Shelter Us: A Novel (22 page)

The melody of Robert’s computer booting up floats up to us. I coach myself to stay focused on the book. My voice reads the words on each page but my brain travels back to Berkeley, and I suddenly realize that I’ve read three pages.
Pay attention, Sarah
. I try to get lost in the meter and tempo of the story. Oliver stops me at his favorite picture, the one with the carved heart around “Me and T.”

“That means the boy loves the tree,” he explains.

“Yep, and the tree loves the boy, like I love you and Izzy.”

“And like you love Daddy.”

“Right.”

“And Bibi.”

“And Bibi,” I echo. And Ella. And Josie. And Tyler. He lets me finish the story.

“Okay, bedtime,” I say, lifting Izzy and carrying him to the crib a few steps away.

“More books, Mommy. Pleeease?” Oliver pleads. Izzy’s almost asleep.

“In the morning we’ll read lots more,” I say, turning off the light. “Mommy’s tired.” I rub Izzy’s back first. My mouth can’t reach to kiss his cheek, way down at the lowest setting of the crib, so I kiss my fingers and touch his head. “Good night, Izzy.” I go to Oliver, rub his back, then lean over to kiss him good night. He reaches his arms around my neck, grasps his hands together to keep me there, and smiles. “You have to stay with me.” Some nights, when I’m tired and ready to collapse into my own bed, I have bristled at this command. But I don’t mind tonight. An inner voice counsels,
You are Sarah, Good Mother.
You will stay
. A more cynical voice adds,
It will delay talking about your trip with Robert
.

I lie down. He is small enough that there is plenty of room for us both. “I missed you, sweetie,” I say, pleased with how it sounds. It is what a good mother would say. Also, it is true. I missed his earnest face. His curious questions. His uninhibited giggle. Oliver opens his eyes and sees me looking at him. He smiles, closes his eyes again, snuggles closer to me, and says, “Mama.” I kiss his forehead. He finds my hand in the darkness and holds it. I hum our song, a prayer for our future.

I wait a few minutes after he falls asleep to make sure it sticks; then I disentangle my fingers from his grasp. His hand falls limply onto his blue race car sheets. I get up slowly and take one more long look into Izzy’s crib. I pause at the top of the stairs and prepare myself to be normal with Robert. I pinch my right earlobe. It is an old habit from law school finals. Just before the professor handed out the exam, I’d pinch myself, and the quick pain would grab my attention.
Focus
, it said.
Be confident
. I need that concentration now.

I head toward the light of the dining room. Robert is sitting at his laptop, looking from an open book to the screen. When he hears me, he rests his hands in his lap and looks at me.

“Whatcha working on?” I ask him.

“An article for the law journal. It can wait.” He turns to face me. “How was Berkeley?” The string of events and characters that made up the past two days flash through me. I try to shake the shame from my bones. I smile and answer, “Still Berkeley.” I let him interpret that as he will.

“Everything right where we left it?”

“Pretty much.”

“How is Carolina doing?”

My stomach turns over. The sound of her name in his voice sets off alarm bells: What if he called her and found out I wasn’t there? Why did I not think of that? No, no, he’d have been too busy with the boys and work to track down her number, and he reached me on my
cell phone. His face seems calm. This isn’t a trick. I run my fingers through my hair. “She’s doing great,” I answer.

“That’s good.” He glances at the computer screen, then back to me.

“Yeah.”

Robert looks at me with sympathy. “You’ve got to be tired from the drive. Why don’t you go on up to bed, and I’ll finish this?” He motions to the screen.

“Okay.”

I escape upstairs and close the bedroom door behind me. I keep the light off as I get in bed. I hope that will be the extent of our talking about my disastrous trip. Tomorrow we’ll get back on track with our routines. Everything will be better in the daylight.

I close my eyes. Almost instantly, sensual images of Brian and me play in front of me. A wave of remorse hits me like a spiky cramp in my stomach. I hurry to the bathroom and try to vomit, but nothing comes. I hit myself hard on the sides of my head, punishing myself for what I did. I look at myself in the mirror. “Push it out of your mind,” I command my reflection. “Forget it. It didn’t happen.” I shuffle in the dark back to bed.

I am desperate for sleep, but my brain won’t let me off that easy. It continues to replay the past two days: Victoria’s haunted expression, my humiliation at the gas station, the desire and guilt in Brian’s apartment. I try to do what I counsel Oliver to do when he has a nightmare: imagine something he loves to replace the bad images. “Pretend we’re at the pier,” I’ll say to him. “What’s the first thing you see?” He’ll tell me, “The carousel.” “Good, now picture we’re buying tickets at the tall wooden counter, and now we’re waiting in line, watching it go around and around. Can you hear the music? Okay, now it’s our turn to go on. What color is your horse?” And so he falls asleep.

I try this game, but I get stuck just trying to think of a memory that makes me happy. I try to borrow Oliver’s, but it doesn’t work. So I go back to the day I found out I was pregnant with Oliver. I took a pregnancy test at work and gasped with delight in the stall. I wrapped the stick in toilet paper and kept it in my purse, checking
it all afternoon in case it changed. I returned to the pharmacy after work to buy Robert a card that said H
APPY
F
ATHER
’
S
D
AY
. I gave it to him at dinner. I watched his face light up like fireworks. We went for a walk after dinner, holding hands and making plans. Before I replay our walk back home, I fall asleep.

I
wake
to the sound of footsteps padding into my room. Oliver’s face comes flush with mine. His head is the only part of his body I can see. We make eye contact, but I quickly close my eyes.

“It’s after six,” he says, then reaches his arms up, grabs the white comforter, wedges his foot between the box spring and mattress, and heaves himself up. He climbs over me, poking a knee in my side, an elbow into my face, and finds his place between Robert and me. He tries to spoon me, and his cold toes land on my thighs, searching for warmth under my legs. I try to find my way back to my sleepy state, but I can’t. My brain registers what’s different in the world today, like waking on the first morning after someone has died. I turn my head and see Robert sleeping. I want to crawl into his deep slumber with him, go wherever he is. A low-grade pain returns to my stomach.

“Let’s go downstairs,” I say to Oliver. He follows me out of bed.

We pass the bedroom where Izzy is still asleep. I peek in, my ritual. Downstairs we do normal morning things. Oliver plays. I watch him when he beckons. I hear Robert moving around upstairs and I come to attention.
Don’t worry
, I say to myself.
Just be normal
. The sound of shoes clunking down the hall, not the muted sigh of slippers I had been listening for, catches me off guard.

“Good morning,” Robert announces, hurrying into the kitchen. He is already dressed as a law professor—brown tweed jacket, white shirt, light khaki slacks. “I know, it’s early,” he says, answering my confused
expression. “There’s an ‘emergency’ academic council meeting before classes.” He picks up papers on the counter, looking for something. He seems more rushed than usual.

“On a Friday? That’s unusual. What’s it about?”

“Personnel stuff for next year.” He goes to the cupboard and pulls out a travel cup, pours himself coffee. It splashes on the counter as he forces the carafe back into the coffeemaker. He tries to put the lid on his mug, but it doesn’t fit. “Dammit.”

“Here,” I say, reaching for the cup and lid, trying to instill some peace into his flustered demeanor. “Let me try.”

He hands it to me. He walks over to Oliver and bends down. “Bye, big boy. Give Daddy a kiss. I have to go to work.”

“Bye, Daddy,” Oliver says without looking up, intent on the expansive Hot Wheels race he’s creating all over the room. Robert kisses the top of his head and walks back to me, and I hand him his coffee mug, lid closed firmly. He smiles, tilts his head, and leans in to kiss me—my first test today. I kiss back, trying to ignore the ways it is different from kissing Brian. I consciously smile at him when he pulls away.

“Kiss Izzy for me,” he says. I reflexively look at the monitor and see that its green lights are flickering with the steady sound of breathing. Robert picks up his car keys from their hook on the wall. I follow him to the front door and watch him back out of the driveway. Oliver comes running, ready at last to wave good-bye, and sees Robert drive away. “Bye, Daddy!” he shouts at the back of the car, waving one arm high above his head and jumping up and down. He runs back inside.

And so he is gone. Could that be it? Am I home free? I try to remember what I was doing before Robert came and went with such bustle and flurry.

“Mommy, come look at this cool crash,” Oliver calls to me.

“Oooh,” I say without looking, dazed by the possibility that Robert and I will be too busy to talk, that it will float away, a lost moment that I got away with too easily.

“Mommy!” Oliver is shouting. “You have to come see it!”

I sit down and pay attention to the crash he reenacts for me in
slow motion. I try to be absorbed by cars and Oliver’s voice telling me stories. But no matter how hard I attempt to concentrate, I can’t control my mind’s inclination to roam back to Berkeley. I replay the entire afternoon, from the moment Brian touched my back while we waited in line at the bakery to the moment I ran out of his apartment.

“I’m hungry.” Oliver breaks into my daydream. I need to keep my mind occupied. I reject the old standbys of cold cereal or instant oatmeal and offer to make French toast.

“Yay! French toast! French toast!” I look to the monitor to see if his voice roused Izzy. Still steady green lights, up and down.

“Okay! French toast it is.” This will be a welcome ordeal. I adjust my bathrobe and begin retrieving ingredients. To my relief, the refrigerator is miraculously stocked with eggs, milk, and butter. I close the fridge door with my foot, locate bread, vanilla, and cinnamon in the pantry, and put all the food on the counter. Let’s do this.

“Can I help?” Oliver offers.

“Sure, let’s wash our hands before we cook,” I say, pleased by how it feels to say and do motherly things. I am a commercial for competent motherhood, for milk and eggs and bread and pure maple syrup. With effort, Oliver carries his wooden stool to the kitchen sink. I pour dish soap in his hands. He lathers until his arms are coated white and claps his hands, sending tiny foam into the air. As he rinses off, my mind wanders to Josie’s mom’s apartment, then to Brian’s living room. I bite the inside of my cheek.

“Okay, Oliver. Let’s start. First we crack the eggs,” I narrate.

“Can I do one?” he asks, picking up an egg.

“Sure.” He perks up at my easygoing manner, so unlike me. Last week I would have cautioned him, worrying about eggshells in the batter and salmonella on his fingers. Is this the new equation: disloyalty yields relaxed mothering? We are moving along, adding the ingredients and turning on the flame under the pan. I soak the first piece of bread and lay it in the pan. It sizzles satisfyingly. With my fingers now covered in raw eggs, I hear Izzy’s wake-up cries from upstairs: “Maaaaamaaaaaa!” The monitor is altogether redundant.

“Okay, Izzy, coming!” I try to throw my voice to his room while my hands finish dipping bread in batter. I wash my hands and turn the burner low. “Quick, let’s go get your brother and tell him we’re having French toast!” I’ve decided that if I do this one thing right, everything will be okay. My family’s future hinges on breakfast.

“Nooooo,” Oliver protests.

“Yes, let’s go. We’ll be right back in ten seconds,” I say.

“Maaaaaamaaaaa!” Izzy continues. I give up on Oliver and jog toward the sound.

“Here I come, Izzy,” I call out. I burst into the bedroom. At the sight of me, he stops crying. He is standing in the crib, with one foot stuck over the top of the railing, trying to climb out. “Uh-oh, you’re stuck. Let’s get you out of there.” His straight brown hair is matted to one side of his head, sticking out on the other. His cheeks are red and wet from crying. I pick him up, and my nose identifies a pressing need for a fresh diaper.

“Let’s change you.” I try to lay him on the changing table, but he rolls over and tries to stand up. The more I hurry, the more he resists.

I take a breath through my mouth and slow down. “Okay, Izzy,” I say again, “let’s clean your tushy.” He starts to wriggle as I put him on his back. I go into clown mode. “Awoop, went the little green frog one day. Awwooop, went the little green frog!” He forgets to fidget, distracted by my show.

“Mommy,” Oliver calls from downstairs, “something smells bad!”

“Oh no, the French toast.” I hurry downstairs with Izzy on my hip. I put him on the floor and check my breakfast project. Low flame notwithstanding, it is charred to black. I bite my lip to keep from crying.
It’s okay
, I console myself.
It’s just French toast. It doesn’t mean anything. This piece will be mine
.

I carefully cook the remaining pieces. I put them on plates, with neat slices of strawberries on the side, and decorate the bread with syrup in the designs that the boys ask for: “Make me a race truck!” and “A boat!” The smell of syrup brings me to the bakery in Berkeley, its aroma of scones and muffins and warm bread, and with it a rush of pleasure, then shame. When my boys are sticky and satisfied, they let me wipe their hands and then stumble away to play. So this is how it is.

W
e arrive
at preschool fifteen minutes late. The class is abuzz, and Oliver will have to figure out where he belongs without Layla’s undivided attention. It takes me five more minutes to unclench a plastic yellow airplane from Izzy’s fist, then we wave to Oliver through the small, square good-bye window in the door.