After the Moment (12 page)

Which wasn't that surprising, as one of the things Leigh most admired in Astra was how closely she had guarded her body before letting him near it. He remembered that Elise Welsh, who had gone to rehab in order to eat, had had an older sister rumored to have slept with half the senior class. Leigh couldn't remember anything else about her, not even her name.

"It was the first promise I had to make to my shrink, even more than the eating," Maia said. "Because they don't want to set you up to fail with food promises."

She was chewing absentmindedly on the cuticle of her left thumb, and, as he had done several times before, he moved her hand away from her mouth. She had told both him and Millie to help her break the habit. Leigh, who chewed on the inside of his mouth when he was nervous, always felt a little hypocritical when doing this, but she had asked.

"I actually had to sign a piece of paper that I wouldn't act out sexually," Maia said, with a laugh. "Like a contract. I mean, you'd think it was worse than burning yourself."

It occurred to him that she brought up her scars whenever she thought they were getting too close. That she used them as a way of keeping him from ever wanting to touch her. Was she afraid of him—of them together—turning into one of those experiences that had been, for her, really bad?

He thought he understood now what Astra had meant when she'd told him that she was afraid of sleeping with someone who might be mean to her. At the time, Leigh had thought Astra simply didn't realize how unbelievably grateful anyone would be just to have a chance with her.

"Maia," he said, to keep his silence from growing into anything she might take the wrong way.

"It's okay, it really is," she said. "You've been so great. And I know you like me as much as you can."

That he liked her far more than he should was closer to the truth, and the first clear thought Leigh had had since Astra's name had been mentioned.

"Anyway, I want you to know that you're more important to me than any of those other times," she said. "That's really why I came out tonight. I wanted to tell you thanks. For making that possible."

He wouldn't, he swore to himself, say anything like
You're welcome.
He was incapable of speaking anyway.

"You've been better than a garden," she said, getting out of the car.

He watched her walk into the house, just as he had back in March when he'd walked her home. Only this time he knew that the something else he wanted to say—
We could do this,
or,
You matter to me
—hadn't found words either of them could believe.

Pete Tahoe had indeed asked Lillian to live with him, and she, after asking for a month to think it over, said yes. She did not talk to Leigh before making her decision because, as she wrote in an e-mail,
A child should never be put in the position of having to grant or deny permission for his mother's happiness.

Leigh was as irritated at her use of the word
child,
as he was grateful to Pete for making his mother happy. Lillian said that she would sublet the apartment for a year, just in case. Pete had offered to put all of Leigh's things (books he'd left behind, soccer trophies, bed, and shelves) into a spare room at the house in Maine.

Lillian moved up to Maine in the middle of August. She wanted Leigh to come to New York on the Thursday before Labor Day so they could load up Pete's Jeep and drive to Maine. The people she was subletting the apartment to were moving in on Labor Day itself. Everything needed to be cleared out by then.

Pete offered to pay for Leigh's airline ticket back down to Maryland, but Clayton chose to get very offended at the idea.

After listening to his parents try to hammer out travel plans, Leigh announced that he would drive himself to New York, leave the car in a garage there, drive to Maine in the Jeep with Lillian and Pete, and then pay his own way back from Maine to New York. This idea only succeeded in uniting Lillian and Clayton, who were dead set against it, saying he didn't have enough driving experience.

"I'm not asking you," Leigh told Clayton. "I'm telling you, so you and Mom can stop trying to arrange things as if I were five."

"No one thinks you're five," Clayton said. "And while you are clearly a good driver and a very responsible person, your mother and I think you shouldn't make your first long trip alone."

"Driving to New York takes only two more hours than driving to the prison," Leigh said, refusing to agree with his parents just because of a few compliments.

"We'd really rather you didn't," Clayton said.

"So noted," Leigh said.

He actually didn't think his parents were being all that horrible. He should just let them split the plane fare, but he couldn't bring himself to be that reasonable. His head ached, and while he wanted to put it down to the glare of the sun, or Millie's incessant playing of the song she had on repeat ("Something is wrong here/I don't belong here"), he suspected he was just furious. For the sake of it.

~~~

It was good to be home, however briefly. The air was hot, wet, and heavy, just like in Calvert Park, but here, with the swollen asphalt and soaring concrete buildings, it seemed more fitting. He plastered over the holes in the apartment walls left by picture hooks and nails. The almost-empty rooms were small and probably ugly, but it was the one physical place he loved most in the world.

On the drive up to Maine, Leigh had a hideous case of car envy. The Jeep, unlike his Camry, did not deliver every bump and jostle of the road right into your bones. It was a perfect ride, and he wondered if he should make some decisions about his future based on money. Perhaps it would be smart to go to law school like his father had. Money would lead to things like Jeeps, and away from things like shabby apartments, which no matter how well loved, were still small and ugly.

Leigh knew now that his desire for wealth back then had simply been a wish to have a clear idea—any idea—of what his future might bring. But as the car crossed into Maine he'd been aware only that entirely too much loomed before him like buildings shrouded in fog.

In fact, Pete's house, which Leigh had found so amazing in May, struck him that weekend as a symbol of all the things he might never achieve. Lillian commented several times that Leigh seemed out of sorts. She wanted to know if things were going badly with Clayton.

"Your father can be unbelievably clueless," she said.

"Except when he's not," Leigh said, thinking of Clayton's finding the way to get Maia to eat.

"Yes," Lillian said, that one word filled with doubt.

"Dad's fine," Leigh said.

"Well, I do think he has your best interests at heart," she said, "but you seem ... not yourself, exactly."

"I'm the same as ever," he told her, not thinking that was so great, but not wanting to have changed either.

"No," Lillian said. "You're different. Not you, but—"

"Jesus, let it go."

And he stomped off to one of the house's three porches to finish the book on Millie's summer list. He really needed to be reading
Lord Jim,
which was required for Honors English. It hadn't been on the list of suggested reading but was instead a book about which Leigh would need to produce an essay during the first week of school. Leigh had read only the introduction and maybe the first seventy pages. He could already tell that it would need hours of his undivided attention to fully grasp what was being said underneath the dense, carefully constructed arrangement of words.

Reading lasted about twenty minutes before Pete came out, carrying two beers. He sat down and offered one to Leigh before taking a swallow of his.

"Thank you," Leigh said, not willing to be rude no matter how much he wanted to be left alone.

"Your mother thinks you're having trouble with our new living arrangement," Pete said, "but I don't think that's it."

Leigh was tempted to tell Pete that his mother was being self-important, but instead he stammered out something about being so grateful that his mother was happy. It wasn't actually a thank-you to Pete for being in love with his mother, because that would be pompous and weird, but it was, right then, the best Leigh could do.

"I dimly remember being seventeen," Pete said. "And if I'm not mistaken, you have all the signs of girl trouble."

"I do not have girl trouble," Leigh said in what he hoped was a pleasant voice, but prepared to do anything to keep Pete from giving him any version of the sex talk.

It's not that they were so terrible. Yes, Clayton had mortified them both when Leigh was fifteen, stammering around about respect, integrity, and pleasure. But Lillian had done a much better job when Leigh really needed it—at the age of eleven. She had used the clearest possible language so that no doubt remained about where babies came from or how every part of both bodies worked.

What Leigh mostly remembered was Lillian saying that sex had the power to start a life, end a life, and to change one. The life that changed most dramatically when things went wrong, his mother said, was a girl's, and she hoped that Leigh would keep that in mind.

It always amazed him that he ever wanted to have sex after such a comment, but to be fair, Lillian had added that when things went right, sex was both mysterious and beautiful.

"Like a Titian painting," she said, trying to be helpful, but making both of them laugh, as it sounded so peculiar.

And, even now, they would sometimes, if sex came up in conversation, refer to it as
the Titian thing.
Which was funny enough, and proof that talking about sex with a grownup, even one intent on giving advice, need not be a disaster. In spite of that, Leigh did not want to think or talk about girls. Especially not about girls and sex, which was, he guessed, what Pete meant by girl trouble. In the back of his mind, like passing traffic on a freeway, was the sound of Maia's voice saying,
In my experience guys want things, and I don't do that now. Anymore, that is.

And behind that low noise were his own questions about how he would ever be able to afford offering a home to a girl—a woman—i n the way Pete had to Lillian. In the way even Clayton, with all of his shortcomings, had given a home to Janet. And not just to Janet, but to Millie, who'd been a small child at the time, and not, as Leigh currently was, a year away from leaving home. Home being some combination of Clayton's house, Pete's huge house, and the small apartment in New York, sublet out to strangers.

"I do not have girl trouble," Leigh said again. "Everything is fine with Astra. She's in Vermont, visiting her father. She swims in a lake every day. It's as happy as Astra gets."

It wasn't, in fact, true. Leigh recalled how, before she insisted on e-mail only, her voice on the phone sounded strained, as if her vocal cords were exhausted. Astra wasn't happy, and he didn't think they should still be dating, but Leigh didn't think any of this fell under the description of
girl trouble.

"I don't think it's Astra," Pete said. "Astra has always struck me as the kind of girl who would dump any guy who caused her a problem."

Leigh laughed for the first time in what felt like months.

"Yeah, I guess."

"I'm thinking it's that girl I met," Pete said. "The friend of Millie's. What was her name—Myra? Maria?"

"Maia," Leigh said, looking at Pete with newfound respect while feeling something like dread.

"Right," Pete said. "Right."

They both looked out at the river where the tide was starting to go out. The ducks and seagulls were making their last forays underwater for food.

"How'd you know?" Leigh asked.

Because, yes, it was Maia. Of course it was. He had girl trouble and she was it.

"I've got eyes," Pete said. "That's a beautiful girl. A beautiful girl screaming trouble. I doubt there's a man alive who could resist that at seventeen."

It made Leigh feel that what was waiting for him, should he ever reach Pete's age of fifty-two, was membership in a club. One full of men who understood how often danger and desire were the same but who had figured out how to make them diverge. Pete made it sound like Leigh's "girl trouble" with Maia wasn't crazy but was instead nothing less than an unavoidable part in the process of becoming a club member.

"I really like her," Leigh said, amazed at how hard it was to say aloud.

"Yeah," Pete said. "Of course you do."

"She's got a few problems," Leigh said, not sure where to start.

The contract? That seemed so beside the point. He didn't need to sleep with her. He needed to keep things away from her. No. He needed to keep Maia away from what she could do to herself with food or germs. Not to mention cigarettes.

"Her father's in prison," Pete said. "A few problems are to be expected."

"Stepfather," Leigh said, thinking of Ned Morland's postcards.

"Well, then, all the more reason," Pete said. "But, look, I don't think there's a person worth knowing who doesn't come with problems."

"I haven't broken up with Astra," Leigh said, when what he meant was
I have no reason to break up with Astra. Astra has done nothing to deserve that. What kind of moron breaks up with Astra Grein for Maia Morland?

Pete didn't say anything for a little bit, as if he were listening hard, waiting for Leigh's silent question to become audible.

"I'm
not
going to give you unsolicited advice, although, when it comes to women," Pete said, finally, "I've made many more mistakes than you have, so my advice is probably not worthless."

No advice is worthless,
Leigh thought. Especially about women. Who didn't need advice when it came to coping with them?

"You could just take it or leave it," Pete said. "Up to you."

Leigh pictured Pete's wife packing up and Pete coming home, not noticing that his wife was gone. Okay, so maybe he had this huge house and a Jeep, but that would never ever happen to Leigh. If nothing else, wouldn't the closet tip you off? He realized that Pete was waiting for his permission before giving this advice, and so Leigh nodded, saying, "Yeah, of course."