53.
Mrs. Weston called me at work a month later.
“Will mentioned to me that it’s your birthday Sunday. I thought I’d offer my services if you want to spend the day celebrating.”
Even though I hated Will and thought he was the world’s biggest traitor, wimp and asshole rolled into one, I took comfort in the fact that he had remembered my birthday.
“Thank you, Mrs. Weston,” I said. Spend the day celebrating. I pictured myself leading a parade of drunken revelers down Broadway, waving silk streamers and banging oversized kettle drums.
Vanessa took a bus from Vassar on the big day and met me for lunch at a bistro in Soho we used to go to late night during our dancing days.
“I haven’t been here since before I met Will,” I said as I dove into the dark-wood banquette.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Vanessa chirped. The waiter sloshed water into our glasses.
“Am I a total loser, Vanessa? Living with Dad? Ian? Is it all just too much loserness?”
“You’re only a loser if you feel like one.” She opened her bag and pulled out a box wrapped in polka-dotted paper. “Do you feel like a loser?”
“Sometimes yes, sometimes no,” I said, waving the box away.
“Well, I’m in the same boat. Vassar has a small amount of loser-stink on it. But it’s okay.”
“You sound like Mom,” I said, putting on her voice. “School is for bloody wankers.…”
Vanessa laughed. “Remember how pissed she used to get at you when you said the word wanker?”
“But she could say it whenever she wanted.” I nodded.
“God, I love this bread,” Vanessa said, unfolding the cloth napkin that covered it. “Remember how much of it we used to … just … basket after basket?”
I picked up my present and opened it. It was for Ian: a stiff little black dog with a red leather collar.
“I thought it was adorable,” she said, chewing.
I put the dog on the table, facing her. “You know you’re a grown-up when you don’t even care if presents aren’t for you,” I said. “Means I’m a good mom, right?”
“That’s right,” she said, flashing me a wink.
“He loves that other dog you gave him, by the way,” I said, remembering how much I resented it when she first gave it to me at my makeshift shower. “He holds it to his chin by its ear, and the other day he made me take it outside with him. It’s his favorite.”
“I knew it would be when I saw it,” she said gravely. “I had a feeling.”
After lunch we walked around Soho, checking out clothes we couldn’t afford as she told me about a preppie guy from Michigan she was obsessed with. It was a relief to hear her drone on and on, like a radio broadcast, about how he wasn’t her type, about his ruddy cheeks and short, square body and his hands, blistered from playing lacrosse. It was a relief to be taken out of my dull, slightly worrisome existence. I asked her to stay over and she pretended to be tempted but then mentioned a party that night at school she “was supposed” to go to.
“You need to come visit soon,” she said, sounding offended as she kissed me on the cheeks. “I can’t believe you haven’t yet. Give the boy a kiss for me, okay? From his auntie Ness?”
Vanessa got in the cab to Port Authority and I went to pick Ian up at Starbucks, the meeting spot Mrs. Weston had established in the two or three times she’d come to get him. She was always very accommodating about coming down to me from the Upper West Side, but she’d made it clear that she didn’t want to pick him up at Dad’s. She’d established the meeting spot right away—“Isn’t there a Starbucks near you on Thirteenth Street?” she’d said, which made me think she’d figured it out before she called. I was a few minutes early, so I bought a massive cookie with M&M’S in it and sat down in a dirty velvet chair.
“Happy birthday, Mommy,” I muttered to myself. The espresso machines screeched as I picked the M&M’S out of the cookie and thought about the fact that I didn’t have any friends other than Vanessa. I would have to work on that. Even Vanessa was in a different place, as nice as it was to see her smiling, confident face.
She’d looked different. Her eyes seemed by turns more jaded and more excited, as though school had somehow intensified her reactions to the world. Was that what college did to people? Or maybe she’d always been like that and I’d just noticed it now. There were things that seemed new about her. Like the way she fired off texts with lightning speed instead of slowly hunting and pecking like she used to. And I hadn’t seen her twirl her hair behind her shoulder once the whole day. It was an age-old habit of hers. I was trying to remember when I’d last seen her do it when the door swung open and Ian rolled in, asleep in his navy-blue sack. He was being pushed by Will.
I stood up. Will’s head did a slow pivot across the line at the register, the tables, the corners. His hair was shorter and he was wearing a gray coat with tattered, unraveling cuffs, which I’d never seen. When he spotted me, a nervous smile crossed his face and quickly vanished, just like smiles appeared and vanished on his mother. He headed to the back in long, purposeful strides. I’d forgotten how tall he was. My legs were shaking.
“Hey,” he said. We stood in front of each other for the first time since I’d left.
“Do you see him a lot?” I asked, my words rushing out as if we’d been midconversation. “When your mom gets him, do you see him then?”
“Sometimes, yeah,” he said, crossing his arms. “That’s okay, isn’t it?”
“It would have been nice to know, that’s all,” I said. I put my hand on the stroller, starting to make a move.
“Can you stay a minute?” he asked.
“What for?”
“Just to talk.”
“What about?”
“Come on, Thea,” he said, forcing a smile.
“Come on, what? What is there to say?”
He tapped the velvet chair across from the one I’d been sitting in and then grasped my shoulder. “Sit.”
I sat on the arm of the chair, staring at the door. I hated him, and at the same time I also wanted to crawl into the dark cave of his coat and spew and sputter my misery out.
“I just”—Will sat down and leaned forward—“I want to try and explain to you what happened. I still don’t have a handle on it.”
“Go ahead,” I said.
“Look, Thea, I just, it was too much. I felt trapped.”
“I’m not saying it was right. I agreed to everything that went down, I know it. But that’s how I felt.”
He turned his head to the counter, where a crowd of people stood waiting for their drinks. “And when Ian was hurt, it sent me over the edge. I don’t know how else to explain it. I panicked.”
“It’s one thing to panic,” I snapped. “It’s another to threaten and torture me.”
“I know,” he said quickly.
“How could you do that to me?” I asked. He leaned over and held me in a tight, awkward hug as I felt myself dissolve into sobs. I looked at Ian over his shoulder and allowed myself to feel it for the first time—how scared I’d been.
“I wish I could be as brave as you are,” Will murmured. “You’re so brave and you’re a really good mother. I know you are. What I did was unforgivable.” He pulled away and sank back into the velvet chair. “Thea, I feel like a failure on so many levels, I don’t know where to begin.”
A mom waiting by the bathroom opened up a bottle of juice, making the lid pop, and handed it down to her daughter. I didn’t know what to say to Will. It seemed like there was nothing to say.
Will eyed the mangled cookie on the table. “Why didn’t you just buy some M&M’S?” he asked, smiling weakly at me. “Happy birthday, by the way. Mom says you have a job.”
I nodded. “Ian has a nanny.” I couldn’t help smiling. It sounded ridiculous.
“So did you know I’m thinking of getting my eye fixed?” he said.
“Fixed?” I asked. “How?”
“There’s this thing they can do with a laser. I still won’t be able to see out of it, but I’ll be able to move it. It’ll follow the other one.”
“Wow,” I said. We’re so young, still, I thought. There’s still so much to fix.
“Wow, what?”
“I think I might miss it.”
“You’d miss my lazy, wandering eyeball?” He sat back and his good eye crinkled with something that I recognized for the first time in a clear, straightforward way. Will loved me. Despite what was going on, despite the fact that we couldn’t be together. I had a flash of the way I often used to feel when I was with him, without even knowing it—rudderless and lonely—and I realized something: That was me, my emptiness, my cauldron of crazy, bottomless need, it wasn’t him. Will loved me.
The kids behind the counter were starting the closing process, running water in the sinks, talking earnestly about whatever, laughing. We watched Ian sleep for a long time without saying anything, a storm of pride and desolation ripping through me before the fumes from the floor cleaner chased us out.