“It’s for tomorrow. I’m making bun bo xao,” I said, taking the lemongrass away from him. “It’s a kind of Vietnamese noodle salad.”
“I thought we were grilling.”
“We are—you have to grill the steak for the recipe.”
“That’s not grilling—grilling is burgers and dogs or brats.”
“It’s September, we’re all tired of that food by now. This is going to be nice and refreshing, the flavors are beautiful, you can make it kid friendly for the little one, and she can have the noodles—WILL YOU PUT DOWN MY JALEPE?O, PLEASE?”
“Jesus,” he said, and tossed the pepper so it hit me in the chest. “It’s fussy, that’s all.”
“It seems fussy now when I’ve got everything out—it won’t be fussy.”
“Are you trying to intimidate them? Or impress them?”
“I’m not trying anything—THAT’S FOR THE BABY,” I yelled as he pulled out the lemonade and started pouring. “Can you get out of here? Thank you.”
“I got rid of the compost.”
“Thank you.”
“They’re just coming over to swim, we’re not hosting their wedding.”
“I’m enjoying myself. I’m enjoying cooking. Please.”
“Can I have this beer?” He held up the beers I had bought that were from a local brewery, which had been recommended to me by an affable bearded store clerk with rainbow nail polish and a twinkling smile.
“Of course,” I said. He moved in to peck my cheek and I flinched. “Sorry,” he said. “Felt like old times.”
He lingered in the kitchen for a moment, looking at me. I could tell he was feeling theatrical and I wasn’t in a mood to countenance it. He ran his finger around a frame with a picture of him and Sidney and me on top of a snowy mountain.
“Did I tell you that I talked to our daughter today?” he asked.
“You didn’t.”
“She seemed upset.”
“She’s upset with us.”
“No, not about us. It’s something else.”
“Oh,” I said, and fixed my eyes on the glass hummingbird she had “made” with a kit by melting glass beads inside a metal frame. She had given it to me for Mother’s Day when she was ten and there was still a glob of melted and hardened glass in the back corner of the oven that no oven cleaner could remove.
Sidney had chosen me as the beneficiary of her outrage about the allegations against John. She hadn’t known about the affairs when they were happening, certainly, one of our rules was that Sidney would never know. We thought it would be confusing, though now I wonder if knowing about our arrangement would have lessened some romantic attachment she held on to in her ideas of who we were. She might have felt more flexible, more pliable, more clear-eyed, more sympathetic. As it was, the last time we spoke she called me an enabler, an accessory, and compared me to Germans who said nothing during the rise and reign of the Nazis.
I couldn’t think about Sidney at that moment, however, I didn’t want to. I stayed up late, prepping plates of chopped vegetables and cleaning the house （though I doubted they would do much more than walk from the pool to the bathroom）。 I drank glass after glass of water, as though the liquid would do something to adjust my molecular structure, would melt the frown marks from around my mouth, the puffiness underneath my eyes—all of which I tried not to look at as I passed the mirror. I tried on several outfits in our guest room, away from the prying eyes of John. Eventually I chose a turtleneck rash guard and flowy Tibetan wrap pants. I wouldn’t swim, but would wear something that made it look like I might swim at any moment or had been swimming previously. Then, enraged at my vapidity, I forced myself to sit down and read several articles in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books before I fixed my nighttime drink. I slept fitfully, furious with myself when I thought about what I would look like the next day with no sleep, my self-directed anger making it all the more difficult to drift off.
* * *
Vladimir and his daughter arrived forty minutes later than our agreed-upon time, without Cynthia. With tired eyes, he told me that she had a migraine and was so sorry to miss us. After we said our hellos I left him and Phee to settle at the pool while I pulled out the plates and snack platters and cutlery, using the opportunity to readjust to the change in the dynamic.
Clearly, Vladimir and Cynthia had argued and she had refused to come. Although I was somewhat thrilled by the thought of them fighting, and glad because I hadn’t yet read the excerpts of her memoir, I was disappointed she was absent. For one, I had wanted to see him and her together in a social setting so I could satisfy my curiosity about the nature of their relationship—to see if it was affectionate and playful, serious and loving, bickering and distant, collegial, respectful, sexual or sexless, full of admiration or rife with disdain. Secondly, there was the problem of the child and the fact that now he would be spending the entire time caring for her, rather than talking to us. Lastly, and most important, I had truly wanted to love her—to love her so much and so fully that all the reoccurring flashes of Vladimir and his face reflected in the black of my windowpane would dissolve, and I would see in front of me a real-life woman, not an idea, but a full person who I could admire. A neighbor, whose husband I should not and would not covet. For lest you think that I was enjoying my cringing and crushing obsession with Vladimir （which I came to see was lust but at the time didn’t fully understand）， I want to assure you I was not. I felt tingling and pained and embarrassed. Some fundamental peace within me, already disrupted since spring and the allegations and the petition and Kacee and Dump His Ass, had been entirely capsized. I was swimming in an ocean of electrical impulses. I was a body made of walking nerves. And truly, I had prayed and hoped that seeing his wife and being with his family would give me release.
Phee was very pretty, with chubby cheeks and bright eyes and brownish-reddish curling messy hair. Three is a wonderful age for communication, if you have a verbal child. I remember it, mostly, from some home videos in which I interviewed Sidney. Philomena, like Sidney had at her age, answered every question with a straightforward eagerness. I am going to preschool and my teachers will be Miss Maureen and Miss Nadia. I am three and one quarter years old. Animals who stay up in the night are called nocturnal and animals who stay up in the day are called diurnal. I could see Vladimir’s lips curling with pride as he coached her through her sentences. Our precocious children. Even though Sidney was by all accounts an unqualified success, I still wish I had paid less attention to her smartness, had cherished her verbosity and alacrity with school much less. She suffered under the weight of her own exceptionalism, I know she did. Over and over she had to show up to the promise of her own potential.
I encouraged the two to get swimming before the heat of the day was gone—by September in this area there is about a three-hour window in which you could even call it warm. Vladimir put Philomena in a little floaty chest guard that looked like modern armor and plopped her inside an inflated donut in the shallow end, where we dipped our feet. He then took off his shirt with an athletic lack of self-consciousness, leaped onto the diving board, and cannonballed into the water, splashing us all, including Phee, who began to cry. He rushed to her and soothed her and spun her around and around in the pool until her tears gave way to laughter.