If We Lived Here (18 page)

“Why not? Annie is my best friend.”

“I don’t have a good feeling about it.”

“You’re being inflexible.”

“Max is your family. I think
you’re
being inflexible.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

Emma stormed out of the room, murmuring something about a client. Nick sighed, thinking the only way that conversation could’ve gone worse is if he’d added, “By the way, I hooked up with Gen.” He popped open a beer and pulled out a stack of student papers on America’s thirteen colonies, determined to use grading as a distraction.

 

That night in bed, Emma squeezed herself into a tight ball, making no physical contact with Nick’s body. Nick lay awake on his side of the mattress, fantasizing about being Christopher Columbus, coming to America, and laying claim to the land, natives be damned. Of course the so-called founding of our country had been chauvinistic and inhumane, Columbus Day a fraud—Nick knew these things and taught them to his kids. But at the moment, the idea of colonization sounded quite appealing to Nick, arriving and declaring a space your home, no talk of landlord or rent or lease, simple and done.

 

“What kind of person sells their hair?” José yelled out.

“And who would
buy
human hair?” Sierra chimed in.

“They sell combs for a dollar on the subway. That’s a pretty cheap-ass present.”

“Watch your language, Lawrence. Everyone else, calm down.” This discussion was not going the way Nick had intended. He’d asked his students to respond to O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi
.
” They were all always talking about jeans they simply
had
to buy or a cell phone upgrade that would transform their lives, and Nick wanted them to consider the importance of relationships over material things. It wasn’t working.

“Mr. O’Hare, this story is dumb.” José again. “Della and the dude shoulda just asked each other what they wanted. And what’s a fob anyway? Sounds like a you-know-what.” He gestured to the front of his pants, and the class erupted in laughter.

“Guys, it’s supposed to be ironic,” said Nick. “Remember irony? Della and James love each other so much that they’re willing to sacrifice their most prized possessions—her hair and his watch—in order to buy each other something special. Even though they each end up with items they can’t use, a comb for Della, and a watch part for James—José, a fob is a kind of chain—they see how much the other one loves them.”

Blank stares all around. Nick decided to cut the lesson short and move on to math.

 

At lunch, he called Emma—on her cell, not through Genevieve—to vent.

“You read them ‘The Gift of the Magi’? Of course they hated it.”

“What do you mean? It’s romantic!”

“No, it’s depressing,” said Emma. “The couple is broke and then they end up broker, plus the girl gets her hair chopped off. And it’s horribly sentimental. Also, isn’t that a Christmas story? It’s September.”

“Yeah, but . . .” Nick trailed off. He realized now that, more so than his students, he wanted Emma to get the moral about love prevailing over money. Maybe he wanted to convince himself, too.

“I have an idea for your next lesson,” Emma said.

“Yeah?”

“Cue up cartoons all day. I bet you won’t get any more complaints from the kids.”

“Ha ha, very funny.”

“My point is, you’re not there to entertain them, right? So don’t take it so hard when they’re hard on you. News flash, Nick: Most kids don’t like school.”

“I know,” Nick sighed. He appreciated these pep talks.

“So have you thought any more about us asking Annie for money? I’m sure the wedding bucks are pouring in—all she’d have to do is redirect a few checks our way.”

“Emma, no, sorry. We’ll figure something else out.”

“Okay.” She sighed. “Gotta run, client calling.”

Nick paced the block around his school, over and over chanting to himself the Henry VIII playground rhyme: “Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.” Striding to its beat, he indulged himself in what ifs: What if he’d gone to law school and now pulled in six figures? What if he robbed a bank and never got caught? What if he played the lottery, won, and—
poof!
—all of their problems disappeared? This last option was the only mildly feasible one. The lottery was a terrible Plan B, but Nick figured it was worth a shot. He ducked into a bodega and eyed the scratch-offs. He was about to order five Lucky 7s when he heard, “Mr. O’Hare!”

Two of Nick’s students tailed him in line. “Oh, hey, guys.”

So instead of the scratch-offs he bought a pint of milk, which he then chucked in a corner trashcan, cursing his kids for forcing him to always set a good example. Feeling despondently out of options, he dialed Emma: “If you really want to ask Annie for help, go ahead. But make sure she gets that it would be a loan, that we’d pay interest, and—”

“Listen, I have an even better solution! I spoke to Annie—she was literally watching a lion sleep while we talked; it sounded amazing. They have a week more of safari, and then they’re doing the whole city thing before they’re back in town on the eighth.”

“Their honeymoon is over a month long?”

“You know Annie. Anyway, she said we could crash at their apartment until then, and after that we can stick around in the guest room for as long as we need. Plus they have basement storage where we can keep all our stuff. I know it’s not ideal to live at their place, especially once they’re back, but this way we’ll have time—we’ll both get another paycheck—and we can look for a place for October fifteenth.”

Nick wanted to jump up and down like a lunatic. As usual, Emma had solved everything. “That’s perfect. I love you.”

“I know you do. And I gotta go, babe. My next appointment.”

 

That night, Emma used her spare key to let them into Eli’s SoHo dream apartment, and they took a look around their new temporary digs as of next week. Despite Emma’s protests, Nick snuck into Eli’s closet. Among the designer suits and perfectly shined wingtips and other items that even smelled expensive, he discovered a red velvet robe. Nick threw it over his shoulders and strutted into the bedroom, where Emma was laid out on the bed flipping through a magazine.

“I am Henry the Eighth,” he proclaimed on a whim, hoping Emma was game to role-play. She usually was. “And you, my adulterous wife, deserve to be punished.”

Emma yelped, “No, I didn’t do it! Don’t hurt me!” and ran from the room. Nick chased her to the living room, where she’d draped herself dramatically across a couch. Nick hesitated a moment—the couch was white leather—but then pounced upon his girlfriend, berating her for her inability to bear him an heir.

“Give me another chance,” she cried, tearing off her clothing. “I’ll give you a son, I know I will, the future king of France!”

“England.”

“Yes, the future king of England.”

“I don’t believe you, you unfaithful lout. After I ravage you one more time, I’ll have to behead you.”

“Oh, how I’ll shame my family, the, um, the—”

“The Boleyns.”

“Ah yes, the whole Boleyn clan will be cast out of high society. That’s a fate I couldn’t bear.”

“You better bear it, Anne.”

“Anne?”
Emma said, out of character, pausing her hips’ movements. “As in
Annie?
Is that what this is about, you have a thing for my friend?”

“Silence, my minx of a wife,” Nick said, his voice cracking. His heart pounded. “I’ll chop off your head!”

A devilish smile appeared on Emma’s face. Just as Nick finished, she cocked her neck to the side and enacted a dramatic death by guillotine, titillating and terrifying both.

Chapter
18

“B
unking up with Annie for a few weeks, how fun!” Emma’s mother’s eyes popped; this was a frequent occurrence in their Skype conversations, and Emma suspected it had something to do with the screen’s pixilation. Still it made her recoil. “It’ll be like your sleepovers from the old days.”

Emma was taking a break from packing, which she’d been doing for hours, and her stomach groaned. As her mom chatted from her bakery, she picked at a flaky pastry, and Emma wished she could reach through the Internet to tear off a piece. “Yeah, it’s super-generous.” Emma could hear that she was doing “the voice.” Before meeting Nick, she’d never noticed that when talking to her mother she raised her pitch and added a singsongy lilt. It drove Nick crazy, and now it caused Emma to cringe, too. Despite this, Emma couldn’t control it, and it made her annoyed at her mother, unfairly, she knew.

“Well, isn’t everything working out nicely for you two, after a few little hiccups.” This last phrase grated on Emma. “You’re such New Yorkers, navigating this crazy apartment rental process. And now you’ll get free rent for a couple of weeks, right?”

“I guess so,” said Emma, “but we lost a ton of money on the other place.”

“Oh, but you’ll get it all back in court. I can just picture you arguing your case, a total natural. I always thought you, not Max, would end up being our family’s lawyer. My feisty little Emma! Can’t you see Emma being a star before a jury, dear?” She was shouting to Emma’s dad, who now ducked into the frame to wave. On-screen, he always looked squinty and flummoxed.

“Hey-a, Em. I’m off to my Spanish conversation class, but all’s well, I presume? Gotta run.
¡Adiós, hija mía!”

“Isn’t that sweet?” her mom said. “It’s taken him weeks to get that far. This group has really built up his confidence. He likes to drag me to the markets now just so he can ask for
el precio
and name the vegetables he’s learned. Although last week we ended up with a dozen tomatoes when he confused
dos and doce.
We were eating gazpacho up the wazoo. Of course I was fluent ages ago, but we all learn at a different pace, right?”

“Right.” Emma hadn’t made a Skype date with her mom to talk about tomatoes or varying rates of learning, but somehow she felt incapable of steering the conversation back to what she’d intended to discuss: Nick’s head injury. Emma hadn’t told her mother about the hospital visit, and it was eating at her; withholding something that had caused her such fear and worry for the past few weeks seemed like lying. And now that Nick was almost entirely healed, the whole fiasco felt safe to bring up. But the topic seemed out-of-bounds of this airy chat so it sat unmentioned, heavy in the pit of Emma’s stomach.

“All right, give me Annie’s address so I know where to send your next care package. I’ll throw in a few extra goodies for the newlyweds.” Emma read out the address, the swanky SoHo location lost on her mother. “
Perfecto.
And when you guys land on a fabulous new place, make sure you send me that address pronto, too. I wouldn’t want you to miss a package amid the hubbub of a move.”

“Sure, Mom. Listen, I have to finish packing.”

“Ooh, I read an article in the
Times
about these companies that’ll come in and pack up all your stuff for you, and then when you get to your new place they’ll unpack everything and set it up exactly where you want it. It sounds fab. I’ll send you the link.”

“Thanks, Mom.” Emma knew about these services—Eli had hired one for Annie when she moved into his place earlier this year. The cost was exorbitant.

“Anything else, Em?” Her mother popped the last piece of pastry into her mouth, then licked her fingers one by one. Again Emma thought of Nick in the hospital, and how scared she’d been. She shook her head.

“Okay, sweetheart. I love you more than anything.
¡Hasta luego!
”

Emma shut her laptop and slumped against the boxes she’d filled that morning. Dipping into her mother’s world, so bright and European and pastry-filled, often made Emma’s own feel dull and dark. She reached to turn on a lamp. It didn’t help. So she got up and pulled a pint of ice cream from the freezer, then settled back onto the floor, where she soothed herself with spoonfuls of the cold sweetness until her mouth went numb.

Emma remembered back to when she was little, when her mother had meant everything to her, when she’d truly believed she had the best mom on earth. There had always been something to celebrate—after a school play a candy bar would await Emma on her pillow, and at the end of a softball season she’d be allowed to stay up late and watch
A League of Her Own
, brand new on VHS. For the temple’s Purim festival one year, her mom had helped her build a ball-toss game with life-sized photos of Blossom and Six from Emma’s favorite TV show; at the news that her game had drawn the longest lines all day, her mom had high-fived her, as if she’d never doubted it. Then she’d surprised Emma with a replica of Blossom’s outfit, matching scrunchie and all.

But at some point, her mother’s enthusiasm had stopped seeming magical and started feeling overbearing to Emma. Did everything have to be cause for celebration? she wondered; did every day have to be extraordinary? She’d started to resent all the goodies and the fanfare, which, for their ubiquity, came to feel not so special at all. And then she’d begun to suspect that maybe something was wrong with her when she sometimes felt sad or upset. Consciously or not, her mother had confirmed this suspicion when, in reaction to Emma crying over a poor grade or a fight with a friend, she’d descended upon her daughter as if the world had ended, offering up so much solace that Emma felt she might drown in it. Eventually she’d learned to monitor her feelings around her mom, shielding her from the extremes so as not to feel so overcome by her mom’s responses.

Emma’s thoughts tilted toward Lily Bart. She knew it was childish to identify with the tragic heroine (an orphan, no less). But Emma couldn’t help comparing her impending stay with Annie to Lily’s sojourns to her wealthy friends’ estates, the people who’d taken pity on her and given her shelter when she was broke and in need. (This daydreaming had ultimately gotten Emma in trouble in grad school, when she’d started viewing Wharton’s novels as fairy tales to slip into rather than scholarly texts to be studied.) But the imagining was a pleasure like ice cream, sweet and simple and soothing.

Scraping up the last bits of ice cream from the pint, Emma sighed. She wondered if her brother felt this same strange gloom after talking to their parents. Probably not. Max was often declaring (a little too adamantly, if you asked Emma) that he was just as happy if not more so than their parents. Although who knew? Maybe he was. After all, the trickle of loneliness now infecting Emma was the kind of thing Max had been talking about when he’d gone on about the power of religion. His answer to uncertainty and anger and despair was Judaism. Emma knew her brother felt part of a tight-knit community—both of his congregation and of Jews all across the globe (not to mention throughout history). Emma couldn’t imagine that kind of comfort. Although she also had her heritage—you didn’t just stop being a Jew because you ate cheeseburgers—it didn’t possess the same power as what Max had, that total commitment and giving over of yourself, that impervious bond of belief. Agnostics like Emma sat on the sidelines. She was envious, not of religion itself but of what it provided for its faithful. “Oy vey,” she said, then burped loudly.

And then Emma remembered what her brother had said to her when she’d visited, how he wanted to make more of an effort to hang out together. She was dialing his number before her idea was fully formed. “Max!” she yelped, surprised that he’d picked up; he’d described early evenings as chaos with the kids. “I’m so glad you’re there.”

“Yeah?” He sounded both flattered and skeptical. “I was just going to call you to wish you happy break fast.”

“Oh, right, Yom Kippur.
Chag Sameach.
” Emma was proud to remember how to say “Happy Holiday” in Hebrew, although she guiltily pushed away the empty ice-cream container; apparently her parents had blown off the high holiday, too.

“So what’s up, Emmy?”

She related a truncated version of the apartment drama, downplaying the more traumatic parts, then asked if he was free that weekend to help her move.

“Ah, so you need my car?”

“Yeah, and also your brute strength. I’ve heard Alysse brag about your bench-pressing skills, and even flimsy IKEA furniture is heavy.” Emma was only half joking. “Come on, I’ll pay you in pizza and we can hang out.”

“Sure, I’ll work for food. As long as we can do it on Sunday, and no pepperoni, it’s a deal. I’ll drop the kids off at Hebrew school, then drive down to the city.”

“Excellent. See you then.” Emma felt good about this, spending time with just her brother, far away from his wife and kids and his home turf, which had formerly been both of theirs, and which could make Emma so uncomfortable. Finally she felt that uplifting closeness that family is supposed to make you feel. It was a feeling she always hoped for when she set up the Skype dates with her parents, but one that rarely materialized. Satisfied, she set about configuring another box, aiming to fill five more that night.

 

By Thursday evenings, Nick was usually almost brain-dead, so short on energy and mental resources that the oasis of Friday afternoon started to seem like a mirage. But only on Thursdays was the Kings County courthouse open late enough for both Emma and Nick to make it there before closing time. And Emma had insisted they file their grievance against Luis together—“as a team,” she’d declared with pep, as if suing their almost-landlord were an intramural softball tournament. Nick would’ve preferred they drop the whole thing altogether, just leave it be and move on. But Emma was determined for justice. So there they were at rush hour, battling hordes of commuters and the smoggy downtown air in search of the address among a row of identical municipal buildings.

It should’ve been simple—according to the court’s Web site, they’d check a box on a form to indicate their grounds for suing, pay the fifteen-dollar fee, and then get assigned a court date. The first complication came at the metal detector, when Nick’s backpack was flagged for containing scissors, which meant he had to stop in the security office to register the “potential weapon.” Nick asked whether he might abandon the scissors in lieu of registering them, but was informed that that would not be permitted: “We can’t just have people leaving weapons willy-nilly on our premises, can we?” replied the guard, arms crossed against an ample bosom. Nick wondered aloud what kind of damage he might do with the childproof tool’s blunt edges. The guard didn’t crack a smile, so he figured it wouldn’t help to show her the nonviolent pursuit for which he’d been using them—to cut up goods and services cards for a lesson about bartering in colonial America. To make Emma laugh, on the weapon registration paperwork Nick filled in his name as Edward Scissorhands. They quickly fled the office.

Next came the elevator, which was packed with people and all their various odors, and which lurched violently to each floor’s stop, so that by the time they reached their destination, Nick, never one for carnival rides, felt ill. The guard had told them Floor 9, but when the doors opened to a hushed hallway, well lit and sparsely populated, Nick thought, no way was this Housing Court. And he was right—several surly officials had to redirect them several more times before they found the right floor, where they joined the end of a line snaking down a long hallway. The mood reminded Nick of an airport terminal after a several-hour delay. Their neighbors’ chatter, in what Nick could identify as at least three languages, clashed in a cacophony of noise, and two babies seemed to be competing to outfuss each other. Worst of all, it smelled as if the invention of deodorant had not reached this part of town, or perhaps like Nick, most of these people had worked a very long day and were overdue for hygiene refreshment.

“We don’t belong here,” Emma whispered, clutching at Nick’s arm.

“Excuse me?” he said, feeling strangely defensive.

“We don’t belong here,” she repeated, now in a whine. “You know what I mean.”

Nick didn’t respond. He wasn’t going to be cruel and make Emma articulate what he guessed she meant: that they were the only white people, or that it never would’ve occurred to them to wear torn sweatpants to court, or that their haircuts and shoes were clearly more expensive than the ones all around them. Especially when a moment earlier Nick had been doing some judging of his own. In truth, he wasn’t thrilled to spend his evening among this crowd, either. But he was ashamed of this judgmental part of himself, and he never would’ve given voice to it; he couldn’t help feeling contemptuous of Emma’s brazen complaints. Still, he had to remind himself that Emma spent most of her time in a sleek high-rise among Manhattan’s wealthiest families, or else with Annie and her platinum credit card at the city’s trendiest restaurants. Whereas for Nick, back-to-school night in his classroom had more in common with this courthouse scene than it did with any setting Emma was familiar with; it was a miracle if he could get half his students’ families to contribute five bucks to the classroom tissue fund.

But beyond demographics, the truth was that Nick and Emma
did
belong here. They’d gotten themselves into a sorry legal snafu just like everyone else in this line, and just like everyone else they weren’t above pursuing their right to recoup what they’d lost.

“How long do you think we’ll be waiting?” Emma asked, and then she assumed that faraway actress-y look that Nick knew all too well; she was imagining herself as that pathetic Edith Wharton character. The line hadn’t budged for fifteen minutes, but Nick noted that no one else but the babies was complaining.

“Are you doing the Lily Bart thing, feeling sorry for yourself?”