Authors: Christina Baker Kline
“It was a great party,” Alison said, with genuine feeling—it had been a great party. “Did you enjoy it?” This was where their relationship was now—somewhat formal, and yet still, somehow, intimate. Alison didn’t know if Claire had had a good time, but she felt entitled, even obligated, to ask.
“I did,” Claire said, as if she were surprised to say so. “Though it’s weird for things to be so … so public, after all that time scribbling away in a room by myself.”
“Dear God, yawn. Isn’t that what all writers say when they finally get published?” Ben said, coming up behind them. “We’re going to have to think of something more original for you to say when you go on tour, you know.”
“My husband, my press agent,” Claire said.
“By the way,” said Alison, “Charlie’s sorry he can’t be here. We had a babysitting situation.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” Claire said.
“We should all have dinner again one of these nights, after Claire gets back,” Ben said. “Maybe you two could come into the city.” He touched Alison’s back with the flat of his hand. “We miss you guys.”
“We’d love that,” Alison said. She took a sip of her drink. (As one of the bartenders was packing up, he’d handed Alison a half-full glass of blue liquid. “The end of the martinis,” he said. “I’d hate to see it go to waste.”)
“Mmm,” said Claire.
“So when are you going on tour?” Alison asked.
“In about a week. Just a few towns. Nothing major.”
“Are you going, Ben?” Alison asked.
He shrugged, and Claire shook her head. “It’s going to be so tedious,” she said. “One obscure radio station after another.”
“She says I’d be trailing after her like Prince Philip. Though I think that could be fun. I’ve got the stance down.” Ben clasped his hands behind him and rocked on his heels, then added, “I did point out to her that the queen rarely makes appearances at chain stores in strip malls.”
Two women, the peacock from the elevator and a fresh-faced girl with a Marc Jacobs bag, whose proprietary manner with Claire implied that she was either her new best friend or her publicist, joined the group.
“Fabulous! Party!” declared the peacock. “Everybody wants to know when you’re writing a sequel.”
Claire laughed uncomfortably. “Let’s just get through this, shall we?”
“You know, if you push another one out right away, it increases your selling power exponentially,” said Peacock.
“But I’ve said everything I have to say,” Claire said. “What’s left?”
“Well, for one thing, sex,” the fresh-faced girl said, her voice dropping to a coy whisper. “There’s not a lot of it in this book.”
“Wait a minute,” Ben said. “Aren’t you billing it as ‘a young girl’s sexual awakening’?”
“Sure, to sell copies,” said Fresh Face. “But it’s really pretty tame. The book ends when she goes off to college—just think of all the material Claire’s got saved up from the past ten or fifteen years!”
All at once Alison realized that Claire was becoming agitated. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes hard and bright; her hand fluttered at her neck. “First of all,” she said in a strained voice, “remember, this is fiction. And second … ”
Peacock and Fresh Face exchanged glances. They were clearly accustomed to dealing with sensitive authors; this was part of the deal.
“Second … ” Claire’s voice trailed off. She looked at Ben beseechingly.
“Second,” he jumped in, “if this novel were, in the slightest way, based on her life, the sequel would be dreadfully boring. Prince Charming, happily ever after, end of story.”
Claire reached over and pulled Ben toward her, kissing him on the cheek.
“Aw,” said Fresh Face, “sweet. A love story.”
Peacock glanced at her watch. “Well, time to go. Fabulous party,” she said again. “Congratulations, Claire.”
“Thank you,” Claire murmured, air-kissing them both.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Fresh Face said, holding one hand out like a phone receiver, pinky and thumb extended, as they walked away. “You get some rest!”
Alison watched them head toward the door, grabbing the leftover books from side tables along the way. “I guess I’d better be going, too,” she said. “See what I can scrounge up at home for dinner.”
Claire nodded distractedly.
“Well,” Ben said, trying and failing to catch Claire’s eye, “why don’t you come and grab a bite with us? We’re going to a little bistro around the corner on Second.”
Claire snapped to attention. “Ben,” she said abruptly, clutching his arm. “I’m—I’m really tired. This might not be the best night.”
“It’s okay—I can’t, anyway,” Alison said quickly. “I need to get home. Let’s do it another time.”
“I’m sorry if that sounded bitchy,” Claire said, turning toward her. “It’s just … my mother and everything … You understand.”
“Of course, of course.”
“I’m so glad you came,” Claire said. “Honestly. It means a lot to me.”
Something about this irritated Alison. Perhaps it was the earnest tone, at once overly formal and grandiose, the celebrity thanking her audience for its support. Perhaps it was bigger than that: Claire’s appropriation of an inheritance of stories and memories on which both of them had claims—an archive of secrets, a library of shared experiences. Their childhood together was Claire’s childhood now, defined by her interpretation.
Alison took the elevator down to the lobby alone. Stepping outside, she gazed at the street in front of her, glistening like an oily river. The air smelled, improbably, of damp soil. Alison fumbled for her keys, feeling around in her bag for the smooth silver Tiffany’s ring Charlie had given her for her birthday (the little blue box had held such promise, and then it held … a key ring). As she opened the car door and slipped into the driver’s seat, Alison realized that she hadn’t missed Charlie, the way she’d expected to, at the party. Instead she’d felt a small thrill at being alone in the city—even as her mood turned cloudy. Being alone and anonymous might be preferable, she thought, to being alone and observed—which was how she felt most days in the fishbowl of Rockwell. She started the car. As she drove north on East End Avenue, the multicolored lights of the city refracted through the raindrops on her windshield.
When the phone
rang, Charlie was in a deep sleep. It took a moment for him to realize that the ringing was not inside his head, somewhere in his dream, and then, all at once, his brain collected itself in a rush—late night—Alison gone
—
and he lunged for the telephone, fully awake. He heard her voice and could tell right away that something terrible had happened. Alison was, by nature, calm. Charlie had seen her break down only twice: the day her father had a heart attack, and the time Annie, as a toddler, got lost in a mall.
Alison wasn’t crying, but there was a hysterical undercurrent in her voice, as if on the other end of the line someone were holding a gun to her head and she wasn’t supposed to let Charlie know. As she spoke, Charlie cradled the phone on one shoulder and pulled a pair of khakis over his boxers, grabbed two random socks out of the laundry basket and put them on, fished his sneakers out from under the bed. As he yanked an old Izod over his head he realized that she was asking him a question.
“What?” he said.
“Jesus, are you listening?” Alison breathed. “I asked if you can come right away.”
“Sorry, I’m getting dressed,” he said. “I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
Their next-door neighbor, Robin, didn’t hesitate when Charlie called and told her there’d been an accident and the car was totaled, and asked if she could come over and stay with the kids. The only thing she wanted to know was whether Alison was all right. He said she was. Then he remembered that Alison had said she had hurt her wrist, and he told Robin that, too, thinking it might mitigate the inconvenience if she knew it was serious. He didn’t say anything about the boy.
The streets of Rockwell were quiet and wet and dramatically lit, like a stage set. Driving like this, in a rush of adrenaline in the still of the night, felt strangely familiar, and after a moment he realized why: Charlie and Alison had taken predawn trips to the hospital for the births of both of their children. Alison used to joke that she was physically incapable of going into labor unless she was in a deep sleep; Charlie joked that the kids were considerate to give them a taste of the nocturnal schedule they’d be keeping. How ironic, he thought, that his associations were with hope, with promise, and now. …
He felt a great weight descend on him; he almost couldn’t breathe. She might have been killed—it was impossible to fathom. Emotions sloshed around inside him like conflicting pronouncements in a Magic 8 Ball: I should have gone with her. She’s hurt. In pain. How the hell did this happen? Was she drunk? The car must be totaled; we can’t afford a new one. Jesus, what if there’s a lawsuit? This is going to completely fuck up my life.
Claire—
He took a deep breath. Alison, with whom he had fallen in love and married, who had borne him two children, would now carry a burden of guilt and remorse. And he, who was no longer in love with her, who was, in fact, in love with someone else, would have to help her get through it, would have to be the good husband for—how long?
He didn’t know.
Was he up to it? He didn’t know.
He was the one who had talked Alison into going to that damn party. He knew she wasn’t comfortable driving at night, in the rain, in the gnarl of traffic moving to and from the city. Why was he so invested in her going? What did he think it would prove? Claire had called him earlier in the day to make sure he was coming, and he hadn’t called her back to tell her he wasn’t. It was complicated; his chest had felt tight all day. The truth was, Charlie wanted Alison to go to the party because these days when he allowed himself to feel anything at all for her, he felt overwhelming sadness and pity, and he didn’t want to feel that anymore. If only for a night, he wanted to nudge her back into the world she had been a part of, the one she’d given up for him, for the children. He wanted her to be happy.
And maybe in some small, terrible way, he wanted her to get used to the idea of being alone.
He turned on the radio to keep from thinking. He stared at the road ahead. For some reason what came to mind were generic moments from his childhood: smacking a ball with his wooden bat high and hard and rounding the bases on a hot afternoon, kicking up dust the whole way home; staring at a clock, portentous as a full moon, in a chalky-smelling middle-school classroom. Even when he tried, he couldn’t remember much specific detail about his adolescence. In Charlie’s memory his parents were always the same age, in their late thirties, his mother smiling and his father joking with his sister and flipping burgers on the grill, an endless family barbecue under a wide Kansas sky.
According to the radio station, 1010 WINS, the tunnel was as clear as the bridge. He got on Route 80 toward New York and took exit 7, as instructed, to the station house in Sherman where Alison was—waiting? Being held? He hadn’t asked.
As Charlie drove along in the preternatural brightness he started thinking about how he’d responded when Alison called—how his reaction had been impatience, not empathy, and how differently he might have felt even a few months ago. You would think that two people who had built a life together over eight years, who’d seen each other at all hours of the day and night, who were raising two children together, might know each other better than anyone else in the world. But Charlie had the peculiar sense with Alison that he might never know her. She’d always been a kind of mystery to him. He could sit down next to a woman at a dinner party and feel, after thirty minutes, that he understood her better than he did his own wife.
Marrying Alison had been a slow-motion dive into an untested body of water. He wasn’t sure, he had never been sure, but then he had never really been sure about anything or anyone. Getting married seemed brave and important. But now he wondered if it was the opposite—a form of cowardice, a lack of ambition, a capitulation to his most conventional and conservative impulses.
Charlie’s love for Alison was like a rubber band; it always snapped back to its original size. And now, when it mattered, he realized that it didn’t stretch at all.
“Your husband is
here,” a female officer said, not unkindly. “How’s that wrist?”
Alison looked down at it, this thing in her lap wrapped in a soft beige bandage and secured with two metal butterfly clips, and thought, with a strange sense of disconnection, that it actually was hurting a bit, throbbing even, though until the officer had asked she hadn’t been aware of it. “It’s okay,” she said. “Thanks.”
The officer hesitated a moment, as if she wanted to say something more. It was a response that would become familiar to Alison over the next few days and weeks. In that split second, she knew what the woman was thinking: she was repulsed by Alison and horrified at what had happened, but she understood that Alison would suffer for it, and she felt sorry for her. Alison looked at her, and she glanced away. “Well, I’ll send him back,” the officer said. “Then we’ll need to get a statement from you.”
“I think I’m … ” Alison’s voice faltered. She cleared her throat. “Getting a lawyer. He said I might need a lawyer.”
The officer nodded. “That’s probably not a bad idea.”
After she left, Alison took a deep breath and let it out slowly. In the silence she could hear raindrops against the small windows set high in the wall. She rubbed the arm of the swivel chair and felt the rough wood, worn down to ribbons of grain. Her head was pounding, a low, throbbing pulse that had started at her temples and was spreading down her scalp, and she pressed her fingers against her skull to push it away. All of a sudden she felt a different kind of pressure on her shoulder, and it took a moment to realize that it was a hand—Charlie’s hand, the one with his wedding ring. She looked up. He was pale and somber. He was wearing a Yankees cap and a faded navy blue tennis shirt, all three buttons uncharacteristically undone, revealing a thatch of light-brown curly hair.