After the End(83)

On the transfer bus the crew are talking about hotels. Unusually, we’ve been split between two. Our captain, Shona, is staying in the Sandton Sun with half the team, and Jada and are I at the Palazzo Montecasino, with the rest of the crew. I tune out and turn on my phone to let Max know I’ve arrived safely. He flies back today, having added an extra day to his Chicago trip, so he could see his mum. Chicago is seven hours behind Joburg, and as my phone searches for a local signal I count on my fingers, too tired to do the maths in my head. Midday here, which means . . . five a.m., Max’s time.

His regular good-night text comes through, incongruous against the backdrop of sunshine streaming through the transfer bus windows.


Sleep tight honey, miss you. Love you so much and feel so lucky to have you.



The South African sunshine warms my face, and Max’s text warms my heart. I’m the lucky one. Max has never given up on me. He has quietly kept loving me and waited for me to come back to him.

There’s more, but I have to read the rest of the text twice, because it doesn’t make sense. I wonder for a second if it’s me—the jet lag, the tiredness, the pregnancy.


So good to spend the day with you today. Can’t wait for the next time xxx



I haven’t seen Max for five days.

This message wasn’t meant for me.





thirty-seven





Max


   2017


I stand across the street from the house.

“Looking good.” A woman laden with several shopping bags stops to look with me.

“Thanks.” The deep red of Mom’s house is restored to its former glory, and the siding gleams white once more. My muscles ache in a way that isn’t entirely unpleasant, and the June sun warms the back of my neck.

“Don’t suppose you have a card, do you?”

“A card? I—oh, right. This is my mom’s house—I’m not a painter.”

The woman looks at my paint-covered coveralls, and the spatters of red and white on my hands. “Could have fooled me.” She puts down her shopping and roots in her purse. “Listen, I’m at 1021, in a brand-new condo in need of some personality. White just isn’t me, you know? Job’s yours, if you want it.” She scribbles a number on a piece of paper and thrusts it at me. “The name’s Nancy.”

I call her the next day.

She wants blue in the living room, yellow in the kitchen, green in the bedroom.

“Like I said, white’s not really me.” She laughs, and her earrings dance against her neck. She’s maybe fifty or so, with steel-gray hair cropped closer than mine, and an armful of silver bangles that jangle when she waves her arms around, which she does frequently as she talks. I learn that she’s a social worker, that she’s in a relationship with a woman over in Little Italy, but they have no plans to move in together—I’m not making that mistake again!—and that she likes jazz and hates cats. She leaves me with the brushes and paint, a stepladder, and her door key.

The job takes two weeks. We settle into a routine. Nancy comes home around six, and while I’m cleaning the brushes she makes us a coffee and checks out my progress.

At the end of each week she pays me in cash, and I walk home feeling every inch like the fifteen-year-old me who got his first summer job at Eckhart pool.

Nancy sings my praises to anyone who sets foot in her apartment, and I wind up with two more condos to decorate, and the outside of a house like Mom’s, only gray.

At the end of July I take Mom to Wicker Park Fest. She claims she’s too old for the bands—although you’d never know it to see her toe-tapping to the beat—but she loves to wander through the food stalls. The sun beats down on us as we weave through the crowds. Everyone’s eating, everyone’s smiling and laughing, chatting to friends. A woman on stilts, swathes of silky fabric swirling around her, leans down to hand a balloon to a child who is gazing openmouthed at her.

We’re out back at Big Star, tucking into a plate of tacos, when Blair and the kids walk by. Blair’s face breaks into a smile. “Perfect! You can settle a dispute for us.” Her hair is twisted into a bun, and escaped curls tumble over the bandana that keeps them off her face. She shepherds the kids in front of her. “Say hello, guys.” Logan says hello, and Brianna manages a teenage grunt. Both look mutinous. “Kids Fest isn’t for babies, is it?”

“Absolutely not!” Mom gets straight in there. “The program says they’re doing balloon animals this afternoon, and I hear there’s cookie decorating, too.”

Brianna rolls her eyes. Blair catches my eye, and I can’t help but laugh.

“I guess that settles that, then,” Blair says, grinning. “No Kids Fest.”

“Although,” I say, “did you see they’re doing karate trials?”

Logan perks up. I find the page in the program and look at my watch. “Starts in ten minutes. You could practice kicking your sister’s butt.”

“Huh—I’ll kick his butt before he kicks mine.”

“You wanna bet?” I reach into my pocket and pull out a five-dollar bill. Brianna reaches for it and I hold my hand high. “You’ve gotta kick some butt first.”

“Max!” My mother’s disapproval is almost tangible, but Blair laughs loudly.