after work, and sat at our kitchen table covered with a swath of spreadsheets and documents. Layla and I grew bored, drifted away from the table. But the boys stayed up late talking about pension plans and salaries, quarterly taxes, insurance costs.
Layla and I opened a bottle of wine, lay on the couch listening to their voices, low and serious.
“Are you sure this is what you guys want?” she asked that night.
“The agency?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Won’t you miss it? The assignments, the travel, you know—the excitement of it?”
There was something odd in her tone. “Do you miss it?” I asked.
She shrugged. “The kids keep me busy,” she says. “But, yeah, sometimes.”
I was surprised by this; it never occurred to me that Layla was less than happy.
Her Facebook posts and Instagram feeds were a cheerful tumble of beautiful pictures of the kids, family trips, idyllic Sunday breakfasts, strolls in the park. Layla and Mac in love, wealthy, with two gorgeous, gifted children. Fakebook, Jack liked to call it. A bulletin board of our pretty moments, all the rest of it hidden.
“I guess we all make our choices,” she said, flat and final. “I mean, we’re blessed. I’m—grateful.”
“Mac loves the kids,” she says now. “He’s always there for them. He’s never missed a performance or a party—they call, he answers.”
“He loves you.”
That much I know. Though Mac can be stiff and isn’t exactly a sparkling conversationalist, sometimes even a little blank, his face lights up when Layla talks. He watches her with love in his eyes. Personally, I think he’s on the spectrum, a genius with numbers but maybe struggling elsewhere. Not an unusual combination. But since Jack’s death, Mac has spent many an evening at the office with me, educating me on everything Jack used to handle. He’s patient, gentle, explaining and re-explaining as often as necessary without a trace of annoyance. He’s been there for me, just like Layla. These people—they’re my family.
Layla rubs at the back of her shoulder, seems about to say something but then it dies on her lips, replaced by a wan smile.
“I know,” she says. “Of course he does. Seventeen years.”
She takes a sip from her wineglass, the lights behind her twinkling in a sea of dark. In daylight, the room looks out onto Central Park—an expanse of green, or autumn colors, or white. “It’s okay. We can’t change each other. Most of us who stay married know that.”
Jack and I had just passed our eighth-year wedding anniversary before he died, so I don’t comment. But I don’t remember ever wanting to change him.
“I’m sorry,” she says, sitting forward and looking stricken. “The stupid things I say sometimes.”
I lift a hand. “Don’t walk on eggshells. Don’t do that.”
“So what’s going on with you, then?” she asks. “Something—so don’t lie.”
“Nothing,” I lie. She doesn’t buy it, doesn’t push, but keeps her gaze on me.
“I saw Dr. Nash today,” I say, just to put something out there. “She wants me to get off the sleeping pills.”
“Why?” says Layla, pouring us each another glass of wine. I don’t stop her, though I’ve had enough, and the pills earlier. This is our second bottle. “Fuck that. Take what you need to sleep. This year’s been hard enough. You tell her—”
I tune her out. She’s always had a mouth on her, always the fighter, the one standing up, speaking out. For some reason I flash on her arguing with one of her high school boyfriends. We were in the parking lot after a football game. She hit him on the head with her purse. You fucker! she’d screamed, as we all watched. I dragged her off; she kept yelling. The look on his face, like he’d never experienced anger before. Maybe he hadn’t. Layla wept in my car afterward. What had she been so mad about that night? I don’t even remember—or who the boy was, or who else was there. Just the bright spotlights from the field, some girls giggling, the smell of cut grass and Layla’s voice slicing the night.
“Poppy,” she says.
“What?”
I’m getting the mom look, the one she gives her kids when they’re not listening.
“I asked if she took you off the pills.”
“She lowered the dosage.”
“And.”
“My dreams.” My dream images of Jack from last night mingle with the shadow on the subway, the odd daydream I experienced on the train. “They’re more vivid. I don’t feel as rested.”
“Tell her to put the dose back up,” she says sharply. “You need your rest, Poppy.”
“I want to get off them.” The words sound weak even to my own ears. Do I really? “I don’t want to take pills to sleep for the rest of my life.”
“Why not? Better living through chemistry. Lots of people are medicated all their lives.” She lifts her glass like she’s proving a point.
I don’t know if she’s kidding or not. What’s certain is that I’m duller, mentally heavier. I haven’t had a camera in my hand since Jack died, haven’t taken one serious photograph. The truth is I don’t even feel the urge. Is it the grief? The drugs? Some combination of those things. I put the glass down on the table, where it glitters accusingly. How many have I had? Is it weird that I don’t even know?
She drops it. We chat awhile longer, just gossip about the firm, how I think Maura and Alvaro might be involved. I think I see something cross Layla’s face at the mention of Alvaro’s name, but then it’s gone. She tells me that she’s started shooting again. Layla has an eye for faces. They blossom before her lens, reveal all their secrets. Her favorite subjects in recent years, naturally, have been her children. She still maintains her website, has an Instagram feed with a decent following. She has real talent, more than I ever had.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “Not more beautiful shots of my gorgeous children. After Slade and Izzy go to school, I head out the way I used to. Just looking for it, you know, that perfect moment.”
“Show me,” I say, curious.
“I will.” She looks away. It’s not like her to be shy. “I’m rusty. I’ve spent so many years on the kids—maybe I’ve lost my eye. What small amount of talent I had, maybe it just withered up and died.”
“I doubt that,” I answer. “Be patient. Maybe you just have a new way of seeing things now.”
She shifts on the couch, folds her legs under her. Something about the way she’s sitting seems uncomfortable, as if she might be in pain. Too much kickboxing. She rubs at her shoulder again. “Life does that I guess.”
She looks at me too long, too sadly. I look away.
“I
