Days of Awe (27 page)

“Oh, but I don't…this isn't that bad!” I'm trying to quickly gauge the depth and truth of the connection between Cal and this woman, trying to decide if I could tolerate being the mortified reject in the backseat, witness to their giddy rain-drenched affection. I'm thinking that risking my life walking through tree-lined streets in a thunderstorm might just be preferable, when another flash of lightning fizzes through the sky, followed by another, and then another, and then a triple-strength crack of thunder as loud as a bomb.

“You're right!” Cal says. “It's not that bad.”

His ladylove extends her hand to me with a little sigh. “We haven't been formally introduced,” she says mildly, “although Cal has told me about you. I'm Joy Peterson.”

Joy. I've never met a happy Joy. She's wearing a breezy, light green cotton shirt and a black skirt. There's a delicate gold chain around her neck with a tiny oval pendant that rests in the dip of her clavicle, like a little cat's tongue. She's sexy in a precise, fine-boned way that makes me feel like an elephant.

She squeezes my hand. Joy Peterson has a surprisingly solid grip and a quick release. She didn't speak during the meeting, but I imagine her as the recently divorced mother of a pair of rowdy eight-year-old twin boys, and that her handshake is a reflection of her parenting style: firm, no-nonsense, a little bit heroic.
Mason, Trevor, you boys go to your rooms right now! Do I sound like I'm kidding?

We wait a few awkward moments until it's clear that we've reached the scientific limit of our comfort level with each other here in the entryway, and then we make a dash for the car. We are, of course, soaking wet by the time we scramble in, and very quickly the chemical-floral-doggish scent of wet hair fills Cal's little Prius. Joy, in the front seat, pats her head, and then turns around to me and gives me the tightest smile in the history of smiles, a very slight stretching of her lips across her teeth.

“Thank you for this,” I say to her, trying for a sisterly bond:
Thank you for the ride, but you and I both know what I really mean; thank you for letting me interrupt your date; Cal and I have a little history, sure, but don't worry, I'll step out of your way; he's yours now, this hunky older fella.

But Joy just smooths her hair again and turns back toward the front of the car. “Don't thank me,” she mutters.

It's loud in the car, but I'm pretty sure I hear Cal chuckle to himself, unable to mask his delight with the situation—two women in his car, younger than he is by decades, and are we vying for his affection? Clearly we are. It strikes me for the first time since I met him, and with the mighty force of the previously ignored obvious, that Cal is a player. My hair drips in my eyes, and my shirt is damp against my body. And something else: a nervous quickening; desire, for once without scrutiny. That long-dormant dragon suddenly twitching its spiny tail.

The rain hammers the Prius, and the thunder is an almost-constant drumbeat. The streets are dark and mostly deserted. We hydroplane through an enormous puddle, and Joy lets out a high chirp of fear. Cal is driving west, away from my house. I'm quiet in the backseat, waiting.

“Oh,” Joy says, after a few minutes. “Oh, you're dropping me off first?” The disappointment in her voice is like a missed note in a familiar song. She recovers quickly, like a professional. “Yes, that's fine. Good idea. Thank you, Cal. I do need to get home.” From behind, I see her raise her hands to her throat. She's adjusting the clasp of her necklace, recentering the pendant.

After ten more minutes he pulls into the steep driveway of a small blue house on a busy street, across from a shopping area: an empty video store with a
FOR LEASE
sign in the window; Lucky Shrimp, a Chinese takeout place; and Fashion 4ward, a down-market women's clothing store. Joy has her hand on the door handle before the car has even stopped moving.

“Hang on,” Cal says. “Wait.” He gets out quickly and jogs around to the passenger side with an umbrella that he seems to have procured from thin air. He opens it, and Joy steps out of the car and under the umbrella with an economy of moves, balletically. She tilts away from him as they walk to her front door, arranging as much physical space between them as she can. The sky is brightening behind her little blue house. The rain still thrums on the car's roof, but it sounds less menacing now, not an artillery, just a cloudburst.

I watch as they pause at her front door. Cal is getting wet, holding the umbrella above Joy's head as she searches in her bag. I'm thirty feet away in the cheap seats, but I can see the drama play out between them: Cal says something; Joy shrugs. Cal says something else, gestures with his free hand. Joy nods, slings her bag over her shoulder and turns away, stabs her key into the door, turns halfway back to Cal.

And then she's inside her house, and after that who knows: maybe her grubby twin boys rush to her for hugs, or the babysitter greets her with apologies for the mess, or her little sister, who is visiting from Indianapolis, says hello from the couch where she has just started watching
The Notebook,
and how about she starts it over so they can watch the whole thing together? Or nobody is home, because nobody else lives there, and Joy slips off her wet shoes and turns on the light and breathes in the lonely quiet and feels a tiny pinprick of grief over this one small lost possibility.

Or maybe none of those things. It's impossible to guess.

Cal is quiet as we pull out of Joy's driveway and head back toward my neighborhood, and I'm still in the backseat, which suddenly and again feels unbearably awkward, so I say, “Are we there yet? I'm bored! Are we there yet?”

“Don't make me turn this car around,” Cal says sternly, and here we are, pretending that this man who is almost old enough to be my father is my father. Cal turns onto a quiet side street and pulls over. “Would you please sit in front with me?” he says.

“Joy seems nice,” I say, next to him now. “Is she a Turk?”

“Worse,” Cal says. “Much worse. I believe she's a Swede.”

“Oh, boy,” I say. “I knew a Swede once.
Knew,
if you know what I'm saying.” Now that we're alone in the car, it's more true that we haven't seen each other in two months.

“She is a lovely person,” Cal says. We're stopped at a red light, five minutes from my house. The rain is down to a drizzle, the sky smudgy and pinkish, as if it's embarrassed by its recent display. “I told her that, at her door. I said, ‘You are a lovely person,' and then she just went inside.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Isabel,” he says. “Do you remember at the first support group meeting when Jillian suggested we keep a pen and a notebook by our beds, and every morning, before the day starts, write down one thing we're looking forward to that day, and one thing we're apprehensive about?”

“Uh, no. But I haven't been paying the best attention at these meetings.”

“Well, I've found it to be a useful exercise,” he says. “Therapeutic, really. And every Thursday morning for the past two months I've written, ‘Seeing Isabel.' ” He's looking straight ahead. I can't tell what this admission has cost him, if it's cost him anything.

“Wait, is that under the ‘looking forward to' column, or the ‘apprehensive about'?”

“ ‘Looking forward to,' ” he says, “definitely. At least for the past few weeks.”

We're almost at my house. Cal glances at me quickly: his face kind, his green eyes familiar now.

I feel the loss of Chris all over my body. It announces itself in the strangest ways: a weight in my knees, a twinge in my right cheek, an ache in the night. I feel it now, liquid, changeable. Is this the secret of human existence, the biology of loneliness?

We're in my driveway, we're inside the house, in the dim living room, kissing frantically.

He runs a hand through my still-damp hair, rests his palm on the back of my neck, whispers something in my ear that I can't quite make out.

I take his hand and lead him upstairs.

I lead Cal to the bedroom that Chris and I shared, and in this way it becomes mine, transformed.

It's a shock of nerves, embarrassed thrill, and it is also the saddest story I've ever heard. It sounds like this: goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

My deepest gratitude to Jennifer Jackson and Julie Barer for brilliant feedback, endless patience, and calm waters. I am so lucky to have you two. Sincere appreciation to my wise and insightful friends and colleagues: Carolyn Crooke, Elizabeth Larsen, Jill Hekman, Korinthia Klein, Annie Rajurkar, Liam Callanan, Jon Olson, and Christi Clancy. A big thank you to Emma Gillette for Charm School. Thanks to Sue Betz for eagle-eyed copyediting. I am indebted to my parents, Ann and Jordan Fox, for a lifetime of confidence, encouragement, and leaps of faith. And my whole heart is full of gratitude to Andrew Kincaid for two decades of love and support. Thank you doesn't even begin to cover it.

Lauren Fox is the author of the novels
Still Life with Husband
and
Friends Like Us.
She earned her MFA from the University of Minnesota, and her work has appeared in numerous publications including
The New York Times, Marie Claire, Parenting, Psychology Today, The Rumpus,
and
Salon.
She lives in Milwaukee with her husband and two daughters.

www.laurenfoxwriter.com

The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group's discussion of
Days of Awe,
the raw, achingly funny new novel by acclaimed author Lauren Fox.