Family and Other Accidents (27 page)

When they finish looking at fish, Jack and Ryan meet Kathy for deep-dish pizza at Carmine's. Across from her in a red vinyl booth, Ryan nods at her the way he always nods at her, completely unfazed at the prospect she'll be his stepmother. The boy's complacency might be due to the handheld video game system Jack bought him—Ryan's own engagement present. Thumbs working the buttons, he plays until the pie comes out, greasy and gooey, then burns the roof of his mouth on the volcanic layer of cheese between the sauce and crust. He cries, and for a minute Kathy hates his soft round face and red hair. Then the sensation passes, and she gives him ice from her water glass to soothe his tongue. He climbs over to her side of the booth and rests his head on her side. She looks at Jack, but the openness is gone. As he tries to catch the attention of the waiter to get more crushed red peppers, Kathy catches a flicker of the challenging blankness.

         

“So when is Jack marrying Blond Ponytail?” Melanie asks a month later. She and Mona aren't having Bloody Mary brunch, but coffee in Mona's kitchen on a Thursday night because Melanie has a literary conference in San Francisco over the next week. “Will you go to the wedding?”

“I don't know,” Mona says. She still feels good about her exchange with Jack. “If I'm invited, I guess I'll go.”

“I'm sure he'll be an ass to her, too.”

Melanie is going to California with a married University of Chicago colleague she's been sleeping with for more than a year. Mona makes no reference to the irony, though, understands her sister is trying to be nice.

“I don't really care.”

“Ryan taking it okay?” Melanie asks.

“What's there to take? Kathy's lived there for years,” Mona says, but bad-mother guilt socks her in the stomach—not once has she asked Ryan's opinion on the subject. She glances at him in the den, watching an inane cartoon where the main character appears to be a block of cheddar cheese. “He's never complained about her.”

“Yeah, I guess Blond Ponytail's been around his whole life.” Melanie fluffs her own red hair; she's always been a shade less pretty than Mona.

They talk about the married professor and debate if his wife knows about Melanie. They talk about the doctor who writes a medical question-and-answer column in Mona's paper, who Mona's slept with a few times. They talk about their younger sister and her four brats, about their father's retirement party next spring.

Melanie gives Mona the keys to her apartment so Mona can feed the cat and water the plants while she's gone. “I'm just not sure this Jack remarrying thing has really hit you,” Melanie says as Mona walks her through the mirrored hall to the elevator. “Don't hesitate to call me if you freak out.”

Kissing her sister's milky cheek, Mona says she'll be fine, and Melanie tells Mona not to keep the cat waiting too long. “You can cuddle up with Fido,” she says. “He's better than a guy anyway.”

But Mona doesn't spend much time playing with Melanie's Siamese cat on Sunday night because she has to rewrite a horrible story by the horrible intern at work and doesn't get to her sister's until after dark. She's already late to get Ryan from Jack's, so she runs in, throws water on the plants and food in Fido's bowl, leaving the litter box for her next visit.

Melanie's condo is in a neighborhood
Chicago Magazine
has been describing as “up-and-coming” for ten years. As far as Mona can tell, it still hasn't hit. The streets are empty and the graffiti fresh on the sides of uninviting businesses—check-cashing services and auto-parts stores—all of which are locked with rusted chain-link doors. Somewhere in the distance a car alarm warbles. She fumbles for the Mercedes keys,
actually
thinking it's not a safe place to be at night, when she feels a hand on her throat, another around her middle, pinning her arms against her sides.

“I want your purse and your car keys.” The voice is male, though not particularly masculine, very young. For a full two seconds, Mona fantasizes about crashing her elbow into his ribs, wrestling him to the ground—the kind of heroism she sometimes fantasizes about when she jogs.

“Now, lady!” The man attached to the voice squeezes her tighter, and she thinks she feels metal on her throat, maybe a knife, maybe a gun, it's hard to discern through her wool scarf and the cold of Chicago in February. If nothing else her attacker
is
bigger than she is.

“I can't reach them,” she says, her own voice squeaky and high. “You're holding my arms.”

“Smart-ass bitch,” he says, but behind her, she feels him trying to negotiate the transaction.

He takes the car keys from her fingers, yanks the leather strap of her handbag, and shoves her to the dirty, hard snow on the curb. Catching herself, she twists her wrist, the pain sharp enough that tears pop into her eyes. A spray of street salt and asphalt hits her face as her assailant drives off in her car.

It can't be more than fifteen degrees out, but for a minute she sits on the cold concrete, studying the rip in her leather glove and the thin tributaries of blood running down her palm. Her cell phone was in her purse; she can't even call anyone. She thinks she may have seen a pay phone a few blocks away, but when she shoves her good hand into the pocket of her long black coat looking for change, she finds Melanie's apartment keys.

Back in Melanie's kitchen, she calls the police and they tell her two officers are on the way. She briefly contemplates the litter box, but decides against it. Her wrist hurts, so she wraps ice in a towel, but there's really no good way to hold it on her arm, so she takes four Advil from the bottle on top of the microwave instead. She calls Jack, who insists on coming over.

A big, burly boy cop and a big, burly girl cop arrive and sit awkwardly in the kitchen at the pearl vinyl bar stools and vintage 1940s table. Mona offers them coffee, but realizes she doesn't know if her sister even has any coffee.

“Don't worry about it, honey.” Boy Cop puts a fat hand on her shoulder. Studying the gun on his hip, Mona decides there's almost no way that was what her attacker was carrying.

Girl Cop takes notes as Mona tells the story. Did Mona get a good look at the man, no. Did she see how tall he was, no. Was he Caucasion? Asian? African American? Mona's not sure. “You haven't really given us much to go on,” Girl Cop says, and Mona rubs her wrist.

Boy Cop asks if she'd like to go to the hospital, calls her “honey” again.

“No,” Mona says. “It's not that bad.”

Jack arrives, tall and authoritative in a cashmere trench coat, and Boy Cop lets him in the front door.

“Are you her husband?” Boy Cop asks, and Jack simply nods. He asks them
Law & Order
questions, even though his job working for giant corporations has nothing to do with the criminal justice system.

“It sounds like the guy was pretty amateur,” Girl Cop says. “We'll put out a call to body shops to be on the lookout. We'll let you know when it turns up.”

“Keep ice on your wrist,” Boy Cop says. “Go to the hospital if it gets any worse.”

Jack walks them out, returns, and pulls out the bar stool next to Mona's.

“You hurt your wrist?” he asks.

“It's okay,” she says, but it does hurt, is turning red. “Where's Ryan?”

“He'd already fallen asleep before you called,” Jack says. “I'm going out of town tomorrow; you can just use my car while I'm gone.”

“I can rent a car.”

“Yeah, but for tonight and tom—” Jack stops. “You're holding your hand, are you sure you don't want me to run you to the emergency room?”

“It's fine.”

“Jesus, Mo.” Jack shakes his head, leans forward, elbows on the table. “It's Hyde Park. What were you thinking?”

“I guess I wasn't thinking,” she says to the table and to her bruised arm. “I'm sorry.”

“Well, I'm just glad you're okay.” There's something in his voice that rallies all the hurt and loss she didn't feel in her own kitchen when he told her he was marrying Blond Ponytail.

She looks at him. Really looks at him.

For the past six years she's dressed up on Sunday afternoons, but that was different, that was about her wanting him to want her, about her pride. This might be larger, might be about their life and what it means to have your existence tightly braided to someone else's.

He looks at her.

His cell phone rings in the pocket of his coat draped across one of the stools, but he doesn't answer, just keeps looking.

She kisses him.

He kisses back, his lips more familiar than the sound of her name.

As Mona's fingers work the buttons of his oxford, he fiddles with the zipper on her skirt. He pulls her sweater over her head, unhooks her bra with one hand, the other in her curls. And then they're on the ugly linoleum of Melanie's kitchen floor, rolling around, bumping into the table and chair legs.

The last time they'd made love had been six years ago, when they'd already decided they were separating, but he hadn't closed on his condo yet. She'd been asleep on the bed with Ryan, and Jack was looking at them when she flittered awake. “What a lovely picture,” he'd said, sitting down next to her to touch his son's small arm, then Mona's larger arm. Their bodies had taken over then. By that point they'd been so committed to uncommitting that they never talked about it.

And Mona wonders if they will talk about this time. When they finish, he holds her against him, and she notices subtle differences in his body. He's heavier, grayer. There's a scar on his lower abdomen from a hernia operation she'd only heard about.

It could be seconds or years that they lay there, nothing said. She's uncertain of what she wants to have happen, knows only that they can't stay on the floor forever, because her wrist hurts and the cat is licking her naked thigh, because she saw a line of ants scamper past, because he's engaged to Kathy, who's watching their son. She props herself on her elbows, her skin sticking to the floor.

“I'm sure this kind of thing happens all the time,” Mona says, reaching for her panties and bra.

“Probably.” Jack sits up.

She hopes he'll kiss her head once more, but he doesn't, doesn't touch her again. She looks away, notices the clock on the microwave says it's after one thirty, makes a comment about how late it is.

“You can drop me off and get Ryan,” Jack says, as if he isn't pulling on his boxers, hopping into his pants. “I'll be gone through Friday; you can just keep the car until then.”

“Sure,” she says.

         

Jack hadn't told Kathy he'd call her when he'd gone to help Mona with the police, but three hours go by without any word from him and she tries his cell phone. Her heart pinches with worry as the voice mail picks up. She checks on Ryan, innocent and round, as he sleeps in his race car–shaped bed. As she runs her fingers along his hairline, she wishes it weren't red. Putting on a pair of Jack's old boxers and a T-shirt, Kathy goes to the bathroom brushes and flosses. She washes her face and applies unneeded wrinkle cream; this spring she'll be thirty-two, but she still gets carded in bars and worried looks from clients the first time they meet her.

She gets into bed, but doesn't sleep. At two the front door opens and closes, and she peeks into the living room. Ryan is asleep in Jack's arms, and Mona's bunched over her son—a family.

“Do you think he'll be okay?” Mona whispers. “Should we try to put his coat on?”

“You're going from one garage to another,” Jack whispers back. “I'm sure he'll be fine. If your wrist hurts, don't try to carry him, make him walk.”

As Kathy watches, she remembers the first time she met Mona all those years ago when she was a summer associate and she and Jack were not yet lovers. She'd gone to Jack's office to show him a case she'd found on Westlaw—partly because it pertained to their client, partly because her attraction to Jack had avalanched in the weeks since he'd called Billings a putz. His door had been ajar, and she could see him packing a leather case full of papers, talking quietly with someone hidden behind the office doors. When he saw Kathy, he waved her in. And there, ripped from the photo, had been the redheaded woman. Not as pretty as the picture really—maybe a few pounds heavier, even paler—but frighteningly real in a breezy sleeveless dress.

“Mo, this is that brilliant law student I've been raving about.” Jack had pointed appropriately. “Kathy, my wife, Mona.”

It was the way he had said “wife,” pride in ownership, that made Kathy double over. Leaning on his desk, she'd felt sweat rolling from her hairline, down her back, to the waist of her nylons.

“Kath?” Jack had put a hand on her arm. “Are you feeling okay?”

She shook her head, mumbled she was sorry.

“You poor thing,” the redheaded woman said. “You should go home.”

“Yeah, we can give you a ride—”

She'd said she'd be fine, but Jack and Mona insisted on escorting her out of the building. As he hailed her a cab, Jack slipped a twenty into her palm, as if he were a better father than Kathy's own.

And there they are now, Jack and the redhead in the hall with the child that they'd made. Only now everything is different. Kathy has only to walk out and claim Jack, and it will be Mona who has to mutter something about how late it is, about how she should be going. But Kathy says nothing and gets back into bed.

A few minutes later she hears Jack trying not to make much noise as he undresses and slides between the sheets next to her. Kathy touches his collarbone, and he flips over to face her.

“Did I wake you?” He kisses her forehead.

“I was already awake. Is everything all right?”

“She's fine, a little banged up. I let her have my car. I can take a service to O'Hare.”