Writers & Lovers(49)

‘Not chocolates.’

‘Not Slinkys or binkies or Twinkies.’

‘But then.’

‘But then one day Papa brought Mama ice cream.’

‘Peppermint ice cream.’

‘But it was a day when Mama was very sick.’

‘She was too sick to eat.’

‘She pointed to Nurse Ellen.’

‘And Papa gave her the ice cream.’

‘And Nurse Ellen smiled from ear to ear.’

‘Like never before or since.’

They go silent all at once, and there is a terrible stillness I don’t want to break but know I have to break, a heathen made to speak after their sacred liturgy.

‘That’s a great story.’

‘It’s true. It happened,’ John says.

Jasper’s hand is still on my wrist, tight.

‘Dishes to the sink,’ Oscar says.

John stands and takes two plates. Jasper lets go and takes the other two. We are left with the water glasses between us. Oscar is resting his chin in his palm. He raises his eyebrows at me. ‘And that’s the abridged version.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

He nods. His eyes are unfocused.

John and Jasper are fighting over the sprayer at the sink. When Oscar notices, he says, ‘Up. Go up now.’

They let go and head to the stairs.

‘Say goodnight to Casey.’

They say goodnight, and I wish I could give them hugs, but I stay in my seat. ‘Sleep tight.’

Halfway up the stairs John says, ‘Thanks for teaching us to shuffle.’

‘Keep moving,’ Oscar says, and they go the rest of the way up. They look down from the balcony and I wave and they wave and Oscar says, ‘Face and teeth,’ and they are gone.

I bring the glasses to the sink.

‘Look at you,’ he says.

I’m carrying the four glasses in one hand, the cucumber bowl, chicken sticks platter, and dipping sauce in the other.

‘A real pro.’

He opens the dishwasher. A smell comes out of it. I haven’t lived anywhere with a dishwasher since high school. I load the dishes and take in the scent of an American home.

‘They do this with women. Their teachers, their friends’ mothers. Well, you saw it at the restaurant. They sort of throw themselves at them. It breaks my heart because what is it going to look like in ten years with girls their age? All that neediness.’

‘They’re going to have to fight them off.’

He shakes his head. He rinses the plates and slots them into the machine. I want him to forget about the dishes and pull me to the couch.

He rinses and reassembles the salad spinner and hands it to me. It’s a solid expensive salad spinner. I push down on the big red button and the plastic basket inside revs and whizzes like a well-built engine.

‘Sorry,’ he says, taking it away from me. ‘I forgot you don’t know where it goes.’

Upstairs there’s arguing coming from the bathroom.

‘Boys!’

‘Ready,’ John calls from the balcony. Jasper’s head barely clears the railing.

I want to ask him if I can read the boys a book before bed. I wonder what their favorites are.

‘Okay,’ Oscar says. He wipes his hands on a dishrag. ‘Thanks for coming, Casey.’

‘I can wait, or maybe I could read—’

He shakes his head. ‘Bedtime is still a bit rough.’

‘Papa,’ Jasper whines.

‘Coming.’ He starts up the stairs and looks back. And there is Oscar again, Oscar from the arboretum, the little grin as if we already have a past together, hundreds of little jokes, as if me just standing there at his fancy kitchen island is all he wants in the world.

‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’ He lifts his hands briefly in helpless apology.

He climbs the rest of the stairs, puts a hand on each boy’s back, and steers them down the hallway and out of sight. The dishwasher starts churning.

I gather my cards from the spot on the rug where I sat with the boys. I can hear bits of their voices above me. I give the cards one last slow shuffle and put them in my knapsack. I put on my coat and my helmet and go out the door. Bob has come out of hiding and watches me from a chair near the window. I wheel my bike to the end of the driveway. I can’t see them, but I know what room they’re in by the way the light shifts through the windows. I can nearly smell the toothpaste breath, the weight of a tired boy against my shoulder.





Silas calls, and I meet him at a Korean place near MIT. He apologizes for not getting in touch sooner. He came back with a stomach bug the students were passing around on the trip he says and threw up for three days straight. He does look a little wan. He’s just shaved, and I can see the blue stubble beneath. Usually his skin is ruddy from afterschool coaching. He orders plain rice and steamed vegetables.

As he’s describing the eighteen hours each way in a bus and six nights in a Red Roof Inn policing thirty-seven teenagers with the seventy-eight-year-old librarian, I’m wondering how to tell him about Oscar. I want to know if it matters to him. It seems like the only way to find out his feelings for me. It was easier to imagine doing this when he wasn’t in the room, when he wasn’t leaning over a table on his elbows, twisting up a chopstick wrapper with fingers that are unexpectedly familiar.