modern yet, did I read that
New York Times
travel article he sent about London literary haunts—but we skirt the real issues. He never asks what my role as pinch hitter is really like, and I don’t tell. We are mostly polite, and accommodating, and try not to let too much of our expectations and disappointments creep over our long-distance line. We have become masters of garden-variety small talk.

I feel like a double agent or a polygamist. I no longer consider catching the next Virgin Atlantic flight home, popping an Ambien and wrapping my feet in those warm red socks. I no longer wonder what I am doing here. My mission has been clarified. Sophie needs me. Greg needs me. And, though I hate to admit it, right now, with Lucy gone, I need them too. They are the closest things I have to a purpose. They understand, they appreciate, what has been lost.

“When are you coming home?” Phillip asks me tonight, and suddenly I decide to change the script. No more “I don’t know” and “we’ll see” and “I’m taking this one day at a time.”

“I don’t think I am.” My heart is beating fast, and my hands are shaking. I am not sure what I’m doing—this was not premeditated—and I am trembling with this new clarity that has rolled over and flattened me:
I don’t want to go home
.

“Fine,” Phillip says, his voice as angry as I have ever heard it.

“Fine.” Flat resignation.

“So that’s it, then? You’re leaving me.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t mean that.”

“So now we are back to the ‘I don’t know’s?”

“Phillip, I’m just trying to be honest here. I’m so confused.” I am not sure what I expect from him: to convince me to come home? To give me a yearlong marital reprieve so I can be here for Sophie? To understand that I love the school run, and tucking into my favorite book, and getting lost in my new neighborhood, where no one knows me and no one remembers that I had a beautiful, promising belly that deflated? To allow me this feeling that my days, even if they are difficult and drenched in grief, have some sense of meaning?

“Confused? Give me a fucking break.”

“Please—” Again, I don’t even know what I am asking.
Please what?
I feel muzzled and slow. I have stepped up to the abyss, and now it seems I can’t jump after all.

Of course he is angry. He has every right to be.

“Please what? You want honest? Here’s honest: Fuck you, Ellie.”

“Please stop,” I say. Suddenly I want to move us away from the edge.

But I am too late. Phillip has already hung up.

* * *

Kensington Gardens, a must-see in any London guidebook, is less than ten minutes up the road from the house. I lead Sophie through its majestic gates—black and pointed with tips of gold—and down one of the gravel paths lined by flower beds that divide the expansive green lawn and give the place its sense of scale. We are shielded from the summer sun by leafy trees.

“You okay, Auntie Ellie?” Sophie asks me, when she sees me staring a little too long at a square box of pink flowers that I can’t identify. Sophie doesn’t want to be here; she’d rather be inside reading or maybe watching cartoons, now that I’ve gotten her addicted to the world of Disney. Certainly not my finest parenting act, exposing Sophie to princess culture—
Cinderella; Beauty and the Beast; The Little Mermaid
—but I couldn’t help it. I’m a little hooked myself, especially now that I feel like I could use a little rescuing, and sometimes it is so much easier to plop her—plop both of us—in front of the television than to do anything else.

The world is awake and outside and stripped down to appreciate the rare rays drying up this moist piece of land on this glorious summer day. Women in bikinis and men shirtless and in shorts are scattered on hilly lawns or on public wooden lounge chairs. They dot the landscape like happy sheep. Both Sophie and I could use the fresh air and a bit of sun, seeing as we are both too pale these days, and so I’ve forced her on this walk, which will end at the “Diana, Princess of Wales, Memorial Playground,” about half a mile away. I am not sure Sophie, when we get there, will know how to use the equipment. I picture her going all posh on me and slipping into the third person:
What’s this thing called ‘playing’? How does one
do
that, exactly?

We’ve left her backpack behind, an unburdening that makes us both feel naked, since we have not a single book between us.

“What?” I ask her now. Did I forget to respond to something she said?

“I asked if you’re okay, Auntie Ellie. You haven’t been listening at all.”

Right now, surrounded by couples with linked hands, my brain is saturated with Phillip. Not with the recent Phillip. I can’t get a hold on the recent Phillip—who has become something like an acquaintance, someone I wouldn’t presume to know or understand—the one who said, “Fuck you” a couple of days ago and meant it. No, the old Phillip, the one who has somehow blocked out everything else, pulls me away from the here and now. The one who used to bite my butt whenever I stepped out of the shower, and the one who asked me to marry him on a day just like this one, right by the Charles River, surprising me with a ring in our picnic basket.

The recent Phillip, who spends days and nights in the office, who rarely asks what I’m thinking in a way that says he needs to know, stays out of the picture. That Phillip has no place in a hopeful day like this one, when it seems at least possible that the good weather could stick. I know how those people are feeling, relaxing in the reprieve of the sunshine; it’s exactly how Lucy and I used to feel on the first day of summer vacation more than twenty years ago, when we would take out our beach towels and walk down to the river to sunbathe until our oiled skin had turned brown. Now both Sophie and I are covered head to toe in SPF 45.

“We’re here, Auntie Ellie. What do we do?” Sophie says, as expected, when the hulking playground creeps up on us.

I survey the elaborate playground equipment and look for the usual suspects—slide, swings, sandbox. Instead, I see a giant pirate ship, a bunch of canvas teepees, wooden sheep—none of which looks capable of giving us the exercise we could use.

“Well, we need a bit of fresh air, that’s all. Something that gets us moving. Like Mary Lennox running on the moors.”

“But I don’t see any moors. I don’t even know what a moor looks like,” Sophie says.

“Me neither. But I have a better idea. Monkey bars.” I point to a set, just off to the left.

“You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

“Nope,” I say, like the disciplinarian I have become.

“But I’ll hurt myself. I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m really small. I can’t even reach.”

“You worry too much, Soph. I’ll spot you.”

So I boost her up and Sophie hangs there, on the first bar, unable or unwilling to move.

“Come on. Go to the next one, and then keep moving. It’s good for you.” Sophie starts swinging, and it turns out she is a natural. If monkey bars were an Olympic sport, my Sophie would win gold. She wouldn’t even need to train at some Russian camp, where she would miss her prom and be verbally abused by a coach named Boris.

“Look at that. You’re doing it. You’re amazing.”

“One arm, Auntie Ellie! One arm!” And there she is, managing to support her body weight with one of her thin wrists.

“Soph-E. Soph-E,” I start to chant, and she starts to giggle and finally lets go. “Sophie-bear, that was awe some.”

I split the word into two syllables, like that kid from her class, and we high-five like frat boys. For a moment I feel like I am eight also, capable of getting lost in the joys of the monkey bars.

“Your turn, Auntie Ellie. But I can’t spot you.”

I place my hands on the bars, which it turns out are about a foot shorter than I am. In order to use them, I need to bend my knees, to cut my height in half.

My first thought is,
Damn, I’m heavy
.

My second thought is,
I need to get my ass to the gym
.

My third thought, as I fall to the ground and hear something of mine crack, is,
Oh. Shit
.

Sophie is already next to me, and her tears are immediate, as if they have just been waiting all this time to be unleashed. I try to catch my breath, to say something to make her feel better, but I can’t focus.

“Auntie Ellie, are you okay? Please don’t be dead. Oh, God, please don’t be dead.”

“Stop, sweetheart. I’m fine. I’m fine. Just fell. That’s all.” I try to make my voice sound calm, though I hurt everywhere. Somehow, my hands must have slipped, and I didn’t put my feet down fast enough.

I am still lying on the ground. My head smacked the pavement—at least that’s what I assume, because I feel gravel in my face and my brain aches—but I need to get up, and fast, for Sophie’s sake. People are starting to look over; I am making a spectacle of myself in the Diana, Princess of Wales, Memorial Playground.

My left arm is at an unnatural angle. That’s what cracked. The pain, sharp and demanding, echoes through my body, and I blink back reflexive tears.
Shit, shit, shit
.

“Oh, this is all my fault. I’m sorry, Auntie Ellie. I’m so sorry. Please be okay.”

“I’m fine, Soph, seriously. I’m just a klutz. This isn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything.”

“I’m so sorry.” Her tears are still falling, and her posture has turned fetal, her arms wrapped around her belly, bent forward and rocking. Seeing her reaction hurts even more than my arm.

“I’m fine, sweetheart. Please stop apologizing.” I start to get up, slow and steady, wipe the gravel from my face, and feel relief that there’s no blood. Sophie should not have to look at my blood. “See, I’m fine. I’m good as new.”

I do a little good-as-new dance—only a mini-shuffle, because moving hurts—and Sophie stands up straight, wipes her tears with her shirtsleeve, and nods, not at me but at herself, as if accepting the proof that nothing has happened. We give up on the playground for the day, walk over to the nearby café, and I order us both ice cream sundaes to prove my good cheer. A perfect opportunity to sneak five Advil from my purse while Sophie isn’t looking. We even stop to see the famous Peter Pan statue: Peter standing on a tree trunk, playing his flute to an audience of squirrels and fairies and tourists. And when the pain shoots through my left arm—fast and splitting—and I hear the steady knock of my headache, I refuse to wince, use it as a reminder instead to smile wider, pretend bigger, that no part of me hurts.

Of course, I am not good as new. I find out five hours later, after Sophie is home and tucked in, and I make my first solo trip to the emergency room, that my left arm is broken.