The Hazards of Sleeping Alone (20 page)

“I'm the first one here, I take it?”

Charlotte turns. It takes a moment to accept the fact that Joe is actually standing in her foyer. His hair seems a bit thinner, a bit blonder. (Does he get it colored? Does Valerie insist on it?) He's wearing tan pants, a loose white shirt, a thin cotton blazer the color of sand. On his feet, brown loafers that look like they are made of thatched leather. He's very tan, his teeth very white. (Does she make him bleach his teeth too?)

“You're the first,” Charlotte says. “But they should be here soon.” She has no way of knowing this for sure, but maybe saying it will make it true. “Emily said they would leave about ten, which would get them here about five, if they don't hit any major problems. But you know how she likes to sleep in. Walter, though, Walter's a different story. He gets up early and he's just, you know, very responsible.”

Charlotte stops talking. She'd made a promise to herself about this weekend: she was staying out of it. Emily could voice her opinions—and Joe, and Walter—but Charlotte was just here to facilitate and listen. She'd been opinionated the first time around, and now she deeply regrets it. Charlotte wants her daughter to keep this baby. Desperately. But, more than that, she wants to preserve her relationship with her daughter.

Joe is looking at her with a small smile. Not the old pinched smile, but a smile of amusement, even affection. “You're a trip, Char,” he says. “Really and truly.” Then, with what seems like unnecessary flourish, he hoists his bag off his shoulder and drops it on the floor. It is made of dark leather, riddled with furled travel tags: Athens, Paris, Aspen. “So,” he says, smile widening to a grin, “aren't you going to offer me something? I know you have a thousand appetizers hidden around here somewhere.”

“Not a thousand,” Charlotte says, mentally calculating the puckered shrimp and vegetable dips and other nonmeat snacks she has packed away in the refrigerator. “Are you hungry?”

“Nah. Still recovering from the plane cuisine. But a drink would do me good.”

Charlotte nods and starts toward the kitchen. Instead of following, Joe ducks around the partition and into the living room.

“These are the new digs, huh?”

“Yes,” Charlotte says, to the empty kitchen. “I guess.”

She hears the hinges creaking on the curtains and sneaks a peek into the living room. Joe is peering out at the patio, hands cupped around his eyes, much like Emily her first time through. Charlotte glances around nervously. The place is spotless; she couldn't have been more thorough cleaning. But suddenly she wishes she had done a better job, well, editing. Confiscated the
People
with its montage of pregnant celebrities on the cover. The Bed, Bath and Beyond coupon on the refrigerator door. She spots the two packs of moving announcements on the windowsill, still wrapped in plastic, and quickly shoves them into the utensil drawer.

“You've been here since, what, September?” Joe calls out, accompanied by the creak of retreating hinges.

“August, actually.”

“And you're liking it?”

“Oh, yes,” Charlotte says. Of all people, she can't tell Joe how she pines for the house on Dunleavy Street. “I am. Very much.”

Joe appears in the kitchen doorway. “How are the neighbors?”

“They're fine.”

“You know them?”

“Some.” It isn't a complete lie. How many people does
“some” entail? “One woman, Ruth. She lives over there.” Charlotte gestures pointlessly at the hidden kitchen window. “And the woman upstairs. Bea.”

“Bea, huh?”

His tone prickles Charlotte. It sounds belittling somehow. Was he implying “Bea” was a condo person's name? An old-lady name? A single-lady name? That nobody was named “Bea” in the entire city of Seattle?

“Emily and Walter know her too,” she adds. “And her boyfriend. Bill. They all went out to a bar together. When they were here, two weeks ago. Visiting.”

She winces, listening to herself, knowing all too well what she's doing. Creating a false sense of closeness with her upstairs neighbor, leading Joe to believe they're better friends than they are. Mentioning “bar” and “Bill” with such nonchalance it's almost laughable. Reminding him that Emily and Walter came to visit. It's the same need Joe aroused in her so many years ago: a pressure to sound laid-back, to act easygoing, to be something she's not.

“Fantastic,” Joe says. He knocks on the top of the doorjamb, as if to verify it's real wood, then takes an exaggerated step to where Charlotte is standing. From the middle of the kitchen, they face the spotless counter with its single bottle of wine. It couldn't look more conspicuous, standing tall beside the flower-patterned paper towels and row of chubby ceramic canisters (sugar, flour, coffee) like a worldly impostor trying unsuccessfully to blend in.

Joe reaches for the bottle. Charlotte watches him spin it in his hand and scan the label. She had no idea what brand to buy, had asked the cashier at the liquor store to recommend something. If it's a bad choice, Joe doesn't let on.

“Got an opener?”

Charlotte opens the utensil drawer, blocking it with her hip so he doesn't see the stashed moving announcements.

“Thank you, ma'am.”

Joe whistles as he spears the cork. Charlotte removes two wineglasses from the cabinet. She gives them a quick once-over to make sure they aren't dusty. She can't imagine the last time they were used; they were probably last touched when she was moving. If she were being truly sanitary—if this weren't, say, the first time she'd been alone with her ex-husband in fifteen years—she would wash them for any traces of the inky
Jersey Tribune
s they'd been wrapped in. But now, she reasons, is not the time.

Charlotte places the glasses on the counter. As he twists the cork, Joe is alternately whistling and grunting, punctuated by a pop that makes Charlotte flinch.

“There we go,” he says, sniffing the smoking lip of the bottle. He fills each glass just over halfway. If Emily were here, she'd make a comment about the shock of seeing her mother drinking. Charlotte is glad, for the moment, that she isn't.

“Cheers,” Joe says, handing Charlotte a glass.

“Cheers,” she repeats.

“To parenting,” he says. They clink.

“Yes.” She takes a sip, managing not to wince at the bitterness.

Joe swallows, smacks his lips, and lets out an exaggerated “Ahhh.” Then he moves toward the table, his loose strides looking comfortable here already. He's whistling again; Charlotte had forgotten about the whistling. Joe had whistled his way through their entire ten years together. In the beginning it was light, endearing; then it increased in volume and frequency,
until by the end of their marriage the whistling had become almost constant, unconscious, even aggressive. Even light tunes—“Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” a Coke commercial jingle—contained a hint of anger. A few times, Charlotte had found Emily trying to whistle in her crib, her wet lips pursed and heaving soundless puffs of air, like blowing out candles on a birthday cake.

They sit, facing each other. Joe crosses his legs at the knee. This must be a West Coast thing, Charlotte thinks; he never used to sit like that. In fact, he probably scoffed at men who did. His top leg is so long that the end of it—the thatched-looking leather loafer—reaches halfway across the kitchen, its length intensified by the shoe swinging casually from his toe.

Charlotte takes another sip of wine, feeling her cheeks grow warm. She drinks so infrequently it's embarrassing. Joe studies his glass, turning it in his hand. “I remember these.”

“You do?”

“They were your mom's, weren't they?”

They'd been her grandmother's, but like the unwashed glasses, this seems too minor a point to dwell on. “I think so,” she says, then amends her lie. “They might have been.”

Joe takes a swallow. “They're great,” he says. “I always liked these glasses. Real antiques. Authentic.”

Charlotte is suddenly aware of the weight of history between them, the presence of a shared past, uncomfortable in its intimacy. It's almost impossible to believe that these two people were once married. That they once shared a bed, that once upon a time this man stepped naked into the shower behind this woman and spread his long fingers over her wet shoulders, that his body was once inside hers. How is this possible? How could those same two people sit here now, on an autumn day more
than two decades later, talking about wineglasses that did or didn't belong to her mother?

“Great lady,” Joe says.

Charlotte looks up. “Who?”

“Your mom.”

“Oh.”

“George too. Good guy.”

Joe had always made the assumption of calling her father by his first name. Her father, Charlotte recalls, never seemed to like it.

“How's old Polly doing?” he asks. “Still kicking?”

Polly: Charlotte's great-aunt, her father's sister. She lived in Texas, near her grown children, was ninety-three and seemingly immortal.

“She's starting to slow down a little,” Charlotte replies. “Linda says her hip is mending, which is good, but her mind isn't what it used to be. And her sciatica's been worse.” She looks at Joe's face, his expression of fixed politeness, and stops herself from saying more. “She's hanging in there,” she concludes. It was one of her mother's favorite catchphrases. “And your family? How are they?”

“Let's see.” Joe frowns into his glass, as if the family news might be written inside it. “Mike just got into Notre Dame.”

Mike, Michael: Joe's sister Martie's son. The last time Charlotte saw Michael, he was in diapers.

“That's wonderful news.”

“Baseball scholarship. The kid can really hit.”

“Wonderful,” Charlotte says again.

Joe shifts legs, flopping the right one over the left knee. He presses the heel of his hand against his forehead, then sits forward abruptly, jostling the table. “Char,” he says. Wine sloshes in his glass. “We can do this, can't we?”

Charlotte is alarmed. “Do what?”

“Sit here? Drink a glass of wine? Act like two people who used to be married?”

He grins, but there is none of the usual ease about it; this grin looks like something spread on deliberately, for appearance's sake, like Brie.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, it seems ridiculous to not talk about what's really going on here. What we're really doing—
here.
“ He waves his arms in an aimless sort of way, as if to say: Look at where I am, for God's sake! In a condo! In New Jersey! “I mean, I don't really feel like talking about sciatica and my nephew Mike, do you?”

Charlotte's face burns, a combination of wine and embarrassment. She assumes that Joe is implying the fault lies with her. For this conversation feeling stilted, for the subjects being bland and boring, for—why not!—the marriage ending in the first place. She wishes she hadn't told him about the sciatica. That was a mistake. His throwing in “my nephew Mike” was, she knew, a mercy mention.

“Of course,” Charlotte says, a note of false confidence in her voice.

“Okay,” Joe says, leaning back. He smiles a genuine smile. “Real conversation.”

Charlotte glances toward the window. She would give anything for Emily and Walter to pull up right now. Or, better yet: for her house to be empty. To be purely alone. She could cry, she wants to be alone so badly.

“I'll start.” Joe picks up his glass and twines the stem between two long fingers, eyebrows gathered in what resembles deep thought. Charlotte wonders if this is his “professor” persona:
legs crossed, brow pinched, hungry for a debate. She can just imagine him presiding over a seminar table of eager college students, reeling them in with playful questions, pouncing on their answers. They must love him, Charlotte thinks. Love him, or be in love with him.

“Tell me about Walter,” Joe says finally, setting his wineglass down. “You sound like you really like the guy.”

This Charlotte hadn't expected. “I do?”

“Don't you?”

“Well, I guess. Why wouldn't I?”

“So this is an easy one.” Joe smiles. “Why do you?”

He lifts the glass again, confident now that the ball is rolling, and studies Charlotte over the rim. His expression—this entire scene, in fact—reminds Charlotte of a dinner party when they were first married, thrown by Joe's new colleagues from Temple and their wives. After dinner, among the dirty dishes and baguette crumbs and mangled wedge of cheese, they had played a game of ethics. In it you were asked how you would handle certain delicate situations, and the others could challenge you if they believed you weren't telling the truth. Charlotte can still remember the other wives sitting around the table: one wore a black turtleneck so thick it engulfed her chin, two were clearly not wearing bras. They struck her as the kind of women who might swap husbands, not that she had any direct experience with that kind of thing. They all delivered their questions in the same wary tones, peering over the rims of their Chiantis. Charlotte felt as if those narrowed eyes were boring right through her, seeing her very core, all her conflicted emotions and formless opinions and fearful, partial truths.

But, as it turned out, they couldn't read her at all. Charlotte won the game. “Isn't she amazing?” Joe marveled, over and over.
He squeezed her knee so hard it hurt. “Sweetheart,” he said, kissing her cheek. “You have a perfect poker face.”

Now, Charlotte pauses, flustered. “Tell you why I like Walter?”

“Yeah.” Joe sits forward, elbows resting on his knees. “Tell me why you like Walter.”

There's the slightest hint of anticipation in his pose, in his half smile, remnants of a time when he hung on Charlotte's every word. He was always waiting—maybe he couldn't help but be waiting, still—for the moment she would finally surprise him, when her inner self would be revealed.