After the Moment (10 page)

"Are you liking it?" he asked. "It looks pretty long."

"It is," she said.

"But good, right?"

"It's—I ... yes."

She made a muffled sound like a choke, enough for him to take his eyes off the road for a second (only a second, for during their lessons Clayton had hounded him about how dangerous and stupid it was to look at anyone in the car, and to only look ahead). Maia had her fist pressed against her teeth, her lips compressed around her fingers. He knew she wasn't sick, only sad.

"You can cry—it's allowed in the car. Only muddy shoes are banned."

"No," she said. "No."

He didn't say anything further, as he also didn't like to cry in front of other people. He didn't like to cry, period, but definitely not in public. They drove the rest of the way in silence until he pulled into the driveway of the huge house where Maia lived.

Leigh had yet to meet Esme Green, but Charles Rhoem seemed nice enough, and could be seen through one of the large bay windows as he moved slowly around the kitchen.

"I'll go in there," Maia said, "and Charles will ask me if I've eaten, and, so, today, I'll say yes."

She was zipping up her bag while stuffing her phone and a pack of tissues into it.

"And then, since he won't have to sit with me while I eat, he'll say, 'Your mother's out back,' meaning that I should go say hello. So I'll go out back and she'll say, 'How was it?' and I'll say, 'Fine,' or, 'Josh says hello,' or whatever, and she'll nod."

Maia's voice, although calm and even, was the saddest thing Leigh had ever heard. It was sadder than this violin concerto his mother listened to when she was depressed, and sadder than the sound of Millie and Janet crying during the days right after Seth died.

"Then I'll go up to my room and read or e-mail until about six, when I'll go outside and water the plants. Charles and Mom will have cocktails on the porch, and I'll sit with them until they go out, and then I'll walk over to your house for dinner."

Leigh wanted to interrupt, to pull her back from describing a life totally devoid of detail or texture or color. He wanted to remind her that her coming for dinner still meant the world to Millie. That he himself loved the nights when he was home and she was there. That when she walked into Clayton's house, it snapped to attention. That Maia's craziness gave them all a vacation from their own fears and worries. There was no way to say this, however. Even someone good at saying what he meant would never be able to explain it in a way that didn't make Maia Morland feel worse.

So he kept his mouth shut and let her keep talking in the flat, sad voice.

"By the time I go to bed, it'll be as if I never saw Josh at all. I'll wake up tomorrow and it'll start all over again."

"What will?" he asked, imagining himself able to stop it, whatever
it
was.

"My pathetic life," she said, impatiently, anger lurking along the edges of those three words. "It's ridiculous—I'm ridiculous."

"No, no, you're not," he said. "You're just thin."

"You think that's it?" she asked him, pushing up the sleeves of her dress. "The food is the least of it."

She thrust an elbow before his eyes. He saw marks on her pale skin other than the blue pathways of her veins. The small, circular burn scars were impossible to understand—impossible even to see—until she said, "This is what I used to do. This is what worked—this is what I spend six days a week not doing."

Leigh looked at her arm, not wanting to imagine, not wanting to think about Maia holding a lit cigarette (for what else would leave this round, bumpy shape?) against her own skin. Guided by impulses and feelings that he would later describe to himself as instinct, he brought her arm to his lips and, very gently, kissed each of the nine little scars.

He felt more than heard Maia's sharp intake of breath. It was not so far away from how Janet used to kiss Millie's cut knees, murmuring
All better.
The glaring difference being that Leigh, inhaling the smell of Maia's skin, feeling her pulse against his mouth, was, as his body immediately told him, almost unbearably turned on. Although, oddly, given his experience with this state, his excitement seemed to hover at a distance, allowing him room to think.

"Don't ever do that again," he said, releasing her arm and putting both of his around her.

It was not, given the obstacles of stick shift and seat belt buckles, the most comfortable position for either of them, and he let her go, saying, "Ever."

Maia nodded. "Okay."

As whispered replies went, it was neither convincing nor reassuring. But as he watched her get out of the car, he was silent, and at a total loss as to how to extract such a promise from her.

During dinner that night, each of them tried to behave as if nothing had happened. Leigh, who had gone straight to the tennis club's pool and swum a mile, was as tired and starved as if he had gone twice that far. While Janet was fixing up grilled chicken, salad, and rice with cashews, Leigh ate two turkey sandwiches and half a box of cookies.

"I'm starving," he said when she smacked his hand away from sneaking a pepper out of the salad bowl.

"You can wait five minutes," Janet said.

He went out to the sun porch and sat with Clayton, who was watching the news, something Leigh had mostly stopped doing. One of the weekend anchors, whom he didn't recognize, reported that U.S. casualties had reached two hundred and fifty-five. Clayton said he wondered when anyone would begin to count Iraqi casualties. Leigh, trying not to think about two hundred and fifty-five funerals, immediately felt as if his life—his overfed, gas-guzzling life—was absurd.

At dinner, he matched Maia bite for bite, despising himself for never before having wondered why she always wore long sleeves. He was already angry at himself for being ravenous and blissfully untouched by a war he hadn't had the decency to understand well enough to either approve or condemn. Couldn't he at least take notice of what was going on right in front of him? Millie asked him if he would take her to the movies tomorrow, and he reminded her he had to work, which he felt bad about, but maybe not as much as he should.

Which contributed more to his foul temper. For God's sake—he was here only for Millie's benefit. What had he done with her other than fail to get Bubbles to do anything other than obey the sit command? The very least he could do was take his sister wherever she wanted.

"I'll take you," Maia said. "Maybe Franklin would like to go, and then we could all get a ride from Kevin."

Leigh, recalling some of the things Kevin had said about Maia, hated this suggestion but said nothing. He ate strawberries with ice cream because he was now in the habit of eating a portion of everything Janet put in front of Maia. He felt a little sick, furious at himself for reasons he couldn't quite make out, and anxious to drive his crazy girlfriend home.

A thought so badly worded that he had to excuse himself from the table. Leigh went into the kitchen and stuck his head under the faucet, letting cold water pour across his neck. She was
not
his girlfriend. He had one, although trying to conjure up Astra at this minute was difficult. Unwillingly, he thought of all the romance novels he'd been forced to read earlier in the summer.

He remembered how he'd half listened to the girls talk about the "right" way for a hero to behave. Obviously, the men under discussion bore no resemblance to real people. But the conversation about them had held an immutable truth: Just as there was a way for men to behave in romances, there was a less absurd but as important way to treat women in real life. One thing romance heroes had in common with normal men was that neither cheated on their girlfriends.

Then Leigh snapped out of it, asking himself:
A romance novel? You're thinking of your failings in terms of a romance novel?
Why not worry about the implications of not having to go to Iraq? If he was going to judge his own behavior, Leigh thought he should use a reality-based standard.

He threw some more water on his face, counted backwards from thirty-three in French, told himself he was calm, and returned to the dining room in time to help clear.

"No, don't, just sit down," Janet said, as he reached for the empty chicken platter. "You deal with enough dishes at work. Millie, you could start helping around the house."

Clayton sat at the table long enough to ask Maia how Josh was. ("Fine," she said. "Thank you.") He then excused himself, and Leigh knew his father would spend the rest of the night at his desk. He felt like hitting something, and wondered why no one had figured out a way to have a fistfight alone. You could have a type of sex alone—why not a fight? Should he get a punching bag? Would that erase his need to hit something?

Probably no more than what he did in the shower erased any of his other desires.

How many more years until he was Pete's age? Could he live the thirty-five years he was sure it would take before he stopped thinking about sex to such an extent? Then he remembered how in the car, when holding Maia, he'd been able to think beyond his desire.

He looked up at her and smiled. He was about to tell her that it had been nice, that he had liked driving her to Cumberland and back, but she spoke first.

"I shouldn't have showed you my arms," she said. "I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking..."

"No, no," he said, more loudly than he needed to, and Maia, in a panic, looked toward the kitchen, where Janet and Millie were doing dishes.

He lowered his voice, saying, "Maia, I should be sorry. I had no idea, and I—"

"It's called SI—self-injury," she said. "It's gross, I know."

Well, she had him there. Burning yourself with a cigarette was gross. It was also disturbing and—there was no getting around it—kind of fascinating. Why would anyone do it? Nine scars. Did she make them all at once one afternoon? Or over nine days in a row? How would you come up with such an idea?

"I don't want you to think of me like that," she said.

"I don't," he said. "I'd never think of you as gross, not even if you showed me a hundred scars."

"I used to cut the bottoms of my feet," she said. "I have twenty-seven little scars on them."

Well, that explained the socks in ninety-degree weather. Her feet didn't get cold; they held private information.

"You're not gross," he said, feeling sick, but also consumed with the desire to see. "You're just really strange."

She started to laugh, asking, "Really, really hugely strange or just, you know, strange?"

"I like strange," he said.

Leigh knew his words held more importance than their actual meaning, and he was grateful that she looked away first, making it easier to study his hands. The air in the dining room—previously just air—became eerily still. As if it were growing thick with all of his longings, shortcomings, dreams, and frustrations.

"I like really, really hugely strange," he added, hoping to bring her laugh back, as maybe that would make it easier for them to look at each other.

But, when she looked up, she smiled only slightly and said, "Lucky for you, then."

He nodded, enjoying the way her eyes and hair seemed to match the dining room's dark wood and its brass light fixtures.

"Lucky for me," he said.

~~~

He found some old athletic tape in one of his drawers, wrapped up his foot, and started running again. When the tape didn't erase all the pain, he asked Janet to help him find an orthopedist, made an appointment, and got a cortisone shot. That eased Leigh's discomfort somewhat, although the doctor did tell him to go slowly and to return for a follow-up visit in a month.

Leigh ran two or three miles before he swam. He did this every day, even though it meant he fell into bed as if he were dying on the nights he worked. It didn't matter. When he was awake, he was a hundred and sixty-seven pounds of twitchy energy. Every inch of him felt braced for something, as if his body, along with the country, had been put on Code Orange and was waiting to hear that it should move immediately to red.

~~~

On the following Saturday, Leigh drove Maia to the prison and then, without either of them planning it, he began to pick her up at the Metro and drive her (along with her bike, which was how she got to the Metro in the mornings) back to her house. Around Maia, he was calm. One afternoon, he fell asleep on the floor of her room, waking up with only seven minutes to get to work.

When he wasn't due at his job, he helped her in the garden, reasoning that it was just too hot for her to lug around a hose, a rake, and a bag of topsoil. If he could save her from burning calories needlessly, her eating could become less important. So he followed her around, pulling up weeds and clearing away debris.

"If everything grew the way the weeds do, I'd have an amazing garden," she said, sadly cutting back a bush that had failed to bloom.

Maia had started out knowing nothing except that she wanted to see pretty things in the morning. When she'd bought plants, she'd put them in the ground organized by color instead of by what needed shade or light. A lot of things died, and she moved others, but the basic scheme remained of orange flowers in one area, purple in another, and white around the base of all the trees.

"It looks pretty amazing now," he said. "My mom would love it."

The previous summer, Lillian and Pete had gone on a garden tour around the lake district in England.

"Well my mom's just happy that her shrink had one good idea," Maia said. "He was the one who said I should have a hobby. He told me to plant things, and so I did."

"Your mother sees a psychiatrist?"

"Oh, yeah," Maia said. "And until Josh started paying for me to see one, I saw my mother's."

"You see a psychiatrist," Leigh said, thinking that made more sense, and glad someone had thought of it.

Astra had seen one right after her parents got divorced because, as she put it, she "had a lot of rage." A boy Leigh knew from the soccer team still saw one because his father was worried about the way he choked under pressure, failing tests for which he had studied countless hours.