When It Happens to You (17 page)

He set two cups of coffee on the side table in the kitchen. It was at this small table that the staff, Javier and Isa, ate their meal, before prepping for the next day's breakfast and lunch—the restaurant served a local working crowd, opening at six a.m and closing at four p.m. Today, however, Tony sent them home early, telling them that he would finish their prep for them. They nodded, obedient and solemn, but they looked at Phillip with an obvious question in their eyes: Who was this strange man in relation to their boss? Phillip watched them go, remembering all the employees his parents had hired and the few that had been fired. The single mothers, part-time students, illegal immigrants (always with papers, however illegitimate). They had been a part of the family, and when they left, it was like foster children going on to a real home. It was odd now to not know anything about the restaurant and the members of its strong temporary families.

“I mean, I gotta stick with the coffee,” Tony continued, “and I couldn't tell you whether it's good wine or not . . .”

Tony and his wife had met in Alcoholics Anonymous. They had both tried and failed several times at sobriety, and on what would have been Tony's eighth—and what he swore was his last—serious try, they had met each other. Even though it was advised in the first year not to have any romantic entanglements, he and Suzanne fell for each other, clinging together with an enduring gratitude for what seemed like their last chance at survival in both life and love.

Phillip held up the coffee mug, blowing to cool it. “No, it's okay. I'm good with this.

Tony remained standing, gesturing to the wine. “You sure? You know it's okay with me, right? I mean, sometimes people feel awkward. But I actually kind of like it, the smell. Red wine.” He inhaled, smiling.

Phillip shook his head. “No thanks. I really don't want any. I don't know
why
, with all this . . .”

He took a sip of coffee without finishing his sentence, searching for the right word to properly describe what had become of his life.

“Calamity,” he said at last.

Tony came and sat across from him.

“What did she do?” he asked, and then smacked his forehead. “Oh, jeez. Suzanne would bust me for being sexist right now. Is that sexist?” Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the napkin holder on the table askew. Zeroing in on it, he righted the napkin holder, then straightened the napkins that had been sticking out. He looked back at Phillip. “I think about that now, with Sarah. So she respects herself, you know. Fifteen is a hell of a time, let me tell you. Just
wait
.” He shook his head and mock shuddered.

“I don't know about sexist,” Phillip said. “But as it happens, it wasn't her. It was me.”

His brother nodded, the corners of his mouth turned down, but Phillip didn't feel that his brother was frowning at him. It was just what happened to his face with age. Calamities pulled the corners of the mouth down. His own face probably did it, but he never had the occasion or the desire to really look at himself.

“Got it,” Tony said. “You can tell me all the details. Or none of them. Okay? I'm here.”

Phillip nodded.

Tony reached across the table and ran his knuckles across Phillip's jawline. Another gesture of his father's. When did his brother become their father? And if Phillip wasn't even remotely his father, then who was he?

“I mean it,” Tony said.

“Okay.” Phillip took a drink of coffee. “Thanks.”

“How's Greta? Are you two still . . .”

“She served me with papers. Today.”

“Today?” Tony raised his eyebrows. “
Today
, today?”

“Is there another one?” Phillip said. “Yeah. About three hours ago. Maybe more. I wasn't there. It was at my office.”

“Jesus.” Tony shook his head. “I'm sorry.” He was quiet for a moment, running his thumb back and forth over his chapped lower lip. “Is there anything you can do? Or is it—let me put it this way . . . do you want out of this, too?”

Phillip thought for a moment. It seemed crazy to say it, considering everything he had done, every time he had pretended in his mind not to be married, but now he wanted his marriage more than he had ever wanted anything. More than his job, which he was perilously close to losing if he continued this erratic behavior; more than the freedom he had once imagined he had lost; more than he had wanted to marry Greta in the first place, which at the time had seemed monumental. The only thing equal to the enormity of his want was his regret.

“I know—” Phillip's voice broke. He coughed into his sleeve. “I know that everything can't go back to the way it was—obviously, there was something . . . wrong. Or not right.” He paused and considered the distinction. “But I love her. Desperately. And I think we could get over this. That's the thing. I know I can get over it. I'm a different person now. . . .”

Tony was silent. Phillip ran his hands through his hair and dropped them to the table.

“It's just, she can't get over it. Not yet, at least. If ever . . . I don't know.”

“Does she know how much you want the marriage?” Tony asked.

“Of course. I've told her a hundred times. A thousand. Doesn't seem to matter.” Phillip shook his head. “I don't blame her. And probably the kindest thing that I could do at this point would be just to get the hell out of her life.” He rubbed his eyes, and then closed them, pressing his two thumbs against the sockets. “But as it's become abundantly clear to just about anyone I have come into contact with, I'm not a kind person.”

If Tony took this to be self-pity, or an invitation to contradict his brother, he gave no indication.

“Does Charlotte know?”

“No. But she's used to the separation. I got an apartment back in September.”

“Wow.” Tony looked up at the right-hand corner of the ceiling, doing the mental math.

“Five months,” Phillip said.

Tony sighed. He reached across the small table and squeezed Phillip's shoulder.

“I'm sorry. You and Greta. God, I don't even remember when you
weren't
together.

“And you were wasted for a lot of it,” Phillip said, with a weary grin. He remembered the mod tuxedo that Tony had worn to their wedding, instead of the one rented expressly for him. He had stumbled into the wedding processional and given a toast at dinner so rambling and inappropriate that Greta's mother had made Greta's father unplug the amp.

Tony laughed. “Yeah, well . . .”

Phillip smiled at his brother. Even though both he and Greta had been furious at him for a few months after the wedding, it had made for consistently funny anecdotes at dinner parties.

“How's Suzanne?” Phillip asked.

“She's good, thanks. You just missed her, actually. She went to take Sarah somewhere. Some doctor. They were secretive about it, so I didn't ask.”

Phillip tried to imagine Charlotte growing breasts, getting her period, driving a car to meet a boyfriend. His own daughter turning into a woman was as impossible for him to imagine as animals standing up on their hind legs and speaking.

“She cares a lot about Sarah and her self-esteem,” Tony said. “Reading all these books and underlining them for me. She wants her to respect herself—not do all this crazy shit these kids are doing now with the
sexting
.”

“She's not doing that, is she?”

Phillip flashed back to the picture that Theresa has sent him, posing topless with her honey-colored violin in her lap. He shuddered now, recalling how stirred he had been by the image before erasing it from his phone and asking her not to do it again. It wasn't because he didn't desire it, but having that picture on the little square window of his phone made the affair more real somehow. Looking at the photo made it harder for Phillip to convince himself that the affair was insignificant and safely confined, that it existed only in the dark, hidden places of his life.

“Naw. She knows better than that,” Tony said. He sighed and finished his coffee, but in that sigh Phillip heard all of the fear and heartbreak of a father who knows he is losing his daughter. Worse, he recognized that sorrowful certainty that no matter how parents may strive to protect their children, they will be hurt, somehow, in some way—most likely from their own doing. It made him think of how Greta, strung-out and hormonal, had watched over baby Charlotte sleeping and burst into tears at the thought that one day pain would find her and there was nothing they would be able to do to stop it.

“It's a sort of terrorism,” Greta sobbed, wild-eyed and irrational.

Phillip had held her then, telling her that together they would protect Charlotte. She would be fine—more than fine, she would flourish. Utilizing all of the simple and reasonable reassurances he could access at the time, he had managed to allay her fear, never imagining that he would be the one who would succeed in harming their daughter, when his failings tore apart their family.

Greta, for her part, was more than willing to inform Phillip of his culpability when it came to the damage done to their daughter. Though the shock of betrayal had initially silenced Greta, when her voice did return, it was almost unrecognizable to Phillip. In eighteen years of marriage, he could count on one hand the number of times that either of them had raised their voice at the other. But for weeks on end he found himself frightened and cowed by the hysterical, keening woman who had taken possession of his wife. And then, when he had resigned himself to this person into whom Greta had transformed, he was struck by yet another metamorphosis. An eerie calm descended over her, as cold and disheartening as the early morning fog that strips the warmth from the Los Angeles sky.

“You are the kind of man we want to protect our daughter from,” she had said.

 

Tony took their empty mugs and rinsed them out in the sink. Then he headed over to the counter and began the next day's prep. He lifted up a soft, wet box of bell peppers and placed it within reach. Calmly, with the easy confidence of a man who has completed this task ten thousand times, he took a curved serrated blade and cored out a green pepper. He gave it a little shake, dislodging the flimsy white seeds, and placed the pepper upside down on the counter. Phillip watched his brother move through the contents of the box with a steadiness that could have been hunger or artistry or just mindless persistence; whatever it was, it soothed Phillip. He was reminded of the hours spent in his parents' restaurant as a child, racing around underfoot while the formidable figures of his mother and father peeled, sliced, assembled, boiled, sauteed, baked, and broiled an array of dishes as eternally familiar to him as the smell of his mother's lilac perfume.

Tony was halfway through the box when Phillip got up to join him. It had been a long time since he had raised a hand in a kitchen, and he was surprised how quickly it came back, how natural the paring knife felt in his right hand, the back of the blade pressing against the bottom of his index finger, the slight juice of the vegetable dribbling onto the counter. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve and smiled at his brother, little and paternal beside him, and he continued slicing. One by one he placed the hollowed-out peppers in a cluster. Some of them had been poorly sliced and tipped over, spilling their imperfect emptiness onto the counter. He left those where they fell.

THE PLACES YOU DON'T WALK AWAY FROM

From:
[email protected]

Subject:
Fwd:

Date:
August 1 2011 3:45:41 AM PDT

To:
[email protected]

PARRIS GRETA
PARRIS PHILLIP
543 Amalfi Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90402

Dear Clients,

Our records indicate that you have 6 frozen embryo(s) in storage at our facility at West Coast Fertility Center–Los Angeles since 9/1/2010.

If you wish to continue to store your embryos at our facility, simply pay the invoice and sign and return this letter by 12/1/2011.

If you choose any other option, please return the letter with your notarized signatures.

• Keep all of our frozen embryos in storage until further notice. (Please enclose storage fees.)
  
• Thaw and discard all of our frozen embryos.
  
• Make all of our frozen embryos available for Anonymous Embryo Donation.
  
• Donate embryos for Stem-Cell Research.
  

Please print your name and sign in the appropriate spaces.

Partner # 1: GRETA PARRIS

Signature: ____________________________ Date: _______

Partner # 2: PHILLIP PARRIS

Signature: ____________________________ Date: _______

Notary Public Seal:

____________________________________________________

(Please state if you are notarizing one patient's signature or both.)

Medical Director: M. Dunne,
MD 3521 Olympic Blvd. Suite 400 Los Angeles, CA 90402
Tel 310.555.3212 Fax: 310.555.3211
www.wcfcla.com

Greta lay on her side curled up like a shell. It had been almost a year since she had shared the bed with anyone. In the beginning, when Phillip had first moved out, she had told herself to relish the great expanse of the bed; but it was a hollow prompt, and she would wake in the middle of the night to find herself flush along the right edge. It was a habit of confinement that she could not and—later, even after meeting Peter—would not break. Whenever Charlotte stayed at her father's and Greta invited Peter over for the night, she insisted that they sleep in the guest room. She knew that Peter saw it as a residual sentimentality, and Greta didn't bother to argue the point. Peter was probably right. She didn't know why she should be sentimental toward the bed, when it was the same bed her husband had lain in with Theresa—a fact that she found herself almost able to block from her mind, except when she was about to do the same thing with another man. Men are different about these things, Peter had told her. They don't think about the appropriateness of where they are about to cheat.

“It stands to reason that if he took the time to consider how wrong it was to fuck her in his marital bed, he probably wouldn't have done it at all,” Peter said.

Greta nodded but said nothing. She didn't like talking about Phillip with Peter, or about Peter with Phillip.

As much as Greta longed for another hour of sleep, the early morning light shone through the wooden blinds and striated across the floor in jagged stripes. The cat, Thinmuffin (christened by a three-year-old Charlotte), as if sensing Greta's wakefulness began mewling at the door of the terrace, and Charlotte herself would be up within the hour. Greta dragged herself out of bed and went to the terrace door to let the cat in. The gray cat stood at the door, tail twitching, and deposited a bluebird at her feet on her way into the room. Greta knelt down and examined the bird. The wing, dampened by blood, jutted out at a sharp angle and she noticed one of the eyes was scratched out. The heart, she was sorry to find, was still beating.

 

After dropping off Charlotte at summer camp, Greta returned home to find a large moving van in front of the house next door. A crew of men was carrying chairs and side tables out to the open doors of the truck and wheeling them up the ramp on a dolly. She slowed down her car and peered into the yard to see if she could see her neighbor, the old lady whom Charlotte had befriended. She wondered if she was moving into a home. Greta knew very little about her other than the few random things that she had gleaned from Charlotte.

A woman in a white button-down shirt and jeans came out of the house and chatted with a man who looked to be the head mover. The woman turned to follow him inside and then noticed Greta idling in the car. Greta unrolled the window as the woman approached.

“Hi, are you the little girl's mother?”

“Yes. Charlotte,” Greta said.

“Nice to meet you, Charlotte,” she said, “I'm Amanda.”

“No, no. Sorry, I'm Greta. Charlotte's my daughter.”

Amanda tapped her forehead with the heel of her open palm. “Yes, I knew that. I'm sorry, I'm a little scattered.”

“Is everything okay?” Greta glanced over at a burly muscled man carrying what looked like a headboard. “Is your mother moving? It's your mother who lives here, isn't it?” Greta stopped as she searched for her name. “I've never really spoken to her, though my daughter has been over quite a bit.”

“My mother died. A week ago.” Amanda turned and yelled over to a pregnant woman who had just emerged from the house. “Don't let them move the piano till I'm in there!”

“Oh God,” Greta said. “I'm so sorry.” She felt that she had just seen the old woman pruning her garden in her funny hat.

The pregnant woman carefully navigated down the porch steps, holding on to the wooden railing for support. “Not to worry,
tesoro
,” she called out with an Italian accent. As she waddled her way over to Amanda, she squinted to see into the car. Amanda put her hand on the woman's stomach. Then she picked it up and moved it to another spot, as if trying to feel the baby's movement. Greta remembered Phillip's hands on her belly when she was carrying Charlotte and experienced such a searing sadness and envy that she could feel her eyes burn as they involuntarily filled with tears.

“Thank you,” Amanda said. “Greta, this is my partner, Francesca.”

Francesca extended her hand to Greta.

“Hello,” she said.

“Greta is our neighbor,” Amanda said. “Her little girl is the one Mom was always going on about.”

“So you're moving in?” Greta asked.

“For now,” Amanda said. “At least until we are ready to sell. If the market ever turns around.”

Greta felt a small surge of disappointment. It was a feeling that she remembered, acutely, from when she was a girl negotiating the tricky waters of girlhood friendship. At one time female friendship had been paramount to her. She and her friend April had been nearly inseparable until they had moved away to college, and it was only recently that Greta noticed the marked absence of friends in her life—female or otherwise. Her marriage had sufficiently obscured this deficit. Now she craved the intimacy of friends but felt ill equipped to make them. It seemed that her six-year-old daughter was infinitely more skilled than Greta.

“I would love to stay in this neighborhood,” Francesca offered. “It seems perfect for the children.” She looked at Amanda, whose expression remained neutral, and then smiled at Greta. “But you know . . . it's more complicated for Amanda.”

One of the movers came up and stood hovering behind the women.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “When you have a minute?”

Amanda raised her hand to the man. “Be right there,” she said. “Nice to meet you, Greta.” She followed the man back into the house.

Francesca stayed behind. She reached out her thumb and rubbed it across a bright blue smear of paint that had been left by another car.

“Perhaps after we settle a bit, we might have you over for an
aperitivo
, a drink?” Francesca arched her back with one palm held flat against her sacrum and the other hand spread across her belly like a fan.

“I'd love that,” Greta said.

She drove up the hill to the big empty house. At the top of the driveway, Thinmuffin lay on her back, licking her paws and staring up at the hummingbirds feeding in the overgrown bottlebrush tree. Since they had adopted the cat three years ago, she had managed to kill an astonishing array of birds. Crows, warblers, sparrows, and scrub jays had all fallen prey to the executioner that was their twelve-pound, slightly overweight tabby.

As Greta let herself into the house, she turned and looked at the cat lolling in the sun, watching the hummingbirds hover in the trees above the cat's half-closed eyes and swishing tail. It was the only avian species that the cat had failed to kill, and it made Greta wonder if animals were capable of understanding futility. Or perhaps, unlike us, they just inherently better understand the importance of timing.

 

“I'm just disappointed, is all.”

Peter picked the radishes out of his salad and piled them up on the side of his plate. “I thought we were driving up the coast after you dropped Charlotte off.”

Greta swirled the straw around in her iced tea and looked out over the boardwalk to the water. “I'm sorry. I should have told you before. It's just that—”

“It's okay,” he interrupted. “I have stuff to do in the apartment anyway. This apartment isn't going to furnish itself.”

“Let me finish,” Greta said.

After years of altering the way she spoke with Phillip, she found it aggravating now whenever it felt that she was not fully expressing herself. She didn't like to be interrupted, analyzed, or manipulated—none of which Peter was doing, she hastened to remind herself. She looked back at him and smiled. “I am sorry. I've been putting this off, and we really need to talk.”

Peter nodded. “Sure, sure. Of course.” He looked down and pushed the lettuce around and then absently took a bit of radish and chewed on it. Greta wondered why he had pushed all of the radishes onto the corner of his plate. She had assumed that the segregation of food had to do with dislike, the way that Charlotte separated her food, leaving all of the greenery for last in the hopes that Greta wouldn't notice the offending vegetables.

“I just forget sometimes,” he said.

“Why do you do that?” Greta asked.

Peter looked startled. “What?”

“Smush all of the radishes to the side like that. Do you like them or not?”

“As it happens, I've always harbored an intense dislike for them.”

She waited for more. “And?”

“I still do,” he said.

Greta laughed. His face relaxed at the triumph of having elicited the response. His delight in delighting her was a trait that she found alternately charming and galling. It felt at times like she was an audience of one and that a sign was being held up instructing her to applaud.

“I think it's important to continue to investigate how you feel, what you think,” Peter said. “It changes all the time.”

She rolled her eyes. “O wise one.”

“I am wise, little grasshopper,” he said. He motioned to the waiter for a refill of water.

“What do you always forget?” she asked him.

“What?”

“You said that you always forget something.”

Peter shook his head. “Oh, yeah . . . whatever.”

“Not whatever. What?”

“That you're married.”

He seemed to be waiting for some kind of reassurance. She knew that he wanted her to tell him that it was not for long, that she didn't love Phillip. Instead, she said, “It shouldn't be an all-day thing. We're going to have coffee while Charlotte is in art class, and then take her to the airport at five. He can take her, but it's the first time she's flying by herself and . . .”

“You want to be there,” Peter supplied.

“Yes.” She turned her face to the sun and felt the heat burning along her eyelids, creating strange patterns in her vision. “It's hard to explain.”

“You don't have to,” he said. He held out a crust of bread to a mangy-looking pigeon that had landed on the railing. It pecked the crust out of his hands. Immediately a swarm of other pigeons descended upon the bird and the bread, fighting for their share.

 

At the appointed hour, Phillip waited for Greta in the coffeehouse across from Charlotte's art class. He tried to focus on the case in front of him, mulling over data that required multiple rereads before he could extract any of its meaning. Discrepancies in the two columns had just begun to appear when Charlotte flew into his arms. He inhaled chlorine and sunscreen as her long, wet hair whipped across his face.

“Daddy!” Her cry was muffled into his neck.

“There's my girl,” he said. He looked up at Greta, who stood a few paces behind Charlotte. “Hi,” he said.

Greta blinked and said nothing. She pulled up the jeans that were falling down off her hips. It was the thinnest that Phillip had seen her since they had been in college together, but her face had a healthy color. Sprinkled across the bridge of her nose was the band of freckles that always came out when she spent time at the beach. He had overheard Charlotte telling one of her school friends that her mother's friend had just gotten an apartment on the water, but he had restrained himself from seeking more information.

“I know we're a few minutes late,” she said, “but there was a highly competitive game of Marco Polo going on. . . .”

Phillip stood up, lifting Charlotte up in his arms. She was too old to be carried this way, but Phillip enjoyed it too much to stop. Charlotte flailed excitedly, her elbow knocking into a man who was carrying a tray of drinks.

“Whoa!” The man steadied his tray.

Phillip lowered Charlotte back to the ground. She scrambled into her father's seat and placed his sunglasses on her face.

“Charlotte, what do you say?” Greta prompted.

“Sor-ry,” Charlotte told the man.

“Why don't I just run her over there and I'll meet you right back here, okay?” Phillip said, reaching out his hand for the sunglasses. With a precise pout, Charlotte deposited them onto his palm.