Sunday's on the Phone to Monday (21 page)

Sawyer only visited with Claudio, and barely! What kind of husband was he? Nobody gave them any privacy at Lincoln. Maybe if Jane kept trying, if she kept blocking out the voices that layered on top of one another, if she stayed more in everybody else's world and chewed with her mouth closed and buttoned her shirts all the way to the top, maybe next time they'd give them some privacy and leave her and her husband alone.

Claudio alone visited every Tuesday without fail. Since she left New Orleans, she'd never had a Tuesday without Claudio. Sometimes he even came twice, thrice a week. He'd been the one to tell her their mom died, and then two months later he'd been the one to tell her their dad died. But it wasn't a prank. Claudio carried the news inside him. Most of his visits would pass by without her letting loose a single word.
Tell him I hate him,
she'd tell her nurses. But Claudio would never leave. Didn't he have better things to do? She knew what he wanted: to reupholster whatever had busted inside her.

Last week her asshole sister-in-law visited too, which she only did once every couple of years, claiming to be busy with her daughters, with her own family. The visits were always worse when Mathilde came, all faux-naïf and filled with sorrow for Jane,
you look beautiful, Jane,
like Jane was an unseemly charity.

The last time Mathilde visited, a week ago, Jane had asked about her husband.
Does he not want to see me?

Husband?
Mathilde smiled at Jane with her teeth, looking unutterably concerned for her.

He's Sawyer,
said Jane.
Sawyer Spicer.

My brother?
asked Mathilde.
You've met my brother?,
looking at Claudio and not Jane.

Of course I have,
said Jane.
I married him, didn't I? In City Hall—me and Claudio and Sawyer and some sunflowers. Claudio said you were sick. Maybe you were here. In this hospital!

Sunflowers,
said Mathilde.

You're being a cunt,
said Jane,
because you think you could marry into my family, but I've done the same. You may be a Simone, but I'm a Spicer.

Mathilde shook her head.

When can I meet my nieces?
Jane pushed.

Shortly
, Claudio promised, feeling as counterfeit as a bounced check.
When you feel better, Jane.

I feel good now,
Jane would say. She'd touch her thighs to check. Same old trustworthy thighs, soggy with cellulite and still hers and still thighs, which made her feel good indeed, still a someone.

Soon.

He'd given her school pictures of the girls, every year. Jane collected their faces. She'd put them out of order, then in order, like an agitated librarian.

Do they ask about me?

Every now and then,
Claudio would say.

Well, what do you tell them?

I say you're in a different place.

Better?

Sometimes,
Claudio's eyes would unspool,
sometimes better.

Someday, but definitely not today, Jane would forgive Claudio for tricking her. And then she would forgive him for everything else, like for getting the milkman fired, like for not sticking up for her on the bus, like for not protecting her when the man on vacation stuck his finger in her eye and told her he was going to find her later that night and make her feel good. It was hard
because so much time had passed, and that was precisely the era when Jane first started to slip into her world. Those days were the most confusing because she didn't know she lived in a world that was different. So who was she to say what had actually happened? Who was she to say what was right and what was wrong?
You're not the crazy one,
they'd told her at Pine Rest.
It's the delusions that are crazy.

A
fter they left the hospital, Claudio beat his wife to addressing the elephant that had been in the hospital room:
strange of my sister to say that, huh?

Yes,
Mathilde said, hoping to believe whatever words would come out of his mouth rather than to trust her instincts.
Especially the sunflowers. You know, those are Sawyer's favorite, right? His spirit plants.

I don't remember.

How did they even meet?

Let's talk when we get home.

That night, after each truth had been exposed, Mathilde left her house. Claudio followed her out to the car.

Where are you going?

Stop.

She drove back to Manhattan, to her brother's apartment. She'd never felt more duped, and by whom? god. Tears collected, slunk down her face. People in nearby cars and pedestrians were looking at her, and not in a way that fed her. While driving, she imagined the conversation they'd have.

How could you keep this a secret from me?
she'd ask.
We're family.
(Yet, she realized, disgustedly, they'd
all
been family without her knowing. For eight fucking years!)
We're blood,
she'd plead. Blood had to be more important than flimsy contracts.
Shamefully, she thought of how Sawyer and Claudio had just proved to her how blood was more important than marriage. This meant that Claudio had to love his sister more than he loved his wife. Well, Mathilde could just as well love Sawyer more than Claudio.

To her dismay, it was not Sawyer who opened the door but Noah. In any version of her predictions, it would never be Noah who opened the door, whom she'd have to confront, as Noah was their small family's breadwinner, working twelve-hour days and paying for four-fifths of their cohabitating lives, making the sacrifice while Sawyer could pleasurably pursue what he loved.

Mathilde!
Noah squinted at Mathilde's artful and lucky parking spot, right in front of his building, right where they both could see it.
Did you drive here?

He was still wearing his suit and thick woolen socks and holding a glass of orange juice. So different from Mathilde, whose routine it was to change into pajamas immediately upon arriving home, even if it was still the afternoon. Noah dressed in his clothes seemed magnificently adult of him. Noah was the type of person who dressed up when he was having a terrible day, to make himself feel nicer.

Come, sit down.
He brought her to their living room. Mathilde moored her left hand to Noah's forearm.

Claudio went to a strip club last night.
Mathilde laughed.

What? Why? With friends?

Claudio has friends?
asked Mathilde. She hyperventilated a clumsy mixture of laughter and hiccups. Her hands shook, now hidden between her cooled knees.

Noah curled his arm around her shoulders.

Something else has happened.

And then Mathilde told Noah the secret, feeling it ram out of her accidentally-on-purpose, bulimic-style. And then she added,
they're divorced now. When Mom died, they divorced,
which felt like pressing a Band-Aid into an amputated arm.
I don't think
Jane even knows about the divorce. But hey, she knew more than we did, which is saying something, huh?

Noah said
what?
many times.
Wait, tell me everything.
She told him what she knew. He left the room for a while. Mathilde shoved her face into a throw pillow. Three tears tracked her face, clear as vodka.

Eventually, Noah came back. He had changed clothes, and the skin on his face shone. Then,
I don't know what to say.

I am so sorry.

I could have paid for her health care. I would have too.

Yes,
breathed Mathilde. Noah hadn't come from much money originally but earned a great deal each year. Much more than Mathilde and Claudio. He and Sawyer could afford a gorgeous Chelsea apartment and stunning furniture and vacations multiple times a year.

Oh god, how could they have done this? And why? Why keep a secret from me?
It was
me
now, Noah only, in the typically self-absorbed way of fraught people in the wake of bad news, and Mathilde felt an astonishing relief. It was easier to take care of another than oneself.

The man you chose to love. The man I happened to love,
said Mathilde.
Both would rather lie than ask us for favors.

Noah understood from a place deep inside himself that she was right. Noah took care of Sawyer. They had no agreement, no binding contract besides their love. In his mind Sawyer must have thought that his actions would have been less damaging than asking Noah to pay for one more thing while Sawyer spent his glorious hours with what he loved, changing another culture's tongue into his own.

Slut,
said Noah.

Jane?
asked Mathilde. Jane didn't seem like a person anymore so much as a tax. But that was the end of Jane's role in the conversation. There was nothing else to say about her and nothing left to feel.

He's weak,
said Noah.
Sawyer is a weak man.

Because he kept the truth from you.

Not just because of that.
Noah stood.

Because he was too cowardly to ask you to pay for her health care.

Not just that either. I just don't think he'd have the strength to do what I'm doing. Right this moment, which is knowing that the person I love most in the world has exchanged vows and rings with another person.
Noah sat down. He loved Sawyer so much, he'd do anything for him. He'd test himself like this. -
Test, -
he soliloquized internally. -
It's just a test. -
It soothed him. Noah had always been an excellent test-taker. In college, he always dressed up to take tests too.

Mathilde held the side of Noah's clammy chin, treating his face like a classic car. She'd never touched him in that place before, this confidential zone of his—where a wife was supposed to touch her husband. In spite of it all, she felt a little charge, and that charge made her happy, distracted.
Oh god,
Noah said.
What else has been kept from me?

They think they've done something noble,
said Mathilde.
They think they've saved our family.

Family,
Noah repeated, mockingly. What was family? Just a set of people who thought you were obliged to them, for whatever reason. For helping you exist—or not.

C
laudio didn't know the whereabouts of his wife for the first time in his entire life. He poured himself a glass of tap water and lay on their bed, on Mathilde's side. He put her pillow over his face and bit the case's corner. He was everything he tried and then happened to be: a good father, a good husband, a good brother, and a terrible person.

When Claudio signed on to be a father, he agreed to take bullets, be the type of man who'd die for his wife and daughters, but his circumstances hadn't demanded that. So he honored his next task as a father: the logistics, taking care of what was messy. When his daughter got sick, he researched organ transplants, spending every one of his spare hours ensuring relations with the best doctors, the best health care they could afford.

Déjà vu was exerted, because even before Claudio could afford to keep Jane safe, he'd resorted to fraught measures. The worst part about that was involving Sawyer. His whole life, Claudio avoided depending on anybody but himself. It wasn't that he didn't trust people, more that his character was chiseled by his sovereignty. This was a matter of pride.

His wife and daughters cried on awful days, filling themselves with their coagulating emotions, but Claudio didn't let himself, for it was his job to keep the family going. That job was even more imperative than his other, to serve as the family's supplementary
source of income. After her mother passed, Mathilde's trust took care of most of their needs. Christ, Claudio even viewed his day job as a luxury, so damn lucky that music was his bread and butter. How many people could say that? The only detail he ever deferred to was the hope that people would keep listening to vinyls. He often feared technology; what if one day something was made that produced startlingly better sound quality than records? He'd have to work with it, he guessed, for that was the way you worked with time.

Unlike Claudio, Mathilde barely thought of money, having recently said,
money means nothing to me except another way to pay the hospital bills.

You say that because you've been comfortable your whole life.

When my father died,
said Mathilde,
that wasn't too comfortable.

I understand,
said Claudio,
but we're talking about different things.
Could she not recall their prior arguments about money, cementing the makeup of their connubial history, their tapestry made stronger through fights and forgiveness? Here was a woman who'd continue to perplex him, after years of marriage.

Yes,
said Mathilde,
and there are things more important than money.

You act,
said Claudio.
It's something you want to do. I'm lucky to work for myself. Before I saved the money to open the store, you know how I was cleaning vomit out of toilets on Friday nights. How I cleaned cars that cost more money than I made in a year.

Mathilde paused for a long time, before saying,
god, what do I know?

Claudio remembered the different pain that came with growing up in poverty. Sure, it wasn't as bad as what was happening with Lucy, but there was a particular kind of undignified sadness that came with deciding between foods funded by stamps as other students his age decided between colleges.