People Who Knew Me Page 6

  I took the stairs two at a time and unlocked the door to our apartment. We always locked it, even if we just went up the street for takeout. Inside, my mom and Drew’s mom were sitting on our new leather couch—one of our proudest purchases as a couple. It wasn’t new new, but it was new to us. The previous owner said he’d used it for only a year. He was moving in with his girlfriend and she insisted on keeping her own couch. So it goes.

  “There she is,” my mom said, the annoyance in her voice making it obvious that I’d kept them waiting. I dropped my purse, kicked off my heels, and hung my keys on a nail on the wall by the door. Bruce gave me his usual evening greeting—a jump that resulted in two clumsy paws on the front of my dress and slobber all over my hands.

  I hadn’t seen my mom or Drew’s mom in months—“just so busy,” I told my mom during our intermittent obligatory calls. In college, before I met Drew, I hardly ever called my mother. He was the one who said, “Come on, Em. You should try harder. Family is family.” Any rebuttals I had—She never tried very hard, or She should call me—sounded childish. So I tried, begrudgingly.

  Drew’s mom looked more frail than I remembered, and older, like a woman in her seventies instead of her early fifties. I watched her hands—trying not to stare—and they were trembling uncontrollably. Both of them. It had been just the left one before. It seemed difficult for her to stand from the couch when she hugged me, and even more difficult to sit back down. She held on to my arm—not as a sign of affection, but for balance. I felt the weight of her, little that there was, leaning into me. I gave her a smile, an it’s-okay, I-got-you smile, and she tried to reciprocate, but her face didn’t seem to cooperate.

  Drew was at the stove, donning his chef’s hat and apron.

  “Whatcha making?” I said, wrapping my arms around him from the back. I always loved how my head fell just on his shoulder, without having to stand on my tiptoes.

  “Shrimp scampi,” he said. “I opened a bottle of white. You want some?”

  “That’s a ridiculous question,” I said, reaching for one of the wineglasses that were permanent fixtures on our kitchen counter. He poured for me, like a fancy waiter, one hand behind his back and all. One of his culinary schoolteachers made his own wine and gave Drew free bottles. This had become our routine every night—gourmet meals and homemade wine. His cooking had really improved. When he first started out, every night felt like an experiment with a strong probability of failure. I’d even have a snack on my last leg of the L Line, worried about going hungry. I hadn’t done that in months, though.

  “I’ll set the table,” I said, referring to the round wood table we’d inherited from his mom. We covered it with a white tablecloth because it still showed evidence of when he’d drawn on it with markers as a kid.

  “So Drew was telling us about his taco shop idea,” my mom said, emphasis on the word “idea,” as if it were fantastical, as if it would never be a reality. She had her feet up on our coffee table, wine in her hand. I guessed she was on her second or third glass.

  “Pretty exciting, huh?” I said, laying out the silverware. We didn’t have cloth napkins, so I just folded paper towels in half.

  “Restaurants fail all the time, you know,” my mom said. I hated her for saying that, then remembered I’d said the same thing to Marni.

  “I’m sure it’ll be successful,” Drew’s mom snapped, with as much force in her voice as she could muster. Whatever it was that was making her hands shake and disrupting her balance and disabling her facial expressions was slowly taking her voice, too.

  “It’s a big venture for a kid,” my mom said.

  I looked over to Drew, expecting him to refute her, but he just tended to the scampi, pretending not to hear.

  “We’re not kids, Mom,” I said.

  Drew dished out the scampi into four bowls and brought them to the table, along with a salad.

  “Dinner’s on,” he said.

  “It’s just good he’s finishing with that school,” my mom said, unwilling to let it go. She never liked the idea of Drew going to cooking school. She thought he should get what she called a “regular job,” like the one I had. She said that was a man’s responsibility to his wife. I tried to explain that times were different, that men and women were partners now, but she just shook her head and said, “It’s just not right.” I reminded her that she didn’t need a man to take care of her. She said, “But I sure as hell wanted one.”

  “I think you’ll realize I’ll be successful when you try this,” Drew said, indicating the meal on the table. My mom took her seat and I walked Drew’s mom to hers, my hand on her lower back. She slouched against her chair and groaned like she was exhausted by the trek from the couch to the table. My mom poured herself another glass, finishing off the bottle.

  His mom took the first bite. “It’s delicious, honey,” she said.

  “There’s no such thing as shrimp scampi tacos, though,” my mom said, still blowing cooling breaths on her first bite.

  “Mom, please,” I said. “Drew makes amazing tacos.”

  “We’re going to have a great menu,” Drew said, maintaining his smile, per usual. Nothing rattled him. “We’ll have carnitas tacos, chicken tacos, portabello mushroom tacos for the vegetarians.”

  “Well, I hope it all works out,” my mom said. She took a long gulp of wine, like it was juice on a hot day.

  “And then grandkids,” Drew’s mom chimed in.

  She was focused intently on her meal, concentrating on stopping her hands from shaking so she could control her fork. They wouldn’t stop, though. It took her a few minutes to take a proper bite. More often than not, the food fell off the fork before she could get it to her mouth.

  “Grandkids?” my mom said, like someone had just suggested we all take a spaceship to the moon. “They’re still kids themselves!”

  “Mom,” I said, “stop.”

  “It’s okay,” Drew said, ever the pacifier. “I think we have a few years before kids.”

  “Maybe not that long,” I said.

  He looked at me with furrowed brows, asking me with the creases in his forehead what I meant. We hadn’t discussed kids much, with the exception of far-off fantasies presented whimsically in moments of romance: “I bet our kids get your eyes,” and “I can’t wait to tell bedtime stories.”

  Drew looked down, resumed eating.

  “How have you been doing, Mom?” he asked, changing the subject.

  “Fine,” she said, eyes on her fork, just a few inches away from making it into her mouth. Her bowl was still mostly full and the rest of us were halfway done.

  “Did you see that new doctor?” he asked her. Drew was on her case about this frequently. He called her a few times a week, checking in, asking her about the shaking hands and what the doctors said. She always claimed they didn’t know what they were talking about. She doctor-hopped, saying she needed to find someone she trusted. I told Drew, “She doesn’t like what the doctors are telling her. She wants to find someone who will lie to her.” He said it wasn’t that. I didn’t know who was in stronger denial—Drew or his mother.

  “I saw him,” she said. She scrunched up her nose. “No good.”

  “Does he think it’s Parkinson’s, too?”

  That’s what all the doctors were diagnosing—Parkinson’s. She didn’t want to believe it because there’s not a damn thing out there to cure it.

  “That’s what they all say,” she said. She paused in her eating, put her hands in her lap so we couldn’t see them. It was like she was trying to hide the evidence of her errors in judgment. “But I found a new doctor who has a different theory.”

  Her eyes were wide with hope and excitement. They seemed even bigger since her face had become so gaunt.

  “He thinks it’s a complex bacterial infection. He suggested doing this thing called chelation therapy to remove toxins from my blood.”

  “Sounds like a quack,” my mom said. I gave her a hard stare.

  “What�
�s his specialty?” I asked, trying to be respectful.

  “He’s a chiropractor,” she said, avoiding our eye contact, “but he has so much experience with these strange illnesses.”

  “I don’t care what he does, as long as you get better,” Drew said. He reached under the table to take her hands in his. I wondered if they stopped shaking when he held them.

  We finished our meals—all of us except his mom. It was no wonder she was losing weight at such an alarming rate. When alone, in her own home, she probably didn’t even bother. A bowl of cereal could take an hour.

  I cleared the table and started washing the dishes—my usual duty—while Drew offered our moms little ramekins of tiramisu he’d made earlier that day.

  “I’m going to take them home,” he said, when the ramekins were licked clean. “Don’t wait up for me.”

  He thought he was being sweet by saying that. Don’t wait up for me. But I wanted to wait up for him. I wanted his command to be, Be naked when I get home.

  * * *

  After I put the dishes away, I got into bed, naked, except for black lacy underwear I’d found at the back of my drawer. I stared at the ceiling and waited to hear Drew’s steps on the stairs. It would take him a while. He had to drop off his mom in Newark, then my mom in Irvington. Bruce jumped up in bed next to me and I just lay there, flat on my back, one arm at my side, the other draped over the dog, and waited.

  He put his key in the door around eleven o’ clock. I could tell he was tiptoeing through the apartment, trying not to wake me. He was considerate that way even though I rarely was. The wood floors creaked despite his conscientiousness. He turned the knob on the bedroom door slowly, but that creaked, too. He peered in at Bruce, who started wagging his tail. Drew shushed him.

  “I’m awake,” I said.

  “I thought you’d be dead tired after this week.”

  “I am. I can’t sleep. I’m antsy.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed and took off his shoes and socks, then stood up to pull off his jeans and unbutton his flannel shirt.

  “Antsy about what?”

  “I don’t know. Something.”

  When he was down to just his boxers—blue-and-gray-checkered, worn thin in the crotch from too many wears and too many washes—he climbed into bed next to me. Bruce followed him.

  “I’m sorry about my mom,” I said.

  “Nah, she’s fine.”

  “No, she’s not. She’s rude. She’s always been rude.”

  He was lying flat on his back, like me. I rolled onto my side, facing him, bending my elbow so I could prop up my head on my hand.

  “Then I’m sorry about your mom,” I said.

  “What about her?” he said, looking at me, his eyes innocent and concerned with nothing.

  “She’s getting worse, Drew,” I said. Then: “It’s pretty obvious.”

  He turned to Bruce, nuzzled into him. He needed the dog in these situations, for the distraction.

  I touched Drew’s stomach, grazed his sides with my fingertips in the way that gave him goose bumps all over. He continued giving his affections to the dog. I tried harder: kissed his cheek, sucked on his earlobe. He always liked when I sucked on his earlobe.

  “It’s been a while,” I whispered.

  He knew what I was referring to. “I’ve had so much on my mind,” he said. He picked me up with an ease I appreciated and put me on top of him, one thigh on each side.

  “I should be one of those things on your mind.”

  “You are.”

  “Prove it.”

  We had sex the way people do when it’s forbidden, when there’s not much time, when niceties are excluded. There were no soft whispers, no slow stroking of each other’s naked bodies, no finesse. It was fast and furious and over in five minutes.

  I rolled off him and looked at his face—shiny with sweat, afterglow. I caught my breath.

  “I’ve never seen those black panties before,” he said, as I pulled them back on.

  “I forgot I had them.”

  “You shouldn’t forget something like that.”

  We laughed. I pulled the sheets up to my chin. They were cool. I’d shove them off at some point in the night.

  “Do you think we’re complacent?” I asked him.

  He looked at me, perplexed.

  I clarified: “Doesn’t it feel like one day just kind of rolls into the next?”

  “Sure,” he said, like it was a good thing. Maybe it was.

  “But are we kind of … blah?”

  He leaned over and kissed me.

  “I’m not. You are,” he teased. “I’m going to make breakfast tacos in the morning. Eggs, salsa, black beans. They won’t be blah. You can tell me if they’re good enough for the restaurant.”

  “Sounds good,” I said, forcing a yawn, not because I was tired, but because I was trying to put my body through the motions of being tired, to trick it.

  He turned out the light. We didn’t have room for nightstands, so we kept a standing lamp near his side of the bed. We lay in the darkness, both still awake after ten minutes or so, as evidenced by the rustling of the sheets.

  “You really want to wait a few years to have kids?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Yes, you do.”

  “You want to have kids now?”

  “I asked you first,” I said.

  “I don’t know. We’re young still. I don’t even have a career yet.”

  “You will.”

  “There’s too much we have to do first.”

  “Like?”

  “I don’t know. Things.”

  We shuffled around the sheets uncomfortably.

  “It would be cool to be young parents,” I said.

  “Em,” he said, his tone asking me for permission or forgiveness or something, “I’m not ready.”

  There wasn’t much I could say to argue with that.

  “Is it selfish that I want you all to myself for a while?” he asked, pressing his nose into my cheek, giving me a kiss. In the darkness, he only got half my mouth.

  “Yes, you’re a selfish jackass,” I teased, using one finger to press his nose and push him away.

  “You know what we should do?” he said, with the excitement I always loved about him. “Finally go on our honeymoon.”

  See, Marni was wrong. I was wrong. We weren’t complacent.

  “Yes!” I said.

  “Where do you want to go?”

  Most people, when asked this question, name Paris or Tahiti—somewhere exotic and far, somewhere once-in-a-lifetime, somewhere with a different language and different food, somewhere magical.

  But, ever-practical, taking into consideration my hectic job and the tentative taco shop opening, I said:

  “How about California?”

  “California it is,” he said.

  He gave me his good-night kiss and I tried to let the thought of our honeymoon soothe me to sleep, like a nursery rhyme. We’d run from ride to ride through Disneyland, as giddy as the little kids around us. We’d sleep late in fancy hotel rooms, roll around naked in bed, order ice cream for breakfast, tell the cleaning service, Come back later. We’d walk hand in hand on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, see a movie at the Chinese Theatre. We’d eat at all the famous chefs’ restaurants and daydream aloud about Drew being the next Wolfgang Puck. We’d sunbathe on wide stretches of beach, reading books. It’d been so long since we’d made time to read. In college, we’d said we couldn’t imagine a life without books, and here we were.

  I counted the attractions like sheep. But it didn’t help. I was still antsy. I looked over to Drew, wanting to talk more, ask when we would go to California, but he was asleep. A moment later, he started snoring—a common occurrence after too much wine. Even if he was awake, I didn’t know what I wanted to say. Something was still bothering me, gnawing at me, but I couldn’t say what. It was that feeling of having a sought-after word on the tip of your tongue and not being able
to articulate it. Neurons fire in search of it, unable to rest until the answer is plucked from a mass of useless knowledge. I got no answers, no resolution, just a bunch of neurons firing until dawn.

  EIGHT

  When I first moved to California, I had horrible insomnia. Some nights, I worried that I would be found and taken back to New York. Some nights, I worried that I wouldn’t. I didn’t know what I was doing in California, pregnant, alone. In weak moments, I imagined relief at seeing Drew’s face at the door, saying, The jig’s up. Now, all these years later, that thought gives me goose bumps.

  There was this one time when past and present collided, when the jig could have been up. Claire was eight. It was a Saturday and I took her to a craft fair in Topanga Canyon. I’d seen signs for it. I had the day off. I needed an activity for my daughter. There’s this pressure as a parent to entertain your child. It still weighs on me.

  We were looking at beaded necklaces when I saw a woman approaching out of the corner of my eye. She was making a beeline straight for me. Nobody made beelines straight for me because I didn’t know anyone well. I had acquaintances, mostly mothers of Claire’s friends or regulars from the bar, but they wouldn’t approach me with such intent.

  “Emily Morris?” the voice boomed.

  It was as if someone in the crowd of people had yelled, Bomb! It was all I could do not to duck under the table. Claire, of course, just kept looking at the necklaces. The name Emily Morris meant—and still means—nothing to her.

  The woman stopped right next to me, put her hand on my forearm.

  “It is you,” she said.

  I looked up tentatively. “Excuse me?” I said, trying my best to look perplexed instead of petrified.