Modern Lovers (17 page)

T
here were no two ways about it—Andrew refused to compromise. Harry was not allowed to see Ruby other than in their SAT class. After the tiniest flicker of pride that his son had made his (likely) sexual debut in a public place, with a (face it) really beautiful girl, Andrew had swiftly moved on to more practical parental feelings. As far as Harry was concerned, Ruby Kahn-Bennett was his invisible neighbor, a ghost girl, a memory. If her parents had been good at any part of their jobs as mothers, Ruby would have been leaving the nest soon, flying off to some second- or third-rate college, where she could terrorize all the local ruffians with her winning combination of insouciance and innate grace. But Ruby was probably going to live at home forever, working at her parents' restaurant. Andrew didn't care. Ruby wasn't his problem—that was what Zoe and Jane got for being distracted and loose. Ruby had slept in their bed, in between them, until she was three. That's what you got. So many people were wishy-washy with their kids, softer than butter, and all it did was ensure that you were going to have bigger problems down the road.

It was easier to focus on positive things. He and Dave were going over the plans for the boat. Ideas, really. The garage at EVOLVEment had turned into more of a coffee klatch than a workshop, but Andrew didn't mind. He didn't know how to build a boat big enough for
people to live on. At first, Andrew thought Dave might be annoyed, but he wasn't—Dave was remarkably cool about the whole thing. It was actually better this way—the kid with the tools had taken over the shelf project, and instead, Dave and Andrew spent afternoons talking and meditating. One afternoon, after a quick juice, Dave asked Andrew to go with him down to the Rockaways. There were some herbalists with a little shop right off the beach, and he needed some supplies. Andrew thought it sounded like he was talking about weed, but he didn't want to be rude and ask. There was a lot about EVOLVEment that he didn't understand, and that was okay. Sometimes the whole top floor of the house stank like bong water, but that didn't mean it was Dave's finger on the carb. Even if it was, what did it matter?

The communal EVOLVEment car was a truck with paneled wood sides. The air-conditioning was broken, but it didn't matter, because it was cool enough with the windows rolled down. Andrew tapped the base of the window as they drove down Bedford Avenue toward the water.

“So you and your family have lived in Ditmas a long time, huh,” Dave said. He was wearing aviator sunglasses, a shiny contrast to his dense, dark beard.

“A really long time. Maybe even too long?” Andrew didn't mean anything by it.

“You thinking about moving?” Dave asked. “We just got here, man.” He smiled.

“Oh, no, no, we're not going anywhere,” Andrew said. The fact that Zoe and Jane were probably going to get a divorce and move was a silver lining, not that he could admit that to Lizzy. When they were kids, Zoe was fine—smart, funny, sexy, all that. It wasn't that he didn't like her—it was that Elizabeth liked her too much. Whenever she came home from a dinner with Zoe, he could feel the prickly edges poking up, the remnants of whatever Zoe had said about him.
Elizabeth always denied it, but he knew it was true—Zoe loved talking shit, and she always had, and when you got old and married, what else was there to talk shit about, except your marriage? Jane was fine—she was solid. He liked her food, and he liked that she was chill. Jane was not the problem.

So much made him angry. The traffic, the congestion, the population. Harry had one more year of school. Then things would be different. When Harry was young, when he was a child (which Andrew supposed he wasn't anymore), they would troop up to the natural-history museum to look at dinosaurs, they would ride the Staten Island Ferry back and forth. They had fun. Being the parent of a teenager meant that not only were you no longer having fun, you stood for the opposite of fun. Andrew wondered how long that had been true—God, they were so
stupid
, he and Elizabeth. How long had Harry been this other person, capable of sex and lies? How long had it been since he was a baby? There was no way to tell. Andrew closed his eyes and stuck his head closer to the window. The breeze felt like cool water on his forehead.

“I see what you're saying,” Dave said, even though Andrew wasn't saying much. “A couple of years ago, I was in Joshua Tree with a couple of friends, including a healer, and we took ayahuasca every night for a week. When I went in, I thought, how do I know how my body will react? Maybe I'll just call a cab and go back to L.A., you know? After the first night, I knew I was in for some real magic. Have you ever done it? It's like opening your third-eye point for six straight hours. Everything just comes pouring out.” He drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. “That's when I knew I had to make EVOLVEment a reality.”

“What were you doing before?” He didn't mean to be impertinent—it felt a bit like asking your therapist what
her
problems were, but it was hard to imagine Dave at a desk job, or even at a non-desk job
where he had to wear real clothes. As far as Andrew could tell, Dave didn't own a pair of socks or a single pair of pants with a zipper.

“Some body work, some life coaching. Taught yoga. You know, the circuit.”

“Of course.”

“What about you, Andrew? What circuit are you on?” Dave smiled. He had great teeth, the kind of teeth that orthodontists probably dreamed about—big and white and perfectly straight, with the tiniest gap in between his front two. Preacher teeth. Talk-show-host teeth. Guru teeth. Andrew had always thought that gurus would look sort of like Gandhi or, at the very least, Ben Kingsley. Under the beard, Dave looked like an amiable frat boy, a lacrosse player.

“I guess I'm not really sure,” Andrew said. “I was on the music circuit. Then I was on the documentary circuit. The dad circuit, for sure. I was good at that one. Killed it at the playground. Then the magazine circuit. I think right now I'm in the figuring-shit-out circuit.” He paused, and exhaled through his mouth. “Is there a list I can look at?”

Dave reached over and patted him on the leg. “It's cool, man. I have a feeling that it's all going to come together. It's about being in the right place at the right time, you know? Energy. It's about preparation, and energy. And you have it—I could feel, like, buzzing around you, like. The second you walked into the house, I just knew.” The car was slowing down. Andrew looked around—they were already in the Rockaways, that funny little toothbrush of Brooklyn (or was it Queens?) that stuck out into the water, parallel to the mainland. Dave pulled over and stopped the car. For a split second, Andrew thought Dave was going to kiss him. That was what gurus did, wasn't it? Gain followers and then sleep with them all? Andrew wouldn't have been surprised if Dave had slept with every girl at EVOLVEment and half the boys. They were all so gorgeous, their bodies so strong and toned.
Their bodies were meant to be used! Andrew wasn't sure what his body was for. They were parked in front of a slightly ramshackle house with wood-shingled walls that reminded Andrew of his parents' summer cottage on the Vineyard, a house he hadn't visited in almost twenty years. To the left of the house were four smaller identical houses, like little ducklings following their mother down the street.

“This is it,” Dave said. “This is what I wanted you to see.”

“This is where the herbalist lives?”

Dave laughed. “No, the herbalist lives in a shitty apartment near the taco place. This is the next phase.” He held up his hands so that his thumbs almost touched and leaned over so far that he was almost lying across Andrew's lap. “Do you see it, man?”

“See what?” Andrew scooched over in the leather seat and leaned out the window. “Good breeze. How close are we to the water?”

“One block,” Dave said. “One block to the waves. The Waves! Maybe that's what we call it.”

“Call what?” The houses were sweet. The windows and doors looked weathered but solid. He liked it out here. Maybe this would be their next act—a beach house in Brooklyn. He could finally learn to surf. Elizabeth could sell condos to the hipsters from Williamsburg. Harry would be off at school, and he'd come back to visit and they'd both be tan, wearing flip-flops.

“Our hotel, man.” Dave reached into the pocket of his T-shirt and pulled out a joint.

A
ccording to Ruby, all Zoe and Jane did was take turns yelling at her. Jane usually yelled at the restaurant, in the guise of giving Ruby things to do: “Clean the bathroom! Really do it this time!” or “Wipe down Table Six. Get the broom—there are Cheerios everywhere. This is not a Chuck E. Cheese!” Zoe chose to yell at home. Those outbursts were more erratic, but she couldn't help it: Sometimes she was angriest that Ruby had left the shampoo bottle right side up instead of upside down, which meant that it took longer for the shampoo to come out, and if the cap was open, the bottle would fill with water. Sometimes she was the angriest when she thought about Ruby's body exposed in public after dark, how anything could have happened to them, to both her and Harry, that they were in danger and they'd put themselves there. Sometimes she was angriest about the college applications, and Ruby's SAT score, and the fact that it was the middle of July and there was nothing on the horizon except more of the same. It was hardest to yell about that, so that's when she made popcorn, covered it with some nutritional yeast, and left it in front of Ruby's bedroom door instead.

What made Zoe feel even worse (and what she wouldn't admit out loud, not even to Jane) was that she was also relieved. If Ruby had been leaving for school, then she and Jane would be forced to sort
through their shit without any breaks, with no pauses for good behavior while Ruby was at the dinner table. Right now, it felt like their marriage talk was on pause, and Zoe was okay with that, for a little while. It wasn't like she was
dying
to get divorced. It just seemed inevitable—because how many downgrades could one marriage get? From lovers to friends to roommates to fond acquaintances? Things could always get worse. Elizabeth and Andrew seemed to be hovering somewhere below fond. How many years would it take for her and Jane to start poisoning each other with arsenic, or to “accidentally” run over each other's toes in the driveway? How many years would it take for them to end up a Lifetime movie, based on real facts? Zoe wasn't sure how much further down she wanted to go. Jane had always been jealous, of Elizabeth and other friends, and of everyone else she'd ever loved and/or touched. It didn't matter if the relationship was sexual or platonic or somewhere in the middle—Jane was a fucking gorilla, and she wanted her woman close. At first it had seemed so sweet, almost old-fashioned. Jane held Zoe's waist when they crossed the street, she carried her over the threshold when they got married, she knew and worshipped every inch of Zoe's body, every mole, every notch. Now Zoe wasn't so sure that was a good thing.

When Elizabeth complained about Andrew, it was about him having to go off somewhere, to some hippie-dippie shit, or to climb some mountain with his own special Tibetan Sherpa. Jane never left the neighborhood. All Zoe wanted was some goddamn space. And attention. She wanted Jane to miss her when she was gone, but she never went anywhere except to bed.

“Jane? You here?” Zoe knew she was. She grabbed an orange off the counter and walked up the stairs. It was just before noon, which meant that Ruby was at the restaurant and Jane was probably in her pajamas. She knocked on the door to the guest room and opened it after Jane growled a response.

Someone had once told her that you should never marry anyone
you wouldn't want to divorce, but Zoe had always thought that Jane's ornery qualities were among her most attractive. She didn't give a shit about how she looked. She didn't make small talk. She didn't pretend to like people she didn't, which Zoe thought probably saved about a dozen years of wasted time. Bitchy Whitman parents? Jane looked right through them. She was rough, and she was fair. She was a junkyard dog that made popovers for no reason, just because she was in the mood. Zoe poked her head into the room.

“Can we talk?”

Jane rolled over, the futon nearly rolling with her. She scooted backward until she was leaning against the wall. Her head knocked on a low-hanging picture frame, a drawing of Ruby's from kindergarten. “Sure,” she said, rubbing her eyes.

“Elizabeth is not the problem.”

“I know that.”

“You went straight-up Hulk at the police station.” Zoe sat down on the floor next to the futon.

“I know that, too. But I also know the way she looks at you, like you're her fucking chocolate ice cream cone and she wants to eat your brains and live inside your body.”

“Are you saying that she wants to lick me, or that she wants to kill me? I'm confused.” Zoe peeled her orange, sending sprays of citrus into the air.

“Maybe both? Both.” Jane paused to consider. “I don't actually think she wants to kill you. But I do think there's some weird shit happening over there, and I wouldn't be surprised if she thinks about you when she jerks off.”

“I don't think Elizabeth jerks off.”

“Exactly my point. There's some weird shit going on over there. Listen, that was nothing, okay? It was nothing. I was just tense, and worried about Ruby, and then I saw Elizabeth making her stupid Elizabeth faces at you, and I just went crazy. I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry. I
know things have been low for a while, but I've actually been feeling so much better, haven't you? Or am I crazy for thinking that, too? How are we doing? Are we okay? Should I stop asking you so many questions?”

Zoe laughed. She offered Jane a section of the orange, her fingers wet and sticky. When they met, Zoe had been in all kinds of relationships: good ones, bad ones, short ones, long ones. But nothing serious, not ever. She thought she'd been in love before—with a girl in high school, with a couple of girls at Oberlin and one after—but as soon as she met Jane, she knew she was wrong. Everything else had been make-believe, practice for the real thing. She'd learned how to say all the romantic words, and how to use her tongue just so, but it had all been pretend. Training wheels. With Jane, the wheels were off, and Zoe was flying.

She'd never thought about getting married: it seemed so square, so boring. But when she met Jane, so determined and purposeful, she understood: it was the acknowledgment of steadiness and trust, the shouted-out claim. Jane was already an adult, whereas Zoe and all her friends were still acting like teenagers.
Oh
, Zoe had thought. Marriage was something that grown-ups did, and if she grew up, she could do it, too. Jane made her want to stand up straight and stop referring to herself as a girl. When Jane's fingers reached the orange, their hands touched, Zoe smiled.