She Has Your Eyes (19 page)

“Why Devin, you don’t know? You’re losing your touch,” I said as I turned away from him, feigning rejection. He slid his hand under the sheets and caressed the inside of my thigh.

“Hardly,” he breathed. And yet, he beckoned, “Tell me.”

I climbed back on top of him. “Make me.”

chapter twenty-five

I couldn’t help but wonder if the impromptu appearance of Devin was a way for David and me to avoid the conversations we needed to have. Nevertheless, the days following our encounter passed without my bringing up my mother’s request, and David and I returned to our routines.

Columbus Day weekend was around the corner, and David wanted Wylie to spend the weekend. “I can take her to all my galleries in Boston.” He often referred to the galleries he did business with in the possessive. “You should see her work, Andi. She sent me a few photos and I tell ya, she’s got talent. Send her to the right people and she’ll be a star.”

“David, are you sure you’re not rushing things? I mean, she’s fifteen. I’m sure she’d rather be at the mall with her friends this weekend.”

He soured. “Way to kill my buzz.”

“David, I wasn’t—” I started, but he interrupted me.

“I’m still going to invite her.”

He called her after dinner, and after ten minutes he handed the phone to me in the den, visibly disappointed. “She wants to talk to you.”

Surprised, I took hold of it and spoke, “Hello?”

“Hi,” said Wylie. “So I can’t meet David this weekend because I’m going to my friend’s Sweet Sixteen on Sunday. But I have a paper due next Wednesday for English and was wondering if you could help me with it. I thought maybe you could come on Saturday.”

“Oh,” I said, not expecting the request. “Just me? Or David too?”

“Well, I thought just you this time, and then I’d see David another time. I don’t—please don’t think that means I don’t like him or anything.”

“I didn’t think that,” I said, although I knew David might be thinking otherwise. “Thing is, this Saturday isn’t the best day for me.” I didn’t need to look at the calendar to know why.

“Oh,” she said, sounding just as disappointed as David looked. But something pressed on me. So this was what it felt like to let your kids down. I could never understand the guilt parents felt when they had to miss their kid’s school play or recital or soccer game because of work or some other obligation.
What’s the big deal?
I would think.
It’s not as if there won’t be another. Not as if you don’t see the kid at all.
Wylie wasn’t even my kid, and I felt as if I were kicking her in the shins.

However, I felt torn. If I agreed to tutor Wylie, then David would feel left out, and might even resent me. If I said no to Wylie, she might think I was rejecting her, and that could potentially affect her relationship with David; he would resent me for that too. And where did I fit into this? I hadn’t yet decided how I was going to observe the day. I didn’t think I wanted to be alone this year, but tutoring my husband-to-be’s newly discovered teenage daughter hadn’t come close to the agenda.

I caved. “Let me see what I can do. Maybe I can work it out,” I said, intimating that I had specific plans to rearrange.

The lilt in her voice picked up. “That would be great. My mom wants you to come
here
, though, to our house.”

I felt as if I’d dug myself into a hole, and Wylie just made it deeper. I swallowed hard. “That’s fine. I’ll let you know for sure tomorrow,” I said.

“Thank you
so
much,” she said, and with that I handed the phone back to David, who was watching me like a hawk the entire time, and he left the room to resume his conversation. Ten minutes later, he returned, and his expression made my muscles tense. I knew what was coming.

He sank onto the sofa, sitting beside me. “Wylie said she wants to see
you
this weekend. For tutoring.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry. Did she tell you it wasn’t a reflection against you?”

“She said you’re going on Saturday.”

“I said
maybe
. You know what this Saturday is.”

He paused for a moment, and I realized that he wasn’t making the connection. I reminded him: “It’s my anniversary. Both of them.”

And then it registered. “I’m sorry, Andi. I forgot.”

“It’s OK,” I said. Was it? Should I have been mad that he forgot? Or was it just one of those things about losing a loved one—the world goes on for everyone else? Neither good nor bad.

“I thought you wanted to be alone. Go away or something.”

I had thought about going to visit my mother, actually.

“Do you want me to go away?” I asked. Of course, what I was really asking was if he wanted me to back off from Wylie. He knew that. And I think he realized he too was between the proverbial rock and hard place.

“Wylie obviously wants to see you. You shouldn’t let her down,” he said.

“Dev, I really think this is just about tutoring. She said she’s not doing well in English.”

David looked at me skeptically; he wasn’t buying it any more than I was. “Andi. Please. If it were just about tutoring she’d get a friend or someone to help her. Not
you
.”

The way he said
you
almost sounded like an insult. As if she were settling for me rather than making a special request.

“I can’t imagine Janine being happy about it,” I said.

“Maybe it was Janine’s idea. Maybe she’s checking up on you.”

I sighed. “Dev, it’s Sam’s anniversary. And mine. Going to the Bakers’—into hostile territory—and tutoring your newfound daughter without you there is stressful under normal circumstances. And like I said before, this is all happening so fast.”

As David processed this, he wore a conflicted expression. Finally, he took my hand. “It would mean a lot to me if you did it,” he said.

“Really?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I had to do it, I realized. David was more than my lover; he was my fiancé now. It meant I was committing to him on a higher level. And to make Wylie happy would make him happy. But his eyes gave him away. He didn’t want
me
making her happy.

chapter twenty-six

Fourth anniversary of Sam’s death

“Mrs. Vanzant? There’s been an accident.…”

The words are burned into my brain—the tone, their inflection, every one of them a bullet to the heart. In the first few days following Sam’s death, those words spoken by the police officer at my door resounded like a maniacal loop designed to kill me by way of insanity. And on every anniversary since, they have been the first words that wake me up, almost as if they’ve been programmed to do so, regardless of whether I know what day it is.

Four years. Four years since Sam went out for a bottle of sparkling cider, a meaningless detail of our anniversary dinner that he’d refused to ignore, and never came home.

Nine years since our wedding day. Nine years since I nearly skipped with glee down the aisle to greet him—he looked ridiculously handsome in his black tuxedo with white silk tie in a Windsor knot. And I, in a plain yet elegant Vera Wang gown, with my hair fixed in a French twist, sans veil. Sam was shaking so much he had nearly dropped the ring just as he was about to place it on my finger. (“Nerves?” I had whispered. “
You
,” he replied. “It’s hard to stand still when I’ve just realized I’m going to be in love with you for the rest of my life.”)

And we were in love with each other for the five years we were married. Rarely spent a day apart. Not that we were clingy or co-dependent; no, we were
friends
, best friends, the kind of friend you feel like your real self with, especially when you’re
laughing
together. Sam and I were ageless when we were together. And showing him even the worst parts of me somehow made me feel safer rather than vulnerable. And I knew he felt the same with me.

This year I didn’t want to dwell on the anniversary of Sam’s death, but rather on the anniversary of our marriage. But somehow the two memories had fused into one: we got married, danced at the reception, and at the end of the day he got killed by a drunk driver. As if that was the way it had really happened.

I drove to Hartford to meet Wylie for our tutoring session, and spent the hour-long drive lost in the reverie of Sam Vanzant—his smiling eyes, blue as island waters; short, tapered hair; naturally athletic physique maintained by skiing and biking and the two of us playing Frisbee or catch on the quad at Edmund College, where he taught—he even occasionally was invited to a pickup basketball game with his students, and he never shied away from accepting. They especially loved when he joined them in the trash talk—only Sam could turn it into a teachable moment about rhetoric and language, and they happily listened and learned.

I also worried about David—despite his outward support, it was tearing him up that I was coming here without him, that Wylie specifically requested to see me and not him. I worried about how I would be welcomed by Janine and Peter. I still felt like an intruder, an invader, an occupier. Where would we work? It seemed rude to just waltz into their home and commandeer the kitchen or dining room table.

As I pulled up to the Bakers’ house, once again I remembered the look on Peter’s face when he dropped Wylie off at our home, as if his little girl had abandoned him. Or worse—she’d been stolen away. I could relate. I knew what it was like to have your heart ripped out at the hands of a stranger on your doorstep.

“Mrs. Vanzant? There’s been an accident.…”

Maybe this was a mistake.

Wylie opened the door seconds after I knocked, and invited me in. Janine emerged, dressed in blue jeans and a close-fitting Giants hoodie. She wore the same amount of dark eyeliner and mascara as Wylie, and I tried to picture her without it. I wondered if she wore this much eye makeup when she first met David, when he was Devin. She was probably as pretty as Wylie without it, and I tried to see her as he would have. Tried to see what, specifically, attracted him. It wasn’t hard.

“Hi, Mrs. Baker,” I said, hoping my friendliness didn’t sound forced. I extended my hand to her.

“Hello, Andi,” she said. It was the first time she used my name. She shook my hand, which I interpreted as a positive sign.

“So… you’re OK with my helping Wylie out with her English assignment?”

“Well, it’s what she wants. I don’t want you two leaving the house, however. You can work here,” said Janine, pointing to their den.

Wylie led me into the room and emptied the contents of her backpack onto the table, located in the far corner, away from the television set. Before I could get started, she pointed to my chest. “Are those your wedding rings from your first marriage?”

Like a Pavlovian response, my hand went to the rings on the gold chain—I added them to the engagement ring for
today—and clutched them, my palm over my heart. “Yes, they are.”

“I don’t remember seeing you wear them before.”

“Today would’ve been our ninth wedding anniversary.”

Wylie gasped. “Whoa. Seriously?”

“Yes.” I went all in. “Unfortunately it’s also the anniversary of his death. Four years ago,” I reminded her.

She grew quiet and still.

I rapidly waved my hand in front of my face to keep from crying, and apologized. “I shouldn’t have told you a thing like that. I’m sorry.” In an attempt to regain my composure, I tried to divert the conversation back to business. “Where shall we start?”

She didn’t respond. After a long pause, she said, “David knows, right? I mean about what today is? Your anniversary? Both of them?”

“Yes, he does.”

“Is he OK? I mean…” she trailed off.

“He knows it’s not an easy day for me, and he’s very supportive. He’s sad for me. But he knows I love him, if that’s what you’re thinking about. He’s OK, Wylie. We both are. And I wanted to be here today.”

I wasn’t sure if I was being entirely truthful about that last part. She seemed more at ease, however. I sat up straight and started again, more professorial. “So, let’s get to work.”

“Here.” She plopped a book in front of me:
Animal Farm
.

I picked it up and fanned through the pages, amused. “I haven’t read this in ages.”