“Still.” I pressed my cheek into the pillow. “It’s different, not having a husband.”
“Yeah, probably.” He set the phone back on the nightstand. “Eli had a good time over there. I think he needs more friends. I feel like now that you’re getting things wrapped up with your father’s house, you’ll have some extra time to hang with him. There’s a birthday party for one of the other kids at daycare next week. Friday the thirty-first. Maybe you could take him.”
I didn’t move. “I don’t know how long this thing with her is going to take. With Robin.”
“Well, if you’re free.” The mattress tilted as he shifted his weight. “You want to watch something?”
I let him touch my hair, too gently. It felt apologetic. “Do you think Netflix has Anthony Bourdain?”
“Baby, we are gonna find out,” Dave said, and clicked the TV on.
* * *
—
Dave fell asleep barely fifteen minutes into “Hanoi.” I waited until the episode was over to get up and pull on my T-shirt and boxers and shut the light off. Then I crawled in next to him once more, trying to will myself into sleep.
I pulled his arm over my shoulders and pressed his wrist to my face. His heartbeat, like a live worm, moved against my cheek. His pulse had always been quicker than mine, reminding me every time I was in bed with him of his more subcutaneous functions. It was as if, as the night blinded me, I became more able to see the beauty of his insides: the violet thermal glow of his chest cavity, the electric-blue slosh of his stomach, the red pulsing veins embroidering his skin. He bled heat into the covers, into the mattress, his living so aggressive it kept me alive by proximity. I clutched him to me.
I’d expected to dream about Robin last night, but instead I had dreamed about Dave. The camping trip we took, up in Abiquiú, a few months before we got married. He’d borrowed his sister’s wife’s old gear, which included a clear-topped tent, and we lay in bed under an enormous glittering canopy as Dave tried to convince me of the existence of various types of desert predators I’d never heard of, complete with sound effects. That one’s the conejillo, he’d said. You don’t know it because it’s a Spanish name. Can you hear it?
And then later: Wake up. I miss you.
I’m right here, I’d said sleepily, opening my eyes to the still-bright stars.
How long had I been lying awake now? An hour? I looked at the bedside alarm but couldn’t remember when Anthony Bourdain had ended.
Dave’s heartbeat pounded in my ear.
I gave in and sat up.
Down the hallway, lit a little to my dilated pupils. Mary’s door across the hall, shut tight. The next door, propped open. I pushed it farther and slipped inside.
There he was, asleep in the crib. He slept facedown, knees tucked underneath him—a position that suggested sleep had caught him standing up, crumpling him thoughtlessly. I stared at him, Eli, our baby, listened to his tiny, rapid breathing.
I don’t know how long I stood there, thinking, One more week. Then everything will be fixed.
One more week.
17
Robin
Am I making Leslie sound like a saint? To me she was, at least back then. She taught me how to tie my shoes, how to heat up soup on the stove. She taught me how to read, in between school lessons, sat at home with one of the old Sassy magazines she stole from the hairdresser’s, helping me follow along the lines of “Ben Stiller: Cute Boy Director” with my fat pointer finger.
She taught me how to lie.
My mother was away again, although her purse still hung on its usual peg by the front door, and Grandma Betty had come to take care of us. We were unused to the surveillance. When it was just my mother around, I went to bed at nine, at Leslie’s provocation (she stayed up later, hours that I deeply begrudged her, plagued by visions of Leslie having dozens of friends over, all of them dancing madly around the bonfire without me or eating my personal Cheez-Its). But Grandma Betty believed that children should go to bed at eight, and sometimes barged into our shared room without knocking, hoping to catch us awake.
That night, having gone to bed earlier than I ordinarily did, I’d woken up alone at half midnight. The other bed was empty, Leslie off doing whatever it was she did without me. Instantly I was filled with outrage. Probably she was watching television on the tiny screen in the garage, or was in my parents’ bedroom, trying on my mother’s things. I jiggled the doorknob, but it was locked from the outside, something Leslie often did when she wanted me to stay out of her business.
I resolved to wait up for her. I thought about folding myself into a ball of blankets at the bottom of her bed and seizing her toes as soon as she got into bed, but I had done that once already, so the sheen had come off. Instead I rolled under her bed, which was taller than mine and could fit a broad-shouldered five-year-old. I’d let her discover my empty bed and fear the worst. I’d come out when she was good and sorry she’d left me out of her surreptitious adventure.
Arms reached out and grabbed me as soon as I rolled under the dust ruffle. I screamed. Leslie clutched me to her and put her hand over my mouth, and I sagged into her embrace.
“What are you doing under the bed?” I said into her fingers, drooling not a little. I hoped she wouldn’t ask me what I was doing there.
She nodded at an overturned water glass on the carpet. Inside it, something went tink, tink, tink, as if about to make a speech at a wedding. Its shape stretched and shrank as it moved around, bent this way and that by the curvature of the glass. I reached for it and she slapped my hand away.
“What is it?” I whispered, annoyed.
Her eyes didn’t leave the glass. “A mouse.”
“Oh.” I twisted around to look at her. “What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m waiting.”
“For what?”
“For it to die.”
“Why?”
“I kept hearing it under my bed at night. I thought I would trap it, and then…” My body was propping the dust ruffle open, letting the light from the nightlight under the bed. I could see the flutter of her lashes as she blinked rapidly, and her body against mine was as hot as a coal.
The doorknob rattled and the door burst open. I froze in place.
“Robin?” Grandma Betty said, flicking on the light. “Leslie? What are you doing under there?”
The dust ruffle had given me away. I rolled out resignedly. Leslie followed, mouseless.
“Why were you out of bed? What was all the noise about?”