Kilroy stepped around the coffee table and kissed her pale pink cheek. “Morton Fraser, Barbara Fraser, this is Carrie Bell.”
I stood up, and Mr. Fraser and I shook, then Mrs. Fraser offered me her slim, cool hand. “How lovely to meet you,” she said, smiling and tipping her head to the side so that her soft, gray-gold hair brushed her shoulder. “It’s not often that we get to meet any of Paul’s”—she hesitated—“friends.”
“So,” Mr. Fraser said. “Glad you could stop by.” He shot his wife a look, and she shook her head almost imperceptibly. I wondered what the note had said, some kind of summons. We all stood there without quite looking at each other until a man in a dark suit came in and poured
drinks, Mrs. Fraser’s mouth tightening a little when she saw we already had ours. I wished I weren’t wearing jeans.
“How’ve you been?” Kilroy’s father said to him. “It’s been some time.”
Kilroy nodded. “OK.” One corner of his mouth rose into a cockeyed half smile. “Same old, same old.” Then he glanced at me and added, quietly, “Well, almost.”
Mrs. Fraser leaned forward, her hands clasped together. “Tell us what you do,” she said to me. “Do you work or are you a student?”
“I’m a part-time student,” I said. “I’m taking courses at Parsons.”
“Is that right?” she said. “And what are you studying?”
“Fashion design.”
“Right up your alley, Mom,” Kilroy said, not unkindly.
His mother smiled. “Do you have
wonderful
fabrics to work with?”
“We pretty much just use muslin,” I said. “At this level the emphasis is on learning how to fit and drape.”
“I see,” she said, nodding. “How interesting.”
There was another long silence. Kilroy and I were together on the couch, his parents in separate leather chairs opposite us. Behind them, yet another servant walked past the open doorway, carrying a tall silver vase full of slightly spent roses.
“Well,” Mr. Fraser said. “How did you, um—what did you do this weekend?”
Before he’d really stopped talking, Kilroy broke in to answer, his voice a half notch higher and louder than usual, as if he wanted to drown his father out. “Actually, Carrie and I went out to Montauk—rented a car and drove out Friday afternoon. She’d never been there. Traffic wasn’t bad at all on the way out, though it got a little nasty coming back in this afternoon.”
“And what did you think of Montauk?” Mr. Fraser asked me.
“It was great.”
He smiled broadly. “It’s one of the best places on earth. How was the weather?”
“Freezing and windy. The sky was so dramatic I kept kind of hoping it would rain.”
He beamed. “One of my favorite things is to come inside after getting soaked in a storm on the beach.”
“The consummate outdoorsman,” Kilroy said, and the two of them chuckled a little.
Mrs. Fraser lifted her glass to her mouth, barely opening her lips
enough to admit any of the drink. “Jane called yesterday,” she said. She hesitated, and I wondered who Jane was. What was going on? There was something in the atmosphere that the three of them were aware of, and I couldn’t tell if it was just their discomfort with each other or something more.
“How is she?” Kilroy said.
“They’re just back from diving off the Caymans. Mac came face to face with a shark.”
“How ironic,” Kilroy said, and his parents each suppressed a smile.
“She asked about you,” Mr. Fraser said.
“I’m sure she did.” Kilroy turned to me. “My older sister,” he explained, and a look of faint surprise passed between his parents at his having to tell me.
“Lucia wants a pony,” Mrs. Fraser went on. “Jane said she drew a picture of herself on horseback and left it on Jane and Mac’s bed. She wrote, ‘Lucia at age seven wanted to be an equestrienne.’ ” Mrs. Fraser smiled. “ ‘Equestrienne.’ She got the gender right.”
Mr. Fraser leaned forward. “She’s quite the wit these days, Paul. Sweet, too, although boy, can you get her dander up. Then she’s off to her room and there’s no reaching her.”
Kilroy snickered. “Must be genetic,” he said, and his parents hesitated and then both smiled awkward smiles.
I’d barely touched my drink, but Kilroy’s was nearly empty. He put it on the coffee table, carefully centering it on a coaster that was either made of malachite or painted to look as if it were made of malachite—it matched the green walls perfectly. He stood up and said to me, “We’d better go if we’re going to make that reservation.”
His mother looked up at him. “Reservation?” She glanced at me, a quick look that took in my jeans, my straggly hair. “Where are you going?”
“A place downtown.”
“Paul thinks we never go below Fiftieth Street,” she said to me, “but in fact one of our favorite places is in SoHo. Do you know Clos de la Violette?”
I shook my head.
“It’s lovely,” she said.
We were all still for a moment until, abruptly, Kilroy’s father stood, too. “Well,” he said. “Glad you could come by. Very nice.”
Kilroy shrugged. “I’m a sucker for your Scotch.”
His father brightened. “Really? Can I send a bottle home with you?” He turned to Mrs. Fraser. “Would you ring?”
“I was kidding,” Kilroy said.
Out in the hall a clock chimed seven times, and after a moment Mr. Fraser shook Kilroy’s hand again, and he and Mrs. Fraser walked us to the door. The entryway had a black-and-white marble floor and, running up the center, a staircase made of wood that had been stained a glossy black. I looked up to see what I could of the second floor, an open, yellow-walled space with two wide doorways leading deeper into the house.
Mrs. Fraser was waiting to say goodbye. She shook my hand, then put her palm on Kilroy’s arm, her thin fingers against his tweedy coat. “Don’t be such a stranger,” she said lightly, and he flushed and looked down, then reached for the shiny brass doorknob.
C
HAPTER
29
Kilroy was edgy and remote that evening, not wanting to talk about the visit—not wanting to talk, period. In the middle of the night I woke to find his place in the bed empty. I crept out to the living room and found him asleep on the couch, huddled under his coat, the reading light on and his book lying near him on the floor. From the bedroom I got his pillow and wedged it between his head and the hard frame of the futon, then went back and lay awake for a long time. I rolled from side to side, wondering at what I’d seen and heard at his parents’ house, how it added up to such a breach. They’d seemed so watchful of him, so careful. And their surprise that he’d never mentioned his sister to me. Jane.
They’re just back from diving off the Caymans
. Jane and Mac and Lucia. I flipped onto my back. I hated to be awake in the middle of the night, fearful I’d be exhausted all the next day.
Morton Fraser, Barbara Fraser, this is Carrie Bell
. That house, sumptuous and full of servants. His mother had been so pretty. Her cool, slim hand in mine. I turned and turned again. I was still awake at dawn, shapes clarifying in the gathering light.
Then suddenly I woke to the sound of the front door clicking shut. Eight thirty-three, according to the red numerals of Kilroy’s bedside clock. He was on his way to work.
I was muzzy with exhaustion, thick-limbed and trembly. I burrowed back toward sleep, but something pulled me back: the fact that he’d never before left without saying goodbye. If I happened to sleep through his
shower, he always came and sat on the bed, touched my shoulder and whispered a plan for later.
I thought of him on the futon in the middle of the night, just his head showing above the heavy wool of his coat. Then his parents again. The way they looked at each other, the way they looked at him. I kicked the blankets off but lay there for a while uncovered before I rubbed my face and sat up.
No note in the kitchen, no coffee in the coffeemaker. Well, he’d probably overslept, too. I wandered out to the living room and pushed his coat away so I could sit on the couch. Minutes after we’d gotten into bed together the night before I’d reached to touch his side, and I’d felt him flinch slightly, then deepen his breath so I’d think he was asleep. I thought of his mother’s face, her soft, grayish blond hair. His father’s smile. I pulled the coat close and felt in the pocket, half hoping he’d removed the note, but there it was, the stiff, smooth corner waiting for my fingertips. What a terrible thing to do. I pulled it out and looked at it, now seeing that the scrawly engraving on the back flap read
B
F
L
. Barbara Something Fraser. And
Paul
written on the front, in girlish, back-slanted printing.
I lifted the flap and pulled out a heavy card.
Darling, you must be thinking of the date as much as we are. Won’t you come by and have a drink with us? It would mean so much to your father. We’ll be home today and tomorrow
.
I slid the card back into the envelope and returned the envelope to Kilroy’s coat pocket, arranging the coat haphazardly on the futon. The date on the card had been March 20th, Saturday’s date: the note had waited a full day for Kilroy to find it. I wondered what
you must be thinking of the date as much as we are
meant, and why, rather than mail it, she’d come all the way down to Chelsea, maybe stood around until someone came out so she could enter the building and slide it under his door.
So he couldn’t miss it, that was why. She’d probably called first: Friday evening, Saturday morning, Saturday noon.
I tried calling him from the brownstone after Patternmaking—at six, when he was usually home, and then at seven, and then, with mounting anxiety, at eight. No answer, and I couldn’t leave a message because he didn’t have an answering machine, of course. Was he there, letting it ring? I walked over to McClanahan’s, the night dark and wet, a light rain misting my hair. The bar was noisy, Joe the bartender busy filling glasses, but
Kilroy was nowhere in sight. At his apartment building I buzzed but got no answer, and I was afraid to use my key: I could use it when he wasn’t there but not when he was, and I suspected he was. It was after nine when I returned to the brownstone, and I tried phoning one more time. By nine-thirty I was in bed, lying wide awake in the dark again. The house was quiet, and my room—
my
room—had a smell of old dust that was all but foreign to me.
Standing at Kilroy’s door the next afternoon, I rapped once for good measure, then slid my key into the lock. It was before five, but I wanted to be there when he got home from work: so I wouldn’t have another evening like last night, so I wouldn’t have to find out how many days in a row he’d fail to answer my phone calls. Inside, a smell of burned toast hit me, and I was about to go into the kitchen when Kilroy appeared from the living room, looking bedraggled in sweatpants and a ragged white T-shirt.
Oh, it’s you
, he didn’t have to say: his expression said it for him.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t expect—” I stopped and shook my head. “Did you skip work today?”
He lowered his head and moved it up and down without taking his eyes off the floor.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I thought I’d wait here for you to get home. I was worried about you last night—are you OK?”
He let out a whoosh of breath, then looked up at me and smiled unconvincingly. “Sure.”
“I can tell.”
He scowled a little, then turned and made his way back to the living room. “Come on in,” he said grudgingly, and then he flopped onto the futon, adjusting his position until his head was centered on the bed pillow I’d put there Sunday night. I wondered if he’d slept in the living room last night, too.
“What’s going on?” I said.
He drew his knees up and crossed one leg over the other.
“Kilroy?”
“Do you mean ‘wuz happenin’?’ ” he said with a jive accent. “Or ‘what is wrong with you?’ ”
“Either,” I said. “Both.”
He didn’t answer, and I sighed. There were several stacks of books in front of the bookcase, precarious towers of ten or twelve books each. The bookcase itself was partly empty now, two free shelves plus most of a third
one, so I knew what he’d been doing:
When it’s too full, I weed out whatever’s lost its glitter for me
. When it was too full, or when he needed something to occupy his mind.
He reached for
Contemporaneity and Consequences
, the book he’d been reading since before Montauk—I had no idea what it was about. He opened it and raised it to his face.
“I smell burned toast,” I said.
He lowered the book and stared at me. “Any other observations?”
I noticed his coat just then, in a heap on the floor behind the futon, and when he saw me looking at it, fear clawed at my stomach. Could he know I’d read the note? Was that what this was all about? But no, he couldn’t, there was no way.
“Do you want me to leave?” I said.
“Whatever.”
I turned away and moved down the hall and into the kitchen, where three or four plates of toast crumbs were crowded onto the counter, a dish of shapeless butter nearby. In the bedroom the blinds were drawn, and the bed was a mess, sheets wrinkled and twisted, pillows hugged into awkward shapes and abandoned. There was a half-empty coffee mug on the floor, another plate of toast crumbs. I skirted the foot of the bed to sit on my side. My photograph of the Parisian rooftop leaned against the back of the kitchen chair I used as a bedside table, and I picked it up, admiring in the half-light the perfect match between the gray paint of the frame and the gray roof of the building. I remembered the night he’d given it to me, how happy we’d been.
I heard his footsteps and turned to see him standing in the doorway, his book closed around his finger. “Want to get some dinner?” he said. “I could eat Chinese.”
I put the picture down and buried my face in my hands—I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I could eat Chinese
—as if this were a normal night in the course of our relationship.
“What?” he said, coming around the bed to stand before me.