The Other Life (9 page)

“Arlene,” she said, and paused, waiting for eye contact from Lewis’s mother. “It’s called art.”

“You think I don’t know what art is?” Arlene said. “Lewis, tell her how often I took you to the Metropolitan Museum when you were growing up.”

“I’m sure you spent hours looking at all the pretty Impressionists,” Nan said.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Arlene asked.

“Mom, stop,” Quinn said.

Nan put up her hands. “Okay, okay. I’m done.”

Arlene folded her arms. “Well, I’m not. I’d like to know exactly what you meant. You think I’m some sort of Philistine?”

Nan cut into her turkey. “You said it, I didn’t.”

Arlene looked as if she were about to get up and storm out, but her husband jumped in with a joke to defuse the situation. “Phyllis Dean, Phyllis Diller,” he said. “Who cares?”

For once, Quinn was grateful for one of Don’s corny puns. It broke the tension just enough for the conversation to move in another direction, though the mood remained strained throughout the meal. Later, when Arlene and Don had left and Quinn found herself alone in the kitchen with her mother, she was still furious.

“Did you really have to lay into Arlene like that?”

“She won’t even remember it in the morning. Woman has the IQ of a rhododendron.”

Quinn picked up the bowl of mashed sweet potatoes and started spooning the contents into a plastic container. “She’ll remember. She’s not stupid.”

“Okay, right. She’s brilliant, just incredibly shallow. Where am I putting the cranberry sauce?”

Quinn grabbed the small dish from her mother. “There’s no law against being shallow! Not everyone shares your intensity, Mom. And yet they go about their lives and raise families and have every right to be treated with common decency.”

“That woman just rubs me the wrong way. Always has.”

“Of course—she’s Lewis’s mother. She’d rub you the wrong way no matter what.”

“There you go again. I don’t know why you always insist I have something against Lewis.”

“Name one thing you’ve done to be supportive of my relationship with him.” She folded her arms and leaned against the counter.

“I walked down the aisle at your wedding.”

“Well. I didn’t realize it was such a big favor. Thank you, Mom. Thank you for not boycotting my wedding ceremony. Big of you.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I want you to admit that it drives you crazy seeing me in a normal, stable relationship.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it? Remember when you said you didn’t think I should leave Eugene for Lewis?”

“I never said I didn’t think you should
.
I said I didn’t think you could.”

“Your confidence is inspiring.”

“I think I should go.”

“I think you should, too.”

Two weeks later, when Quinn finally relented and called her parents’ house, her father answered and told her Nan was still sleeping. Quinn worried that their fight had pushed her mother into a depression. She tried to remember how Nan had sounded at Thanksgiving. Was she talking fast? Had she seemed grandiose? If she had been in the midst of a manic episode, it was quite possible she had crash-landed into a depression. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

“She’s fine,” her father said. “At least I think so. You know how she gets when she’s holed up in that studio.”

“What is she painting?”

He paused. “Why don’t you come over and see?”

And so she did. But when she got to her mother’s studio, she didn’t think her mother was fine at all, despite what her father had said. Nan seemed lethargic and melancholy. She didn’t usually paint when she was depressed, but Quinn was still concerned. She dispensed with rehashing the fight they’d had, and asked her mother if everything was okay.

“I’m just tired,” she said.

“Are you taking your meds?”

“Of course.”

Quinn squinted at her mother, trying to figure out if she was telling the truth.

“Isn’t a person allowed to be tired?” she asked. “I was up painting most of the night. Started a new piece.”

“Can I see?”

“Not yet. But I finished that portrait of you last week. It’s there.” She pointed to a canvas that was perched on her counter and covered with a sheet.

Quinn approached it hesitantly.

“Go on,” her mother said. “Take a look.”

Quinn pulled off the sheet and was so surprised it took her a few minutes to understand what she was looking at. She had expected a portrait similar to Hayden’s or her father’s. But instead of a close-up interpretation of Quinn’s face, it seemed to be a statement about her relationship with her mother. The image disturbed her so much that she made short shrift of the visit and left without saying anything complimentary about the painting. It was the last time they spoke, and Quinn couldn’t remember if she’d even said good-bye.

Eugene’s heavy black phone rang again and jarred her. She looked at the clock by the bed. Isaac. Soon, his bus would pull up at the corner and he’d step down onto the curb. What if she wasn’t there?

Quinn went into the bathroom again and studied the tub, looking for a tiny fissure. But the porcelain was smooth from end to end. She examined the perimeter, where the grout met the fixture, but everything was sealed tight. Quinn stood and stared down, surveying the entire bathtub.

There has to be a way back, she thought. There has to be.

She kneeled again and closed her eyes, holding her hands above the bathtub. Maybe things were different on this side. Maybe the fissure was invisible, and she’d be able to feel the resistance of air but not actually see a crack. She waved her hands down the entire length of the tub and up the sides. But there was nothing—no wind at all. In fact, if anything, she felt something quite opposite—a gentle vacuum. It was coming from the drain. Was that just the natural effect of the pipes?

Quinn pressed all around the drain, and even inspected the faucet, but everything remained solid.

She thought of Isaac getting off the school bus. If she was even a second late he would panic. At school he was fine, and at home he wasn’t any clingier than most six-year-olds. But outside the protection of the house he seemed terrified of losing sight of her. Quinn sometimes wondered if Isaac sensed his mother could vanish like vapor, or if it was just normal separation anxiety. Of course, if he really knew the truth, he would be more worried at home than at such places as the bus stop or the playground, where she had to be in his line of sight at all times.

She didn’t understand just how terrified he was until the day they actually got separated for a few moments. Lewis, Quinn, and Isaac had gone out for dinner at a big, boisterous family restaurant. The waitress led them through three different rooms to their table in the back of the cavernous establishment, and when Quinn turned around, Isaac was nowhere in sight.

“Where is he?” Lewis said.

Quinn looked around. “I don’t know,” she said. “Isaac? Isaac!” She bent to see if he was hiding under a table.

“I’ll backtrack,” Lewis said, but before he had gone a few steps, they heard a child’s scream so piercing the place went silent and every head turned. Quinn and Lewis ran toward the sound, where they found Isaac standing, rigid with fear. He stopped when he saw his mother and collapsed in her arms.

“Sweetheart,” she said.

It took only moments to figure out what had happened. The restaurant had a large chalkboard affixed to the wall in the waiting area—a diversion for kids while their families waited to be seated. Isaac had been trailing his mother and father to the table when he got distracted by the board. He picked up a piece of chalk and got so absorbed in what he was drawing that he forgot he was supposed to be following his parents.

Isaac took a jagged breath. “I thought you disappeared.”

Today, Quinn imagined him standing alone on the corner, his little heart pounding in his chest when he didn’t see her.

Or would he? Quinn wondered if there was a chance she might continue to exist in both lives. If she spent a day or a month or a year in this life, could she step back into the other life at any time and simply absorb all the memories as she had done when she crossed over to this “Eugene life”?

Her intuition told her it wasn’t so, that once she dared cross the portal there was no “substitute” Quinn living her life with Lewis and Isaac. And, of course, she couldn’t risk finding out. She wouldn’t do to Isaac what her own mother had done to her. She had to return to him. She had to.

Don’t panic, she told herself. Just think. Think of how you got here. Maybe it’s just a matter of reversing the steps. But how? Did it make sense to get back into the bath?

Quinn turned on the faucets, figuring it was worth a try. “Hurry,” she whispered, as she watched the bath fill. At last she took off the bathrobe and hung it back on the brass hook, then lowered herself into the warm water. She lay down, closed her eyes, and submerged herself completely. Quinn tried to relax in the water, let her mind go. After a few moments she felt something like a push, pressing her into darkness. She fought the panic that made her feel as if she were being drowned, and let the force move her down into the space between two worlds, where she floated through a mass that was neither solid nor liquid. This time there was no sensation of peace, but a fear that she might not emerge. She felt vulnerable and conscious of her nakedness. Quinn wrapped her arms around herself in protection as she was pressed forward. The environment went from warm to tepid to cold, and she became aware of a musty, earthy smell. Then her head hit something solid, and Quinn knew it was the concrete wall of her basement. She opened her eyes and saw the ironing board in the light in front of her. Thank God, she thought. She crawled out onto it, scratching her right side on the rough cement, as the fissure was now a solid, physical thing, just wide enough for her to fit through. And then there she was—wet, naked, and bleeding a little bit, but back in her house. Her clothes were in a pile on the floor under the ironing board, as if she had dropped them there before her journey.

She stood and looked down at her body, noting the swell in her abdomen. She touched her breasts, examining them for tenderness. Yes, she was still pregnant. Quinn put her clothes back on and went out to meet her son at the bus stop.

AS QUINN MOVED THROUGH THE REST OF HER DAY SHELLshocked from the emotional grenade of hearing her mother’s voice, she knew there was only one person who would believe what had happened and know how she felt—her brother, Hayden.

And so early Saturday afternoon, after Lewis had taken Isaac to his soccer game, Quinn got in her Volvo and headed to a restaurant in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, where she and Hayden had agreed to meet.

The Maplewood Cafe had sidewalk seating, which was filling quickly with people eager to take advantage of the unusually warm fall weather. Quinn sat at a table with a view down the street, and settled in to wait for her brother, who she knew would be late. Even though she was the one who had to drive an hour to get to this place and all he had to do was tumble out of his brownstone and walk two blocks, she couldn’t get mad at him. No one could. Hayden’s sweet nature brought out the best in almost everyone. He could show up late or forget to come at all. He could miss birthdays, not return calls, overlook important dates—and none of it mattered. His heart was as big as a bear and as tender as a puppy, and he was beloved. Year after year, the students at the New York City high school where he taught social studies voted him their favorite teacher.

Quinn sat sipping sparkling water with lemon as she watched down the street for her brother, thinking about how she would tell him her astounding story. At last she saw his large frame approaching, a huge smile shrinking his crystal blue eyes to tiny slits.

“Sorry,” he said. “The phone rang just as I was leaving.”

She laughed. “Right. Otherwise you would have been on time.”

He kissed her on the cheek. “God, it’s gorgeous out.” He sat down and examined her face. “You sure you’re okay?”

She shrugged. Over the phone, she had told him all about the sonogram and how little information the doctors had been able to provide about the baby’s prognosis. “Tell me about you. How’s Cordell?”

Cordell had been at the center of Hayden’s life for years. He was an aspiring actor, a beautiful, mocha-skinned god. Quinn had something like a love-hate relationship with him. Sometimes she appreciated his goofy sense of humor and offbeat charm. Other times she found him obnoxious. But what troubled her most was that she felt he wasn’t giving enough to Hayden, and that he used his career ambitions as an excuse for selfishness. As far as Quinn could tell, Cordell gave little thought to Hayden as he shuttled back and forth between the East and West Coasts, depending on where there was work. When he was here, he lived with her brother. Supposedly Cordell had his own apartment in Los Angeles, but Hayden had never seen it, and Quinn wondered whether it really existed or if he had another boyfriend in Hollywood. She suspected that deep down Hayden knew he was being used. But he was as devoted as an addict. Quinn wished he would move on—he deserved so much better, after all—but it was hopeless.

“He was supposed to come in on the red-eye this morning but he got held up. He’s meeting with a casting agent today.”

She reached over and straightened his collar. “On Saturday?”

“There’s no such thing as weekends in L.A. That’s what he says, anyway.” Hayden smiled to show Quinn that none of this really hurt him, but his eyes broke her heart.

“Oh, Hayd.”

“I’m this close to breaking up with him,” he said, holding his fingers a millimeter apart.

It was a long-standing joke between them, and Quinn laughed. “I won’t hold my breath.”

“Seriously, Quinn. Cross your fingers for us. Last week he auditioned for a big part on a soap opera, and if it comes through he’ll have a career right here.”