Carousel Court (7 page)

There's a small team of people shooting footage of a surfer. When they were first living together, Nick was showing her all this footage from documentaries and newsreels he most admired, from far-off places ravaged by war or natural disaster. “On the ground,” he would say. “In the middle of it,” he'd add. “Someone has to be there, go there, put the pieces together, and bring it to life. That's all I want to do. Be in the middle of it.” It could be a tsunami or some civil war or famine or disease-ravaged place; he ticked off a list of topics for pitches he'd already written and sent off to production companies in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles. The quiet certainty in his tone convinced Phoebe that it was realistic: He would be going overseas to make documentary films, and she would go, too, and their reality, their life together, would revolve around immunizations and efficient packing, checklists and emergency procedures, local militias and rogue fighters, moments of sheer terror—lawless states ravaged by civil unrest, the stench of human remains—all so Nick could capture it, bring the tragedy home, raw and unfiltered. And Nick and Phoebe would live to tell about it. She'd go with him. When she got pregnant, Phoebe simply added a nanny to the fantasy. They'd skip the dangerous trips but tag along for the others. When Nick traveled alone, Phoebe would immerse Jackson in French classes. She'd find them a cabin in Maine or the Shenandoahs where they could spend Christmas, chopping wood for the stove. But after Jackson was born, even a move to New Orleans or long weekends in the mountains felt beyond their reach. Worse, Nick seemed okay with that.

And Nick killed it, slowly, with purpose, Monday through Friday,
eight thirty to six, week after week. He was in Hartford instead of Havana, calling her to say the commuter flight was canceled and he was renting a car and driving home to Boston and could she record the Celtics game and reminding her that tomorrow was recycling day and to bring the cans down to the basement of the building.

He snapped at her once in Boston, before their new plan took shape. The ones who made a career of it, all those documentary filmmakers, were trust-fund kids, he hissed, staked by their parents. He was convinced, and Phoebe didn't argue, that the young filmmakers could afford to travel the world and shoot footage of disasters or soccer teams because, unlike Nick and Phoebe, they didn't have to earn money for a living. Options are limited, he said, when you have to work for a living.

• •

Her iPhone vibrates. She reads the text:

You didn't leave a message.

It's JW.

She doesn't respond. She called an hour ago, hung up after one ring.

She's at her car, brushing sand from the bottoms of her feet. Two surfers pass by with longboards, oblivious to her. A man with a boxer on a leash ignores her, studies his handheld. She's anonymous here.

I'm flattered that I'm still in your contacts
, she writes.

Top of the list and it's alphabetical

How's that?

AwesomePhoebe

What about Amanda?

Who?

Ana? April? Araceli??

Funny

Let me guess: Martha's Vineyard. Maine. Lisbon?

My ex's basement apartment. I have nowhere else to stay.

There's nowhere you can't afford to stay

It's a divorce thing. Complicated

Don't you have layoffs to recommend? Some lives to wreck?

;)

How were the Galapagos?

You still read my emails. Thought you tuned me out.

White noise.

The yoga instructor: breathtaking. Older woman, too. Like fifties and just stunning. And her grad school daughter . . . and two other women. Have you been to Sardinia?

She doesn't respond.

You sent me that SOS in June. And two months later I respond, you're thinking, Typical, right?

And another:
Are you ok? Do you still need me? You had me worried when you wrote that.

And another
: And yet . . . do you realize how hard it gets me to think about you needing me?

And one more:
Totally inappropriate but honest, right? Can never be too honest.

And a last message from him in the string:
Of course I don't expect a response. I never do. Your self-restraint is commendable. Can I take some credit?

Will try you again when I'm out there, which will be soon.

Days, not weeks.

She taps out a response:
Nearly
three months, not two. And you're not hiding out in a basement apartment. Who are you really with?

But she doesn't send it. Instead, she deletes it. She's sure he's somewhere else, with someone else, and not his wife or one of his ex-wives. She doesn't care who he's with. It doesn't matter. That's what she tells herself as she turns off her iPhone. Her neck is stiff. She rubs it until the skin burns.

7

T
he semiautomatic pistol Nick found in the uncovered toilet tank of a house they trashed out in Loma Linda had no rounds in it. He'll never load it, but he's glad he's got it. Despite the gun and Metzger and the floodlights and ADT, Nick and Phoebe stay awake late, leave most of the lights on inside until morning. It has nothing to do with the strange noises they hear, something metallic, scraping, from somewhere inside the house, as if it's alive, or the relentless moaning winds and anguished cries coming from the bone-dry hills that surround and seem to close in on them. He lies awake because he knows the fracture never healed between them. It's a matter of time before the nerve is struck.

He hung wind chimes their first week here, took them down because they kept clanging and getting tangled in the wind. Even with the heat and lack of rain, Nick takes pride in keeping the lawn thick and green. He applies all sorts of synthetics to beef up the turf, keep it lush. The three white chaises by the pool are arranged just so. He swims laps daily. He brings Jackson in with him. When he does, Phoebe warns him to please avoid the deep end. Rings from Phoebe's tumblers of her special-recipe mojitos dot the glass table. Jackson's
toys gather neatly around his playhouse, which is finally free from wasps after Nick sprayed it and hosed it down, yet again. Nick habitually circles the perimeter of the house with a flashlight and the unloaded pistol. The water in the pool glows; sharp ends of palm fronds scrape the windows. The dead ones are easily torn loose by the wind, end up floating on the clear water until Nick fishes them out. Cicadas clutch the screens on all the windows, land on the chaises, pelt the living room and kitchen windows. When Jackson was floating on his back in the pool yesterday, a cicada landed on his face. Before his son could react, Nick carefully plucked it from his forehead and crushed it on the poolside concrete.

He checks entry points and blind spots. He finds a living room window unlocked and secures it; one of the ten motion-sensor bulbs is out, so he climbs a ladder two stories and changes it. He scales the fence separating their property from the young neighbor, whose backyard smolders from a recent fire he set: computer monitors, athletic equipment, garbage, end tables. All the lights are on and music plays from inside the house. It will be like this well into the night, and Metzger will call the police, but they won't come or will arrive hours too late. Metzger cursed them out once: “This isn't goddamn Compton! Taxpayers live here.” Nick has an eye on the neighbor and Metzger, too, like everything else. He misses nothing.

8

D
id you feed him?” Nick asks Phoebe. There's no response. “Did he eat?” She's facedown on the sectional, passed out again. The house is quiet and cool. She's bathed in seven-thirty twilight that floods the living room on a hot Thursday in August. Nothing's changed since June: a ten-hour day for Phoebe spent in the car means a Klonopin blackout at night.

Summer is almost over, but it's now clear the heat is here to stay. It's the seventh consecutive day over ninety-five degrees. The forecasts warn of no break from the dry, hot pattern. Wildfire and high-wind warnings every day. Nick's been working since nine this morning on a house in North Hollywood after two consecutive night shifts. She can't hear him, and he knows it but asks again: “Did he eat?”
He
being Jackson, who is slouched against Phoebe's ass, his pacifier dangling from dry lips, his diaper bulging, heavy with urine. “Did he eat?”

The television is on, the sound muted. The loop of On Demand coming attractions is the sign that they were watching Jackson's shows. Nick could figure out whether or not his son had dinner with a simple check of the kitchen sink for the plastic cow dishes, empty jars of little meats, pasta twists. But that's not the point. Nick shouldn't
have to play detective. He drops to his knees, inches from her face. “Did he eat?”

Nothing. Maybe she's trying to sleep through it all—the night, the summer, this season of their lives together. It's no accident that she's up before the sun, gone before Nick is home or awake, and more often than not, passed out before sundown.

He could scoop her up, carry her to the Subaru, strap her in the passenger seat, and drive her up the coast to Monterey Bay. A bed-and-breakfast. He'd check her in. She'd wake up and ask first about Jackson—where is he, is he okay?—and Nick would tell her he's fine, he's with the Vietnamese supernanny, eating sticky rice and broccoli. Then she'd look around and see the huge trees and gray skies and swatches of blue where they were thinning and ask where they were.

But Phoebe is not Nick's immediate concern. She's passed out, high on Klonopin and Effexor, Ativan and whatever else. She should be someone's priority, just not Nick's, not now. Jackson is the one who needs to be put to bed the same way, at the same time, every night.

“It's not even eight,” Nick is saying to himself. “This is why he's always tired. His whole rhythm's messed up.” He picks up his soggy son, turns off the television. “Routine. Every night. It's not fair to him, Phoebe.” These conversations are so much easier when she's passed out. He actually prefers talking to her when she's blacked out. He can tell the truth. Nick wonders what isn't easier when she's passed out. It's a win-win. Except for Jackson. When he's changed, cleaned up, a fresh dry diaper and pacifier dipped in apple juice slipped in and the night-light and Mozart turned on softly, Nick returns to Phoebe's side and asks again, “Did he eat?” until she jolts awake, confused, sitting up in the dark, Nick still asking the question not for the answer but to make the point, quietly, in the darkness: She is failing her son.

9

D
rop-off takes longer than it should. Jackson is a mess. As usual, he is the first child here, along with one employee, a heavy hippie chick from Altadena who wears thick red glasses and a scoop-neck T-shirt that is too small. Jackson is bawling, red-faced. The girl sits down, tries to soothe him, rocks him, sings into his ear a song Phoebe doesn't know. But he wriggles free and falls to the carpeted floor, runs to the door, and slaps it over and over, his silent screaming the last image Phoebe has as she leaves the building.

She fires off a text to Nick:

Yes the nanny would be nice, right? You'd think by this point, right? I know, right, I'm sounding like a raving bitch.

His reply is instantaneous and catches her off guard, though it shouldn't.

Brilliant Phoebe. Spot-on framing of the situation. OUR situation.

Whatever

Remember, babe: every page of the mortgage has TWO signatures on it. But facts and shared responsibility aside: just what IN THE FUCK do you think I'm doing
?

• •

Nick was impressed that Phoebe had achieved a starting salary twice her age at twenty-four with full benefits straight out of BU. She assisted a humorless woman with short blond hair and halitosis, but that wasn't the point. The associate analyst position she secured with a leading financial services firm would look solid when she applied to business school, especially if she'd found a mentor. When she started at the firm, she was no different from the other new hires without MBAs: always borrowed, assigned short- and long-term projects, pulled off, put back on, a pawn in a larger chess match between managers, directors, and partners. There were unspoken endurance contests among the new hires: who arrived first, who left last, who came in on the weekend, who spent the most time with the senior analysts, whose phone vibrated the most, who was never found at a desk after being pulled into a meeting, who made any impression at all on a partner. And the crown jewel of achievement: who got a turn with the lead partner, JW.

Laughter was rare in the firm, was rare for JW. But Phoebe made him laugh. When he wasn't on calls or in meetings, he was walking around his cool, bright office with his shoes off. Somehow Phoebe found herself on his soft leather couch, taking notes on her laptop, next to a pair of blades, gloves, two white helmets, pads, and three hockey sticks. He had games on Thursday nights.

“You look better with makeup,” she said. He'd been on CNBC that week and she'd watched. He'd invited her to come. She'd laughed and lied and told him she had Bruins tickets.

He asked her how she slipped through the cracks and ended up down in the pits with Jane. He said he was going to look into doing something about that. Maybe he'd bring her on staff, his staff, make her an analyst. “Instead of floating around unclaimed,” he said.

“So do it,” Phoebe shot back, which made him smile.

“Come watch me play.”

“No.”

• •

The next week, Thursday, before his hockey game, he summoned her to his office. It was the third consecutive afternoon he'd called her in. She brought her laptop, was taking a seat on the couch, when he motioned her over to him in the center of the room.