The Hazards of Sleeping Alone (21 page)

“Well—” She swallows, and attempts being glib. “Why did
you
say it sounded like I liked him?”

It doesn't work. The glibness sounds like what it is: cowardice.

Joe leans back. He lifts his glass and shrugs. “Because he wakes up so damned early. Because he's so damned responsible. He sounds like a man after your own heart, Char.”

Charlotte feels herself redden. She looks down at the table. She can't just sit here. She has to say something. She picks up her own glass, stares at it for a moment, then says, “He's just different from Emily,” and takes a sip.

“You mean he's pro-baby.” Joe sits forward again, a touch eagerly, the professor sensing a gray area in a student's thesis.

“No.” Charlotte shakes her head, swallowing. “That's not what I meant.”

“But he is.”

“Well, that's what he says, so yes, I guess he is.”

“That must make you happy, since you're pro-life.”

Charlotte balks at the label. She doesn't like the depth of commitment, the sense of identity, it implies. Politically, she is
registered an Independent, but the word has always struck her as misleading. It should be Undecided.

“I suppose,” she says.

“Okay.” Joe's voice is more animated. “So he's pro-life. Why else is he different? Because he's black?”

Charlotte's eyes fly to Joe's face, wondering what he's implying, but sees immediately that it was just a joke.

“He's more traditional,” she amends.

“Again, pro-baby.”

“It's not just that. He—” She gropes for a safe example. “He eats meat.”

Joe laughs loudly. “Does he?”

“He wears a cross around his neck.”

“Fashion or religion?”

“Religion,” Charlotte says quickly. She's never asked Walter, but feels absolutely sure that this is true. “He set me up on the Internet, and he brought me candy—he, he asked about my book group. He actually seemed to want to hear.” She stops herself. She hadn't meant to say all that, never would have if it weren't for the wine. When she dares to look at Joe's face, anticipating his amusement, what she finds there is worse: sympathy.

To his credit, Joe leaves it alone. “So,” he says. He uncrosses, recrosses his legs again. “A conservative, God-fearing meat-eater. They do sound pretty different.”

Charlotte can't help but wonder if, in his mind, “different” means incompatible. She remembers Emily's assessment of poor Peter McCann in tenth grade:
We're just really different, and not in a good way.
But if there's a
not
-good kind of different, there must be a good kind. Maybe that's the kind of different Emily and Walter are. For the first time, she realizes she really wants this to be true.

“How are they doing, anyway?” Joe says. He is tracing one finger around the rim of his glass. “Em and Walter. Are they cool? Are they fighting?”

“I'm not sure,” she answers truthfully.

He looks toward the window. Charlotte wonders what he's thinking.

“Have you talked to Em any more? About all this?”

“No,” she admits, knowing how irresponsible this must sound. She might explain:
I was terrified.
Or:
I was plagued with doubt.
Instead she says, “Have you?”

“Not really. Not seriously, anyway.” Joe picks up his glass and looks inside it, swirling the last of the wine around in the bottom. “But I do know Val had a pretty long talk with her the other night.”

Charlotte feels a sudden crushing weight, like a lead blanket falling on her shoulders, muffling her senses. “She did?” she says, voice flattened to a whisper.

“I don't know what they talked about.” Joe swallows the last of his wine in a matter-of-fact gulp, then raises both palms as if to plead innocence. “I don't pry.”

Don't
pry?
Charlotte feels her body's unconscious reaction: heat rising, head aching, heart hammering. To pry—the concept is so misplaced, so irrelevant. This isn't about eavesdropping on two teenagers gossiping about their homeroom teacher or the cute boy in math class. This is about a
baby.
This is about his
daughter.
Charlotte closes her eyes, wine swimming behind her lids. She reminds herself of the promise she made to stay out of it. She reminds herself what the past two weeks have felt like, of her new respect for Joe as a parent and, most importantly, her doubts about herself.

Joe scrapes his chair back, making Charlotte's eyelids flutter
open. “You all set there?” he says, raising his eyebrows at her glass.

She manages a nod.

He heads to the counter, whistles while pouring, as Charlotte is assaulted by thoughts of what Valerie might have said. She knows Emily idolizes her stepmother; the woman can probably convince her of anything. Maybe she recounted an abortion of her own, dismissing it as casually as the facelift Emily once mentioned Valerie had—so breezily, so nonchalantly. Emily, who had always scoffed at plastic surgery. Who rolled her eyes when she heard Marion from the book group had her stomach stapled. And that wasn't even cosmetic! That was for medical reasons!

“Char,” Joe is saying. “Charlotte.”

“What?” She blinks.

Joe laughs and starts heading toward the door, glass in hand. “They're here.”

For what seems like minutes, Emily clings tightly around Joe's neck. Her face is buried in the hollow of his collarbone, his lips pressed to the top of her head. When he pulls back, he pushes her tangled hair behind her ears to look in her face. “Hi, princess.”

“Hi, Joe,” Emily says.

Charlotte feels her heart swell at the sight of her daughter. She's wearing a zippered, hooded sweater over a pair of corduroy overalls. The sweater is a thick, woolly brown that's starting to pill at the cuffs and collar, the overalls a burgundy color that looks like it was dipped in rust. Charlotte's eyes move instinctively to her belly, even though she knows she couldn't be showing yet. She remembers the single pair of overalls she herself ever owned, a gift from Joe's sister when she was pregnant. She can
still remember the pressure of her stomach pushing against the denim, the snug space it created, like a papoose.

Charlotte hears the slam of a trunk. Seconds later, Walter appears.

“Wal!” Joe says. His exuberance is irritating. He extends a hand, keeping the other arm around Emily, wineglass hovering by her left ear. “Good to see you, buddy.”

“Same here, Joe.” Walter drops two battered backpacks on the floor and shakes Joe's hand, then turns to Charlotte. “Charlotte, how you doing.”

This time, when he gives her a hug, she doesn't flinch. In fact, for a moment she loves him for it.

“Hi, Mom,” Emily says. She disentangles herself from Joe and gives Charlotte a kiss on the cheek.

They all step back then, resuming their respective spaces. There's an awkwardness about them, an uncertainty about where to go next, what to do. As host, Charlotte feels it's her responsibility to fix it; and yet there's no precedent to work from here. The purpose for their being together feels so palpable, so obvious, it would be silly to go into normal hosting mode—taking drink orders, ushering guests to chairs, setting out trays of water crackers and cheeses.

She notices something tucked under Walter's elbow: a sleeping bag. Army green, sleeved in plastic, drawn tight with a frayed cord. Why has he brought it? So he and Emily won't have to sleep together? Maybe it's a sign that something's wrong, that they've been fighting. Or maybe it's a gesture of courtesy, to put Charlotte at ease.

“Walter?” Charlotte says. “Can I take that for you?”

“It's not for me.” Walter smiles and tosses the bag in Joe's direction. Joe catches it with a laugh.

“Why—” Charlotte starts to ask, then stops. They are all smiling; she's the only one confused.

Emily gives her an emphatic look. “It's for
Joe,
Mom.” When Charlotte's blank expression doesn't change, she gets impatient. “Remember, we talked about this? Last weekend? On the phone?”

Charlotte has a flash of their conversation last Saturday, the one to which she'd been only half paying attention. Had she unknowingly agreed to Joe's staying here? In a sleeping bag on her floor? Which floor? Which room? She begins to sweat.

“Mom. We talked about this.”

“Right, I know, I—”

“Hey,” Joe shrugs. “If it's a problem, I grab a hotel. No big deal. I could use some new shampoo anyway.”

A good-natured laugh from Walter.

“It's not a problem,” Emily says quickly, eyes on Charlotte. “We already talked about this, Mom. Right?”

Charlotte recognizes the need in her daughter's eyes, the near-pleading. “Right,” she says, forcing a smile. “We talked about it. It's fine.”

Emily looks expectantly at Joe. Charlotte's smile remains pasted to her face.

“Well, damn,” Joe says. “I was starting to look forward to that free cable.”

Walter laughs again, the perennial good sport. Joe raises his glass in his direction. “Thirsty, Wal?”

“Sure.” Walter nods at the glass, now near-empty. “What's that about? You crack open the good stuff without us?”

“No worries.” Joe claps him on the back. “I'm only getting started.”

Charlotte watches as the two of them head toward the
kitchen, Joe's hand on Walter's shoulder. For a moment she has a flash of Joe and her father emerging in similar fashion from her parents' front porch, twenty-five years ago.

“So everything's cool?”

Emily is still standing in front of her, hands sunk deep in her pockets.

“What?”

“Everything's cool?”

“Oh, you mean about—” Charlotte pauses, nods. “It's fine. I just must have forgotten what we talked about, that's all,” she says, though she senses Emily is asking about more than this.

Emily pushes her fists against the insides of her pockets, making the front of her overalls go flat. “You seemed sort of out of it, or something, last weekend. On the phone.”

“I guess. Yes.”

“You're doing better now, though, right?”

Charlotte pauses to soak in her lovely daughter: brown hair falling messily over her thin shoulders, catching in the hood of her sweater, the sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose. “Yes,” she says.

Emily peers up at her, offers a faint smile. Up close, Charlotte can see the dark thumbprints under her eyes. Another mother might chalk them up to blurred eyeliner, makeup that smudged in the car, but Charlotte has no such luxury. She sees those smudges for what they are: marks of weariness, of worry. And she knows that Emily is seeing her with equal clarity. She feels closer to her daughter than she has in two weeks, and the relief is enormous. From the kitchen, she can hear the clinks of dishes, thumps of cabinet doors. Two men are picking through her home, possibly stumbling upon her vitamin supplements and frozen diet dinners, but right now, she doesn't care.

“So your drive down? It was fine?”

“Yeah.”

“It must be good to see your dad.”

Emily pauses. “Yeah.” She looks at her feet. Something about being near Joe makes her seem younger, more sheepish. Like a schoolgirl with a crush. She nudges the toe of her boot against Joe's satchel, making the travel tags rustle like leaves. She says, “I didn't know they went to Aspen,” almost too softly for Charlotte to hear.

In the kitchen, they find Joe and Walter engaged in energetic conversation. Joe has found a fresh bottle of wine and is pouring while he talks, something about the Supersonics—a sports team? a rock band? Charlotte doesn't know. She's preoccupied with whether or not Emily will drink too. To her relief, she opens the refrigerator and extracts a bottled water.

“They have momentum, Wal,” Joe is saying, handing him an overfull glass. “The team's hungry.”

“No way.” Walter shakes his head. “Takes more than hunger to put the ball in the hoop.”

“Mark my words. Everyone's so busy watching L.A., they're not going to see it coming.”

“Sorry.” Walter laughs. “You wait. Sixers all the way.”

It feels like they're on a weekend retreat, Charlotte thinks, or at a dinner party. She recalls what Joe said earlier about not ignoring “what we're doing here” and feels aggravated that he's doing just that. Talking about Supersonics, filling up on wine, calling Walter “Wal” (he barely knows him!). And yet she's not surprised. It's so like Joe: to maintain his “coolness” at all costs. Amazing how, twenty years later, he can annoy her in exactly the same way.

Without discussion, the four of them gravitate to the kitchen
table. Their personalities are in their feet: Charlotte's ankles folded neatly under her chair; Emily sitting in the lotus position, boots sloughed off to reveal gray rag socks; Walter with his chair turned backward, straddling it, one high-top sneaker planted on each side. Joe's loafer has resumed its lofty perch, dangling halfway across the room.

“Hey,” Walter says, noticing the laptop. He taps the cover affectionately with one finger. “You get this up and running, Charlotte? No problems?”

“Nope.” Her scrawled Post-it is still stuck to the front, though she no longer needs it. “None at all.”

“And you actually use it?” from Emily.

“I do.” Wouldn't they be surprised to know how much. “It's been wonderful, actually.”

“What has?” Joe tunes in. He's holding a salt shaker in front of his eyes, squinting into the tiny holes. “What did I miss? What's your mother using?”

“Wally set Mom up on the Internet.”

“Did he!” Joe bangs the salt shaker on the table. “What's your secret, Wal? I couldn't get this woman near technology for seven years. Electricity either, for that matter.” He grins, picking up his glass. “Isn't that right, Char?”