51.
I had the key but I rang, which felt weird. Mom opened the door in her black silk bathrobe. She leaned forward, gripping the half-open door, and kissed me, smelling like sugary grapes.
“Sorry I didn’t call,” I said, hoisting Ian higher on my hip. “Dad and I had a fight.”
“You did?” she whispered. “Alex is here.”
“The married guy?” I asked, disgusted. She nodded. There were mascara smudges under her eyes, but the smudges somehow accentuated them. She looked pretty.
“I won’t keep you.” I threw our bag onto a dining room chair. “We just need to crash here.” There were stacks of glossy real estate brochures held together in thick strips of white paper covering the table.
“What happened?” she asked, tying her bathrobe tighter.
“I don’t even know. It was stupid.” Ian wriggled to get down. Part of me expected her to pull up a chair and devour any gory details.
“You’ll work it out,” she said quickly. She glanced down the hall at her door, then turned and headed to the kitchen.
“He doesn’t want to come out and say hi?” I asked, following her with Ian. “Meet your grandson?”
“Now’s probably not the time for that,” she said, looking skittishly at Ian. “Where’s he going to sleep?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll rig something up.” As I said it, it dawned on me: Ian had never been there.
“Okay, well, it’s getting late. You guys should get some sleep.” She looked nervous, like she wanted us to clear the area.
“Do you have any food?”
“Take a look.” She opened the fridge, letting it hang ajar, and darted out of the kitchen before I could ask her to take Ian while I scavenged.
Ian had just started sitting up. I put him down on the kitchen floor with a toy and found a takeout container of brown rice. I dumped some soy sauce in and ate ravenously, spilling out dry rice clumps onto the floor. Ian spotted some rice near him on the floor and reached for it, but instead fell back on his head, his feet sweeping into the air. There was a long, deep pause before he screamed. His pipes had really developed and he seemed much louder, all of a sudden, than he used to be. I wondered about the neighbors, the Chesleys, next door with their stupid dachshund. I scarfed a few more bites and chucked the container into the trash, then grabbed Ian and scooted down the hallway to my bedroom.
Everything looked the same: my bed neatly made with my white duvet and little lace pillow squarely in the middle of my two bigger pillows. How long had it been since I’d been there? I pulled Ian’s blanket out and lay it on the floor. He fussed but grew quieter once I found the pacifier and shoved it into his mouth. I took his clothes off and put on a clean onesie, counting out loud with a stretchy mouth to keep him distracted. I took off my clothes down to my underwear and tank top, picked up Ian and jammed his head down on my shoulder as I walked him around singing “Twinkle, Twinkle.” He was asleep within a minute, like he’d breathed in a magical rose in a fairy tale. I turned off as many lights as I could and pulled the covers down, figuring I’d put Ian between me and the wall. I did and he stayed miraculously asleep. I got my hook out of the bag and sat down at my desk, but I couldn’t bring my hands to move. I looked around the dark room, at the line drawing of the Eiffel Tower above my bed and the stack of old jeans on the floor in the closet. There was something really sad about being there, as though time was passing and things were changing too quickly. I got into bed.
In the middle of the night I woke up in a panic, wondering if there was a chance that the fight with Dad would make him go down to the deli and buy a couple of six-packs, drink those, go down again for two more six-packs, drink those and pass out. The idea of him drinking again was almost as scary as the idea of him dying. I fell back to sleep, but then Ian woke up crying. I picked him up and walked around in the dark, squeezing his body across my chest, biting the inside of my cheeks, worried he was going to wake Mom and the cheater. He went on and on, calming down, then starting back up. He kept looking at the door, wanting to go, I think. At one point Mom peeked in.
“What’s the matter with him?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” I said, nudging the door closed. “He’ll be all right. Go back to sleep.”
In the morning I woke to the sound of drilling outside on the street and the sound of Mom’s voice, telling someone on the phone, “Cancel it. I don’t need it.”
Ian was sleeping soundly after finally falling back at six. I pulled the duvet over his little shoulders, put my teddy next to him and snuck out, covered in a heavy, almost painful blanket of fatigue. When he woke up, he’d need to eat. There was a mango in the straw basket on the kitchen counter. I picked it up and squeezed, wondering if Ian could gum it down. Mom appeared, showered and with her hair combed back off her face.
“Did you get any sleep? she asked.
I shrugged. “He doesn’t usually do that anymore. He’s been really good at night.”
“Guess I got lucky,” she said. “Alex slept through it—how, I don’t know. I think all men sleep like the dead.”
“I think it’s being in a new place,” I said, cutting the mango into tiny pieces. “Is he still here?”
“He snuck out earlier.”
“Of course he did,” I said.
“He’s not so bad, Thea.” She swiped a piece of mango and popped it into her mouth.
“How would I know, right?” I asked. Ian woke up as I was plating the mango. I put the plate down on the dining table and went to my room. He was wedged into the crack by the wall, trying to roll onto his back. “Good morning, shuggi-buggi,” I said. “I have mango.” He looked up and around, wondering where the hell we were now.
“So what happened with Daddy?” Mom asked, eyeing me as I sat down with Ian.
“What are you looking at?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said innocently. “Did you see the flyers?”
“What flyers?” I asked, only then registering the piles of flyers covering the table. I picked up a stack and, with my free hand, slid the white sleeve down to the bottom so I could see what it was: a quadrant of photos, backlit and shot with a wide angle, of our apartment. HUGE, TRADITIONAL WHITE-BOX LOFT—TWO-BEDROOM IN THE HEART OF CHELSEA, read the banner across the front.
“Two million dollars?” was the first thing that came out of my mouth.
“That’s what we valued it at,” she said, standing yoga-ready straight, obviously proud.
“Wow,” I said. I picked up a piece of slippery mango with my fingers and found Ian’s lips. “Do you think you could have talked to me about it?”
“Oh, it’s nothing, really,” she said, sitting down on the living room rug in front of us. “I just thought I’d cast the net, see what little fishies I caught.” She looked at Ian, watched him pick a piece of mango up by himself. “He’s so sort of self-sufficient now, isn’t he?”
“Mom, where would you even go?” I asked.
She lay down and flexed her red-toenailed feet. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe Gramercy or Tribeca. It’s time for me to downsize.”
My phone rang. It was Dad. “Look, Thea, I’m sorry about last night.”
I put Ian on the floor next to Mom and scurried back to my room, ignoring his cries. “Why did you ask us to come and stay with you when it’s clear you don’t want us there?” I asked.
“Of course I want you here.” His voice was a confused muddle. “What makes you think I don’t want you here?”
“You just seem like you’d rather be alone.”
“That’s not true.”
“Dad, you grunt. I ask you a question when you’re cooking and you grunt.”
He sighed.
“And I can’t wait till nine o’clock to eat,” I said. I smiled in spite of myself. “I just can’t.”
“Then have a snack, for Christ’s sake.”
“I can’t. You make it impossible to set foot in the kitchen. It’s a no-fly zone when you’re in there. Face it. If you don’t want us there, I don’t want to do that to you.”
“I do want you here.” He said it so quietly I could hardly hear him. “I do. Can you come back? Before I go to work? I’ll wait for you.”
Back in the living room, Ian was lying on the rug, swatting at a playing card Mom was dangling in front of his face.
“I’ve forgiven him for last night,” Mom said. “That was Daddy?”
“He wants us to go back,” I said, stabbing a piece of mango.
Mom lay down on the rug, swaying her knees from side to side, the morning light delineating the deep smile lines around her mouth, her “parentheses” as she referred to them. “You two’ll work it out,” she said, yawning.
“Wait, I’m not done talking about this,” I said, waving the flyer. “I think this is weird, just selling this place out from under me, without even discussing it first.”
“Thea, I told you, it’s just to see if someone bites.”
“Then who knows.” She tickled Ian’s belly and he laughed, rolling onto her arm. “You’ve got such a cute little giggle, who knew?”
I asked her why she didn’t seem that interested in hanging out with Ian.
“Of course I’m interested,” she said. “I see him.”
“You haven’t seen him in at least a month.”
“I haven’t?” she asked, overly surprised.
“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t get it. He’s your grandson.”
She grimaced. “Don’t remind me, please.”
“But don’t you want to see him growing? He changes every day. He’s so bright-eyed. How could you not want to see him?”
“Of course I want to see him,” she said, playing peekaboo with Ian. “Maybe I’ve been a little distracted with this real estate thing. I have four listings now. And I think I’m about to get another one.”
“That’s great,” I said.
“Don’t be so defensive,” she said.
“What?” I implored. “It is. I mean it. I miss you, though.”
“Well, I’m around, Thee.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s not like I’m not here if you need me.”
“If you don’t like seeing him, if he just reminds you of how I’m a failure, just say it. You can tell me, you know. That’s kind of what it feels like. It’s what everyone seems to be feeling these days.”
“It’s nothing like that,” she said quickly. “I’m proud of you. You’re making your own way. With any luck you’ll end up in better shape than the Vanessas of the world. Maybe this will show you early on that it doesn’t come easy. We can hope, right?”
She covered her face with her hands and said, “Huzzah!” when she took them away. Ian watched, delighted, waiting for her to do it again, and she smiled at him, but her eyes darted around the room restlessly. I’d seen that restless look so many times in my life and it occurred to me, maybe she’d gotten restless with Dad. Maybe, after all the fury around getting him to stop drinking, and after all the crazy anger she had about Bill Mindorff getting him to stop and not us and how Dad cared too much about work and making money, maybe all of that was just an excuse. Maybe she just hadn’t loved him anymore.
She straightened her legs in front of her on the floor and stretched while Ian stared at her, awaiting her next move. “Anyway, Daddy always said I wasn’t a baby person. And he might be right. I think I’m better when they speak.”