“I’m not talking about fault. I’m just saying you never came. I was so hungry my stomach hurt. I just sat there, squatting, leaning against the wall. Remember how dark it was in that foyer? How deep it was? The bulb on the ceiling, the brown walls? Ugh, they were really brown. When you were alone in there, it was like they were alive. There were shadows and . . . black holes.”
“Black holes?”
“Yes. Black holes. I was so scared.” Jenny’s eyes are moist now.
Thomas shrugs. He signals the waiter, orders another coffee.
“I was scared, Thomas,” Jenny repeats, earnestly. “Look at me.”
“He was wasted,” Thomas said.
“No, he wasn’t. You’re blowing things out of proportion again.”
“Yes, he was. He was wobbly on his feet. You think I couldn’t tell when he was drunk? And you could too. He stank. Listen, Jenny. I had a concussion, a black eye, a scraped head, and a sprained arm, and all he did was stand there wobbling and blustering like an idiot. He stared at me, he stared out the window, he sat down, and he stood up again. He hobbled around the room in that uneasy way that made us nervous, and that—”
Smiling, Jenny shakes her head.
Thomas points at her. “It made you nervous, no matter what you say.”
“But I wasn’t even there!” she interrupts him.
“No, but I was, and he just walked over to me and grabbed my arm. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, despite the fact they wanted me to spend the night at the hospital. It was embarrassing, but he didn’t care. He yanked me out of the bed and shoved me into the elevator. I remember that shove clearly, because I had so many bruises on my back. Then we went home and picked you up—”
“In a taxi,” Jenny interrupts.
“He didn’t say a word the whole ride.”
She straightens up when the waiter pours her coffee. She says, “I remember that. The taxi. How we drove here and could order whatever we wanted.”
“And why do you suppose that was? Was it a punishment or a celebration?”
“I don’t know. What do you mean by ‘punishment’? I ate as much chocolate cake as I could, but you,” Jenny points at him. “You just sat there moping—and what did you order again? Soup?” She snickers. “Soup! It made him angry. But c’mon, it’s so weird to order a ridiculous bowl of soup, the cheapest thing on the menu, when for once you could have whatever you wanted.”
“I was sick!” Thomas sets his cup heavily on the saucer. Then he lowers his voice. “Can we just drop this? Why do you want to talk about this?”
“Drop what? You had soup, you didn’t touch it, he got angry, and then you fell off the chair.”
“I fainted, Jenny. I was nauseated, I was freezing, I was in pain, my head was spinning, I couldn’t eat that fucking soup.” His voice is a savage hiss, but Jenny laughs again, lightheartedly.
“You fainted because you were hysterical! Don’t you think? That’s what I think.”
Thomas shakes his head, stares at Jenny, lights a cigarette, and blows air through his nose.
“Okay,” Jenny says. “We won’t talk about it anymore. But the chocolate cake was really good. And you were so pale when you came to. Ha! He almost had to carry you to the car, though he didn’t want to. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, you threw up on the living room carpet when we got home. All because of a few bumps and bruises.”
“It was a concussion!” Thomas practically shouts. “A concussion for God’s sake.”
They stare at each other a moment, then each loses focus. Thomas zones out, his eyes resting on two men bent over their pasta. One of the men dabs his mouth with his napkin; the other says something, and the two laugh at the private joke. Thomas smokes greedily and drains the last of his cold, bitter coffee. Jenny gnaws at her pinky nail. She goes to the bathroom. Thomas thinks of his father’s kitchen, the toaster. The smell of the kitchen, the sound the cupboard next to the stove made when you closed it, how it stuck when you tried to open it. And the toast that would pop up, almost always too burnt at the edges, was like coal against his teeth, like tinfoil. He asks for the check. Jenny returns and begins to rummage in her purse. She fishes out a tube and slathers her hands with cream. A faint odor of menthol spreads around them. Then she begins to talk about her night shifts at the nursing home. About her modest salary and Alice and her friends who eat all her food. “What am I going to do?” she says, raising her hands only to let them drop heavily to her side. Thomas is exhausted, doesn’t say much. He pays, and they say goodbye outside the restaurant. Jenny is under a red umbrella, and Thomas is under a black one. Rain lashes the sidewalk with such force that it bounces off as if it were coming from both above and below. She offers him a key. The word Dad is etched onto a small piece of blond wood attached to the key ring. “I’m going out there tomorrow,” she says.
“Say hi to Alice!” he calls out as she walks away. She raises her arm dismissively but doesn’t turn back. Maybe she’s begun to cry. For a moment he feels a prickling jab of tenderness for the plump, swaying body disappearing around the corner. Then disgust. Then tenderness again.
At home Patricia’s sitting in front of the computer, her coat on. Her striped scarf has fallen to the floor. She leans forward, craning her neck, her face to the screen. The hallway light spills into the half-lit living room. She’s put a bowl of oranges on the coffee table. The cat sleeps in the armchair. Thomas stands in the doorway observing her. “Hey,” he says finally. She glances up. “Oh, hi baby. I’m almost done. Sorry, it’s just these pictures for the catalog. The graphic designer keeps putting them in wrong . . .” She stares silently at the screen, he stares at her back. The living room: still life of woman with averted face. Thomas goes into the kitchen, where a tower of dishes is stacked up. He washes his hands and drinks a glass of water as he gazes out the window. He can see the river and the lights on the other side of it. A lightning bolt flashes across the sky, a thunderclap booms far away. It begins to rain. “How’d it go?” Patricia calls out. “Okay,” he mumbles, putting down his glass. He walks into the bedroom and sits on the bed. He picks up his pillow and buries his head in it. This is how I smell, he thinks, it’s me, this aroma, the smell is me, it’s what I give off and what I leave behind, traces of my aroma: me. I am here. I am in the pillow. It’s frightening. Then Patricia appears in the doorway. “What are you doing?” He tosses the pillow aside. “Is something wrong?” She’s taken off her coat, and her hair is gathered in a ponytail. There are wet splotches on the knees of her stonewashed jeans, and her mascara has left black marks around her eyes. Must be from the rain. “You look tired,” he says. “Have you even had dinner?” “I had a sandwich on the way home. We don’t have any bread.” She sits beside him. “You have sauce on your collar.” He nods. With her nail she scratches a little at the dried sauce. She strokes his cheek. She puts her arm around him. “Where’d you eat?” she asks softly. “At Luciano’s. Jenny insisted.” He puts his arm around her, and they sit like that for a while. He can’t stop thinking about how stiff and clumsy it feels. They undress in silence, she brushes her teeth, naked—he’s already in bed—and she brushes her hair. “How’s Jenny? Was she impossible? And what did the lawyer say?” Patricia sits on the edge of the bed and touches his arm. She has goose bumps on her thighs. Her dark hair scatters across her face when
