Writers & Lovers(51)

‘I read Thunder Road.’

‘Really?’ He flips the sandwiches and puts down the spatula. ‘Heavens.’ He touches his wrist. ‘My pulse is starting to race.’

I’m not sure if he’s serious. Does he care what I think, or is he just pretending?

‘I loved it.’

‘Honestly?’ He does seem in earnest.

‘Yes, yes.’ I tell him all the scenes I admired and why, the small moments and gestures. He seems eager for this approval, and I exaggerate my initial responses. I don’t mention I read the earlier books as well, because I’m not sure I can keep up this level of enthusiasm that long.

He calls the boys and they come to the stove with plates and when he slides a sandwich onto John’s plate he says, ‘She liked my book.’ And when he slides one onto Jasper’s plate he says, ‘She liked my book.’ And when John asks if we can play cards at the table, he says, ‘Why not,’ and we eat and play and afterward at the sink when the boys are zooming their plastic planes around the woodstove, he pulls me close and tells me he loves me. I kiss him and our lips are slippery from the grilled cheese and the boys’ planes have stopped flying.





I tell Oscar about Adam selling the garage. We’re at the boys’ swim lesson in East Cambridge, watching them by the indoor pool on lawn chairs. The air is humid, rank with a chlorine and soggy human smell. My jeans are stuck to my legs.

‘Come live with us,’ he says.

The boys’ thin arms are thrashing toward the deep end. They’re learning the crawl. It’s hard to breath in the wet air. ‘I wasn’t—’

‘I know you weren’t. But why not?’

He doesn’t know how I live, how far I need to run, how much I owe, how little I sleep, or that I’ve now gotten rejection letters from three agents. I haven’t told him about the lump under my arm. He calls me his waif, his down-on-her-luck waitress, but he takes it all lightly. In fact, Holly Golightly is one of his names for me. If we lived together I would expose myself as the blighted Jean Rhys character I really am.

The next Saturday he and the boys pick me up to go apple picking. They know an orchard out in Sherborn where you get cider doughnuts afterward. I’m excited about it all week. We never did those kinds of things in my family. There were never outings. Oscar and his boys love an outing.

I prepared them for the size of my place, but they are still surprised when they come in.

‘It’s like Thumbelina’s house,’ Jasper says.

‘It’s smaller, and Casey is a regular-size girl,’ John says.

They jump on the futon, which is disappointingly unbouncy, examine my nibs and ink bottles on the window sill, and stick their heads in and out of the bathroom.

I think Oscar for once has no words at all.

‘The apples await,’ he says finally.

We head out to the car.

‘Back on your thrones,’ Oscar says and the boys strap themselves into their big car seats in back.

‘We think you should come live with us,’ John says.

‘Our beds are better.’ Jasper says, kicking the back of my seat.

‘Wow,’ I say. Oscar is smiling but looking at the road. ‘Wow.’ I turn to the boys behind me. They’re waiting for my answer. ‘That is such a kind offer.’

‘It would be free. We wouldn’t charge you a penny,’ John says.

‘I will have to think that over very carefully. Thank you.’

At the orchard we get a green cart and bags for our apples. The boys get in the cart and Oscar zigzags them down the paths between the rows of apple trees and when the cart goes up on two wheels they shriek. We follow signs for the apples with the weirdest names—Crow Egg and Winter Banana—and we lift the boys up to reach the higher branches. Our cart fills with bags full of apples. We sing ‘This Old Man’ and ‘She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain,’ which they have all sorts of newfangled verses for. Every fifteen minutes, either John or Jasper asks if I’ve thought carefully enough yet.

The boys play on a swing set while we stand in line for the doughnuts.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I had to run it by them.’

‘It’s so soon.’

‘You moved to Spain with Paco.’

‘I met Paco two and a half years before I moved in with him. This is just a few weeks.’

‘A few weeks? I met you in July, Casey.’

‘It didn’t get serious for a while.’ I think I was measuring from my last date with Silas.

‘It was always serious with me.’

‘With Paco it was just Paco. There were not two vulnerable little boys. What if it doesn’t work out? I don’t want them ever to be hurt again by anyone.’

‘Well that’s a bit unrealistic.’ He nuzzles his chin in the curve between my neck and shoulder. ‘Besides, we’re going to work out.’

They drop me off at Iris for my dinner shift.

‘Think about it.’ Jasper taps his head as they pull away. ‘Think!’





I wait for the idea to calm me down, but it doesn’t. Oscar asking me to move in doesn’t seem like a solution to Adam selling the garage. It seems like another problem. And the problems are mounting. Thomas announces he’s opening his own restaurant in the Berkshires. Clark the brunch chef is to replace him as head chef.