The Laws of Gravity (22 page)

Mimi was first through the door. She held a bundled-up Arianna in her arms, looking something like a pink marshmallow Peep. Rianna had lost her baby look, Nicole thought; she had moved straight through toddlerhood and somehow already looked like a little girl, with her father’s strong features and dark complexion. Mimi and Rianna were covered with snow—the sky had begun to drop large, wet flakes about an hour earlier; guests were making jokes about curling up in various corners and spending the night.

“Are we too late?” Mimi asked. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t get Ari moving—” And then she stopped, having spotted Nicole and her family. Her mouth opened but nothing came out. Her arms tightened on her
baby daughter, either to protect the little girl or to gain protection from her.

Nicole’s heart leaped into her mouth. She stepped forward automatically, her arms rising, forming an embrace in the air. There was her best friend Mimi, her darling, standing at the door, snowy, bedraggled, and wet, her daughter in her arms, looking like a modern-day Madonna. Nicole hoped that her auburn wig hadn’t come crooked. She wished she had dressed a little better; she could not for the life of her have said what she had on without looking down at herself, and she could not bring herself to take her eyes even for an instant off Mimi’s face. Mimi. She looked thinner, she’d cut her hair shorter. The beloved face she had not seen in months—longer than they’d ever been apart since the day they met. All these thoughts went through Nicole’s head in less than ten seconds. Her arms rose to make a half circle with which to embrace Mimi, and hung there, futile, when Ari crashed drunkenly through the door, reeling sideways.

“I am so sorry,” Mimi said. She spoke to Aunt Patti, but didn’t take her eyes off Nicole. “I didn’t know about any of this. Ari didn’t tell me—”

Julian loped past his father. “Hey!” he said joyfully. “Daisy, you’re here!” He lifted her off her feet and swung her around in a circle. She shrieked and protested, laughing, her narrow feet pointed like a ballerina’s as they swung.

“See, Mom?” Daisy said. “See?”

“Ari,” said Aunt Patti, her eyes blazing, “what are you doing here?”

He brushed past her, his arms loaded with packages. “I
belong
here, remember?” He sat down heavily on the sofa, next to the man in the red velvet suit. “And you,” he said. “One of Santa’s faggot elves, I take it.”

“You do not belong here,” Aunt Patti said. “Not tonight, and you know it.”

Julian stopped twirling Daisy around. Both children stared at the grown-ups.

“Get the hell out,” Jay said. His mouth barely moved when he spoke.

“You can’t talk to me like that,” Ari said. “This is my mother’s house.”

“I don’t give a crap whose house it is,” Jay said. “Just turn around. For your own sake. For the kids’.”

“Oh, you’re thinking about my
kids
, aren’t you? Both of you. You’ve certainly proven that.”

“You went skiing,” Aunt Patti said. “What happened?”

“Snow happened. Ice. Wasn’t about to risk my family’s life. Because I actually do care what happens to my family. I’ve proven that, allowing my good name to be dragged through the mud.”

“Ari,” Mimi said. “We are leaving right now.”

“No, we aren’t,” he said.

The man in the red velvet suit got up from the couch and stood there.

“What are you going to do, Tinker Bell?” Ari challenged him. “Throw me out?”

“No,” said the man. “I just don’t want to be near anything so ugly.”

“Then don’t look in a mirror,” Ari sneered.

Aunt Patti put an arm around the man in red and spoke with her voice shaking. “You may be my son, but you are not welcome in my house. Not like this. Not tonight.”

“I
may
be your son?”

“Ari,” said Nicole, as gently as she could. “You need to go.”

He looked at her with bleary eyes. “Why aren’t you dead yet?”

Jay hit him so hard, so fast that no one saw it coming. One minute Ari was on the sofa, the next minute he was on the floor, staring up. Jay stood over him, looking like he might kick him.

“Jay,” Nicole yelled. “Stop it! Stop!”

Daisy was sobbing. Julian and Aunt Patti were crying. The man in the red velvet suit was dabbing at his eyes, saying, “Oh, this is so awful. So awful!” Baby Rianna was wailing.

Mimi said in a calm voice, “Ari, get up and go to the car.” To Aunt Patti she said, “Mom, I’m so sorry. I had no idea. Absolutely no idea.”

Patti said, “I know you didn’t, and I’m not your mother.”

Mimi and Nicole helped Ari to his feet. He looked dazed. He was holding the side of his head but he wasn’t bleeding. He looked as white as he had the long-ago day the strange mongrel had attacked Nicole. “Are you all right?” Nicole asked.

“Like you care,” he said.

He pushed both women away and staggered to the door. He had never removed his coat or his boots.

“I don’t even know you anymore,” Mimi said to Ari in a husky voice. She was still hanging on to the wailing Rianna with one arm.

“I’m your husband,” Ari said. “I am the father of your children and the guy who busts his ass for all of you.” Then he walked out, slamming the door.

That seemed to waken something in Mimi. “Julian,” she said. “Julian, honey, put your coat back on and get in the car.”

“No,” he said. “I’m not coming.”

“You have to,” she said.

“No, I don’t.”

“Let him spend the night with me,” Aunt Patti said. “You can pick him up tomorrow morning.”

Mimi looked to Nicole, who nodded just barely. Mimi looked at her son, Julian, still body-blocking Daisy, weeping behind him. She glanced around the room, hoisted Rianna a little higher in both arms, and shrugged. “All right,” she said.

“I’ll call tomorrow,” Aunt Patti said. “Just don’t let Ari drive. Keep waking him every few hours, make him tell you his name and address. Make sure he doesn’t have a concussion.”

Jay was rubbing his hand as if he had hurt it. He kept his head down.

“I will,” Mimi said. Her boots were still dripping on the rug. “Well—good night.”

Nearly everyone in the room out called a weak good-night. Julian’s voice came last. “Night, Mom,” he said. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said. She looked at Nicole, but neither of them said another word.

“Well,” said Aunt Patti, after the door had closed behind her. “I certainly do know how to throw a party.”

Out in the car Ari was weeping. He sat on the passenger side of the front seat, his seat belt already fastened. He was shivering, with cold or from shock. When Mimi had opened the back door and settled Rianna into her infant seat and got her buckled and ready, he said thickly, “Have to go back inside and apologize.” He opened the car door but then closed it again.

“No, you don’t,” Mimi said.

“Yes.”

“I think you’ve done enough damage for one night.”

“She thinks I hate her,” Ari said. “She thinks I’m a monster. I’m killing my own baby cousin. Did you see her? I can’t go on like this.”

“Oh, Ari,” Mimi said. She sounded exhausted.

“Where’s Julian?” he asked.

“He’s spending the night here with your mother.”

Tears crept down the sides of Ari’s face. “I want my son,” he wailed drunkenly.

“Well, you’ll have him tomorrow.” Her voice was kinder than she intended.

“I have to do the right thing,” Ari said. “Mimi, you have to help me. This is too hard. It’s killing everything.”

“We’ll do it together,” Mimi told him. She put her hand on his coat sleeve. “It’s not too late.”

He turned in the seat to face her. “Do you believe that? Really?” His face was streaked with tears.

“I’m sure of it, Ari.”

“I will, I swear to God,” he said. “What difference does it make? Did you see her? Did you see Nikki? Jesus.—I can’t stand myself. I’m so sick and tired of it.”

She stroked the hair back from his forehead. “I know,” she said. “It’s exhausting, behaving badly. It really takes it out of you.”

“My head hurts,” he said. “That Jay bastard really packs a wallop.”

“We’ll call your lawyer tomorrow,” Mimi said. “We’ll put an end to all this.” She could not even bear to say Katrina Turock’s name aloud. She kept stroking his head. “We’ll give her the cord blood, we’ll act like a family again.”

“Please don’t leave me,” Ari said. “I’m going to do the right thing. I will. I promise.”

But the next morning Ari woke sober, with the right side of his head throbbing and burning as if someone had shot fire through it, and his heart dead set against the whole family. Mimi had betrayed him. And his mother. All of them were against him. He remembered the night before only in patches, like scenes from a violent movie. He felt a dull fury. His mouth was dry as sand. Last night he had been humiliated in front of a room full of strangers, and his own mother—his own flesh and blood had turned against him. She had kidnapped his son. He talked about a lawsuit against Jay. He was going to get X-rays taken, he said. He thought his jaw was broken. Then he decided he had punctured an eardrum, because he wasn’t hearing clearly. He was going to take care of that son of a bitch once and for all. Katrina Turock would be thrilled, he said. Furthermore, he was going straight to the press with the whole story.

“You do any of that,” Mimi told him, “and I’m leaving you. Today. With both kids.” There was no softness in her face, no room for negotiation.

Ari felt himself alone at the edge of some abyss. He did not know how to step forward or back. Instead he just looked at his wife, his mouth opening and closing without words, his arms dangling at his sides like a hanged man’s.

Mimi turned and left him standing there. The door closed with a quiet click, but it charged the room like the striking of a match.

The Price of Love

Daisy and Julian continued to see each other, secretly. It was not so secret, since both mothers knew about it. The children were too young to manage on their own. Every Thursday afternoon Julian came to Daisy’s house in Huntington after school. He dutifully spent a half hour playing chess with a neighboring kid his own age named Max, and then he would knock at Nicole’s door.

Daisy would always be there, anxiously waiting. She hustled Nicole home on Thursdays, insisting that they drive the quarter mile instead of walking as they did nearly every other day. Wednesday nights were her happiest night of the week. Thursday nights were the hardest, because it meant another full week before Daisy saw Julian again. “How many days before I see him?” she’d ask. “How many hours?”

Julian was unfailingly polite to Nicole. He called her “Aunt Nicole,” and acted as if nothing was wrong between the families. Nikki, in turn, kept Julian’s favorite treats in the house—mini Oreos, pretzel chips, and black currant juice she bought at a local Russian grocery.

It was the next best thing to coddling her best friend; Julian and Mimi shared a lot of the same taste in snack foods. And it seemed the least she could do to repay Julian for his loyalty to Daisy, the endless games of playing house and Barbie and hide-and-seek that he endured for her daughter’s sake.

In between visits, he would call, between three and five o’clock, when Ari was still at work. Nicole imagined Mimi kept up a charade even more elaborately at her end, focusing on the fact that Julian played chess once a week, never revealing where he went to do it. Ari was eagle-eyed. Nicole could not imagine how they managed to fool him, but he must have believed his son was on his way to becoming a chess prodigy. Thursdays Jay coached the junior varsity basketball at his school, and Nikki, feeling guilty, kept the secret from him as well. So it was all elaborately orchestrated without words or explanations, and only the women and children knew what was going on.

Mimi no longer called the house or Nikki’s cell phone to leave messages. She didn’t send out e-cards or e-mail Jewish jokes. What was there to say? The chasm between them took on a life of its own and kept on growing. Nicole saw Mimi’s familiar silver Saab parked at the corner, blue smoke puffing from the back of the car while she waited for Julian to emerge from Nicole’s house. Mimi sat in that car for at least an hour, most Thursdays, with the engine running. Listening to one of her comedy tapes, Nicole was sure, or to National Public Radio. Once or twice when Nicole had peeked out the window—she had even used her birding binoculars one time—she saw Mimi asleep in the car, wrapped in a coat, a knitted cap, two scarves, and a pair of gloves. That loved, plain face, so familiar and so distant, broke her heart. Time after time she thought of running out and tapping on the window, inviting her best friend inside. But something held her back each time. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t to punish her. It was more like the widening
of a canyon. She no longer knew how to call across the distance, which grew every day that passed in silence. She tried to make other friends, but she felt too separate from the healthy young mothers, and couldn’t quite bear to bind herself to the others in the infusion room.