The Hazards of Sleeping Alone (41 page)

Now, standing on her porch, her face is damp with the rain. They'd hurried across the parking lot, not bothering with umbrellas. Under the porchlight, she can see a few droplets clinging to Howie's hair. She fumbles for her keys, then pauses, not knowing what to do with them. She wants him to kiss her. She doesn't want him to kiss her. She wants to thank him, run inside, and jump under the covers. She wants to kiss him, stay up until Bea gets home, crack open a few Smirnoffs, and recount every detail.

“I had a really nice time, Charlotte.”

They are facing each other but not touching, all four arms at their sides. Charlotte looks at the ground, at the door, over his shoulder at the night sky. The sky looks strangely bright, she thinks, as if cleansed by the rain. Howie puts his hand on her arm.

Then his other hand is under her chin, lifting her face upward. She has only seconds to register that his eyes are closed
before she meets the warm pressure of his lips. She feels a surge in her gut, a sudden splash, alive and flipping. She closes her eyes, aware of the presence of flesh on flesh, the space their mouths occupy, tiny yet overwhelming. As she kisses him, all the vastness of the sky and moon and rain are winnowed down to just this: miracle of miracles, the meeting of two people's lips, absolute proof of being awake.

F
unny how a thing so small—no bigger than a quarter, no longer than a minute—can alter everything. Despite the enormous list of things she has to do in preparation for the book group (shopping, cleaning, choreographing condo to be seen in best possible light), it is there, just there, tucked in the back of her mind like a secret: a man and a woman, the weight of a hand on an arm, slight rise of a chin, smell of fresh rain on a jacket. Small details on the surface—almost negligible—and yet, everything else is dwarfed by their magnitude.

Charlotte manages to funnel her giddiness into preparing for the group's arrival. She scours the kitchen. Swiffers the hardwood. Vacuums the beige rug. Yanks open the curtains to show off her patio, dappled in the promised rays of Saturday sunshine. Even gets uncharacteristically cute with her snack choices, running to the 7-Eleven for honey-flavored candies to tie in thematically with
The Secret Life of Bees.
She leaves her laptop open on the kitchen table—which gives the misleading impression she's been writing, though to have it on isn't unusual. Not since
Walter called last week, explaining how to convert Emily's sonogram picture into a screensaver.

With the rest of the house ready, Charlotte considers the centerpiece: Howie's daisies. They're still on the kitchen table, looking ridiculous in their juice carton. Charlotte pulls on her coat, pockets her key ring. Then, armed with a pair of scissors, she ventures into the bright cold to the basement storage area. It's about five condos down, past the K—H doors, some of them already hung with pine-cone Christmas wreaths and red velvet bows. She steps carefully, last night's rain having congealed into slippery patches, until she finds the door marked
STORAGE
and descends.

This is the underworld of Sunset Heights: cool, cavelike, a maze of alphabetical eight-by-eight wooden crates hidden away below the rows of identical foyers and garden patios. The crates are huge, slatted; they could contain circus tigers. Instead they are crammed full of people's belongings: detritus of memories, evidence of past lives. Peering through the slats in the dim light, Charlotte can make out shoe bags, steamer trunks, grills, lampshades. The ornate edge of a picture frame, rubber handle of an exercise bike. She pauses to admire the fabulously precarious tower of boxes inside L2. Unlike Charlotte's generic cardboard, Bea's boxes proclaim their contents loudly: an electronic foot massager, set of tequila glasses, chip-and-dip set, George Foreman grill in hot pink.

Charlotte digs out her tiny key to unlock L1. There are at least ten boxes in there, all unopened since her move. About half are her father's old textbooks, labeled
BOOKS—DAD.
She picks her way around these and punctures the top of a box marked DECOR, expecting to find random furnishings. Instead it's a pile of holiday decorations she'd forgotten that she had. Reindeer
cookie cutters, pastel Easter baskets, a gluey rubber skeleton, an ancient tree stand. She lifts them out gently, each a subtle sharpening of breath. She untangles strings of colored lights, fuzzy Christmas stockings, rolls of red-white-and-blue crepe paper Emily once used to decorate her bike for the Fourth of July parade. Digging into the next box—
SCHOOL
—she uncovers stacks of Emily's old three-ring binders, Velcro-flapped Trapper Keepers, tests with stickers at the top that say “Terrific!” and “Great Job!”
STUFF
yields a compact history of Emily's collections: owls, pennies, stickers, erasers in the shapes of lightbulbs and Hershey bars. When Charlotte pries open
MISC.
and finds, draped across the top, the sign for
EMILY' S OFFICE,
she sinks to her knees.

The red yarn ribbon is still intact, but the colors are looking faded. The edges of the cardboard are starting to curl. Her eyes well up as she traces the letters with her fingertip, remembering so clearly the afternoon she found Emily drawing them, the kitchen table an avalanche of Magic Markers. She remembers how Emily would dispense advice from inside the kitchen closet, walls thrumming, phone cord like a tensile tail, how Charlotte couldn't see her but could sense her, and how that had been enough.

Now, it's almost too much. Charlotte is overcome with a feeling of emptiness that almost knocks her out. She gazes around at her memory vault, just one in a maze of memory vaults, and feels exhausted. Indifferent. She could curl into a ball right here on the basement floor. Then she thinks about the book group. She thinks of Howie's neglected flowers. She picks up her scissors and places the sign back in its box.

It's in the misleadingly labeled
BOOKS—OTHER
that Charlotte finally finds what she came for. She removes the vases from
their inky wrappings, varying in size and shape and color, most of them acquired through some long-ago boyfriend of Emily's. Charlotte burrows deeper, through a layer of
Jersey Tribunes,
a soft sediment of pillows, more
Tribunes,
and finally, like a bed of rock, books. She pulls one to the surface.
The Joy of Sex.
She surveys the crate for any trace of a hidden camera. Then, without pausing to think, she stuffs the book inside a cobalt blue vase, repacks
BOOKS—OTHER,
hurries out of the storage area and across the slippery walkway and into her warm condo, where she shoves
Joy
to the back of a living room shelf.

When the book group arrives, they are twenty minutes late and minus one member. From her kitchen window, Charlotte watches the remaining five of them pull up in Cathy's Hyundai, emerging one after another like a clown car.

“Apologies,” Rita Curran says as Charlotte opens the door. Rita is wearing sunglasses, despite the fact it's about thirty degrees outside. “We know we're more than fashionably late. But it's not our fault.”

“We were waiting for Linda—”

“—she never showed—”

“—we finally called—”

“—turns out they picked up Rachel from the clinic this morning.”

“Did they?” Charlotte is genuinely elated. “That's wonderful!”

“She said she just forgot to call us,” Kit explains. “Which is understandable. Considering.”

“Of course it is,” Charlotte says, then awkwardly flings her arms apart. “Well—welcome!” The group doesn't need any encouragement. They crowd into the foyer like a swarm of real
estate agents, heels clicking, eyes digesting and probably mentally pricing every detail. Charlotte leads them through the condo en masse.

“This hardwood's just gorgeous.”

“Is that patio all yours?”

“Oh, the bathroom's adorable! I've always liked fish prints.”

“Aren't these rugs plush? It's like they've never seen feet!”

They conclude in the kitchen, where they all begin unwrapping snacks. They comment on the honey candy, the hippo soap. Someone claims to have always wanted an icemaker.

“You know, Char,” Rita says, apropos of nothing. “I've been meaning to ask you. I could have sworn I saw Joe in town a few weeks ago.”

The group collectively skips a beat, necks stiffening.

“You probably did,” Charlotte replies evenly. “He flew in when Emily and her boyfriend came to visit.” She feels a wave of recollection ripple through the room:
The daughter! The one with the black boyfriend!

“And how is she doing?” Rita asks. “Your daughter?”

“Very well.”

“Things with the boyfriend still going strong?”

“Oh, yes. Very strong.”

“Well, please tell her I wish them all the best. Joe too. I can't imagine the last time I saw him—it must be seven years ago. More! I knew it was him the minute I saw him, though. I came home and said to Ed, I could swear I just saw Joe Warren downtown. I think I told you too, didn't I, Marion?”

“You might have,” Marion says, with a glance at Charlotte.

“He was jogging,” Rita continues. “That's the reason I noticed him in the first place. Must be a West Coast thing. I don't know many men in this neighborhood who jog!”

The group laughs, a touch uncomfortably.

“He
is
on the West Coast, isn't that right, Charlotte?”

“Seattle.”

“That's right. I thought so. Seattle.” Rita sighs. “Well, good to know I'm not losing my mind—or my eyesight. Not yet, at least. With the calcium and the estrogen, I've got enough on my hands. Speaking of which—” She pauses, and Charlotte looks over to find her peering at the refrigerator door. “Who's this?”

Charlotte's stomach does a flip.

“Howard Janson, pharmaceuticals,” Rita reads, frowning. “Do you recommend him? I can always use some new meds.”

“Actually,” Charlotte says, her face growing warm. “I don't know him like that. I mean, not professionally.” Her body is a series of small explosions. “I had a date with him last night.”

The room falls silent. All snacks are abandoned, all eyes turned to Charlotte. “In that case,” Rita says, pushing a stack of books aside and dropping into a chair. “You're dealing with a roomful of married ladies here. Take it from the top.”

So, holding court in the middle of her kitchen, Charlotte describes her date with Howie. It's not that she feels obligated; she just can't resist an opportunity to talk about it. She explains to the group how she has a neighbor upstairs, Bea, and how they've become friends. How Bea is a waitress at Friendly's (a flickering of glances), and Howie is one of her Friday-night regulars (more glances). How he took Charlotte to McFadden's Shoreside Restaurant (a few nods of approval), and how there was a lobster village in the tank by the door and the butter was shaped like seashells. She giggles as she recounts Howie's key chain, his cholesterol. The buttered roll story is hilarious in the retelling, at least to her; the group looks bewildered. She omits the good-night kiss, though there had been no avoiding it with
Bea and Emily, who had collectively kept her up until 1:30
A.M.
the night before (Emily immediately asking “Did he kiss you?” and, when Charlotte hesitated, cheering, “Go Howie!”).

By the time she concludes that, yes, they're going to see each other again, her giddiness is bordering on hysteria. But unlike when she told the group about Walter, this time the shock effect isn't engineered: it's real.

“So you like him?” the group confirms, but hesitantly, as if unsure how to interpret what they've heard.

“Yes. He's—” Charlotte takes a breath. “He's kind.”

“Hot?” from Rita.

“I'd say there were sparks.”

But Charlotte doesn't elaborate any more than this. Her reasons for liking Howie are things she isn't sure the group would understand. Like the fact that he's tentative about expressing his opinions. That he sees the humor in a ridiculous spelling. That he says her name often. That he glows when he talks about his children. That he uses the word “supper,” and that she could picture him a grandfather, and that, when he kissed her, he guided her chin with his hand.

“These must be from him,” Cathy says, gesturing to the daisies.

“Oh, I love flowers.” Kit sighs. “They're so romantic.”

“Romantic?” Sandy reaches for a blondie and takes a bite. “What's that mean again? It's been so long, I think I forgot.”

“Hear hear,” from Marion.

“I'll tell you what's
not
romantic,” Cathy confides, plucking a truffle from a Tupperware bowl. “The Howard Stern TV show. It's bad enough Dan listens to him on the radio, but when it comes on at night and I'm going to bed, it's like he's downstairs watching porn.”

And from there, the book group begins to officially unravel: from comparing notes on literary themes and symbols to comparing notes on marriages and husbands. One by one, their shiny veneers come down as they admit to the fissures, the conflicts, the daily trials, all while devouring lemon squares and toffee bark and (for the more traumatic confessions) bear claws and Rocky Road fudge. Charlotte just listens, sneaking occasional glances at her daisies, exuberant in the sun.

When Sandy slaps a palm against the table (emphasizing her disdain for her husband's mayonnaise sandwiches), the sleeping laptop springs to life. The dark screen fills with the photo from Emily's sonogram.

Rita squints. “What's this?” she says. “Is that a sono?”

“Yes.” Charlotte's voice trembles with pride. “My daughter is having a baby.”

The group freezes mid-snack: mouths half-filled with chocolate, hands cradling crumb-covered napkins, unlicked fingertips coated with powdered sugar. Their eyes widen and dart from one to the other, as if trying to silently reach consensus on how best to respond. At last Sandy ventures, “The daughter with the—boyfriend?”