Modern Lovers (30 page)

A
nd on the other end, on the train platform in Montauk, Elizabeth pulled her straw hat over her face and listened to her husband talk. In some ways, it was both better and worse than she imagined. Andrew hadn't slept with any of the mostly nude young women at the juice emporium. He hadn't slept with the guy with the beard, which had crossed her mind briefly, and which had bothered her somewhat less, as an idea, than the nude young women. Andrew told her about the money, which stung, though she certainly didn't think of it as
her
money, or even
their
money, and so she was willing to chalk even that up to Andrew's stupidity and/or open-mindedness, one of which she felt pretty good about, in general.

In a funny way, everything that Andrew was saying made Elizabeth think that a long marriage truly was possible, in part because it only ever
seemed
like they'd told you all their secrets. There were always more.

“Who did I marry?” Elizabeth asked, out loud, amazed. The train was scheduled to arrive in five minutes. Zoe and Jane had dropped her off at the station together. They'd gone swimming that morning, and the tips of Elizabeth's hair were still damp on her shoulders, slightly crunchy with salt and sand. Her headache hadn't gone
away, but it was getting better. They were all getting better, at least some of the time.

“Listen,” Elizabeth said. “The train is about to come. I'll be home in a few hours. Be there, okay? I want to really talk to you.”

“Of course,” Andrew said.

“When we were kids, I almost kissed Zoe once. And we just talked about it for the first time.” She wanted him to know that he wasn't the only one who hadn't opened all his doors.

“When?” Andrew asked.

“At school. When we were young. When we were children. Just like you. I mean, almost. I didn't actually do anything. But I know, Andrew, I know that we were children then. We were Harry's age, more or less. Can you imagine?” What Elizabeth couldn't imagine, not really, was that all the years in between had actually happened to her, and to Andrew, and to all their friends. That they had passed through those years unscathed, escaping with their lives and one another. It seemed mathematically unreasonable, to think that they were all still standing. Except for Lydia. Lydia was doing something else entirely—not standing, maybe, but simulated, reproduced. In certain ways, Lydia would outlive them all.

There was a little fluttering in her stomach, exactly the feeling that she'd had when she and Andrew decided to get married. Nerves, or excitement. The unknown. The train was pulling in to the station, and a new crop of drunken louts poured out. Elizabeth tucked herself as much out of the way as she could without getting swept along. Life swept you along enough—she planted her feet and sharpened her elbows.

“I'll see you soon,” she said. “I miss you. I hate you and I miss you.” Elizabeth was talking to the angry boy who'd ordered her the scrambled eggs from the diner near his parents' house. He still didn't know better. She could help, or not. It was all up to her. Elizabeth
took off her hat and fanned it in front of her face. “I will be calm calm calm,” she sang, at full volume. The kids looked at her like she was crazy, and she said louder, “I will be calm calm calm!” When it was time to board the train, Elizabeth took a window seat and held her notebook in her lap and didn't stop writing until she was home.

J
ane came back from Gosman's Dock with their evening's lobsters, either Minnie and Mickey, or Fred and Ginger, Jane couldn't decide. She found Zoe on the porch, hunched over a notebook.

“Are you working on your diary for Dr. Amelia?”

“Sort of. Come here.” Zoe patted the chair next to her, and after Jane put the lobsters in the fridge to chill them before the ritual murder, she sat down and looked at what Zoe had been working on.

Zoe flattened her hands over her notebook. “Listen,” she said, her voice low and even. “Here's what I think. Hyacinth will be back up and running soon, which is great, but I think it's time for something new. I think we need a change.”

“Shit,” Jane said. “Shit! I really thought that things were getting so much better, Zo! How do you not see it? I know my temper isn't great, and I know that I'm moody, and that I haven't been to the gym in ten years, but come on! How do you not see that we are good?” Jane could feel her heart rate skyrocketing. “I love you. Don't leave me. I will do anything.”

Zoe smiled and moved her hands. Hidden underneath them was a drawing of a storefront. There were windows all along the street, like at Hyacinth, but with small round tables facing out. Above the door, the sign read
HOT + SWEET,
with a drawing of a pretzel. “It doesn't
have to be a pretzel,” Zoe said. “I just like the shape. It could be a croissant. Or a muffin, maybe. No, I don't like the way muffins look. But it could be a croissant.”

“What is this?” Jane turned the page and saw that there was more. More drawings, more notes. “Ditmas Park's First Gourmet Bakery.” A list of their suppliers, some menus.

“We make everything. You make everything. I already know what light fixtures we should have. This kid out in L.A. makes these lamps that look like mod octopuses. . . .” She was still talking when Jane stopped her with a kiss. Zoe was laughing, and they were kissing, and then Jane was laughing, too.

“You scared me,” Jane said. She shook her head. “Don't scare me like that.”

Zoe took her wife's face in her hands. “Never again. Now, tell me, what do you think?”

“Hot and Sweet,” Jane said. “I love it.”

“Good,” Zoe said. “Because Elizabeth thinks she has a place. You know where the hair salon is, with the yellow awning? Before that, like maybe ten years ago, it was a tiny little Dominican coffee shop? Right across from the fire station?”

Jane closed her eyes. “With the patio. We could have outdoor seating on the side.”

“Exactly.” Zoe reached over and slid her arms around Jane's waist, folding herself onto Jane's lap. “A new project. A new baby.”

“A new baby made out of butter.”

“Best kind,” Zoe said, nuzzling in as close as she could, and then even closer.

T
he office was just as Zoe had described—nicely messy, with stacks of books on the floor beside the bookshelves. Elizabeth and Andrew shuffled in awkwardly and sat down next to each other on a well-worn tufted couch.

“So,” Dr. Amelia said, “what brings you here? Elizabeth, we spoke on the phone briefly, but I always like to start out couples that way, so that we can all be on the same page. In the same boat. On the same team.” She nodded at both of them, her lips pursed with anticipation. The appointment had been a gift—Jane and Zoe were skipping their session and sent Elizabeth and Andrew instead. It wasn't a present you could give to everyone, but there you were.

“Well, I, um,” Andrew began. “I think I've been feeling a bit lost, professionally, for, um, for some time.” He paused. “I think that's where this started.”

“Really?” Elizabeth said, her head rearing back. “I think this started when we were about nineteen years old, don't you?” Ever since leaving Montauk, Elizabeth had slowly been feeling layers of her anxiety flake off, like a snake's old skin. Bits and pieces dropped off all the time—Harry having sex, Harry having sex in public, her first gray hair, the fact that her boss sometimes still called her Emily, the way Lydia looked at her a million years ago, the way fake Lydia looked at
her now, the way she'd always been worried about how Andrew was feeling. Dr. Amelia and Andrew were both looking at her with wide eyes, and Elizabeth realized she was talking.

“And then I also think we should talk about how you basically just joined a cult by accident because you need friends, and a job, and a vocation, which I know isn't easy to come by—I mean, I'm a real-estate agent, which isn't exactly something children dream about becoming, you know?” She was panting slightly, but it felt good, like she'd just run around the block. Elizabeth wanted to run. On the train home, she'd written three songs, and she was pretty sure that at least two of them were as good as “Mistress of Myself.” She wanted to play them for Andrew, but she also wanted to make a demo and send them to Merge and Sub Pop and Touch & Go and say,
Hey! Here I am! I've been here all the while!
She knew some of the right people, at least to start. She just needed to figure out which direction to go. It was exciting, almost, like having a fever so high that you thought you were on another planet. “I think I need a break, maybe. Like a few months. I think I need to travel by myself for a little bit.” Elizabeth rubbed her hands on her thighs. “Maybe rent a house somewhere, record some music, just take some time.”

“Okayyy,” Dr. Amelia said. “Let's start there. Andrew? Jump on in here, the water's fine.”

“The water is definitely
not
fine,” Elizabeth said. She threw her head back and laughed. “The water is not fine.”

“Come on, Lizzy,” Andrew said. “We were totally cool a few minutes ago, weren't we?”

Elizabeth looked at her husband. There were so many pieces of advice she'd heard over the years: not to marry someone she wouldn't want to be divorced from, not to marry someone she wouldn't want to be, not to marry someone who didn't treat her as an equal if not a superior being, not to marry someone for sex, to marry for sex, to marry for friendship, not to marry for companionship. They'd been
together for so long that Elizabeth didn't know which of those rules she'd followed—she certainly hadn't known when they got married. Those guidelines were all for people like Ruby and Harry, city kids who probably wouldn't get married until they were thirty and wouldn't have kids until they were thirty-five. Somehow, though they hadn't meant to, she and Andrew had behaved like they lived in the 1950s, rushing into adulthood with no sense of themselves as individuals.

Dr. Amelia stuck the tip of her pen into the hollow of her cheek, leaving a small blue polka dot. “What do you think about that, Elizabeth? Are you cool?”

The air-conditioning clicked on, sending a sudden blast of freezing cold air onto Elizabeth's right side. Andrew gave an involuntary shake, and she saw a path of goose bumps pop up on his bare forearms.

“I don't think we know the answer to that yet, Dr. Amelia,” she said. She tugged a pillow from behind her back and laid it on her lap. “I think we're really just getting started here.”

Andrew had the strangest look on his face—partly a grimace, and partly a grin, like he couldn't tell his lips what to do and so they were making their own suggestions.

“You know what, though?” Elizabeth said. “This just occurred to me. I actually don't think it's all your fault what's happening here.”

“That's good, sharing the responsibility,” Dr. Amelia said.

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “
Yes.
It's also clearly my fault for not losing my mind ten years ago,” she said. “Or twenty. If I'd been more wild, more willing to experiment and crash and burn and fail, then I don't think we'd be here right now. We might not be here at all.”

“What do you mean? That we'd be dead?” Andrew, the poor dear, looked so confused that Elizabeth wanted to sit him in the corner with a dunce cap.

“No, not dead. Just not married. I'm not saying that I want that. Maybe I want that, I'm not sure yet. But I do think that we're both so static—and that's why we're sitting here.”

“This is such a good session already,” Dr. Amelia said. “I'm really impressed.”

Elizabeth beamed. “Thank you,” she said. “No one's complimented me for what feels like a really long time.” She turned to Andrew, whose face had turned pale. “You can start there, if you like.”

Andrew swallowed. “I will.”

“Now would be a great time, Andrew,” Dr. Amelia said. “Why don't you tell your wife what you think she's great at? It can be something big or small, doesn't matter.”

Andrew looked down at his hands and knocked his thumbs together. The room was silent. “You're a great songwriter,” he said. “Truly great.”

“Thank you,” Elizabeth said.

“And you're an incredible mother. Harry adores you.”

“Thank you,” Elizabeth said.

“That's a great start,” Dr. Amelia said. “Elizabeth?”

“Hmm?” She looked up.

“Anything you'd like to compliment Andrew for?”

“Maybe in a little while, but I'd really like Andrew to keep going, for now, if that's all right.” She crossed her arms and waited.

O
nce Ruby decided she was going, the plans came together fast. She would fly into San Diego on the last day of August, and fly out of Loreto, Mexico, three months later. The program was for people over seventeen, offered college credit and provided all the equipment. After Mexico, she was considering doing a program in South America, but it was mostly hiking, and she wasn't sure. Harry was helping her pack. Ruby's flight was in two days.

The proposal hadn't gone precisely the way he'd hoped—Ruby had slipped the ring onto her middle finger and said “No,” clear as day, but he understood. They were too young. He still had a year of high school left. No one got engaged in high school, not really. He was glad she'd kept the ring.

It was late in the afternoon. Ruby's mothers and his mom were at the new space—they couldn't stop talking about it, the three of them, cackling like witches about doughnuts and jam. It was cool, Harry thought. They were making something out of nothing.

Ruby was standing in front of her closet. She wasn't supposed to bring any clothes like the ones she wore—there was a list, and everything was made of out bathing-suit material. She was going to be sitting in a kayak for three months, but still, for now, Ruby was trying on dresses, maybe to say good-bye. She was pulling on hangers over
her head, so that she looked like Frankenstein's monster, with metal bolts jutting out of her shoulders.

“That's the one you wore to graduation,” Harry said. The white tassels swung by her bare thighs. She was wearing only underwear. Harry wanted to take pictures of every part of Ruby's body, but knew that was no way to keep her.

“When you were my hero,” Ruby said.

“You were always my hero,” Harry said. “Let's be clear about that.” He got up and walked over behind her. “I want to hug you, but I don't want to impale myself.”

Ruby laughed and pulled the hangers off. “You may hug,” she said.

Harry wrapped his arms around her and looked at the two of them in the mirror. “Hey, you know what? You were supposed to bleach my hair, but you never did.”

“Want to do it now?”

“Are you still my girlfriend?” Harry wasn't sure why it mattered, but it did.

“I think I'm your girlfriend until I get on the airplane,” Ruby said. “How does that sound?”

“I can live with that. Let's do it.”

She clapped her hands and pointed to the bathroom. “Step into my salon!” Harry sat on the lip of the bathtub while Ruby opened and closed all the cabinets. “Aha!” she said, and started performing a chemistry demonstration in a plastic bowl in the sink.

Ruby started painting his hair with some cold, white goop. After a few seconds, Harry's scalp begin to itch and then sizzle. “Is this normal?” he asked, and Ruby rolled her eyes.

“Guys are such wusses,” she said. “Yes, it's normal.” She worked her way around his head, section by section. When she was done, she pulled a giant plastic shower cap over the whole thing.

“Will you play some music?” Harry asked. He needed something
to take his mind off the fact that his head felt like it was on fire. Ruby pulled out her phone and scrolled through until she found what she was looking for, hit the button, and then set the phone on the lid of the toilet.

It was a slow song, one Harry didn't know. A guy sang “Love and happiness,” and then a guitar did a little wail behind him, and the rest of the band kicked in.

“It's Al Green,” Ruby said. She started to dance. Harry put his hands on her thighs and closed his eyes, trying to memorize everything he could. They listened to the song three more times before she hit a button and played the rest of the album. “Okay, let's check your hair.” She pulled back the shower cap and peeked. “Oh, shit,” she said. “It's kind of orange.”

Harry pulled the cap off the rest of the way and stood up. It looked like he had bright orange dreadlocks. “Well, let's wash it out, maybe it's not as bad as it seems.” He shoved his head under the faucet, and Ruby rinsed, her fingers separating the bigger clumps. She washed it twice before she let him get up and dry off with a towel.

They stood next to each other, shoulder to shoulder. Instead of blond, Harry's hair was the color of bright new rust, or a very dirty traffic cone. He touched a curl and then put his hand on his chin. It was terrible, so terrible that Ruby couldn't even argue otherwise for show. They grimaced in unison.

“Do you have clippers, by any chance?”

“I think my mom does. Hang on.” Ruby scampered up the stairs to her parents' bedroom and came back wielding a pair, the cord dangling behind her. Harry plugged them into on the wall and switched them on. “Have you done this before?” she asked him.

“Nope,” he said. “But there's a first time for everything.” He started at the front—you had to start somewhere—and dragged the clippers back along his scalp. A long strip of hair fell first to his shoulders and then to the floor.

“Wow,” Ruby said. “Keep going.”

He did the right side first, leaving the hair about an inch long, maybe less, with no trace of the bleach. He stopped long enough for Ruby to take a picture, one half orange, one half gone. She put a towel on the floor to catch all the falling locks.

It only took a few minutes. “I guess I wasted your bleach,” Harry said, swiveling from side to side to look at himself.

“Here,” Ruby said, and handed him a mirror. “Look at the whole thing.” She held it up in his hands like he was in a barbershop, and spun him around so that he could see the reflection of the back of his head in the mirror.

“I look like my dad,” Harry said.

“Kind of,” Ruby said. “I think you look more like you.”

He knew what she meant. Harry looked like a different person—older. Tougher, even. He ran his hand over his head, which was both prickly and still itchy from the bleach. He didn't look like a kid anymore, and he didn't feel like one, either.

“I should go home,” Harry said. “Just for now. I'll come back tonight.”

Ruby nodded. “I love you, Harry Marx.” She kissed him on the cheek, both of them covered in strands of his hair. There were so many ways that he wanted to remember Ruby, images of her that he wanted to freeze forever, but this was what Harry wanted to freeze for himself—however he was, right at this second, when those words came out of her mouth, and he was still standing, still able to walk out the door. There would be no better summer, as long as he lived. Harry kissed her back and then closed her bedroom door behind him.

He went down the stairs slowly, petting Bingo's head on the way out. The day had started to fade. Harry wanted to walk past someone he knew, someone from school, just to see if they'd recognize him, but Argyle Road was empty. He was at his own driveway, and the garage door was half open. Through the four feet of open air, he could see his
mother's legs, and her amp. She was playing something quiet, and Harry walked a little bit up the driveway to listen. It was pretty—something new. There were fireflies starting to flicker, and Harry turned around to watch one float up into the tree. The garage door opened a few more feet, and his mom ducked underneath, poking her head out. “Harry, is that you?” The air smelled like fall, and Harry watched the firefly go all the way under the canopy of leaves before turning back
around.