The Last Romantics(84)

Will did not look up, he did not see me, and a woman pushing a stroller bumped up behind me with a small grunt of impatience. I apologized. I turned and moved farther onto the sidewalk, where I lingered in the dismal winter sun, staring at Will through the café’s wide front window, watching him turn his pages, sip his drink.

I didn’t know what to do. Panic rose from the pavement and through my old, tired boots, panic that I was imagining all this. Had I truly lost my mind, after all these months of wandering? Did I hit my head, did that man knock me harder than I thought? I had never attended a grief support group meeting, though Noni had urged me to. All these months I’d kept my distance from Caroline and Renee. But now I wanted desperately to talk to my sisters, because they would tell me the truth. Have I lost my mind? I wanted to ask them. Will I ever be the way I was before?

Again I looked through the window. Will. Yes, it was him. I couldn’t leave him here, nor could I go inside, and so I waited and I stared, silently urging him to look up, to remember my brown curls and my half-read poem. And finally, after what felt like a lifetime of waiting, Will lifted his head from the book, and he saw me.





Chapter 15




Caroline was roaming her house. It was 3:00 a.m. The TV played a news report of international financial collapse, a housing market gone to hell. Caroline was holding an apple in one hand, the remote control in the other, when Nathan walked into the den.

“Caro,” he said. “You’re up.”

“Yep,” she replied. She took a bite of apple.

“Can I fix you something?” Nathan asked. “There’s chicken. Betty cooked some chicken for the kids.” Betty was the unemployed school nurse Nathan had hired to help with “household organization” once it became clear that Caroline would not be organizing anything for a while. As far as Caroline knew, Betty had assumed the role of housekeeper, nanny, chef, tutor, driver, and whatever else Nathan asked her to do. What else did Nathan ask Betty to do? Caroline had no idea but found that she didn’t really care one way or the other.

That year, as Will and I were falling in love, Caroline was falling into a period of despondency. It was as though the grief that she had refused to acknowledge after Joe’s accident had waited for the second, lesser apparent death of Luna Hernandez to descend. And descend it did. Every last ounce of effort and resolve departed Caroline’s body like the contents of a bottle emptied into the grass. For nine months, through the financial collapse of 2008, the closing of Lehman Brothers, bankruptcies and foreclosure and demonstrations, Caroline lay in her bed and languished. She slept and cried. She ate whatever it was someone brought to her or things she’d pick up in the kitchen—a piece of bread, an apple—that required no preparation or heat. At night she roamed the house, reading a page or two of a book, watching ten, fifteen minutes of television, checking over homework left out on the kitchen counter. And then, just as the sun was beginning to rise, as the colors of the house moved from dark to dusky, Caroline would return to her bedroom (this was her bedroom now; Nathan slept in the guest room down the hall), pull the duvet up over her head, and fall into an agitated sleep.

Nathan was still teaching a full course load at Hamden College, still publishing further conclusions about his beloved Panamanian golden frogs, a species that seemed to offer a boundless wealth of data and insight despite the animals’ negligible size and, if Caroline were being honest with herself, annoyingly high-pitched croaks. Tonight Nathan wore his monogrammed blue pajamas, the ones Caroline had given him for Christmas two years ago. She’d ordered them for the whole family, though, she realized now, she hadn’t seen her C pajamas in months.

What had happened to her C pajamas?

“Caroline,” Nathan said, “I’m worried about you.”

This, Caroline had to admit, was fair. Ever since she’d returned from that meeting with the private investigator, Nathan had drifted at the corners of her peripheral vision, an apparition on the horizon that did not approach. I’m sorry, Nathan would call across the distance. I’m so sorry. And she knew what he meant: that he had kept Caroline away from her family all those years with their various moves, that she had lost her brother long before he fell on that kitchen floor. But Caroline didn’t blame Nathan, not for this; she blamed only herself for allowing it to happen.

“You know how sorry I am about all this,” Nathan said now. “But please come back to us. The kids miss you. I miss you.” He folded his arms around her. Instinctually she pulled away but then stopped. She felt his hands on her back, drawing her closer, and she relaxed. She laid her head against his chest and remembered the feel of this, being close to someone. He kissed her on the neck and lingered there, his breath warm on her skin.

All at once Caroline wanted Nathan to fuck her. She wanted nothing but that. It was the smell of him, sweaty and sleepy, a bit of musky deodorant, and the softness of the pajamas, these stupid, sentimental flannel pajamas. Slowly she traced the cursive N stitched in shiny white thread across his chest and then began to unbutton his shirt, and then she was pulling off the shirt, pulling off his pants. His hands were under the T-shirt she wore, had worn for days now, and he backed her onto the couch where their children watched TV and played video games. Where now a scattering of Lego pieces lay across the upholstery.

“Ouch,” Caroline said, and reached beneath her to sweep the toys onto the floor and pull down her sweatpants. Nathan waited, and then he was on top of her, and she arched her back, her legs went around his waist, and he was inside her. Her apple, one bite taken from the flesh, sat on the arm of the couch; it fell to the floor as Nathan grasped for a better position.