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Nicholas nodded silently, staring down at his plaid bedspread, uncrossing his arms.

“You don’t have to be perfect, Nicholas. Okay?”

“Right.” He turned his face to hers. The storminess in his eyes, though still there, had settled considerably.

Claire kissed his forehead and they walked out into the hallway. There was silence all around them. He slipped his hand into hers. “Thanks, Mom,” he whispered.

“Was that a little too sappy?” Claire asked, understanding when he released her hand in the sunlight.

“I may need some extra insulin.”

They circled back though the grove of maples behind the dorm, taking the long way into town. The weathered trees were old and enormous. The afternoon was shiny and clear. “So,” she asked after a few minutes, “should we stop at the store on the way home and pick up some more Diet Coke?”

Nicholas nodded.

The gleaming spires of the clock tower and the main buildings rose above them in the distance. A squirrel scampered across the path into the high green grass, still damp and glistening from the sprinklers. The strong odor of wet concrete vied with the sweet smell of moist earth. It was a majestic place, she couldn’t deny that.

Claire looked to the ground and saw imprints of footsteps on the cement. She turned back and saw that they had been marking their way for some distance. The prints were not the waffle soles of athletic shoes, but smooth like the penny loafers Nicholas was wearing. Were they an intentionally humorous attempt at posterity, a sly prank on the institution, she speculated? Or were they the oblivious wanderings of a young man lost in contemplation and wet concrete? The walkway had been created around the time of the post Depression-era renovations on the campus, she guessed from the stories of Nick’s grandfather. She wondered why this hiccup in the beautification project hadn’t been smoothed over. Maybe no one noticed. Probably it was just too expensive. She wondered, too, about the boy who left his footprints behind.

At that moment, Nicholas slowed and placed his own shoes in the boy’s. Then he continued walking, loafer to loafer, and slightly off-center down the path. It was an almost perfect fit. Claire imagined that the boy of the footprints might have been a boy like Nicholas, with the same worries and hopes. She pictured a teenager with a letter sweater and a book satchel. A boy who strove to maintain the appearance of normalcy, to be a regular kid and just blend in. Did he feel the pressure to live up to his father’s ambition? Did he tire of that weight, too? Abruptly the footsteps disappeared from the edge of the path.

Claire watched as Nicholas stopped, visibly lost in thought, with one foot still on the concrete, the other in the grass. She felt certain his thoughts were not far from her own. A warm breeze blew her hair across her face, and she looked into the distance, envisioning the specter of the imaginary boy, hightailing it away from the confines of the expected, his satchel tossed to the wind, his body light and carefree. When she looked back at Nicholas, he was lying down in the damp grass and closing his eyes, spreading his arms above his head. She walked over and lay down beside him.

Grass tickled her cheek as she angled her face to the sun. She questioned whether Nicholas would continue to walk stoically down his prescribed road, or if he, too, would veer from the path and run toward his own destiny? Someone once said that the way to make God laugh was to tell Him your plans. Maybe, she thought, it was better to keep things quiet and avoid some huge cosmic joke. She kicked off her shoes and dug her feet into the grass, listening to the hum of passing bicycles. After a few moments, she felt Nick’s hand squeeze her shoulder.

C
HAPTER
18

“I
’m here,” Michael’s voice said through the static.

Claire pulled her cell phone away from her ear and stared at it as she walked out of the hospital doors, looking around the visitors’ gardens ahead and over her shoulders. Morning shadows still insulated the cluster of benches from the heat that was yet to come. It had been over two weeks since they’d last spoken, and she had almost gotten used to the absence of communication. “You’re where?”

“I’m on my way to the hospital. I want to see if these progress reports I’m getting from Dr. Adamson are for real.”

“Okaay.” She sat down on a garden bench, trying to keep her cool, and focusing on the browning edges of the giant bird of paradise. “Yes, Nick’s made some pretty remarkable improvements since you were last here.”

“I talked to him. But it was difficult to tell anything over the phone.”

“Well, I could have given you all the details.”

“I’ll be there in about an hour,” he said in a voice so dispassionate Claire wondered if he would feel the slightest need to address their last conversation.

“Why didn’t you call me back? I left messages.”

“I needed some distance.”

“So you drop a bombshell like that, and then just ... drop out? There is still an ‘us,’ Michael, whether or not we like the state of it. And we need to deal with this.” She felt the retaining wall she’d cobbled together with all of her affirmations and exertions starting to crumble again.

“Look, we can talk after I see Nick.”

Her ear hurt from pressing the phone so tightly against it, and she walked back to the hospital entrance. The electric doors opened and then slid shut behind her, and she felt her body being pulled into a cold, tentative vacuum. She remained standing in the antechamber as the doors continued to open and close around her. A security guard approached the doors from the information desk, and Claire stepped out and cut a quick left toward the cafeteria. She bought a cup of coffee and took it to her usual table in the back corner. Forcing down a sip, she set the cup back on the Formica table. An hour was a long time to kill.

Claire put her phone beside the cup and stared out into the courtyard, missing her home, her family, and the predictability of their old life. The coffee was strong but only lukewarm, and she thought of the consequences of her subsistence diet of caffeine and stale cafeteria food as her mind drifted to Michael’s parents, and to the pain and humiliation she had caused them. Their lack of communication since she’d been in LA conveyed all she needed to know about her current standing with them. She thought, too, of her incongruous soft spot for Paul Montgomery, a man who’d always seemed genuinely interested in her pursuits, despite his frigid approach to paternal affection. She had liked him far more than Margot, and now, with bittersweet irony, they were both lost to her. As for Michael, she could only hope for the best, hope that they always wouldn’t be like storm clouds colliding and sparking their emotional lightning.

Claire took another long sip of her coffee and picked up one of the pink sweetener packets on the table and shook it, settling its contents and wondering why the memories she tried to muster of her family always turned out to be saccharine. So sweet at first, with a bitter aftertaste. She leaned back in her chair and saw a man seated at the table near the door, typing on a laptop. She hadn’t noticed him before, but recognized him from other afternoon coffee breaks, from the gardens and hallways. Another regular. She studied his chiseled features, the gray sprouting from his temples. The tired slope of his shoulders. Even at a distance, there was an acquiescence to whatever had brought him to this place. That much she could tell. Was it his wife, or his mother, maybe? She tried to imagine someone else’s story.

The man glanced up, catching her eye and smiling, and Claire reached too quickly for her phone, checking for a phantom message. She considered what Cora would think of her appearance—the circles under her eyes she no longer bothered to conceal, her untended hair now wavy and past her shoulders, her uniform of white jeans and whatever shirt wasn’t dirty—but just as quickly dismissed all thoughts of clothing and makeup. It wasn’t the kind of place where people cared. She stirred her near-empty cup with determination, and returned to her view of the courtyard gardens.

Several minutes later she heard the groan of a table leg, and turned to see that the man had abandoned his computer and was approaching her. He wore jeans and a faded Oxford shirt, and carried a plate. Claire looked around, but there was no one else behind her in the cafeteria.

“Cookie?” He stood across the table from her, smiling.

“Pardon me?”

“Would you care for a cookie?” He set a plateful of cookies in front of her, and stepped back. “I bought every one they had, hoping at least one wouldn’t be stale.”

Claire looked at the crumbling mound, laughing to herself at the threat of cookies. “Well that’s very nice. Thank you.” At close range his face whispered at the same fatigue she imagined hers shouted.

“I thought we might as well introduce ourselves officially since we seem to be leading parallel lives here. Name’s Richard Elliot.” He remained standing, waiting tentatively.

Parallel lives.
Claire felt the sharp bite of the phrase, felt the hair on her neck stand on end, thinking of Andrew and where that phrase had taken her.

“I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?” he asked after too long a silence.

She shook her head slowly, squeezing the metal edging of the table, wanting to be anywhere but there, yet not wanting to appear rude. “I’m Claire,” she replied. “It’s nice to meet you. Officially.”

“Do you mind if I sit?”

“All right.” She forced a smile and took a bite of an oatmeal raison cookie, finding it difficult to swallow.

“What’s the verdict?”

“I’m sorry?”

“What’s the verdict on the cookie?”

“Oh.” She wiped a crumb from the corner of her mouth. “Crunchy, I guess.”

“Well, that’s a good sign.” He broke off a piece of a peanut butter cookie. “Now here’s the real test,” he said, holding it up between them. “If they can’t get peanut butter right, then they need a new pastry chef in this joint.” He put the cookie into his mouth, considering it like a rare cheese.

She watched his eyes. Large and brown, and flecked with amber. They didn’t smolder or incite, but seemed direct. Safe. “And?”

“And it tastes like old socks.”

Her guard eased and she allowed herself to laugh the warming-up laugh of strangers. As they small-talked in the drab light of the cafeteria, it dawned on her that she hadn’t had a discussion that was tragedy-free in months. So even if it was only a short reprieve—a conversation about nothing with someone who knew nothing about her—Richard with his plate of cookies was a welcome distraction. She broke off chunks of chocolate chip and finished another oatmeal raisin over his reports on the farmer’s market and the Getty Museum. And for just a few minutes, she forgot to worry.

“So, I’m visiting my sister,” he finally said. “You?”

“My son.”

“How old is he?”

“Seventeen.” She hoped that would be enough. “And your sister, how is she doing?”

“Better.” His eyebrows drew together. “We were in a car accident. She didn’t fare as well as I did.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. I didn’t mean to bring things—”

“I know.” She knew exactly. “My son’s improving, too.”

Richard glanced at the clock on the wall, and then pushed his chair back and stood. “Well, it was very nice to meet you, Claire. I need to stop by the pool. But maybe we could share a meal here sometime?”

“I’m married,” she blurted out, feeling broadsided and then immediately embarrassed.

“Then in that case, we could wear hair shirts and sit at separate tables.”

“God, I’m sorry.” She lowered her eyes, shaking her head. “You weren’t asking me on a date.”

“No.”

“It’s just that everything is so, I don’t know—” She sank back in her chair and plastered her hands over her face.

“Fraught?”

She slid her fingers down. “Fraught. And far too complicated to understand. But I apologize for being an idiot.”

Richard looked deliberately around the cafeteria, and out onto the courtyard where two patients in wheelchairs sat next to one another staring in opposite directions. “I’d say I’m uniquely qualified to understand.”

She smiled without effort, lost in thought. There was another long silence between them. “Have you ever just veered away from your path, but didn’t really know you were veering?” she suddenly asked, without really meaning to.

He contemplated her hands for a moment. “Unanticipated choices aren’t the worst thing a person can make.”

“Thank you for the cookies,” she said after a few seconds. “A meal might be lovely sometime. Soup, maybe.”

“The sky’s the limit.”

Claire watched him walk to his table. His hair was flattened against the back of his scalp, as if he had slept sitting up in a chair. His jeans hung loosely on his frame, though she could tell they had once fit more snuggly, and there was just the slightest limp in his gait. “Richard,” she called out to him as he was closing his computer, “what are you writing?”

“It’s sort of my
Tuesdays with Morrie.
” He slid the computer into his bag. “I’m a journalist most hours, but I’m also working on a book. About all this.” He flared his palms outward toward the inpatient and therapy buildings, the cafeteria, her.

She finished the last cookie on the plate, and went to wait for Michael in the lobby.

C
HAPTER
19

T
he conversation happened at a hot dog stand a block from Rancho. They walked there after their two hours together watching Nicholas perform his Wednesday best. Michael had been pleased with Nick’s crisis-free accomplishments in the therapy gym after he’d arrived. Nicholas was talkative and happy after his gait class, the improvements in his strength and attitude on full display. The doctors were encouraging as they gave the go-ahead for a complete dismissal of his walker, and spoke to Claire and Michael of discharging Nicholas for outpatient therapy back home. It was a very good morning, Michael had said. Everything was looking so strangely positive and upbeat, so unlike their last meeting. When it was time for Nick to go to his art workshop, Michael had suggested a late lunch to Claire.

They sat in white plastic chairs near a small patch of grass behind the Gingham Dog. A few pillowy clouds drifted overhead as if just passing through on holiday as they set out their chili specials and sodas and reviewed Nick’s performance. Michael looked almost relaxed in his button-down shirt and jeans, and Claire felt almost hopeful. They would be returning to Denver soon, to a life at home they would somehow finally have to navigate. It was such a welcome and long-awaited moment, this urban picnic on such a seductively sunny afternoon. The fuchsia-haired girl behind the order window turned on an ancient radio and spun the dial until it landed on the Violent Femmes. Claire whistled along to the angsty reminder of the eighties, and for a while they just sat listening to the music and tossing crumbs to the gathering pigeons, while diners of all stripes—businessmen, halter-topped skater chicks, and orderlies in scrubs—came and ate their hot dogs and went.

When the last of the lunch crowd had finally gone, Michael set his Pepsi can on the cement between them. The straw spun a couple revolutions with the breeze until its bent tip stopped and pointed in his direction, like the spinner on a board game. Michael’s cheeks had reddened with the heat, Claire noticed, and perspiration had started to form at his sideburns. She could see he was about to speak, and she placed a hand on his knee, preempting him. “I think I’ll talk to Amy about having a going-away party for Nick when we get back to the hospital. Just a little something with all of his specialists and docs to celebrate his progress and to thank them for all they’ve helped him—”

“We can’t do this anymore, Claire,” Michael said, cutting her off. There was a hint of remorse in his voice, the hint of some long-buried sadness, but only just. “This can’t go on.”

And just like that, amid the gravel and rush of a suburban LA hot dog stand, Claire’s reedy hope blistered in the sun. She stared speechless as her head began its own slow spin.

“I’ve talked with the director,” he continued. “They’ll be sending Nick’s chart out to Craig Hospital, and I’ll bring him back to Denver next week. You can have your party and then fly out ahead of us. And then you should make some arrangements, get yourself set up somewhere near the house,” he’d said, averting his eyes. “We just can’t live there together now and pretend nothing happened. Not with Nick coming home. And obviously he needs to be in the house.”

“What?” she gasped, still fighting to catch her breath from the sucker punch. “You’re serious? You want me to move out of our house? But how do you expect—”

“Face it, we haven’t been happy for a long time.”

“But that’s crazy.” She grabbed both of his hands, his pale smooth knuckles, holding on for their life together. “Until last year, we were fine. I mean, things weren’t perfect, and I know there’s a lot to work through, but—” Bile inched up her throat. “You can’t possibly mean this. Let’s use this time to . . . to work on our issues. We
need
to make that choice.”

He pulled away from her grip. “You already made a choice, Claire. Were you really happy and fine when you chose him? And did it feel
fine
to trash me in the process? No,” he said, shaking his head, “there’s just too much—”

“Michael, people do make stupid, reckless decisions. Mea culpa, a thousand times! But this one had nothing to do with trashing you. Please.”

He seemed to bristle at her words as he was regrouping. “Then maybe you should take a little time to think about what it
did
have to do with. We need to be apart now, Claire. This”—he made a back-and-forth motion with his hand between their two hearts—“this won’t be good for Nick. You know that. He needs calm, and the two of us together under one roof will not make for a healthy environment. I don’t want to put him under any more stress than he’s already under.”

Claire’s head bobbed mechanically, her guilt over everything she had done to bring them to this cliff subduing the anger and shock. All she could think of was how not to push Michael away any further, of not giving him any more reasons to blow it all up and run for good. She couldn’t believe he was asking this of her. And yet, he
was
hurt, maybe in his own version of shock, and not at all himself. The possibility of life as a divorced, single parent washed over her with frightful potency. And it was a life she could not fathom, even if her husband was acting like an irrational ass. They were a family, and if there was to be any shot at mending their relationship, maybe a temporary separation
was
their only hope. A searing ache started to unfold across her brain as she weighed the untenability of her options. If Michael moved out, he might never return. But if she were to go, as he was telling her she should, for some short, temporary trial period where she could further demonstrate her contrition and he could feel like he’d doled out the appropriate penalty . . . She couldn’t find any other trapdoor to the argument. And she had to stop moving her head, had to circumvent the pain before it could take over. She placed pressure on the nerve just below her eyebrow and fished in her bag for some aspirin.

“I can have Dana look into a nice rental for you at Park Gardens if you want,” he’d said as she watched him crush the empty soda can and straw in his palm. His expression was one of numbness and detachment, a stranger’s. The sun flashed overhead, klieg lights, it seemed, on their increasingly surreal tableau.