opened the door to a small room with a sound machine whirring in the corner. She sat down in a chair and gestured to a couch. I sat on the couch, which seemed to be elongated; my feet dangled. I felt like Alice in Wonderland or Lily Tomlin in that big chair. I crossed my hands in my lap and swallowed.
Jane said nothing.
‘So,’ I said. ‘I’m . . .’
Jane was silent, only raising her eyebrows. She had black hair cut in a swingy bob. She was quite a bit older than I was, maybe fifty.
‘My father killed my mother when I was eight,’ I said. ‘But that’s not why I’m here.’
To her credit, Jane’s face did not change. Her expression was kind and interested, like that of a good bartender. We sat quietly for a while, and then I continued. ‘I’m here because . . . my brother is in Iraq. He’s not a soldier, he’s a doctor. I can’t sleep. I’m frightened, more frightened than I should be. Like I’ll crash my car or get cancer or something. I feel out of it. Weird.’
‘Weird?’ said Jane.
‘I get this feeling like I’m about to pass out. I can hear my heartbeat but nothing else.’
‘That must be frightening,’ said Jane.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is frightening.’ I felt a wash of relief, as if my fear had finally been validated, as if someone cared. I remembered my mother putting her cool palm to my forehead to see whether I was sick. I knew, if I had a fever, she would take care of me.
‘Were you there on the night your mother was killed?’
‘Murdered,’ I said. ‘Yes. No. I was in the tree house out back. With my brother. Or I might have been inside. I don’t know. I can’t remember. But that’s not why I’m here.’
‘I see,’ said Jane.
‘It’s not that I don’t want to marry him,’ I said. ‘Gerry. I do want to marry him.’
‘You want to marry Gerry,’ said Jane, a solid statement.
I nodded miserably. ‘Sometimes,’ I said, ‘I wake up in the middle of the night and think, I have got to get out of here. I have to go.’ I felt my heartbeat speed up, and I struggled for air. ‘I feel like I have to get out. But I don’t know why or where I have to go. There’s nowhere to go.’
Jane nodded. ‘Tell me about Gerry,’ she said.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Where did you meet him?’
I had a whole story about this: any half of a couple does. Gerry fed me seaweed, was the story. I was a lonely college graduate taking real estate licensing exams and working at an upscale children’s clothing store in Westlake. The store was called Caramel Apples. Every morning I woke in the run-down house I shared with four of my college friends, bought a giant cup of coffee at Quack’s, drove out 2244, and opened Caramel Apples in time for the barrage of beautiful but bored mothers who arrived almost as soon as I turned on the lights. They settled their kids into carts and shopped, gathering cute T-shirts with dinosaurs and fruit appliqués. Some used the Germ Blockade, a fabric contraption that covered the cart seat, took about five minutes to set up, and cost $25.99; the Germ Blockade was our second biggest seller, after the Hooter Hider nursing apron.
The bookstore in the same shopping center had kids’ story time, and the whole parking lot was jammed with minivans and SUVs from nine A.M. on. The women (and they were almost all women) had already worked out and taken a shower by the time they arrived. They pushed expensive strollers across the parking lot, calling to each other and air-kissing.
I didn’t really know what to make of them. In New York, my mother had dropped me at day care before dawn. My father worked on his poetry at home and picked me up around three or four. When I was in elementary school, he was often late and usually unshowered, sticking out like a sore thumb among the suburban mothers. He’d stand at the edge of the playground with his hands in some rumpled pants, his big tummy hanging over his belt. He had a goatee and John Lennon spectacles. My pride in him remained strong, even as the years went on and his scribblings seemed to amount to little. We would walk home, stopping at the Holt bakery for a snack. He bought me any cookie I wanted, asking only for a piece – the ear of a mouse or the wing of a bat – to dip in his afternoon espresso.
But even the most polished mothers in New York were nothing compared to the Texas crowd. I felt like an anthropologist watching them. I wanted to learn how to be normal, how to be a wife and mother. I didn’t mind my life, but I hoped to transition to something else eventually. Maybe that was why I gravitated to real estate – I could observe people’s homes with a scientist’s detachment. If I could see what a house looked like when it was happily lived in, then maybe I could piece together what had gone wrong on Ocean Avenue.
After work some evenings, I would take in a movie or walk around Hyde Park and West Campus. One night, for a change, I took myself to dinner at a cheap spot called Now and Zen sushi. I was sitting at the counter, surveying all the ingredients, when a white man in a black button-down shirt came from the back room. His hair was a bit long and curly, and he had a spray of freckles across the bridge of his nose. He seemed genuinely glad to see me. ‘Welcome,’ he said.
‘Hi,’ I said.
‘What can I do for you?’ said Gerry.
‘Feed me,’ I said. And he did. After making me the California roll and miso soup I had requested (I had never been to another country; even miso soup was exotic to me), he asked if I’d be willing to taste-test some new creations on the house. Happy to have something to do besides watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer reruns in my room, I agreed. He made me a strong but sweet cocktail and fed me mussels marinated in Kaffir lime juice with fresh cilantro; tuna on a slice of apple with a bit of goat cheese; and sea urchin, which melted on my tongue like salty sea foam. He gave me a foil-wrapped square of chocolate for dessert.
When the chocolate was gone, I didn’t want to depart. As I folded the foil in my fingers, Gerry told me he had grown up in Tokyo: his parents were both teachers at the International School. He was working as a sushi chef to put himself through a computer science degree at UT, and though Now and Zen catered mainly to students and college grads on a shoestring budget (like me), Gerry liked to play around with the fish, serving ‘specials’ to customers who seemed interested. He kept his textbooks in the kitchen and studied when things were slow.
‘Why computer science?’ I asked him. ‘You don’t seem like a . . . nerd.’ I slurped my cocktail. My face felt warm, and I was smiling too much.
‘I thought about trying to work in food or entertainment,’ he said, leaning on the polished counter, ‘but I guess I never felt safe financially while I was growing up. I’m good at computer science. And I want to make a steady living, so I can eat well, travel, you know . . . wine and dine my wife.’
‘Wife?’ I said. I made a sound between a choke and a giggle.
‘I mean my future wife,’ said Gerry. There was a pause as we looked at each other. I felt my damn mouth curling up again. I reached for my glass of ice water. ‘Would you like to . . . do you want to . . . have lunch or brunch this weekend?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I said. I wrote my number on his hand and felt the inexplicable urge to press my lips against his palm. Thankfully, I refrained.
I walked home that night filled with a giddy happiness. I’d had boyfriends but had never felt so electric. Though he was from another part of the world, Gerry seemed just like me, someone burdened by unnecessary responsibility. There was something to be said for precaution, and I felt that Gerry understood this. For the first time in my life, I thought it might be possible for me to share my life, to feel that kind of exquisite joy. I was so happy, and so frightened.
Chapter 8
‘Lauren?’ said Jane Stafford.
‘Yes?’ I said.
‘Are