Knitting Under the Influence (11 page)

“It's not a question of failing,” Sari said.

“Strangely enough, I got that,” Jason said. “I didn't feel like I had failed. I just felt like I wanted to make it better. As soon as possible. But she … You know what she said to me before she moved out?”

“What?”

“She said she was too sensitive to stay. That it hurt her too much to look at him and know he'd never be like the other kids and that's why she
had
to go. Like the only reason
I
could stay with him was that I didn't care as much as she did.”

“That's kind of bullshit,” Sari said.

“Thank you for saying that. I’ve never— Uh, excuse me?” This last was to a guy who was kneeling on the pathway in front of them, tying his shoe. The guy jumped up.

“Sorry,” the guy said. “Didn't see you. Oh, hey, Sari!”

“Jeff,” she said, her heart sinking at the sight of her ex-boyfriend. “What are you doing here?”

“Same thing as you, I assume. The autism walk, right?” He kissed her on the cheek. “I was hoping I might see you here.” He looked pretty much the same as the last time she'd seen him, his back shaped like the letter C, his hair still badly cut and combed all wrong—there was even a familiar sheen of greasy perspiration on his forehead. Fortunately, he no longer looked like she had just socked him in the stomach the way he had the last time she saw him, when she had broken up with him.

It was hard not to compare him to Jason, who stood a head taller, his shoulders wide under a simple V-neck black sweater, his thick hair tousled and wavy. When his eyes caught the sun, they were this unbelievable shade of blue …

Sari suddenly realized that both men were watching her, waiting for her to say something. “I didn't know you were involved with GRAY,” she said quickly. GRAY stood for Get Rid of Autism Yesterday, the name of the organization sponsoring the event.

“Are you kidding?” Jeff said. “They've funded most of our research. I’m fairly certain I told you that.” He had an aggrieved tone to his voice, like she owed him that at least—to remember things he had told her back when they were still going out.

“Oh, right,” she said.

“So.” Jeff stuck his hands in his pockets and looked at Jason. “What brings
you
here?”

Sari realized she had to introduce them. “Jeff, this is—” She hesitated. “My friend. Jason Smith. Jason, Jeff Fleekstra.”

The men nodded at each other and then they started walking again, Sari sandwiched between the two of them and wildly furious at herself. Why had she made that little pause at the word “friend,” the pause that everyone knew meant someone was more than a friend? Why didn't she just say that he was a dad at the clinic?

More important, why oh why was she so desperate for Jeff to leave them alone so they could talk more?

It was wrong, all wrong, and she knew it. So, while the two men exchanged pleasantries, she worked on pulling herself out of the daze she'd been in. Remember the history, she told herself. Remember who he is.

And, so, for the rest of the walk, she made herself remember.

IV

A
rriving back at the field where they had started, Sari spotted Kathleen and Lucy settled under a shady tree. She headed their way, accompanied by Jason and his stroller. Jeff had split off at the finish line.

“Where are David and Kevin?” Sari asked when she reached the others.

“Getting food,” Kathleen said with a nod toward the distant In-N-Out Burger truck.

Jason looked at Sari. “Should I go get something for us?”

“Don't feel you have to,” she said. “If you need to take off or anything—”

“I’ve got time.”

You could tell he was waiting for Sari to give him some kind of clue, let him know if she wanted him to stick around or not. But even her friends, who thought they knew Sari pretty well, couldn't figure out what the blank look on her face meant.

Sari said, “If you want a burger, you should certainly get one.”

That seemed to be encouragement enough for Jason. “Actually, I’m starving. I’ll go see what I can find.” He left, still pushing the stroller.

Sari sat down on the grass and hugged her knees to her chest.

“God, he's cute,” Kathleen said, watching him walk away. “Totally built. But he's got a kid. Does that mean he's married?”

“Divorced,” Sari said. “About to be, anyway. But it doesn't matter. I’m not interested.”

“Why not?”

“Lucy knows. He was a jerk to Charlie. Back in high school.”

“Really?” Kathleen said. “He doesn't seem the type.”

“Well, he was. I was thinking about it all just now, during the walk—about all the awful things they used to do. Like shove the food off of Charlie's tray at lunch. Or bump into him when he was carrying something and make him spill it on himself. Or stick his stuff in someone's locker and lock it in there. They'd throw water at his crotch and act like he'd pissed himself. Stuff like that.”

“Assholes,” Kathleen said.

“And they all called him ‘retard.’ Every one of them. Like it was his name.” She imitated a guy's voice. ‘“Hey, retard, you pissed yourself again.’”

“Fucking
assholes.”

“Once there was this assembly,” Sari said. Now that she had started talking about it, she couldn't stop. “They brought out the kids with special needs—they were different ages but all went to class in the same room because that's just how they did it back then—anyway, they brought them out to sing a song. It must have been Christmas or something. So they bring them out and they're singing away and Charlie really loved to sing. Even before he could talk, he could sing. So I’m there with all the other kids, and I hear someone do this fake cough. You know—” She pretended to cough into her hand but the cough was the word
“retards.”
“And then someone else does it and then pretty soon, all the kids in the whole auditorium are coughing ‘retards’ into their hands. And laughing. Even the kindergartners are doing it and they don't even know what they're
saying.”

“What happened to the kids onstage?”

“They just kept singing,” Sari said. “Charlie was up there smiling and singing away. He didn't even notice what was going on.”

“So maybe it wasn't that bad for him,” Lucy said. “If he didn't notice—”

“Yeah,” Sari said. “Maybe it wasn't that bad for him.” She clasped her hands together below her knees. “But I was down there in the audience. I was down there in the middle of it. And I kept trying to get them to shut up and stop and everyone just laughed at me and kept doing it.”

Kathleen shifted forward so she could put her arms around Sari. She hugged her close. “Fucking morons,” she said. “I wish I’d gone to your school. I would have punched out every one of their fucking faces.”

“You can't fight everyone,” Lucy said.

“Where were you during all this?” Kathleen said, turning on her. “Why weren't you helping her make them shut up?”

“I wasn't even there,” Lucy said. “I always tried to go late on assembly days. My mother was very understanding about that stuff.”

“You were the smart one,” Sari said. “Anyway, this guy—Jason Smith—he was one of them. I swear I can see him sitting there, coughing into his hand. That's why it doesn't matter how good-looking he is. He was one of them. And that's all he'll ever be, as far as I’m concerned.”

The other girls were silent, but when Jason came back, long after the other two men had returned, all three of them watched him struggle toward them with the stroller and the bags of food and the cups of soda and not one of them moved to help him.

Kevin eventually noticed and jumped up to give him a hand.

V

T
hanks for coming today,” Kathleen said to Kevin, after he had walked her to her car. “You've officially achieved good-guy status with my friends.”

“It was a pleasure,” he said. “Really.”

There was a pause. “Saturday afternoon,” Kathleen said, glancing vaguely around the parking lot. “It feels like it should be later than one.”

“All that walking,” he said. “I was going to ask you to go running with me, but I’m too wiped out.”

“I don't
just
run,” she said. “I do other things, too.”

“Ah,” he said. “I’m glad to hear it. Do you go to movies ever?”

“All the time.”

“And to dinner?”

“A girl's got to eat.”

“Dinner
and
a movie?”

“Even better.”

“I don't suppose you're free for something along those lines tonight?”

“I am,” Kathleen said. “Are you?”

“Definitely.”

“A week ago, you had a girlfriend. You mentioned it in passing.”

“Yeah, well, a week ago, I did.”

She waited.

He smiled. “Not anymore. Not as of last night.”

“That worked out well,” Kathleen said.

“It's not a coincidence.” Then he said, “Those times we've gone running—”

Again she waited.

“I haven't wanted to stop.”

“Well,” she said. “It's good exercise.”

“That's not what I meant.”

“I know. So dinner and a movie tonight?”

“At least,” he said.

That evening, after they had finished their entrées and were relaxing at the table, trying to decide if they were hungry enough to order dessert, Kevin asked Kathleen about her family and was genuinely surprised to hear she was related to the famous Winters twins. “I can't believe you never mentioned it before,” he said. “You'd be an instant celebrity at work.”

“And for all the right reasons,” Kathleen said.

“Life is boring. People need thrills.” He gestured to a waiter, who immediately came running over. Kathleen wondered if it was something they taught you in rich kid school—how to flick your finger just
so.
“Another bottle of wine,” Kevin told the waiter. “Same kind.” He settled back down in his chair. “So what's it like being a triplet?”

“Weird for
me,
because they were identical twins and I was the different one.”

“Did you hate that?”

“Sometimes. My mom dressed us all alike when we were babies, and then one year I had different clothes but Christa and Kelly still matched. So I asked what happened and my mother said, ‘Oh, honey, it's so cute on them but on you it just looks
wrong.’”

“Ouch,” he said.

“No, it was probably good, in the long run. If I had twins, I wouldn't dress them the same, anyway. People couldn't ever tell my sisters apart, and sometimes that really bothered them.”

“How did they get into acting?”

“This agent stopped my mother at Target one day and asked her if she had any idea how valuable identical twins were in Hollywood. Especially ones that were small for their age.”

“What makes twins so valuable?”

“It has to do with the child labor laws. Any individual kid can only work a certain number of hours, but if you have identical twins, they can both play a single role and double the number of working hours.”

“Cool. But what was that about being small?”

“It just means they can play younger roles as well as their age.”

“It's hard to believe,” Kevin said, “that you have sisters who are on the small side.”

“I know,” Kathleen said. “But my dad's like a foot and a half taller than my mom and I look like him and they look like her. Kind of like if a Great Dane mated with a Chihuahua.”

He laughed. “Sounds a little painful … Do you get along with your sisters? Does the Great Dane play nicely with the Chihuahuas?”

“Yeah, I guess so. They've actually always been pretty generous to me. They paid for me to go to college even though they didn't get to go.”

“Why not?”

“They were stars already. No point. And they had been tutored—badly—on sets for most of their lives, so I think college would have been a disaster for them, anyway.” She looked at him sideways. “How about you? Do you and your brothers get along? It's got to be complicated, working together every day like you guys do.”

He dismissed the question with a quick wave. “It's fine. We get along fine.”

The word around the office was that Kevin's relationship with his brothers
wasn't
fine, that the two of them had allied in a way that froze him out, left him an outsider in his own family's business. There were meetings he wasn't told about, client dinners he wasn't invited to, projects he never had a chance to weigh in on, information he was never given and looked foolish without. When Kathleen heard all this—Kevin had the office assistants’ loyalty, if not his brothers’—she thought she'd found something they had in common. He, too, was the odd man out. Only now it seemed he wouldn't admit it.

Not
yet,
she reminded herself. It was just a first date. There would be plenty of time for confidences in the lengthy future she was planning for their relationship. She had to be patient— something, admittedly, she wasn't all that good at.

The waiter came over with their wine. He showed Kevin the label. “It's fine,” Kevin said, without a glance. “Just pour it. I don't need to taste it this time.”

The waiter moved off. Kathleen took a sip of wine and looked up to find Kevin studying her. She was wearing the gold tank top she had recently finished knitting and her hair was loose and wavy.

He said, “So what sports did you play in college?”

“Soccer mostly. But I swam during the off-season.”

“For the school?”

“Just intramurally.”

“When was the last time you swam?”

“Not since I moved out of the twins’ house. Why?”

He leaned forward. “I was just thinking … I keep the pool heated at my place all year round. We could—” He stopped. “What was your fastest time?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your fastest freestyle time.”

“Oh.” Kathleen had to think about it. “I broke a minute in the 100. Once. I don't think I still could.”

“That's pretty fast,” he said. “And you look like you've stayed in better shape than I have.”

“Are you asking me to
race?”

He just smiled at her and beckoned the waiter over. Without taking his eyes off of Kathleen, Kevin said, “Check, please.”

So they never finished the second bottle of wine, barely touched it in fact. Kathleen loved that he had ordered it but didn't care whether they actually drank it or not. The wastefulness of the gesture sang of wealth and power and indifference to the kinds of things other people spent their lives worrying about.

Kevin's house was smaller than the twins’, but more impressive. The lot was so big, you couldn't even see his neighbors’ houses once you had gone up the driveway. Inside, all the details were pricey, from the perfectly straight lines of the ceilings and walls—no moldings to cover mistakes and no mistakes to cover— to the vintage Eames furniture. It was clean and modern and architectural, manly and unfussy.

In the foyer, Kevin watched her as she looked around the place. “It's fantastic,” Kathleen said.

“You really like it?”

“It's fantastic,” she said again and meant it.

“Come see the backyard. That's my favorite part.” Once he had led her through the house and out back, she could see why. The yard stretched in all directions, at least as far as she could see in the dark. Tiny lights were hidden among the bushes and trees, sparkling here and there like lightning bugs. “Hear that?” Kevin said. There was a faint tinkling-whooshing sound when Kathleen stopped to listen. “There's a creek down below—it's part of the property.”

“Nice. We're not swimming there, though, right? You mentioned a heated pool.”

“This way.” He led her to a fenced-off part of the yard and opened up the iron gate. “My sister-in-law made me gate it,” he said. “It kind of ruins the way the backyard looks, but she has little kids and wouldn't come visit until I did.”

“Couldn't she just tie her kids to a tree when she comes over?”

“Somehow I don't think she'd go for that.”

“You're just too nice to suggest it.” Kathleen walked over to the edge of the water and knelt down. She put her hand in. “Warm.”

“Eighty-eight degrees. It feels even better when you get your whole body in.”

“Which reminds me.” She stood up, wiping her wet fingers on the side of her black silk pants. “I don't have a suit.”

“Hold on.” He walked down the length of the pool to a row of small cabanas at the far end. He opened the door to one and vanished inside, then reappeared with something dangling from his fingertips. “It's a bikini. Those are one size fits all, right?”

“Not exactly,” Kathleen said. She took the scraps of fabric from him and held them up to the moonlight. “But I think it'll work. Slightly better than being naked, but not much.” She dropped her hand. “Someone wasn't afraid of a little exposure. I don't think I want to ask whose it is.”

“My ex-girlfriend's,” he said. “Does that bother you?”

“Not nearly as much as it would her,” Kathleen said with a grin. “Come on. First race is to see who can get changed faster.”

They emerged from separate cabanas at around the same time. Kevin was wearing longish board shorts that came down to about his knees. His stomach was slightly soft above the waistband but otherwise he looked good. He wasn't too hairy or anything disgusting like that, and his legs and shoulders were strong. Kathleen definitely approved of what she saw, and, from the expression on his face as he checked her out, she was pretty sure he did, too. It was a pretty skimpy bikini, and she knew she filled it well.

“Okay,” Kevin said, gesturing to the pool. “We freestyle to the shallow end, push off, and breaststroke back. First person to touch the wall wins.”

“Got it,” she said. “Ready, set, go.” She dived in neatly and beat him back by a couple of seconds. She clung to the pool edge, catching her breath, as he emerged.

“No fair,” he said. “You dived before I was even ready.”

“Excuses, excuses. I’m just faster than you.” Her legs cycled gently in the warm water. The cool air tingled on her dripping hair and face. The moon was almost full, and she could see Kevin's face clearly.

“I get another chance,” he said.

“I’ll beat you again,” Kathleen said.

“No way,” he said. “No way a girl can beat me if I’m ready.”

“Those are fighting words.”

“I know.” He grabbed on to the wall. “That's the point. And I call ‘ready, set, go’ this time.”

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll still win.”

But she didn't. He won by a full body length. As she emerged, he was already at the edge, his free arm raised in victory, the moonlight shining on the drops of water along his shoulders. “Oh, yeah, baby! Now who's the better swimmer?”

“Best two out of three,” Kathleen said.

He won again. “God, victory is sweet,” he said. “You wouldn't know, of course.”

“Do you always gloat?” she asked.

He faced her. They both clung to the wall, their hands a few inches apart, their breath coming in gasps. “Only when I have to fight this hard to win.”

“Made you work hard, huh?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But it was worth it. I won, didn't I?”

“Just a race,” she said. Their bodies moved closer in the water.

“Just a race,” he agreed. He reached his free hand out for her and she let herself float toward him. For a moment, they stayed like that, his hand against the small of her back, their legs moving in the water, hitting each other softly. It was so quiet, they could hear the sound of the tiny waves they were making just from treading water.

His hand moved higher up her back and slid under the string of the bikini top, then stayed there, growing warm against her skin. Kathleen let the water carry her against him. She tilted her face up and he put his mouth against hers. The taste of chlorine disappeared into the sweeter wetness of their mouths.

A few minutes later, Kevin lifted his head from hers. His eyes caught the light and glinted.

“Come on,” he said, his voice thick. “It's time to get out and dry off.”