The Hazards of Sleeping Alone (3 page)

“Living together?” Charlotte had been Windexing the mirror and stopped, blue rivulets running down the glass. “Just the two of you?”

“Four of us. Walter, me, and a couple of friends.”

“What friends?”

“Just some Wesleyan people.”

“What Wesleyan people?” It was all Charlotte could do to echo her daughter, even though these other people were not, at all, the point.

“Mara and Anthony,” Emily says. “I don't think you've met them…. Ant's the guy who climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. He's really fascinating.”

Her words bounced off the tiled walls, as if mocking Charlotte's practical rubber-soled slippers, her bucket of cleaning supplies.
Fascinating.
She watched as the streams of Windex snagged and merged, like a map of blue veins on the inside of a wrist. Behind them, Charlotte's blurred reflection stared back at
her: faded blue eyes, cheeks flushed and freckled from the summer heat, cropped brown hair she colored dutifully every six weeks. At first glance, she looked younger than she felt. But upon closer inspection, worry lines were rising around her mouth. Crow's feet were nibbling at the corners of her eyes. Every sleepless night etched her wrinkles deeper, though the change was invisible to the naked eye, like a patch of rust forming imperceptibly under a drip in the sink.

“Mara's cool,” Emily went on. “She lived in my dorm.”

“Oh?”

“She's Anthony's girlfriend. Well, sort of.”

“Oh.”

Emily sighed, an amused sigh. “It's fine, Mom.”

“Is it?” Charlotte leapt. “It is?”

“It'll be like one big happy family. I promise.”

Charlotte felt a twinge between her eyes.
Happy family:
it sounded so incestuous, so 1960s. She wasn't sure if this casual, communal environment made the living together better or worse. She thought about calling Joe to discuss it, to have one of their rare parental checkpoints. These had occurred a few times over the years: when Emily had mono, when she was applying to colleges, after she pierced her tongue. (Charlotte had regretted that one, after Joe found her concern so amusing.)

But she suspected Joe had no problem with the alternative living arrangement, just as he'd had no objection to the alternative learning environment. After all, he'd set a precedent for it, living with Valerie before they were married. God only knows what kind of example they set during those endless Augusts. Charlotte hated that her ex-husband had the power to make life-altering decisions, set important examples that she could do nothing about. Of all the emotional aftershocks of divorce—loneliness,
jealousy, resentment—the worst was this lack of control.

“I just—it's just that you're so young, honey.” She wanted to sound wise and knowing, but instead felt like she always did when trying to give Emily relationship advice: unqualified. What experience did she have to back her up? A strained marriage, a cold divorce, and fifteen years without a man in her life? “And living together, well … that's a big commitment.”

“Mom.” Emily's tone was matter-of-fact. “We know living together is a big commitment. We're not jumping into this blindly. Walter and I really love each other.”

Charlotte was jolted into silence. How could she argue with this? She believed Emily probably
was
in love with Walter. In fact, it was very possible her twenty-two-year-old daughter knew more about loving a man than she did.

Charlotte had met Walter just once. It was last spring, at the Wesleyan graduation, the event that had been the final impetus for Charlotte's decision to move. That way, she told herself, when Joe asked, “What's new, Char?” she would have something to tell him. She'd imagined the moment many times over: her new sundress, her grayless haircut, and her unwavering tone of voice as she said, “Well, Joe, I've decided to sell the house,” without a flicker of self-doubt. Without a flinch.

But the actual graduation was nothing like she'd envisioned. It was oppressively hot. Her new haircut wilted. Her makeup blurred. The new dress hung limp on her shoulders (despite the pert shoulder pads) as if it, too, were defeated by the heat. Her announcement to Joe went successfully enough—in that she said all the words she'd planned on saying—but her satisfaction was dulled by the fact that Valerie was there listening, all sweatless five-feet-ten of her, topped with a stylish, wide-brimmed
hat. When the conversation was over, Charlotte snuck away to a Port-a-Potty, a place she avoided except for extreme emergencies, and fished a wad of fuzzy pink tissue from the bottom of her purse to blot her underarms dry.

Charlotte had envisioned many things wrong about that afternoon. But of all of them, the most wrong was Walter. She blames it on his name. Who in this young generation was named Walter? She had pictured someone old-fashioned, traditional, a character from
Our Town.
Plus, Emily had mentioned Walter played rugby. To Charlotte, this conjured images of
boys:
real, rough-and-tumble boys. Boys who wore scuffed baseball caps. Boys who never cleaned their rooms. Boys who acted cool around their friends but at home were lovably helpless, who needed their mothers to pick up after them and keep track of their practice schedules and cook them meaty dinners they would inhale before giving Mom a peck on the cheek and clattering out the back door toward a carful of friends honking in the driveway. Charlotte loved having a daughter—she couldn't imagine being nearly as close to a son—and yet she'd always been able to imagine herself mothering a boy like that.

Perhaps, then, it was only natural that when she pictured Walter, it was
that
boy she imagined. An ally: someone like-minded, someone of her world.

After the ceremony, they stood on the lawn under a yellow pinstriped tent. There were four of them: Joe, Valerie, Emily, and Charlotte. The untidy, untraditional modern family. Getting divorced, Charlotte often thought, was the hippest thing she'd ever done. Joe, Valerie, and Emily were talking about the honorary graduates and keynote speakers whose names Charlotte had already forgotten. She was nodding now and then, but not really paying attention, feeling the self-consciousness that
always set in on Wesleyan's campus. As if she had snuck in the side door and was going to trigger an alarm any second: a woman who never finished college mingling with the academics, a woman with a wardrobe the color of pantyhose lost in a sea of stylish hats.

Her eyes drifted to the dessert table, a delicate pyramid of tiny cakes, a colorful cascade of fruit. At the center was an ice sculpture in some sort of angular, abstract design. It seemed to mirror the women strolling past it, all glittery jewelry and chiseled bones. New Yorkers mostly, Charlotte thought. She could make out the sharp lines of their ankles, hips, jaws. Hands and ears were freighted with diamonds, faces sliced with expensive sunglasses, manicured fingers spearing pieces of cake.

She was contemplating how she might eat cake without being seen eating cake when from out of nowhere a large, muscular black boy grabbed Emily from behind. She shrieked as his dark forearms wrapped around her waist, lifting her flailing feet off the ground. Charlotte's heart seized, raced. She glanced wildly around her. Only when she saw the small smiles flirting on Valerie's and Joe's faces did she register the boy's silky blue robe and gold-tassled hat. He was a Wesleyan student, she realized—well, of course. A fellow graduate. Still, it never occurred to her he could be Walter until Emily wrapped her arms around his neck and they started kissing.

Out of habit, Charlotte looked away. This Walter looked nothing like the one she'd spent the last few weeks mentally cooking for and cleaning up after. First of all, she'd had no idea he was black. Not that she cared, not that it mattered, it was just that in all the times Emily had sung the praises of Walter this, Walter that, she'd never mentioned it. Not once. As Charlotte studied the boy, she felt her Walter being erased line by line,
detail by detail. This Walter wore his hair in an Afro, peeking out from under his hat, glistening wetly in the sun. Beneath his robe he wore a loose white shirt and faded blue jeans. He had a diamond in his left ear, a patch of scruff on his chin. The last trace of Charlotte's Walter disappeared as she noted, with something like resignation, his eyebrow ring.

Emily and Walter stepped apart. Walter kissed her forehead. Emily slid an arm around his waist. As if observing someone else's family, Charlotte watched an exchange of hands and smiles.

“Good to meet you, Walter,” Joe said.

“You too, Mr. Warren. Ms. Warren.”

“Please, call me Joe.”

“And me Valerie.”

“You can call me Mr. Nelson,” said Walter.

Joe and Valerie laughed appreciatively. Emily cupped Walter's cheek, like a proud mom. They were affectionate with each other, but it didn't seem overly deliberate. Not like the teenagers Charlotte saw at the Millville Mall who clung to one another with such determination, hands clutching hands, fingers hooked in belts. Charlotte was amazed that Emily had inherited such ease with her body.

“Congratulations to you both,” Valerie was saying. “It's a real accomplishment, graduating from a school like this one. You should be proud.”

“Thanks.”

“You're celebrating tonight, I hope,” Joe said.

“You know it,” said Walter. Laughs all around.

Now that he was facing forward, Charlotte saw that Walter had not just one diamond earring, but two: one in each lobe. Around his neck hung a wooden cross on a fuzzy cord made of something that looked like, well, “hemp” sprang to mind. Charlotte
felt her vision blur. Could this necklace be some kind of universal symbol of marijuana? The secret handshake of the drug underworld?

“Walter,” Emily interjected. Charlotte blinked. She saw her daughter beaming at her and realized she was about to become a part of this scene. “This,” Emily announced, with what sounded like pride, “is my mom.”

The boy took a big step forward and thrust a hand out from the silky folds of his sleeve. “Really glad to meet you, Ms. Warren,” he said, and Charlotte flinched at the public acknowledgment that she still used Joe's name. “I've heard a lot about you,” he said. “Em seriously talks about you all the time.”

Charlotte took the hand he held out, felt its firm grasp. He was big (he was a rugby player, after all), with broad shoulders and a wide chest. She sensed she should say something witty—“All good things, I hope” or “Don't hold it against me”—or at the very least return the compliment, but she found she couldn't speak. It was as if, upon physical contact, her brain shut down.

“Please,” she heard herself say, a weak echo of her ex-husband and his new wife. “Call me Charlotte.”

Emily laughed, the affectionate
Oh, Mom!
laugh she had honed to perfection. But Walter just smiled, warm and genuine. “Okay, Charlotte,” he said, then reached out and lightly touched her shoulder. It was as if he sensed her discomfort and wanted to put
her
at ease. Before Charlotte could respond, he was wrapped in a bear hug by another graduate, a boy with a nest of unruly blond dreadlocks and bare feet.

Charlotte was staring at the locks when she heard a whisper: “So?”

It was Emily, materialized by her shoulder. She hooked Charlotte's elbow and steered her away from the group.

“What do you think?” Emily's voice was hushed, conspiratorial. “Isn't Walter amazing?”

Charlotte glanced at her daughter. Her cheeks were flushed, teeth nibbling on her lower lip, as if to restrain herself from squealing. She looked again at Walter, who had Valerie, Joe, and the dreadlocks engaged in one big conversation, their hearty laughter rising and falling as if they'd all been friends for life.

“Well, I'm sure he is, honey,” Charlotte said. “But I hardly know him.”

Emily stopped by the tower of fruit. “First impression.”

“First impression? Well—I'm just not sure.” She watched as Emily plucked a fat strawberry off the top. “He's not exactly what I pictured, I guess.”

“What had you pictured?”

Was it wrong to say she hadn't pictured Walter black? Charlotte didn't know the politically correct way to handle these situations. But why would that be wrong? It was true. She hadn't. Would she be hesitating if he were Asian? Indian? What if Walter was French?
Well, I hadn't pictured him French.
She wouldn't have thought twice!

“I hadn't pictured him black, I guess.”

“Right.” Emily was smiling slightly, as if she had anticipated this, was even amused by it. She bit into the strawberry and kept walking, arm still hooked in Charlotte's.

“And also, I just thought,” Charlotte hurried on, “well, I think it was the name.
Walter.
I don't know. I pictured someone …” She glanced again at the boy. He was gesturing animatedly about something, Joe and Valerie nodding in recognition. Probably a grunge band from Seattle.

“Wait.” Emily stopped walking and released Charlotte's arm. Charlotte turned, sure she'd offended her somehow, but instead
found Emily nodding, the amusement gone, the forgotten strawberry held aloft in midair. “Mom, yes.”

“Yes what?”

“You're exactly right.”

“I am?”

“It's like, he
defies
his name. The name Walter—it's so
un
cool he actually manages to
make
it cool. Right?”

Charlotte hadn't thought the name Walter was uncool, just old-fashioned. As far as she was concerned, Walter's name was his most winning trait. But as she opened her mouth to explain, she was stopped by the expression on her daughter's face. Emily looked so excited, so expectant, her eyes bright, shining, as if lit from behind. She's in love, Charlotte thought. She's in
love.

“Yes,” Charlotte answered, and forced a smile. “That's exactly what I meant.”