The Stranger (5 page)

Corinne's hair was still wet from a recent shower. “Hey, hon.”

He just stood there. “Hey.”

She leaned in and kissed his cheek. Her hair smelled wonderfully of lilacs. “Will you be able to get Ryan?”

“Where is he?”

“A playdate at Max's.”

Thomas winced. “Don't call it that, Mom.”

“What?”

“A playdate. He's in middle school. You have a playdate when you're six.”

Corinne sighed but with a smile. “Fine, whatever, he's having a mature gathering at Max's.” Her eyes met Adam's. “Could you get him before you come to the game?”

Adam knew that he was nodding, but he didn't remember consciously telling himself to do so. “Sure. We'll meet you at the game. How was Atlantic City?”

“Nice.”

“Uh, guys?” Thomas interrupted. “Can you chitchat later? Coach gets pissed if we aren't there at least an hour before game time.”

“Right,” Adam said. Then, turning back to Corinne, he tried to keep it light. “We can, uh, chitchat later.”

But Corinne hesitated for half a second—long enough. “Okay, no problem.”

He stood on the stoop and watched them walk down the path. Corinne hit the minivan's remote, and the back yawned open like a giant mouth. Thomas tossed his bag into the back and took the front passenger seat. The mouth closed, swallowing the equipment whole. Corinne gave him a wave. He waved back.

He and Corinne had met in Atlanta during their five-week precorp training for LitWorld, a charitable enterprise that sent teachers to needy parts of the world to teach reading. This was before the days when every kid took a trip to Zambia to build a hut so they could put it on their college applications. For one thing, all of the volunteers had already graduated college. The trainees were sincere, maybe too sincere, but their hearts were in the right place.

He and Corinne didn't meet on the Emory University campus where the training took place but in a bar nearby, where students over twenty-one could drink and hit on one another in peace over bad country music. She had been with a group of her female friends, he with a group of males. Adam had been looking for a one-nighter. Corinne had been looking for something more. The
two groups met slowly, the guys coming over to the girls like some clichéd dance scene in a bad movie. Adam asked Corinne if he could buy her a drink. She said sure but that wasn't going to get him anywhere. He bought her the drink anyway with the awesomely clever line that the night was young.

The drinks came. They started talking. It went well. Somewhere late into the night, not long before closing time, Corinne told him that she had lost her father at a young age, and then Adam, who had never talked about it with anyone, told her the story of his father's death and how the world hadn't cared.

They bonded over their paternal tragedies. And so it began.

When they were first married, they lived in a quiet condo off Interstate 78. He was still trying to help people as a public defender. She was teaching in the roughest neighborhoods of Newark, New Jersey. When Thomas was born, it was time to move into a proper house. That, it seemed, was just the way it went. Adam hadn't cared much where they lived. He didn't care if the house they chose was contemporary or something more classic like this one. He wanted Corinne happy, not so much because he was a great guy but because it didn't matter to him much. So Corinne had picked this town for obvious reasons.

Maybe he should have stopped it then, but as a young man, he hadn't seen the point. He had let her pick this specific house too, because it was what she wanted. The town. The house. The garage. The cars. The boys.

And what had Adam wanted?

He didn't know, but this house—this neighborhood—had been a financial stretch. Adam ended up leaving his job as a public defender for the far higher pay at the Bachmann Simpson Feagles law
firm. It hadn't been what he wanted so much as the smooth, well-paved path that men like him simply ended up taking: a safe place to raise his children, a lovely home with four bedrooms, a two-car garage, a basketball hoop in the driveway, a gas grill on the wooden deck overlooking the backyard.

Nice, right?

Tripp Evans had wistfully called it “living the dream.” The American dream. Corinne would have concurred.

“You didn't have to stay with her. . . .”

But of course, that wasn't true. The dream is made of delicate yet invaluable stuff. You don't casually destroy it. How ungrateful, selfish, and warped to not realize how lucky you are.

He opened the door and headed into the kitchen. The kitchen table was a mess, done up in Early American Homework. Thomas's algebra textbook was open to a problem that asked him to complete the square in the quadratic function f given by f(x) = 2x
2
– 6x = 4. A number two pencil lay snuggled in the book's crevice. Sheets of white-with-light-blue-squares graph paper were strewn everywhere. Some of the sheets had fallen to the floor.

Adam bent down, picked them up, and put them back on the table. He stared down at the homework for a moment.

Tread gently, Adam reminded himself. This wasn't just his and Corinne's dream at stake here.

T
homas's game was just starting
when Adam and Ryan arrived.

With a quiet “Later, Dad,” Ryan immediately peeled off to hang with fellow younger siblings and not risk being seen with a real-live parent. Adam headed to the left side of the field, the “away team” section, where the other Cedarfield parents would be.

There were no metallic stands, but some parents brought folding chairs so as to have a place to sit. Corinne kept four mesh ones in her minivan, all with cup holders on both arms (did anyone really need two for one chair?) and a shade for above the head. Most of the time—like right now—she preferred to stand. Kristin Hoy was next to her, wearing a sleeveless top with shorts so tiny that they had Daddy issues.

Adam nodded to a few parents as he strolled toward his wife. Tripp Evans stood in the corner with several other fathers, all with arms crossed and sunglasses, looking more like the Secret Service than spectators. To the right, a smirking Gaston hung with his cousin Daz (yes, everyone called him that), who owned CBW Inc., a high-end corporate investigation firm that specialized in employee background checks. Cousin Daz also ran less extensive background checks on every coach in the league to make sure that none had a criminal record or anything like that. Gaston had insisted the lacrosse board hire the high-priced CBW Inc. for this seemingly simple task, one that could be done far more cheaply online, because, hey, what are families for?

Corinne spotted Adam approaching and moved a few feet away from Kristin. When Adam got close, she whispered in near panic, “Thomas isn't starting.”

“The coach is always rotating the lines,” Adam said. “I wouldn't worry about it.”

But she would and she was. “Pete Baime started over him.” Son of Gaston. That explained the smirk. “He's not even cleared from his concussion yet. How can he be back already?”

“Do I look like his doctor, Corinne?”

“Come on, Tony!” a woman shouted. “Make the clear!”

Adam didn't have to be told that the woman shouting was Tony's mother. Had to be. When a parent calls out to her own child, you can always tell. There is that harsh ping of disappointment and exasperation in their voice. No parent believes they sound this way. Every parent does. We all hear it. We all think that only other parents do it but that magically we are immune.

An old Croatian proverb Adam had learned in college applied here: “The hunchback sees the hump of others—never his own.”

Three minutes passed. Thomas still hadn't gotten in. Adam sneaked a glance at Corinne. Her jaw was set. She was staring at the far sideline, at the coach, as though willing him through the power of her glare to put Thomas into the game.

“It'll be okay,” Adam said.

“He's always in the game by now. What do you think happened?”

“I don't know.”

“Pete shouldn't be playing.”

Adam didn't bother responding. Pete caught the ball and threw it to a teammate in the most routine play imaginable. From across the field, Gaston shouted, “Wow, helluva play, Pete!” and high-fived cousin Daz.

“What kind of grown man calls himself Daz?” Adam muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Corinne gnawed on her lower lip. “We were a minute or two late, I guess. I mean, we were here fifty-five minutes before game time, but the coach said an hour.”

“I doubt it's that.”

“I should have left the house sooner.”

Adam felt like saying that they had bigger problems, but maybe for now, this distraction would be helpful. The other team scored. The parents moaned and dissected what their defensemen had done wrong to cause the goal.

Thomas ran onto the field.

Adam could feel the relief coming off his wife in waves. Corinne's face went smooth. She smiled at him and said, “How was work?”

“Now you want to know?”

“Sorry. You know how I get.”

“I do.”

“It's kinda why you love me.”

“Kinda.”

“That,” she said, “and my ass.”

“Now you're talking.”

“I still have a great ass, don't I?”

“World class, prime Grade A, one hundred percent top sirloin with no fillers.”

“Well,” she said with that sly smile she broke out far too little. “Maybe one filler.”

God, he loved the too-rare moments when she let go and was even a little naughty. For a split second, he forgot about the stranger. A split second, no more. Why now? he wondered. She made remarks like that twice, thrice a year. Why now?

He glanced back toward her. Corinne wore the diamond studs he'd bought her at that place on Forty-Seventh Street. Adam had given them to her on their fifteenth anniversary at the Bamboo House Chinese restaurant. His original idea had been to stick them in a fortune cookie somehow—Corinne loved opening, though not eating, fortune cookies—but that idea never really panned out. In the end, the waiter simply delivered them to her on one of those plates with a steel covering. Corny, cliché, unoriginal, and Corinne loved it. She cried and threw her arms around him and squeezed him so hard that he wondered whether any man in the world had ever been hugged like that.

Now she only took them off at night and to swim because she worried the chlorine might eat away at the setting. Her other earrings sat untouched in that small jewelry box in her closet, as if
wearing them in lieu of the diamond studs would be some kind of betrayal. They meant something to her. They meant commitment and love and honor and, really, was that the kind of woman who would fake a pregnancy?

Corinne had her eyes on the field. The ball was down at the offensive end, where Thomas played. He could feel her stiffen whenever the ball came anywhere near their son.

Then Thomas made a beautiful play, knocking the ball out of a defender's stick, picking it up, and heading for the goal.

We pretend otherwise, but we watch only our own child. When Adam was a newer father, he found this parental focus somewhat poignant. You would go to a game or a concert or whatever and, sure, you'd look at everyone and everything, but you'd really only see your own child. Everyone and everything else would become background noise, scenery. You'd stare at your own child and it would be like there were a spotlight on your kid, only your kid, and the rest of the stage or field or court was darkening and you'd feel that warmth, the same one Adam had felt in his chest when his son smiled at him, and even in an environment loaded up with other parents and other kids, Adam would realize that every parent felt the exact same way, that every parent had their own spotlight directed at their own kid and that that was somehow comforting and how it should be.

Now the child-centricity didn't feel quite as uplifting. Now it felt as though that concentrated focus wasn't so much love as obsession, that the single-lens single-mindedness was unhealthy and unrealistic and even damaging.

Thomas ran down on the fast break and dumped a pass off to Paul Williams. Terry Zobel was open to score, but before he could
shoot, the referee blew the whistle and threw the yellow flag. Freddie Friednash, a middie on Thomas's team, was sent off for a one-minute slashing penalty. The fathers in the corner had a group conniption: “Are you kidding me, ref?” “Bad call!” “You gotta be blind!” “That's BS!” “Call them both ways, ref!”

The coaches caught on and started in too. Even Freddie, who had been jogging off at a brisk pace, slowed and shook his head at the referee. More parents joined the chorus of complaints—the herd mentality in action.

“Did you see the slash?” Corinne asked.

“I wasn't looking over there.”

Becky Evans, Tripp's wife, came over and said, “Hi, Adam. Hi, Corinne.”

Because of the penalty, the ball was in the defensive zone now, far away from Thomas, so they both glanced toward her, returning the smile. Becky Evans, mother of five, was almost supernaturally cheerful, always with a smile and a kind word. Adam was usually suspicious of the type. He liked to watch these happy moms for the unguarded moment, when the smile would falter or grow wooden, and for the most part, he always found it. But not with Becky. You constantly saw her cruising the kids around in her Dodge Durango, the smile alit, the backseats loaded up with kids and gear, and while these mundane tasks eventually wore down most in her maternal order, Becky Evans seemed to feed off it, to gain strength even.

Corinne said, “Hi, Becky.”

“Great weather for a game, isn't it?”

“Sure is,” Adam said, because that was what you said.

The whistle blew again—another slashing call on the away team. The fathers went nuts anew, even swearing. Adam frowned
at their behavior but stayed silent. Did that make him part of the problem? He was surprised to see that the jeers were being led by the bespectacled Cal Gottesman. Cal, whose son Eric was a quickly improving defenseman, worked as an insurance salesman in Parsippany. Adam had always found him to be mild-mannered and well-meaning, if not somewhat didactic and dull, but Adam had also noticed of late that Cal Gottesman's behavior had grown increasingly odd in direct proportion to his son's improvement. Eric had grown six inches in the last year and was now a starting defender. Colleges were buzzing around him, and now Cal, who had been so reserved on the sidelines, could often be seen pacing and talking to himself.

Becky leaned in closer. “Did you hear about Richard Fee?”

Richard Fee was the team goalie.

“He's committed to Boston College.”

“But he's only a freshman,” Corinne said.

“I know, right? I mean, are they going to start drafting them out of the womb?”

“It's ridiculous,” Corinne agreed. “How do they know what kind of student he's going to be? He just got into high school.”

Becky and Corinne continued, but Adam was already tuning them out. They didn't seem to care, so Adam dutifully took this as his cue to leave the ladies and maybe stand by himself for a bit. He gave Becky a quick cheek peck and started on his way. Becky and Corinne had known each other since childhood. They had both been born in Cedarfield. Becky had never left the town.

Corinne had not been so lucky.

Adam moved toward a spot halfway between the moms and the dads in the corner, hoping to carve out a little space for himself. He
glanced over at the group of fathers. Tripp Evans met his eye and nodded as though he understood. Tripp probably didn't want the crowd either, but he was the guy who drew it. Local celebrity, Adam thought. Deal with it.

When the horn blew, ending the first quarter, Adam looked back toward his wife. She was chatting away with Becky, both women animated. He just stared for a moment, lost and scared. He knew Corinne so well. He knew everything about her. And paradoxically, because he knew her so well, he knew that what the stranger had told him had the echo of truth.

What will we do to protect our family?

The horn sounded, and the players took the field. Every parent now checked to see whether his or her kid was still in the game. Thomas was. Becky continued to talk. Corinne quieted now, nodding along, but she kept her focus on Thomas. Corinne was good with focus. Adam had originally loved that quality in his wife. Corinne knew what she wanted from life, and she could laser in on the goals that would help achieve it. When they met, Adam had fuzzy future plans at best—something about working with the underserved and downtrodden—but he had no specifics about where he wanted to live or what kind of life he wanted to lead or how to form that life or that nuclear family. It was all vast and vague to him—and here, in stark contrast, was this spectacular, beautiful, intelligent woman who knew exactly what they both should do.

There was a freedom in that surrender.

It was then, thinking about the decisions (or lack thereof) he had made to get him to this point in life, when Thomas got the ball behind the goal, faked a pass down the middle, drove to the right, cranked back his stick, and shot a beauty low and in the corner.

Goal.

The fathers and mothers cheered. Thomas's teammates came over and congratulated him, slapping him good-naturedly on the helmet. His son stayed calm, following that old adage “Act like you've been there.” But even at this distance, even through his son's face mask, even behind the mouth guard, Adam knew that Thomas, his oldest child, was smiling, that he was happy, that it was Adam's job as a father, first and foremost, to keep that boy and his brother smiling and happy and safe.

What would he do to keep his boys happy and safe?

Anything.

But it wasn't all about what you'd do or sacrifice, was it? Life was also about luck, about randomness, about chaos. So he could and would do whatever was possible to protect his children. But he somehow knew—knew with absolute certainty—that it wouldn't be enough, that luck, randomness, and chaos had other plans, that the happiness and safety were going to dissolve in the still springtime air.