I'm Glad About You(29)

“The holidays are always a little stressful.”

“Oh yes.”

“How’s your family?”

“Everyone’s great. The house is packed. Megan’s about to pop, it looks like.”

“Yes, I heard she was pregnant. When’s she due?”

“Of course you would ask that. And of course I have no idea.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. You and she were so close, I just thought . . .”

“No, you’re right, you’re totally right. I have been shockingly narcissistic with regard to these babies. Maybe I’m jealous of them. Wow, maybe I am.” An edge of painful admission had crept into her tone.

“Of them, not her?”

“No, of them. They have her now.”

“This is her first pregnancy?”

“Yeah. It’s two, even. Twins!” It was a little loud by the bar, and Alison was now studying her plastic cup full of white wine with distracted determination. He wished she would look up at him and tell him that he looked tired again, and ask him why, and let the slightest air of her tenderness breathe on him, even though there was no place for it. “She’s one of them now, I guess,” Alison said, glancing away, suddenly opting for a lighter tone.

“Excuse me?”

“Megan. She’s one of the people who have children and, you know. Turn into zombies.”

“I hardly think children turn adults into zombies.” He meant to adopt a careless tone, like hers, but it came out sounding superior. He sounded like a superior prig.

“No, no, that’s not— Well, it is what I said. I didn’t mean— I just meant, at least over at our house, it’s all kids all the time, and it kind of distorts. You say, I need a car tonight, and it turns into an endless circular discussion about whether or not some child might need ferrying somewhere in the most abstract and bizarre system of logic imaginable, you know, everything is just kind of . . . You would know better. You’re a pediatrician, you would know, I wouldn’t know,” Alison said, breezing right by the edge of his tone with an easy forgiveness. A forgiveness of what? Of everything? If she forgave him everything, he would go home and hang himself. “Wow. It’s great to see you, Kyle,” she finished, unexpectedly. “I’m going to see if I can find the bathroom.” She swiveled and paused, facing the daunting necessity of somehow plunging herself into that teeming hive of alcoholics, and turned sideways. He could see again, now, how thin she was. She downed the rest of her wine, dropped the cup on the bar, and worked her way into the crowd with a determination which did not look back.

She had made her escape just in time. As he watched her go, someone tapped him on the shoulder. “Is that for me?” Van asked, flirtatiously imperious. She poked her head around and reached for the now-exhausted cup of club soda which he held clenched in his fist. “I didn’t know where you went!”

“Sorry, it’s so crowded,” he started. And then, “I bumped into Alison.”

“So I saw.”

“Yeah, she said that you guys met.”

“Dennis introduced us since you wouldn’t.”

“I didn’t even know she was here,” Kyle noted. “Dennis told me she wasn’t coming.”

“And you believed him? I didn’t.”

“I guess you’re smarter than me, then.” He finally took a much-needed sip of his now-watery scotch. It tasted dreadful.

“You didn’t tell me how tall she was. She’s just huge,” Van observed, searching the crowd for another glimpse of her.

“She’s not huge,” Kyle replied. “If anything, she’s thin.” That ought to shut her up, he thought. Although Alison certainly was taller than he remembered. During their brief conversation he had been so disconcerted by so many things, he had not considered that she was now looking him in the eye, which might have been part of the disorienting effect.

“I didn’t mean huge, I meant tall. Which feels huge to me! She’s like a tree, she’s so tall. And you’re right, she is skinny! Well, I guess if you’re an actress you have to worry about all that.”

Kyle didn’t even know how to respond to that one. He took another hit off his scotch and wondered how much time he had to give to this. He knew that they should leave, that even hanging around this dreadful party would be a bad idea, but he also knew that to suggest such a thing within instants of talking to Alison would be incriminating beyond belief. Then there was also the fact that he couldn’t bear to leave. The thought that he might actually bump into her again was humming in every cell of his body. And why shouldn’t he talk to her? He was married now. All that nonsense with Alison was finally, blessedly over. He could talk to her. He could see her, and talk to her.

“So did she have anything to say?” Van asked. He glanced down at her. Her eyes were glittering with an air of exasperation, as if there were simply no reasonable answer to this, but somehow it was his fault that she had been forced to ask.

“She didn’t, really.”

“What about you, you apparently had a lot to say.”

“‘Hello’ was actually pretty much the extent of it.”

“Well, you talked for quite a while, for two people who have nothing to say to each other.”