Lost and Wanted(41)

“Their lease is up in December. I haven’t talked to them, but Andrea’s pregnant again—they might be planning to move.” I thought I had to say something about money. I was doing fine financially, but I needed the income from the apartment to keep up with the mortgage payments on the house. “I wish I didn’t need to rent it. I mean, I wish I could just offer it to you.”

Terrence looked a little offended. “I wouldn’t do that. And our house in L.A. is going to sell. We’ll want something permanent again, eventually, but it’ll be simpler. I just need an interim option, and I’d rather not explain the whole situation to someone, again. Also, it’s got to be flexible. I mean, we wouldn’t run out on you. But I’d have to be able to leave if it’s not working.”

He was standing in the framed opening between my living room and the hallway that led to Jack’s bedroom. I thought of seeing Terrence with the baby, seven years ago in Los Angeles, and it was as if time had skipped from that moment to this present one. I felt Charlie’s presence, as if we were both looking at this scene and wondering at it.

    “I’ll just talk to my tenants,” I said. “See what they’re thinking.”

“But you’d be okay with it?” His tone was hopeful, if still a little guarded. He laced his fingers together and stretched them so his palms faced outward.

I thought that it wasn’t so crazy. What had he called it? An “interim option”—two people brought together by a tragedy, helping each other out.

“We’d love it,” I said. “Jack would love it.” I realized it was 10:30. “I have to take him to soccer, but I can talk to them as soon as we get back. I can probably let you know tonight.”

“Great,” Terrence said, with feeling. “That’s great.”





22.


The game went well for Jack. He scored one goal and assisted twice. When he got into the car afterward, his cheeks were flushed; his skin blushes easily, like mine. He had an orange wedged between his lips and his tongue, his teeth in the weedy flesh. I rarely allow him to sit in the front seat, but I let it go for once.

“Nice job out there.”

“Mmph.”

I kissed his head before pushing the button to start the car; his hair was damp, pieces of it sticking to his forehead, and his whole body had a grassy, sour smell. “The goal was terrific, but the way you passed it to Leo was even better. You were using your head.”

“Mmph?”

“I mean, that was good thinking. I know you’re not allowed to head the ball.”

I didn’t play team sports as a child, although I ran track in high school. In college I switched to long runs along the river, with a friend or on my own, because it was easier to fit into my schedule. My parents were always proud of my academic success; what was clearly the most important thing to them had by that time become so for me. But when I chose Jack’s father, I told myself that I was looking for something different. I wanted someone with the potential to be satisfied—to be happy. And I see that in Jack, especially when he’s building something, or coming off the soccer field—the pure delight in being himself in the world.

    Jack took the orange out of his mouth. “Will they be there when we get home?”

“Who?”

“Simmi and her dad.”

“Oh—no. Of course not.”

“Because Simmi said they might live downstairs.”

I’m careful not to overshare with Jack, and I thought Terrence might need some practice in this area. I could imagine how in his situation, on the other hand, it would be tempting to make Simmi his confidante. There could be nothing worse than his daughter siding with her grandparents against him.

“Günter and Andrea live there,” I told Jack. “I don’t think they’re leaving.”

“But if?”

“Would you want Terrence and Simmi to move in downstairs?”

“Yes!”

“How come?”

Jack looked at me as if I were an idiot. “Because I like them.”

I noted that he’d said “them,” rather than “her”; normally he was indifferent to adults he didn’t know. “Well, that’s good to know.”

“Except you have to tell her she’s wrong.”

“Simmi? She’s wrong about what?”

“She says”—Jack rolled his eyes in a way I’m afraid he’s learned from me—“that there’s something called a ‘say’-something. I don’t know what you say. ‘Aunts,’ I think. You build a machine, and then you say it—and then you can talk to dead people.”

“You say ‘aunts’?”

Jack looked embarrassed, as if I might attribute these ludicrous ideas to him. “I told her that’s not what real scientists do.”

I had a moment of clarity. “Are you talking about a séance?”

“Yes!”

“Oh. Um, yeah—you’re right. We don’t do that.” It was easier to keep a straight face because I was driving. Some of Jack’s worst tantrums occur when he thinks I’m making fun of him.

    “I told her that.” He rolled down a knee-high sock and peeled off the Velcro to remove the shin guard. “She said you use a machine. She’s in third grade.”