All the Time in the World (27 page)

“Can you peel them?”

“I will peel them if you run back right now and put some clothes on, as fast as you can.”

“Are we late?”

“Yes, but we'll only be a little bit late if we do this really, really fast. Okay? Help me out, pal.”

“But what about Georgie?”

“He has to stay home, Matt. He threw up a lot last night.”

“Because of that yucky chicken?” Matt, like me, may have lost his taste for chicken forever.

“Yes. Can you please put on your clothes?”

To my surprise, he runs back into the hallway. I peel three little oranges and then have just enough time to run back to my own room and change my shirt before he's back out.

We both put on our shoes, and I tell him we can stop for a bagel on the way to school. Matt suggests that we get one for Georgie too, for when he's feeling better, which melts me a little, so I agree. Gretchen would totally kill me. She would understand our being late, and the finger-food lunch, and even the fact that Matt had to be the one to wake
me
up. But a bagel, made from refined sugar and processed flour—
that
, she would rip me a new one for.

When I get back to the apartment, Scotty is dressed for work, sitting on the couch with a pale, mostly sleeping Georgie. He is holding the newspaper in one hand and one of Georgie's little feet in the other, and for a moment, I'm convinced from the look on his face that there's no way he'll be going to work, no way he'll be leaving his son. But the minute he spots me, the look changes to one of relief, and he stands up to leave. He is out the door a few minutes later, and I'm left with an odd feeling, wondering what might have happened if I hadn't walked through the door.

Valentine's Day

Patrick holds the taxi door open. “Are we going to your place or mine?” Then he slides in next to me as I give the cab driver my address.

The thing is, it would be so easy. So easy to make him feel better for a little while, so easy to let him make
me
feel better. Patrick puts my bags down in the space between us.

When we arrive at my apartment, we both get out, and he pays the driver. We stand on the sidewalk for a minute, and I don't want to be the first one to speak, but someone has to, or this charade will go too far. We're both waiting for the other to cry uncle.

“I thought you were, you know, making an inappropriate joke,” I say. “But here you are. Did you want to grab a cup of tea or something?”

“Matthew made a sarcastic comment to me the last time I saw him,” says Patrick. “At the time, I wondered where he learned it. Scotty and Gretchen can be—could be—funny, but they're not sarcastic. Now I get it.”

“He's a funny kid,” I say. “Some might even call him hilarious.”

“I'm coming upstairs,” says Patrick. “And when you want me to leave, all you need to do is say so.” I want to protest. I don't want to be alone. I settle for not saying anything, turning toward my apartment and letting us both in the front door.

I don't turn on the light right away when we get in because I can't remember if I washed my breakfast dishes or hung underwear to dry in the bathroom. Then I think about how petty those things are, so I flip on the hall lights and dump my stuff under the coatrack.

“There are wineglasses in the cupboard above the sink.” I take out the warmest clothes I can possibly sleep in and go into the bathroom. I shut the door, taking off most of my clothes. Everything I'm wearing is damp, and I feel cold down into the bottom of my lungs. I come back out to the living room to find Patrick swilling vodka out of the cheap bottle on my counter, and a very full goblet of wine waiting for me.

We drink, and my mind plays the events of the day in repeated fragments, like a cable box in a windstorm. Patrick is restless, not seeming to want to be still. He walks around the perimeter of my tiny living room with his bottle, stopping next to the piano. He pushes one of the keys down, so slowly that it doesn't make a sound. “You know those horrible days, the ones where someone shoots up a school, or a bunch of kids die in a bus crash, or somebody sets off a couple of car bombs?”

“Yeah.” I open the cupboard I keep my dishes in. I want to find a glass to pour his vodka into, to make sure we have a way to measure how much he's actually drinking.

“And you know the days that follow it, the media circus, the vigils, all the sad people on the news, the way you feel when you think about doing something normal in the face of such heartbreak?”

“Yeah.” I have to approach him to take the bottle away. He gives it to me without an argument. I pour him a glass and put the vodka away in the cupboard above the refrigerator.

“I always felt like I never knew the appropriate way to mourn those things. What's the right thing to do? Embrace love as the enemy of hate? Live your life like there might not be a tomorrow? Wallow? Is there a
right way
to do it, do you think?”

“Probably not.”

Patrick sets his glass on the counter, and I feel like I can hear all the blood rushing to my face. He sits down, finally, on the piano bench. “This tragedy, this personal tragedy, that's not at all national, that nobody knows about but us—will I be able to use it as an excuse for as long as it is actually affecting me? I don't know how to do this. I can't imagine how I'll ever get over her. And I'm only thinking about me here. No Scotty, no Matthew, no George, and no Gretchen's family in the mix. Just me. How will I ever get over this?”

“I don't know,” I say. And I mean it with my whole heart.

“Do you want to go to bed?” he says, and I do.

He gets undressed, and we get under the covers. Then we close our eyes on the worst day we've ever known, and we sleep.

May, ten weeks after

The boys spend one more weekend with Aunt Lila, but by two weeks past the food-poisoning incident, we stop shipping them off to Connecticut on Friday nights. I suspect it's due to some chicken-related trust issue. I'm now on duty seven days a week. No one ever asked me if I was okay with that, but neither did I give any indication that I might not be. I'm still pretty pissed at Lila for the whole ordeal. It has been two and a half months since we lost Gretchen, and the multiple therapists this family employs have all said pretty much the same thing—that this first year, with its many milestones, is going to be one of the most difficult that these three guys will ever live through. The first birthday without her. The first Fourth of July without her. The first new school year without her. The first Christmas, the first time we walk by her favorite restaurant, the first time we visit all the places we've been with her. Those things will happen, and we will anticipate them and agonize about them, and then we will live through them. And the next birthday won't ever have to be the first one without her again.

We seem to have come to a mutual agreement in this house not to mention Gretchen in front of Scotty. Even Matt is on board. For the life of me, I can't think of the last time I heard someone say her name, and I'm starting to feel paranoid about what will happen when someone finally does. We've fallen into a routine that covers all the loose ends, that neatly constructs the allegation that maybe she never existed at all. Denial holds the walls up here.

“Mom wants to know if you need money, but she doesn't want to insult you,” says Jane in my ear as I'm walking to my own apartment, after dropping the boys at school. I haven't seen my apartment in a few weeks. “She wanted me to do some reconnaissance, but I thought it would be easier just to ask you.”

“I don't need money,” I say. “I've never needed money less.”

“When you stop calling her, it's usually because you're ashamed of something, like a lack of money. Are you? Ashamed of yourself for some reason?”

“What?”

“Her words, her words, my little chicken pot pie. Hey, you're not doing Scotty's laundry are you? That might be cause for a little bit of shame.”

“It's just part of my job.”

“What a weird job.”

“Well,” I say, “I guess we can't all be stable and traditional like you.”

“It's still laundry. It's not exactly unbridled freedom. You've been in a holding pattern with these people for more than two years now. Maybe, and I'm not saying tomorrow, but maybe someday soon, you'll go and find a different job.”

“You're right,” I say. “Probably not tomorrow.” I cross York Avenue and consider ducking into my usual coffee place, but I'm already running a few minutes behind. “I have to go now, Janie Doodle McPoodle. Tell Mom I'm rich, will you?”

“She'll never believe me.”

“Rude! Hey, here's a cliffhanger for you. Everett's scarf was at Jess's apartment the day I was there, and she left it out for me to see.”

“Ew. Oh god. Ew. What does it even mean?”

“I'm going to find out right now. He's sitting on my doorstep.”

“Intrigue. Scandal. The plot—”

“I have to go now.”

“Bye, love-goose.”

“Bye, love-pony.” I hang up. I climb my front steps. Everett stands up to greet me. “You got here fast,” I say, brushing past him so he can't do anything to throw me off my game, like kiss me or say something to make me want to have sex with him.

“I borrowed a car. Which sister was that on the phone?”

“Who says it was a sister?”

“You're calling someone else love-pony?”

“It was Jane,” I say, unlocking my apartment door and letting us both in. “Ugh, it kind of stinks in here. You know what I should do? Clean out the refrigerator.”

“While we're here, you want to clean out the refrigerator? That's what you want to do?”

“Yes. I didn't even think of that when I was packing up. I hope there's nothing disgusting in there.”

Everett opens the window next to the piano and drags the bench closer. “Can you hand me an ashtray?”

I hand him a chipped ice cream dish and open the fridge. “Yikes. I think there used to be a head of lettuce in the bottom drawer, but it seems to have passed on. Into, like, a different material state.”

“How are you here right now?” he asks, attempting to exhale through the screen. The wind blows the cloud of smoke back at him, and he waves his hand around to disperse it.

“The kids are in school.”

“And the dad is at work?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you tell him?” Everett asks. “I mean, I'm curious what you tell him when you're going out, or if you tell him that you're not coming home, or whatever.”

“I didn't tell him.”

“Charlotte.” Everett's face can change so quickly. He has put out his cigarette, stood up, and made it halfway across my living room before I've even looked up from the fridge. “You fucking snuck out of the house? Like you're seventeen or something? That is so fucked up.” He is laughing, but the way he says it makes me feel responsible and guilty. “But I get it. It's kind of hot.” He pulls on the waistband of my leggings. He doesn't look into my eyes or try to hold my face, but he does spread his hand on the small of my back underneath my shirt.

“Hold your horses,” I say.

“Hold my love-ponies?”

“I called to ask you about something.”

“You had to ask me in person?”

“I wanted to see your face.”

“You could have said you trapped a roach or something, needed me to come and kill it for you.”

“Did you go home with Jess? The night of your concert, I mean.”

“No, I didn't. But I like it that you think I'm that smooth.”

I open the fridge again so that the door is between us, and I start pulling out all the condiments to check the expiration dates. “I don't know if I believe you.”

“Why would I lie?”

“She has your scarf.”

“Yes, she does. I gave it to her.”

I pitch a six-month-old bottle of thousand-island dressing into the garbage can. “Did you offer it to her? Or did she ask for it?”

“I don't remember. I might have been a little preoccupied that night.”

“Can you please just try?”

“I think she said she had to walk a few blocks, and would I mind letting her borrow it, and that she would return it or send it back. Or something like that. Did you think I was sleeping with her?”

“I mean, I wondered. It wasn't as accusatory in my mind as all that.”

“But you thought I might sleep with her? While I was sleeping with you?”

“You're not sleeping with me.”

“Well, not right now, I'm not.”

“But I mean. You know what I mean. You can sleep with whoever you want.”

“Shit,” he says, and I'm relieved to realize that the worry in his eyes makes me feel like laughing. “Do we need to have a talk?”

“God. No.” I hear a buzzing noise, and I jump a little. “Hold on a minute.” Scotty McLean, says the readout on my phone. “I have to answer this,” I say and move away from the refrigerator to stand in front of the window. “Hello?”

“Simon is here,” says Scotty, and I try not to mind that he doesn't say hello back to me, because he sounds distressed. “I didn't know he was coming. He came alone. Mae's still in Chicago.”

“Did he show up at your office?”

“No, I'm at the courthouse.”

Everett bends down to put his ear right next to my phone. I move away from him. “Is the trial today?”

“It's not really a trial. He pleaded guilty; his attorneys have already entered the plea. But now he has to be sentenced, and Simon came to hear the proceedings. He's restless. I don't know what he's here for, what he wants to do.”

This is beyond the call of a babysitter, and even though no question has been asked, I feel like whatever I say will be the equivalent of signing my name to a new contract or tearing up the old one.