When He Fell (24 page)

I am just dragging myself towards my apartment, about to unlock my door, when Brian opens his.

“Hey, how did the transfer to rehab go?” he asks, and I am heartened that he remembered, that he cares, even if only a little.

“Good, actually. Ben’s had some good progress.” I hold my keys in my hand, jingling them lightly. “How was your visit with your son?”

Brian makes a little face. “Awkward as usual. Sometimes I wonder if he’d just be better off without me in his life.”

“He wouldn’t be,” I say automatically. “Trust me, I know.” I think of Lewis. “I wish Ben had a father.”

He steps back from the door. “You want to come in?”

I’m too tired for some big emotional conversation, but I also don’t want to be alone. I never do. “Sure,” I say, and step inside.

Brian gets us both beers and I sit on his black leather sofa and stare at the huge blank flat-screen TV. Brian joins me, sitting close enough so our thighs nudge.

“So Ben’s father,” he says slowly. “Not in the picture?”

“You could say that.” I hesitate, because I’ve never told anyone about Ben’s father, even though people, especially Juliet, have asked in a vague sort of way over the years. Now I grimace, because I can tell Brian would like answers and frankly I don’t want to give them. They’re not going to make me look good. “It was just a fling,” I say after a moment. “I mean, a really casual fling.”

“Did you tell him you were pregnant?”

“I didn’t get the chance. By the time I knew he’d moved and I…I didn’t have any of his contact information.” Not even his name. I can feel myself flushing and I take a long swallow of beer.

“Did you ever think of getting an abortion?” Brian asks. He doesn’t sound critical, just curious. I swallow and shrug.

“Of course I did. I was just finally getting my life on track. Steady job, good apartment…” I trail off, remembering the shock of those days. “I was in no place to have a baby.”

“But?” Brian fills in when I stop speaking.

“But I’ve never had a family,” I say quietly. “My dad walked out when I was two. I was taken from my mother because of gross negligence when I was four. She killed herself when I was nine.”

“God, Maddie, I’m so sorry,” Brian says. He sounds appalled, which is why I usually don’t present the laundry list of my pathetic childhood to people. I don’t actually want pity.

“It’s okay,” I say now, because in a way it is. I don’t miss my parents, because I never really knew them. But I hate having no one. “But when I was pregnant with Ben,” I continue, “I couldn’t stop thinking that this was my family. Finally.” My throat thickens and I blink rapidly. I really don’t want to cry. “I’ve never been good at relationships,” I say. I’m being cringingly honest and I’m sure I’ll regret it later, but right now I feel like I need to say this. Maybe because the memory of my little Lewis fantasy is so raw.
Fifteen minutes.
That’s all I ever seem to get. “I had a boyfriend in college but it fizzled out and the truth is I’ve just never been able to do the serious thing.” I shrug like I don’t know why that is, when of course I do. I’ve got just a little too much experience with rejection not to worry about it happening again. And not enough experience with loving, committed relationships of any sort even to know what they look like or how they work. “So I’ve never been angling for the husband and kids, the picket fence. Honestly.” Because it has always been out of my reach. Why try for something you can never have? “And the pregnancy seemed like the closest thing I’d ever get to having a family of my own,” I finish. I can’t tell from Brian’s expression what he thinks about any of this.

My reasoning made sense at the time, but looking back I wonder why I wasn’t just a little more realistic. Why I didn’t consider having artificial insemination in five or ten years’ time, when I was in a more stable position to have a kid. But then, of course, I wouldn’t have Ben. And for better or for worse, I can’t imagine my life without Ben.

“I’m sorry, Maddie,” Brian says quietly, and then, to my shock, he puts his arms around me. I go rigid at first, because I’ve never been a hugger. But then I breathe in the scent of soap on his skin, feel his bristly hair against my cheek, and desire—not just sexual desire, although there’s that too, but a deeper, needier,
bigger
desire, not for sex, but for a connection—roars through me. I put my arms around him and press closer.

I feel the exact moment when Brian’s friendly hug turns into something else. I feel him tense, feel the awareness run through him like an electrical current. Feel it in me too, the river of need that runs through me, sometimes a trickle, now a flood. I hold my breath, waiting, not sure even now what I want to happen.

Brian rests a hand in my hair and his breath shudders through him. It would be so easy for me to tilt my head up, for him to tilt his down. For us to kiss. I can picture it; I can
taste
it. Then slowly he eases back and smiles at me. I know that smile, and I cringe. Even though I didn’t do anything I feel rejected.

“I should go,” I say, and stand up, knocking my bottle of beer to the floor. “Sorry,” I say and quickly grab it, put it back on the coffee table before too much sloshes out.

“Maddie,” Brian says. “Listen…”

“Did I tell you the settlement conference is in two weeks? Friday afternoon. So maybe…” I twitch my shoulders in a shrug; I am already walking to the door.

Brian hurries to catch up with me. “May I go with you?” he asks. “To the conference? I’d like to be there.”

I turn to him in surprise. “You…you would?”

“Yes.”

Slowly I nod. “I’ll have to ask my lawyer, but I think that would be okay.” I take a deep breath. “Thank you,” I say, and then I leave before anything else can happen.

20
JOANNA

By Monday morning my nerves are stretched so tightly they are ready to snap. The visit to Ben was, for our family at least, a disaster. For Ben and his damn Xbox it seemed like a roaring success.

I couldn’t keep the bitterness at bay as we left, taking the train back to the city.

“Aren’t you even going to ask where Josh has been?” I asked Lewis in a low voice as we took our places on the train. Josh, thankfully, couldn’t hear; he was wearing headphones plugged into Lewis’s phone as he played some mindless Tetris-like game.

“Where was he, Jo?” Lewis asked. He sounded weary.

“He was by the vending machines in the hallway.” This felt like a bit of an anticlimax. I wanted Lewis to apologize, to explain, not actually ask the question.

“I figured it was somewhere like that.”

“You were obviously enjoying yourself,” I retorted. I hated myself and what I was doing but I literally could not hold back. The emotions were bursting within me, bubbling over. I saw how they interacted. I saw how they touched. I saw the look in Maddie’s face and knew she was in love with my husband. I
knew.

And so, I thought, did Josh.

Lewis sighed. “I was playing the Xbox with a brain-damaged boy I’ve spent a lot of time with over the last few years. I wouldn’t necessarily call that enjoying myself,” he finished, and turned to look out the window.

“You didn’t even notice Josh had gone.”

Lewis turned back to me, temper in his eyes and voice now. “I’m sorry. I was a little busy. I wanted Josh to be there. I wanted him to talk to Ben. I was trying to make the situation
work
.”

I lapsed into silence, because there were too many things I didn’t want to say. About what I’d seen in Maddie’s eyes. About what I was afraid Josh knew.

Instead I stared blindly ahead, wishing I could erase the images in my head of Lewis and Maddie together. Seeing them together was like having a mirror angled at all my fears; they were reflected a thousand times over, so they became all I could see or feel. I stood and watched, saw the shared smiles, the lingering looks. Once Lewis put his hand on Maddie’s shoulder and she laughed and tilted her head towards his hand in such an unthinking, instinctive gesture of affection that I dug my nails into my palms hard enough to break the skin.

I felt like I could be sick. Did Lewis not realize I see all that? Did he think I was
blind?
Or was he simply not aware of how he was with Maddie? I considered asking him if he’d had an affair but I couldn’t bear to form the question. I didn’t think I’d survive his answer.

And so I stayed silent.

Sunday passed in a haze of misery; I took Josh out for bagels in the morning while Lewis stayed home and read the paper. A few weeks ago there would have been no question of us all going together.
How is this happening?
I wondered as I nibbled at a toasted sesame seed bagel. It tasted like dust. I felt like I was losing my family and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. They were slipping from my grasp no matter how hard I tried to hang on.

“Do we have to see them again?” Josh asked as we picked at our bagels.

“No, Josh,” I answered firmly. “We don’t.”

His expression cleared a little, but his mouth turned down at the corners. “Will Dad see them again?”

I took a deep breath. “Would that bother you, if he did?”

Josh stared at me for a moment. “Would it bother you?” he asked and I swallowed.

“No, of course not.” I didn’t want to feed my fears to Josh. “You’ve spent a lot of time with Lewis and Maddie and Ben, Josh. I understand Dad wanting to see them. It’s okay.”

But Josh didn’t look as if he believed me.

Sunday night Lewis and I lay in bed like two statues and he didn’t pull me towards him as he usually did, didn’t fit me around his body, his hand resting on my stomach. I had no idea what he was thinking, if he was regretting taking us to see Ben, if he wished he’d gone alone.

I forced myself to break the silence. “Will you visit her again?” I asked.

Lewis sighed. “I don’t know,” he said, and it felt like a confession. As if we’d both acknowledged there was something between them, even if neither of us had named it.

On Monday I take Josh to school myself, so I can tell Mrs. Rollins he has to leave early the next day for his appointment with Will Dannon.

I’m just stepping outside through Burgdorf’s bright blue doors when Jane, the mother who came up to Lewis and me before, approaches me.

“Hey,” she says with a cringingly sympathetic smile. “How are you doing?”

I hitch my bag higher on my shoulder and shrug. I feel wary, although I’m not sure why. “Okay,” I say. “I guess.”

She nods, and I think she’ll leave it at that. Then she says, “Do you have time for a cup of coffee? If you want? I know what you’re going through, in a small way.” I stare at her blankly—has her child pushed another child off some rocks and caused brain damage?—and she quickly clarifies, “I just mean, Amelia has had some issues with other children.”

I want to tell her that Josh hasn’t had any other issues with other children. He hasn’t had problems; he’s just been quiet. There’s a difference. At least, I want there to be one.

“Okay,” I say, and we walk to the Starbucks on Sixth Avenue. We don’t really talk as we get our coffees and head to a small table in the back of the narrow shop. It’s filled with people who are clearly not on the eight-to-six or even nine-to-five schedule that most Manhattanites are. There is a mix of arty types who have set up shop with their laptops and iPods and the high-powered business people who make a big deal of checking their watches or their phones, and who take a conference call on an ear piece along with their coffee. I watch a man impatiently toss a five dollar bill on the counter instead of handing it to the cashier, and I wonder why I live in Manhattan.

“So.” Jane pries off the lid of her latte and takes a frothy sip. I ordered an Americano but I don’t think I can drink it; my stomach feels as if it is already filled with acid. I cradle the paper cup with my hands, savoring the warmth instead.

“How are you, really?” Jane asks, and I wonder how she expects me to confide in her when she is barely more than a stranger.

And yet part of me wants to, because I feel like I have no one else to talk to. Part of me craves a connection, and yet still I try to hold back.

“It’s hard,” I say, trying to keep my voice measured, even diffident. “Josh is taking all of this very hard.”

“Of course he is,” Jane says. She leans forward, animated now, coffee forgotten. “Amelia takes the other children’s reactions to her behavior very hard. They don’t realize it, of course, because they just see and experience her acting out. But their rejection is painful to her. I know it is.”

I’m not sure how to reply. I’m sensing that Amelia is a little different than Josh, although I’ve never even seen her. “What kind of…issues does Amelia have?” I ask politely.

Jane waves a hand in what seems to be dismissal. “Hitting. Kicking. Biting.”
Biting?
I nod in alleged understanding. “She has a lot of anger issues and trouble with self-control, due to her upbringing before we adopted her.” Jane makes a face. “We have her in therapy, of course, and we are working on her destructive behaviors. But it’s a long road.”

I keep nodding, trying not to look as appalled as I feel. I instinctively want to distance Josh from someone like Amelia, someone who is clearly labeled a problem child. “I’m sorry,” I tell Jane. “That must be so hard.”

She nods, grimacing. “And Burgdorf doesn’t exactly make it much better. They pay a lot of lip service to the whole child but in actuality they don’t do that much.”

“Has Amelia ever been…disciplined?”

Another grimace. “She was threatened with suspension. Twice.”

Threatened?
And she
bites?
The injustice of Josh’s treatment hits me all over again. Why did the school turn on him so quickly? Was it because, like Lewis seems to think, that they feared a lawsuit? And now they’re getting one. I think of Maddie’s insurance claim and feel another panicky dart of fear. What will that mean for us? Will people blame us? Will we be dragged into some hellish court case?

And then I wonder if
we
might have a lawsuit, for unfair treatment. Maybe we should sue Burgdorf too. Inwardly I shake my head; I feel like I’m going crazy with all my circling thoughts. I know I can’t handle a lawsuit on top of everything else. I just want my son to get better. My marriage to survive.