Heart the Lover (30)

‘What? That’s crazytown,’ you say.

‘Mine is nine and a half,’ Jack says.



‘A half?’ you say. ‘I want to see a half.’

Then you are all too far away to hear, sprinting toward the water, leaping down the little embankment of scrub grass. When you reach the wet sand the three of you slow down and start taking stooped steps, looking for flat stones.

A disheveled dog, barely bigger than a squirrel and a lot faster, starts running circles around me and yapping.

‘Fabio!’

An older woman comes across the playground with a thin leash. ‘I’m sorry. He slipped by me when I opened the car door.’

Fabio stops moving when she bends to clip on the leash. He even extends his tiny neck for her.

‘Cute dog,’ I say.

She straightens up and looks toward the water. ‘Cute kids.’

We watch the boys on the beach, their thick hair and wiry bodies. They’re showing you their rock-skimming technique, arcing back on one foot, bending low, and releasing a flat stone across the surface just the way Silas taught them. Jack jumps up and down on the sand. Harry cranks his arm around over his head. You give it a try and up comes a great holler of surprise. You bend down low for their high fives.

‘Cute dad, too,’ the woman says.

‘He’s not their dad.’ I regret how sharply I say this.



She isn’t bothered. ‘You sure?’

I laugh. The three dark heads on the beach search for more flat stones. ‘First time I’ve seen him in years.’ Twenty-one years.

‘Ah.’

‘Yeah.’

I love how fast women get things.

Another cheer from the beach. Jack takes a victory lap then waves for me to come. I give Fabio a little scrub between the ears and head to the water.

In the car on the way home the boys are sleepy. You tell me about a book you read over the winter, a novel about Iceland and sheep. Silas has parked behind your rental in our driveway, so I park on the street. Jack’s friend Otis sticks his head into the open passenger window.

‘Crater time,’ he says. Then he notices you an inch from his face. ‘Who’s this?’

He doesn’t wait for an answer. He hustles Harry and Jack out of the car and they all run to his yard next door.

‘Crater?’ you say.

‘It’s a game they made up. I think it takes place on the moon.’

On our way to the house, you stop at your rental and pull your bag out of the back. It’s the green duffel you brought to Paris. Now it’s come to Maine. The sight of it is jarring. I wish you would put it back in the car. I wish I hadn’t offered you a place to stay on your trip up the coast to see friends.

Silas and I moved up here from Massachusetts before Harry was born. We sold our tiny apartment in Cambridge for more than the price of this three-bedroom in Portland. It’s an old house, low ceilings, horsehair poking out of the plaster, the remnants of a wooden latrine in the downstairs closet.

You follow me up onto the side porch and through the door. Our dogs skitter loudly across the pine floor of the kitchen to smell you. You squat to give them your full attention.

‘Who’s this?’ you say, mimicking Otis perfectly to our bulldog Nelson, who mashes her face into yours. ‘And who’s this?’ you say to Maxie the beagle while his hard tail thwaps loudly against the rungs of a chair. You look up at me. ‘I didn’t know you had dogs.’

I shrug. Why would you?

On cue, Lupe, who was in a crouch beneath the wood stove, struts across the kitchen and presses her forehead to your knee. ‘Or a woeful cat.’ You stroke her from tip to tail. ‘Your characters never have pets.’

I don’t know what of mine you’ve read.

I take your bag and put it by the stairs.

‘Wow,’ you say, looking left into the living room. ‘It’s like walking into the Breach House.’

‘Why?’



‘It just feels like it.’

I get two beers from the fridge and get you back outside. Our house is nothing like the Breach. We sit in the two beat-up wicker chairs on our porch. You answer my questions about your work and I answer yours about mine. I barely know what I’m saying. It’s so strange you’re here, and so unnerving how familiar you are, the rhythm of your voice, the tilt of your head, the shifts of your body, the hair on your wrists, the scar on your lip. Every now and then I can hear my boys next door and their voices keep some part of me rooted. And some part of me is aware that Silas is home and hasn’t come down. The house is too small for him not to know we’re back. I wonder where he is and if it’s odd that I haven’t gone to find him and if that seems strange to you.

You tell me about a case you worked on for two years, a slam-dunk corruption suit against a school for the deaf that was extorting its students, only to have it be dismissed due to sexual misconduct by your assistant attorney. ‘He was sleeping with the head of the school,’ you say. ‘He’s still sleeping with her. I went to their wedding last month.’

I laugh and shut my eyes and wish I could keep them shut. The familiarity is too much. It goes too deep. I don’t know why you’ve come. And I can’t hear the boys anymore. Where is Silas?



I stayed in Brooklyn with Carson for a week. My oatmeal suitcase took up a quarter of her studio. When the phone rang while she was at work, I didn’t answer it. When she was home, I refused to speak to you. Carson told me you told her bullshit things about savings and timing, about how your friend in publishing had left for a job in finance, how you could write a draft of a novel on the cheap in Atlanta, which was much more affordable than New York. You tried out a Homeric allusion to the thread of fate.