hand.
She’d nearly dropped her glass of wine. It was startling that Charles was real, standing a mere twenty feet away. His posture wasn’t as upright as she’d imagined, and his pants were a little high-waisted. He had razor burn on his jaw line, and his leather jacket fit like a poncho. And his voice – for she could hear it across the mostly-empty room – was wholly different, mid-tone and gravelly and without any accent at all. For some reason, Joanna had assumed he would sound like John F. Kennedy.
Seeing Charles filled Joanna with bittersweet nostalgia – Oh, there’s that boy whose family I used to be obsessed with! And she could have left it as a sad, funny, odd little moment and gone home, that chapter of her life closed, except Charles walked over to her. He bent over at the bar right next to her, ordering another beer, even though there were other empty spots at the counter closer to his friends.
So Joanna said something to him. Maybe something about his complicated platinum watch, maybe something about what he was drinking, she couldn’t remember now. Charles said something back, looking her over, smiling. It was surreal, Charles Bates-McAllister smiling at her, like a character from a book becoming three-dimensional and asking her to dance. After about a half hour of talking, Joanna dared to take him by the hand, lean over the bar, and kiss him. Charles’s eyes popped in surprise, but then he kissed her back. Charles Bates-McAllister kissed her back. She sat back on the stool, grinning, and he was grinning, too. Later that night, when she left with Faith, her roommate, Faith asked why Joanna had thrown herself at the short guy with the ugly tie and terrible shoes – he wasn’t that cute. ‘He’s an old friend,’ was the only way Joanna could explain.
Charles called later that same week. After they had been dating for three months, Joanna decided to finally break the news to Catherine that she had a new boyfriend – someone whose name she might recognize. It felt like the biggest moment in her life. But there was a long pause after she made her announcement. Catherine stared at her, a nail file in one hand. Finally, she set the file on the table. ‘Why in God’s name would he be interested in you?’ she cried.
Joanna was taken aback. ‘What?’
‘You don’t know how to hang pants on a hanger. You don’t know how to set a table. You always put the knives on the wrong side of the plate.’
Joanna had stood up, walked to the bathroom, and inspected her reflection, looking for – well, she wasn’t sure what. A blemish on her face. Oily hair. Some visible ugliness. She looked the same as she always did, her thick dark hair past her shoulders, her gray, almond-shaped eyes bright and alert, her teeth straight from years of treatments from the right orthodontist. For a moment she thought worriedly about Charles’s old girlfriend, Bronwyn, whom he’d told her about by then. Bronwyn had made Joanna very nervous and cagey until Charles assured her that she didn’t matter and that he wouldn’t bring her up again. But Bronwyn did know how to put knives on the right side of the plate, certainly. She sounded so perfect, the daughter of a brilliant physician and professor, the girl whose parents gave her every unthinkable opportunity in the world. In fact, Joanna could easily imagine Bronwyn standing beside Charles in those old, dusty Main Line Times photographs that were still in a box at her mother’s house. Was her mother on to something? Should Charles be with someone like Bronwyn instead?
And then she’d straightened up. Who the hell cared about knives and plates? She emerged from the bathroom, her composure regained. ‘Charles likes me,’ she insisted.
‘Okay,’ her mother said suspiciously, still not letting down her guard. Why wasn’t she happy? Wasn’t this what Catherine was attempting to groom her for?
‘He does,’ Joanna protested. ‘And I like him, too.’ She hated how hard she was trying.
She did like Charles. He was just what she’d imagined he’d be and much more: he took her to great places in the city for dinner. He had season tickets, courtesy of his parents, to the Philadelphia Orchestra. He enjoyed going to plays and museums. When they went shopping, he didn’t sit sullenly on the couch boutiques put out for bored husbands and boyfriends, but instead helped Joanna pick out things that fit her best. Whatever she liked, he bought for her. Whenever they went out to dinner, he paid. His apartment in Rittenhouse Square was clean but not generic – he read Civil War biographies and Vanity Fair. He had square ceramic plates and a collection of old Star Wars toys. He saved his old baseball and concert ticket stubs in a leather-bound black book. Once, when he was taking a shower, she’d found a lined notebook full of original poetry. In that same book she’d found a creased flyer that said, Redemption Is Near. Repent! A man had shoved it at them on their first date; they’d laughed about it in the restaurant, making a jokey second date to attend the Prepare-For-The-Apocalypse Meeting the flyer had advertised. They’d gone to a bar instead of that meeting. And then back to Joanna’s apartment. But Charles had saved that flyer. It meant something to him.
After Joanna found that flyer, she gave herself over to Charles. He became no longer a conquest but something shiny and true. The first time she cried in front of him – recounting an old argument her parents had that culminated in her dad throwing a plate and her mom sobbing on the kitchen floor – she felt safe and protected. Charles unburdened himself to her, too, telling her about his stilted relationship with his father and his brother, recounting memories of being ostracized at summer camps, sadly wishing he were better with his hands. He had flaws; she liked that. It drew her to him, made him more attractive. When he came over, she would tear off his clothes. She liked the way he kissed her all over, and she liked the way he stared at her as if she was truly beautiful and unique. When Charles asked her to marry him at their favorite Italian restaurant in Philadelphia, the one in the small room with the homemade pastas and the exuberantly touchy-feely proprietor, Joanna had been rendered speechless. All those pictures she’d saved of Charles’s family, all that wishing to be part of it. But what made it even sweeter was that who Charles was didn’t matter anymore. She would’ve chosen him out of anyone. And she’d thought he’d chosen her out of everyone, too.
Now, though, she wasn’t entirely sure how the choosing had happened.
It was ten in the morning on Wednesday, two days after Joanna and Charles went to Sylvie’s for dessert. There had been no more talk about Scott since then, and although Joanna wanted to bring up what she’d heard Charles and his mother talking about in the kitchen, she didn’t know how. What was this fight Charles had referred to? Why hadn’t he ever told her about it, and what did Bronwyn have to do with it? How much did he think about Bronwyn, anyway? Charles had assured her that he hadn’t spoken to Bronwyn in twelve years, but he’d never explained why they’d broken up. Joanna suspected that Charles had not been the one who’d cut it off.
She lay in bed now, staring up at the clean, smoothly plastered ceiling, willing herself to get up. Out the window, she saw the rest of the houses lined up along the streets. Centennial, their development was called; there was a stone sign at its entrance, crowing the name in curly We The People font. The streets’ names had something to do with American ideals – there was the cluster named after great American leaders, Washington, Franklin, Hancock, there was Valor Drive, Integrity Circle, Freedom Court. Joanna and Charles lived on Democracy, just past the dog park and the jogging path and the playground.
It was nothing like Joanna’s old neighborhood in Lionville, with its hodgepodge of houses linked together by a gate at either end, her own house slightly on the bedraggled, lowerclass side. Each house in We The People was big and uniform and beautiful and perfectly maintained. The only blemish was the line of houses on Spirit, two streets down. They were originally models, but the developers had decided to try to sell them off. Charles had put a down-payment on this plot before he and Joanna had seriously begun dating – a fact that he’d announced only after they’d gotten engaged, and a fact that had disappointed Joanna a little, knowing they wouldn’t be choosing a house together, but no matter. By the time the construction on their house had been completed, the market here and in the rest of the country had taken a steep downturn. The developer hadn’t started any new construction since. All the houses on Spirit were still empty. Quite a few of the For Sale signs in the yards – Low Financing! Upgrades! Reduction!