Our Little Secret(44)

Ezra burped through dinner and barely touched his food. He made reference to the fifteen or so wedding photos Saskia had hung on the wall, noting his absence in all of them. Every now and then HP told him to behave, but the animosity was palpable.

“So what are your plans, Ezra?” Saskia chewed a small mouthful of peppers. “Did you get any more swim-tryout-offer things?”

“Water polo,” Ez said. “And I didn’t make the cut. That’s okay, Saskia, life’s full of losers. We can’t all be perfect.”

“Watch it,” said HP, pointing with his knife. “I’m not telling you again.”

“Haym?” Saskia’s head tilted. “Settle down. It’s nice to have mates over. Let’s not spoil good tucker.”

HP got up then, and took a long time in the kitchen finding a beer.

After we’d made it through dinner, I drove Ezra and his date home. We took off down the north shore, Ezra next to me in the passenger seat, his window wound down as he howled like a wolf in the night air. We were almost in town by the time he turned to face me. “I still fucking hate Saskia.”

I exhaled and switched gears.

“She took him right out from under us, LJ. When I first met her, I thought she was going to be a good thing.” He squinted into the rearview mirror. In the backseat his date was fast asleep. “You remember my old dog in high school? Renfield, you called him, needy as shit, crazy, followed me from room to room?”

I nodded and turned left.

“You know what I figured out lately? Saskia is Renfield. She’s everywhere, always whining, pawing, desperate to help.” He grimaced. “I hated that dog. Wanted it gone.” He paused. “Here, this is me.”

I pulled up outside a ragged apartment building with a paneled door smeared with a thousand fingerprints.

“You wanna come up? Have a coffee? Make out?” He fumbled his way out of the car and opened the rear door, pulling at the arm of his girlfriend. “Or whatever, turn me down. It wouldn’t be the first time.” He crouched in the gap of the passenger door while his date toppled out.

“Ez, whatever happened to your dog?”

“Got hit by a car,” he said. “Still had to pay to get it put down.”


I drove back to HP’s house and opened the door quietly. Saskia was on the couch in the living room, HP beside her.

“He’s just lost,” HP was saying. “He doesn’t mean anything by it.”

“He hates me. They all do. I can’t get anything right. Even Angela—”

I walked straight into the living room.

“Hey,” said HP, sitting up. “You get them back safely?”

“Yeah. Ezra was in a chatty mood.”

Saskia looked at her feet. Olive cried out upstairs and Saskia jumped up as if an Olympic pistol had just fired, leaving HP and me alone.

I sat next to him on the couch. I don’t know why, maybe I was thinking of those grad days, but I jabbed him in the ribs, play-fighting.

“What are you . . . ?” He batted me away, or maybe he was going to start a tickle fight, but just then Saskia appeared in the doorway holding Olive.

“Babe?” Her face was flushed. “I need you; her bed needs changing.”

HP pushed me away and stood. He strode out of the living room without even looking back.

I couldn’t fall asleep that night, so I wandered downstairs in the darkness. I’ve always liked the quiet in a house when everyone else is sleeping. Houses take on a life of their own in the early hours of the morning: the hum of the fridge increasing to fill the absence of voices; the fabric of furniture lush to the fingertips; floorboards primed to release sound. I moved around like a chess piece, stepping this way and that, my feet finding the parts of the floor I knew were noiseless. Through the living room window, the moon shone high over the smooth lake. The water rolled like mercury, thick and viscous.

One of Olive’s stuffed toys lay slumped on the windowsill, so after a while I went up to her room to return it. Dusky light striped the stairway through the window. How soft the steps were under my feet, the broad strokes of HP’s shoulders and hands having smoothed the wood. A children’s book lay on Olive’s bedroom floor, ready to read for tomorrow. Are You My Mother? the title read. I stepped around it to the side of the bed.

“Olive,” I whispered. A crescent of brown skin peeped out from where her pajama top had ridden up. Her belly button rose and fell. “Olive, move over.”

I lay my body along the warmth of her. She turned and threw a short arm around my neck. We lay like that for a minute. Then she opened her eyes, blinking and rubbing at her nose with a knuckled fist.

“Where’s Mommy?” she asked.

“Next door, sleeping. Can I lie in here with you for a bit?”

“You can have Chops.” She found a rag-doll lamb and placed him alongside my neck. “Mom says I’m a big girl and I need to sleep in my own bed.”

“She’s right. You are a big girl.”

“You are, too. But I won’t tell.”

We slept like that until dawn, when I slipped back to my own room.


A few days after Ezra’s disastrous dinner party, I walked in from work to find Saskia and Olive coloring princess castles at the dining room table. They both looked up when I entered, brushing blond hair from their brows in perfect synchronicity.