After the End(98)

Blair doesn’t suggest another lunch. I think that perhaps I should message her, but days go by, and then two weeks, and then it feels awkward that it’s been so long. I take a job out of town, sending apologies to the swim club secretary, but not to Blair, and spending the evenings alone in my studio, the walls closing in on me. A familiar weight presses on my chest, and as spring arrives in Chicago, a black cloud dogs me. I stop chasing new clients, only working when it falls in my lap, and when Blair texts—Hey, stranger, what’s new?—I leave the message unanswered.



* * *





So.” Mom surveys the empty bottles of wine on the kitchen counter, then eyes me with a critical gaze.

“I’ve not been feeling great,” I mutter.

She drags me out, ordering coffee and making me eat breakfast. “Blair said you’re ignoring her calls.”

“One or two, maybe.” Three, four, five . . .

“She’s a nice girl, Max.” Mom hesitates. “You’ve got a lot in common, as it happens—”

“I know about Alexis.”

Mom breathes out. “I would have told you, but . . .”

“It’s OK.” A lump forms in my throat even as I think about what I’m trying to say. I fold my napkin in half, then half again. “Dylan would have been eight next week.” I blink at my napkin, knowing without looking that Mom’s fighting tears, just as I am. “I should be out buying him a present.”

There’s a moment of silence, then she reaches out and puts a hand over mine. “Make him proud of you, Max. That’s the best present you could give him.” And I realize she isn’t crying for Dylan, but for me.



* * *





I call back a guy with a ten-day job in a new development on Milwaukee, and agree to start right away. The building’s empty and I’m glad of the solitude. I focus on my brushstrokes, on the cutting-in, the neat line where paint meets glass. I breathe with my strokes. Up, down; in, out. I empty my head, pushing out the thoughts that threaten to engulf me, and by the end of the first week I feel the black cloud starting to lift.

At five o’clock on the Saturday, I take a break. I sit on the floor with my back to the wall beneath my freshly painted window, and I rest my forearms on my thighs, my cell phone in my hands between them. I watch the clock tip from minute to minute.

At five ten precisely Pip rings. I wondered if she might. I hoped she would.

“And just like that,” she says, “we became parents. Ten past eleven, on the fifth of May 2010.”

“You were amazing.”

“You never left my side.”

“Remember that brilliant midwife?”

“‘Put those away, Dr. McNab—I’ve been delivering babies since before you qualified, and we are a long way from forceps time.’”

Pip laughs, and I close my eyes, leaning my head against the wall and wishing so much she were here, by my side. “How are things with the—” I stop myself just before I say Flying Dutchman. “With Lars?”

“OK.” It’s a cautious answer, and my heart leaps, but she hasn’t finished. “Good, actually. Great.”

“I’m glad.” I’m not.

“Have you . . . have you met anyone?”

I think of Blair. About the dinner date that didn’t happen, and the way she didn’t seem to care. I think of the flush of color her cheeks take when she feels awkward, and the Cheshire Cat grin, when she doesn’t. I think of shiny brown corkscrew curls.

“No. There’s no one.”

After Pip’s gone—after we’ve said Happy birthday, Dylan, and I’ve bitten back tears and heard Pip do the same—I call Blair to see if she’s free this weekend.

“I wondered if I could take you out to dinner. Someplace nice.”



* * *





The someplace nice ends up being Roister in the West Loop, on seats around the open kitchen, where we have beef broth with bucatini noodles, and chicken cooked three ways—every one of them delicious. Blair’s wearing a dress made from some stretchy material that clings to her hips, and ties in a complicated fashion twice around her waist. Her hair is loose and smells of something I recognize but would never in a million years be able to name. Pip would know.

“How long did it take you to get over losing your daughter?”

Blair’s eyes widen slightly. Way to go, Max. As first-date conversation starters go, that one’s a blinder. I shake my head. “Christ, sorry, that came out without—”

“No, it’s fine. I don’t mind talking about her. But what makes you think I’m over it?”

“Because you’re . . . you’re so . . .” I wave a hand around, encompassing her hair, her outfit, her . . . “You’re so together.”

She laughs, then. It’s different to Pip’s. Pip’s laugh is high and light—like the top notes of a musical score. Blair’s is a bark—a loud snort of amusement that makes people look, makes people smile. “I’m fifteen years down a freeway you’ve only just joined, Max.”

“Tell me it gets easier.”

She hesitates, like she’s considering a lie, then she shakes her head. “No, it doesn’t get easier. But you get better at it. Like you got better at riding that BMX of yours when we were kids. You had wobbles, you fell off from time to time, but mostly you didn’t have to think about it. You knew you were riding a bike—you knew your legs were pumping those pedals, and your hands were gripping that handlebar—but you didn’t think about it. You just did it.”