I'm Glad About You(107)

Kyle fortunately had a handkerchief, which he handed over silently while she sobbed. She blew her nose like a ten-year-old, and tried to use the corners to blot the mascara carefully but without a mirror it was impossible to tell if this operation was even remotely successful.

The funeral party was nearly gone and all that was left was a bewildered little wave of people in black trudging to their cars. Kyle glanced behind her, taking note of the retreating mourners. She considered handing his handkerchief back to him, but that would surely be the end of the whole conversation and she didn’t want to let him go yet. There he was, right in front of her. He was still there. She wanted to tell him everything that had happened, the strangeness of her journey, the years of floating in the demimonde, the hurtling upward to a place where she was no one, and what it felt like to be no one, to be a no one who everyone could see, the collapse of the dreams that she had never dreamed for herself, the recognition that she had betrayed herself more than anyone, the hunger to be whole and at peace. She wanted to take his hand and go to his car with him, drive back to Mom and Dad’s, sit around the family room with Andrew and Megan and Jeff and even Lianne, snuggle under his shoulder, feel the earth firm under her feet.

“But by the time you called, she was gone,” Kyle said.

It was so incongruous and strange it took her a moment; she didn’t know what he was talking about. He continued, an urgency growing in his explanation. “I called you back as soon as I got your call. Well, a couple hours, it did take me a few hours.” She could see that those few hours smote him—he had probably needed those few hours to get up the nerve to call her, and he felt bad about it. But what he was saying other than that didn’t make sense. “I should have called back immediately, I’m sorry about that,” he said, “but Van didn’t tell me there was any urgency. And your mother was already gone, wasn’t she? She must have been gone, even, when you called.”

“I called—I called—” Alison started. The words were on her lips I called five days ago. I actually did call when you could have done something. I told your wife. You never called back. My mother was dying, and your wife didn’t give you the message.

The puzzlement in his face stopped her. And then something else, a breath of understanding, as he figured it out for himself. He flushed. And she rushed in to save him.

“I’m just upset,” she said. “I didn’t mean anything. I know you did what you could.”

“When did you call?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

He was struggling, she could see, to put that genie back in the bottle. “I’m just upset, Kyle, seriously. Sorry. I didn’t mean anything. I really didn’t.”

He nodded, looked away. After a moment, there was nothing else to do but plunge ahead. “You think they made mistakes, at the hospital?” he asked.

“I really don’t want to talk about it, Kyle. It won’t bring her back.”

“I would hate to think that.” He sounded so lonely; he always had. It was so easy for him to fall into himself; she’d always had to work so hard to get him to stay in the world. He hid in his head, and it wasn’t good for him, he was always so much happier when she would coax him out of there. He still has a beautiful soul, she thought, there’s so much light in him. She wondered if the two of them would have been less lonely together.

“I heard you had another baby! Congratulations.”

“Yes, a boy,” he said. “Gabe.”

“Gabe. That’s a great name,” she said. A flush of pride passed over his face. It was charming, a whisper of youth and vulnerability. She remembered the moment she first saw him, in a parking lot of some dumb football game.

“I heard you were in a big movie, some Hollywood blockbuster,” he offered.

“Oh, the movie kind of fizzled. I mean, I did it, it was cool, it was kind of a nightmare—but parts of it were cool,” she admitted.

“Are you going to do any more Chekhov? Maybe Shakespeare?” He smiled at her, remembering their last fight. She remembered the hours she spent practicing scenes for high school plays, lying in his arms, memorizing the lines. Beatrice in Much Ado. Helena in Midsummer, those were her parts, the feisty funny ones. Her resolve started to flag. Don’t fall in love with the past, she thought. You don’t live there. Now is when you live.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re a brilliant actress.”

Being brilliant doesn’t matter, she thought. What she said was, “How’s the baby business?”

“Fine, fine,” he said.

“You’ll start that clinic someday,” she said. “Maybe when your kids are bigger.”

“Maybe.”

Another silence. Perhaps they were finished, finally. She looked down, took a breath, thinking about saying good-bye.

“Are you happy?” Kyle asked. He seemed to really want to know the answer to that one. He seemed to hope that she was.

“Well,” she said. And then, “My mother just died.”

“She’s with God now,” he told her, as a comfort.

“Yeah, that’s what the priest said, at the funeral.”

“Do you not—believe that?”

“It’s what she believed, so I guess I will believe it for her,” Alison replied, careful.