I'm Fine and Neither Are You(71)

“You mean check in on my mother,” said Sanjay.

I laughed. “And that.”

“I’m still impressed you convinced her to watch the kids for four whole days.”

“It’s amazing how easy it is to be persuasive when you threaten not to show up for Christmas.”

Now he laughed and pulled out his phone as I locked the door behind us. “Hi, Mom,” he said. “Yes. Yes. Okay.” He passed me the phone. “Here, talk to your children.”

“Hi, Mommy,” said Miles as I pressed my ear to the receiver. He sounded so grown-up. “When are you coming home?”

“In two days, sweetheart. Which will be here sooner than you can imagine. How’s it going with Cookie?”

He giggled, which I interpreted as “We’re having candy for breakfast and cake for lunch.” “Are you and Daddy having fun?” he asked.

I glanced over at Sanjay, who was stretched out on the sofa. “We are, but I miss you guys.”

“I miss you, too.”

“How’s—”

“Here’s Stevie the booger-face!” interrupted Miles.

There was a fumbling. Then Stevie’s voice came through the receiver. “Mommy, Miles is being a big jerk!”

“Watch your language, love, and hi to you, too. I hear that your brother’s having a hard time, but hopefully he’ll go to bed soon. Are you being good for Cookie?”

“She’s been wonderful!” called Riya, who I now knew was listening in.

“I’m glad to hear that,” I said. “Stevie? You still there?”

“Yes,” said my daughter. “Mommy, where are you again?”

“New York, remember?”

“Yeah. But where are you staying?”

“At our friends’ apartment in Brooklyn. Not too far from where we lived when you were a baby.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Are we moving back?”

I laughed. “To New York? Not unless Mommy wins the lottery.”

“Sorry,” she said.

“No need to be sorry.”

I sat beside Sanjay on the sofa. I had just started to tuck my feet under me when it occurred to me that I might have dirt on my soles, which would end up on the white upholstery. The coffee table’s glass top was pristine and I didn’t want to get toe smudges all over it, either, so I let my feet dangle off the edge of the sofa, which was quite stiff, really. It made me miss my comfy living room, with its marker-scribbled but welcoming sofa and a coffee table that could withstand far more than a pair of feet.

“But you said you miss it,” said Stevie. “If we moved back, we could live like Eloise.”

Through the loft windows before me, downtown Brooklyn was twinkling. At another time in my life, every one of those lights would have looked like an opportunity.

Now they were just lights. “We couldn’t even live like Eloise’s nanny, sweetheart, but that’s fine with me. I don’t want to live in a hotel.”

“Why not?”

“Because I want to live in our home.” I stood from the sofa and walked over to the windows. It had just begun to rain, and the city’s blinking lights were blurring in the glass. “That’s where you and Daddy and Miles live. That’s where my life is.”

After we’d hung up, I looked at Sanjay. “I’m going to shower.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Why don’t you join me?” I said.

He didn’t try to disguise his surprise. “Is this about the list?”

I shook my head. “No. It’s about you and me and some tough-to-clean places I need help with.”

He grinned. “Okay, then.”

Once again, I made love to my husband—in the shower with the lights on, no less. This time it wasn’t over nearly as soon as it began. In fact, it was so languorous and lovely that we did it again the next morning.



As the city disappeared behind me as Sanjay and I began our drive home, a sense of anticipatory loss came over me. It had been such a wonderful few days—almost like early in our marriage—that I wished we could have stayed longer, if only to hold on to that magic.

“Things feel different now, don’t they?” I said as we crossed the border from New Jersey to Pennsylvania.

“They do,” he said.

“Do you think it will last?”

It was beginning to rain, and he kept his eyes on the road as he responded. “I don’t know. I hope so. What do you think?”

“I don’t know, either. Are we still doing the list project? You haven’t given me your third item yet. Are you planning to?”

He paused. “Honestly? I’ve been debating it.”

The sky was nearly charcoal, and the rain was now making it hard to see more than a car’s length in front of us; the semitrailer ahead was visible mostly by its taillights. I held my breath as it fishtailed while trying to merge from the center lane into the right lane. “Maybe we should pull over until the rain slows a little,” I said to Sanjay.

I expected him to say he was fine. Instead, he guided us onto a wide right shoulder beside a field. Then he put the car in park and turned toward me. We stared at each other, wordlessly asking the same question: Now what?