Maya doing?” Dorothea asked. “Recovering okay?”
“She seemed pretty good,” Brent said, which only went to show how unintuitive he was.
“She’s miserable, actually,” Rebecca said.
Brent frowned at her. “She seemed okay to me.”
“I know her better than you,” she said. Maya could wear a smile broad enough to span the Grand Canyon and Rebecca would still be able to see the lie in it. “They’re both miserable.”
“Well,” Brent said, “they’re going out to dinner with us Saturday night. We’re going to that new Brazilian place. Want to come?”
Dorothea shook her head. “Too much to do here,” she said. She was no good at delegating. Rebecca would do a better job of spreading the work around. “Supposed to be a good restaurant, though,” Dorothea added.
Rebecca couldn’t believe Maya had agreed to the Brazilian restaurant. Maya avoided that part of Durham. A sketchy area, to be sure, but when Brent mentioned it, Adam had lit up.
“Yeah!” he’d said. “I’ve wanted to try that place!”
Seeing the sudden life in Adam’s eyes made Rebecca realize exactly how glum he’d been since their arrival. Maya must have noticed as well, because she nodded her okay. Trying to please him, Rebecca thought. Trying to make it up to him for losing another baby. Rebecca nearly suggested a different restaurant, but remembered Brent saying that she infantilized Maya and kept her mouth shut. Besides, she wanted to try the restaurant herself.
“So are you two getting married or what?” Dorothea asked with her usual lack of tact. She looked up from the screen, first at Rebecca, then at Brent, and Rebecca could see the hurricane map reflected in her enormous gray eyes.
“I’m waiting for her answer.” Brent sounded almost shy. Kind of cute, actually. Rebecca couldn’t help but smile at him.
“I’ve told him I still don’t see the point,” she said.
Dorothea tipped her head to the side to look at Brent. “How do you stand her?”
Brent laughed. “’Cause I love her,” he said.
Rebecca lowered her gaze back to the map. She knew in that moment she did love him. As her friend. As the guy who’d run with her through the streets of Durham in the middle of the night. Who’d bike with her. Jump out of a plane with her. Who wasn’t afraid to drop everything at a moment’s notice and fly off to a tsunami-wrecked village to do whatever it took to help the injured. But could she love him as her husband? That she didn’t know at all.
8
Maya
REBECCA AND I SAT IN THE BACKSEAT OF BRENT’S PRIUS, while the men sat in the front. The three of them were talking about DIDA, Rebecca with her seat belt unbuckled so she could lean between Adam and Brent’s seats, monopolizing the conversation, as usual, but I wasn’t listening. I wished I’d stayed home. I was still achy and bleeding a bit from the miscarriage and not up to trekking into the bowels of Durham for a meal I would never enjoy. But Adam was excited about it, and Brent was leaving early in the morning for Ecuador, where an earthquake had wiped a couple of villages off the map the day before. How could I say no?
It was still light out, light enough to let me see the neighborhood deteriorate block by block. I glanced at my sister, whose tanned and superhumanly toned arm was stretched across the back of Adam’s seat. Her mouth moved with words I barely heard. She was talking about the last time she was with DIDA in South America. Someone had boarded the bus she was riding and stolen money from all the passengers, threatening them with a machete. Nice, Bec, I thought. Nice, reassuring conversation for Brent the night before he leaves. But Brent was laughing, as was Adam. I was the only one who felt like I was on that bus. The only one who could see the guy coming toward me, the sharp blade of his machete catching daylight as it sliced through the air. I reached for my purse, opened it, poured my money onto the floor of the bus. Take it. It’s yours.
When Brent suggested this restaurant the other night, I thought for sure Adam would realize its location and offer an alternative. He knew this was hard for me. Either he just wasn’t thinking, or he was truly angry with me and didn’t care how I felt. But really, I was a grown woman. If I hadn’t wanted to come, I should have said so. It wasn’t up to them to take care of me. I’d kept my lips sealed, though. Adam was psyched and I was not going to give him one more reason, no matter how trifling, to be disappointed in me. He’d been cool toward me since our appointment with Elaine. I’d apologized over and over for keeping the abortion a secret from him and didn’t know what more I could do. One thing
I’d learned over the years was that I couldn’t change the past, no matter how much I might want to.
“The only time I was in Brazil,” Rebecca was saying, “my friends ordered this dish for me in a restaurant and it turned out to be boiled alligator.”
Oh, great, I wanted to say. And why do we want to go to a Brazilian restaurant?
We drove past a liquor store, where a string of women—clearly prostitutes—posed and preened on the sidewalk.
“There it is.” Brent pointed to a tiny glass-fronted building squashed between a pawnshop and a video store.
“That’s it?” Rebecca sounded both astonished and delighted.
There was no sign above the door. The word Restaurant was hand painted on a piece of cardboard taped inside the window.
“Yeah,” Brent said. “They’re so new, they don’t have their sign yet.”
“Cool,” said Adam.
“Do you see any parking?” I asked, craning my neck. I wanted a spot right in front of the restaurant so we wouldn’t have to walk any farther in this neighborhood than was necessary.
“Nothing.” Brent looked left and right.
“Is that one?” Rebecca asked. “Up there on the right? Oh. Mini Cooper.”
We drove one block. Then another. “Maybe it’s not a good night for this,” I said.
“There’s one!” Brent shouted, and he started to whip the Prius nose first toward the curb, stepping on the brake just in time to avoid creaming the motorcycle that had been hidden from our view in the parking place. “Damn!” he said. “Dude’s taking up two spots.”
“It’s puny,” my sister said. “Let’s move it!” Before I knew what was happening, she and Adam were out of the car, laughing as they half lifted, half rolled the bike out of our way. I watched the lightness in their movements, the energy, unable to remember the last time I’d seen Adam laugh, and I was glad I’d agreed to come despite my reservations. I wanted to see that smile on my husband’s face, even if I wasn’t the person to put it there.
Brent managed to squeeze the car into the parking place once the motorcycle was out of the way. We were in front of a wig store. The window was full of mannequin heads, most of them dark skinned, wearing wigs in every shade of the rainbow.
Adam offered me a hand as I got out of the
