And although I thought it might ruin whatever spell had come over him, I asked him what his plan was, and he said that before he answered he wanted to know mine.
I didn’t have one, I told him. I had brought him to the cabin because I wanted to show him the space and offer it to him as a writing retreat once it was winterized, as a patron might, because I had enjoyed his book so much. I told him that we had obviously gotten off topic and out of hand. I said that as it was study week and I didn’t have to teach, and I didn’t necessarily want to be in the same house with John while the hearing was taking place, I had considered extending my time here, so long as the weather remained mild enough that space heaters during the day and blankets during the night would suffice. I said I could drive him back now or whenever he wanted, that he was welcome to stay.
He asked if there was any more wine, and I poured us two copper Moscow-mule mugs full of red and brought them back out on the porch.
“You live quite the designed life,” he said when I handed him his cup.
“I’m just old,” I said. “I’ve had enough time to get the right things and get rid of the wrong ones.”
“You’re not old,” he said, and his voice was harsh in a way I hadn’t heard before. “You’re always saying that. Stop saying that.”
My lower eyelids filled with tears, but I swallowed them down, smiled, and thanked him for reminding me.
He looked out to the lake. His profile was not as beautiful as his face full on—his nose looked more rounded and long, his neck extended diagonally from his chin.
“Do you know what happened to us in New York?” he asked.
I said I didn’t. I wasn’t sure what he was talking about.
“To Cynthia and me.”
Ah. I said I knew what others had relayed, but not much more.
“I want to tell you what happened. I’m going to look at the lake and tell you the story.”
For Cynthia it had started years and years ago—he began with that disclaimer. But for him, and for him and her, it all seemed to start when he sold his book. Before that they had been two adjuncts scraping by in New York City—carrying around jars of peanut butter in their bags to avoid buying food on the go, keeping credit cards in drawers, buying secondhand clothes, eating free pizza at student-oriented events, renting films from the libraries, going to open hours at the museums, seeing theater only if a friend got them free tickets. It was the way that they had lived since they were eighteen, thriftily and lightly. They took pride in spending so little and would challenge each other about who could get through the week on the lowest amount of money. It was simple and eco-conscious and freeing.
The book advance had been significant for him—it doubled his yearly income—but he was sensible enough to know it was not life changing. He didn’t quit any of his adjunct teaching jobs. He and Cynthia went out for a fancy dinner, he bought a three-hundred-dollar pair of boots, they flew, rather than drove, to visit his parents in Florida. When they went out walking they bought six-dollar lattes without remonstrating themselves. They started shopping at the organic market. Cynthia, who had previously relied on the adequate therapists-in-training at the university where she worked, started psychoanalysis with a notorious practitioner who specialized in extreme trauma. There was a newfound ease and sense of possibility in their waking, working, everyday life.
They didn’t consider the increase in taxes. They didn’t consider the fact that because of his onetime burst of income the fee for their insurance plan would skyrocket. They got pregnant, mostly on purpose, but they weren’t the kind to plan a baby by planning how much more money said baby would cost. By the time Phee was born they were already back to attempting to subsist off their monthly income. After she was born the great hemorrhaging began. Cynthia had two adjunct jobs at the time she got pregnant, and when she inquired about the maternity leave policies for non-tenured faculty, she was informed that they didn’t have any—they replaced her immediately. Vlad started trying to find extra work wherever he could—editing other professors’ papers, tutoring SAT students, mentoring senior projects and independent studies as well as teaching his own classes. Cynthia was home with the baby and getting restless—she needed babysitting, she needed to get out, she needed time to write—he could see she was fraying at the edges. He should have noticed how serious it was, but he was also fraying at the edges. The city was bearing down on him; everything was so expensive—babysitters were twenty dollars an hour, the psychoanalyst would see Cynthia three times a week or not at all （and he didn’t accept insurance, so not at all）， bills from the hospital and the midwife arrived with no seeming end. Cynthia had been sober when she and Vlad met at graduate school, her drinking and using had been something he knew about only from her writing, but then one night she came home from a walk with Phee with a bottle of white wine in the stroller caddy. That night had felt celebratory and bonding, they had fun, sloppy sex. Soon, however, the situation turned, as he should have known it would. They became enemies. When she drank she compared him to the litany of famous men who had left their wives when they had children for their own work, so that he could ascend while she floundered in obscurity. Bewildered, he told her to go to back to AA, and in response, she drank more. She refused to stop nursing, and Vlad was convinced Phee spit up more than an average baby, imbibing his wife’s pickled breast milk. Their recycling clinked with glass bottles of hard liquor as she plummeted into a wrathful and impermeable depression.
One Sunday afternoon—he hadn’t noted the date, and he should have; he constantly thought about what would have happened if he had remembered that it was April 22—he took Phee to the park. He had packed the diaper bag with care, bringing a blanket, the little neon triangle toy she loved, a change of clothes and diapers, bottles of pumped milk in freezer sleeves, a squeezy pouch of vegetables, a sandwich and a book for himself. He loaded up their stroller. He was so glad for the chance to escape her. Cynthia and the tyranny of her emotions. They were barely talking to each other at that time, out of deference to the oppressive tininess of their apartment and the fact that every discussion seemed to lead to an argument. That morning, however, she was buoyant, playful with Phee, and affectionate with him, calling him her handsome man and kissing him on the side of the mouth. He resisted her, assuming her lift in mood was only because he had promised to take the baby （and himself） away at 9 a.m. and return no earlier than 4 p.m. It was only because she felt guilty for sloughing Phee off on him that she was, for once, acting like a loving wife instead of a resentful cell mate.
She had been conscientious. Knowing how images can burn, she left a note outside the apartment door that said, “Please leave Phee in the high chair in the kitchen before you come into the bedroom.”
He took that note as proof that she didn’t fully mean it. If he had walked in with Phee and seen the bedroom door closed, he would have assumed she was communicating that she was still not in a place to see them. He would have assumed she was trying to let him know that she was finishing something. He would have left Phee in the stroller and lain down on the couch and tried to read the new short story in the New Yorker. He wouldn’t have walked into the bedroom to find her foaming, moaning, and soiled, 911 already dialed on his phone.