rosy light, telling him she was keeping pace with what was going on in her absence, would not count herself out of the game. Naturally, their daughters changed everything. Now he’s flying as much as she once did, which was a lot, and she refuses to say what it’s like being unable to vanish into the excited glaze of the working day. As he does when the hollowness lifts, when he has run his daily ten miles, and drunk his coffee, and kissed his daughters. As always, he kisses Elena last before he’s out the door, but where he once found the blackness of her eyes so enticing, now he is afraid to fall into them, afraid of what he will learn, or be told, fearful that if he can’t fix his failure to sleep, he can’t fix anything else.
And this morning, tears. Poised to spill down his cheeks. There’s no way he can rise and run, not when he’s this done in. Then he’s smothering his face in his pillow, heaving silent sobs, freezing when Elena shifts onto her back, worrying she’s woken and waiting to hear why he’s crying his eyes out. What would he say? He wishes he knew, but he has no answers. And then deliverance—Elena’s soft sleeping whistles.
He wipes his face against the pillowcase, then turns over again, and checks on the crack in the uneven ceiling. A hairline days ago, it has grown wider and longer and looks like it will soon split apart the paint and the plaster.
Does that crack mean the roof is going to collapse?
He needs to do something about it, call someone, make that call this morning, before they leave for Palm Springs, arrange for whatever person fixes cracks in ceilings in old houses in the hills to come Monday, first thing. He’ll even forgo his start-of-the-week run to be here, to handle it, to not put another thing on his wife’s list of things to take care of. He should pull out the house file, see what the agreement says about the roof, if any issues were noted. He doesn’t specialize in real estate, but he is a lawyer, and he would have asked the critical questions. They’ve owned this ninety-three-year-old house for a mere five years; previous owners must have replaced the roof at least a few times over the last decades.
God forbid they need a new roof. How much would it cost? How long would it take? Would they have to bunk elsewhere for the duration? Where would they stay?
Phoebe’s apartment in the flats of Beverly Hills Adjacent is too small to house five; her second bedroom is her study, in which there is no pullout couch.
He has an older colleague at the firm, Tim Devins, who owns some huge estate in Brentwood, is always talking about how he and his wife, childless by choice, have eight bedrooms that are never used, and a guesthouse no one has ever stayed in. Tim is a friendly, generous guy, and if Simon laid out his need, Tim would probably say, “Sure, buddy, no problem, for however long, mi casa es tu casa.” But how awkward it would be to see Tim in a towel after a shower, or eating his breakfast, or lounging in his Jacuzzi attached to his pool, which surely is Olympic-sized, or kissing his sharp-featured wife before tootling off to the office.
Why is he thinking about asking Tim Devins if the Tabor family can move in while their roof is being fixed? Their roof will not need to be fixed; it is simply a small crack that needs to be filled, the ceiling repainted. And if they do have to fix the roof, and leave home for the duration, he would never ask Tim Devins.
They would stay in a hotel.
No, they would not stay in a hotel; they couldn’t afford to stay in a hotel, not if the roof needs fixing. They’d have to stay in a motel. The four of them in a dingy room at some Motel 6, he pulling his tie tight and striding out the door, leaving his wife looking as if she might lift up their daughters and fling the three of them over the second-floor railing, pitching down into a parking lot filled with campers and vans.
Why is he picturing that?
Are the changes in Elena—in her waking routine, her delayed first smile of the day, her distance, her daily uniform—because she has postpartum depression? Lucy is five and Elena was fine after her birth. And Isabel is two—does postpartum depression last for two years? And, really, most of the time, she seems herself, with her customary intensity, occasionally humming as she brushes out Lucy’s tangles, as she encourages Isabel to wear something other than the drooping purple tutu, her everyday favorite since last Halloween.
Simon pinches his arm hard. There will be no more crying. There will be no roof fixing, no motel living, no bodies hurtling to their deaths. Elena does not have any kind of depression, while he, on the other hand, cannot sleep, and whatever is keeping him up far exceeds run-of-the-mill insomnia.
But there is the crack in the ceiling, which he can arrange to be handled on Monday.
His watch says it’s seven twenty. Elena won’t wake until seven forty. The girls will wake up shortly thereafter. Elena’s probably already packed for herself and their daughters.
He could get up now and pack what he’ll need for the weekend. He could do that, and then start the coffee, make them all breakfast. Eggs? French toast? Pancakes? No, nothing hot because whatever he prepares will go cold before everyone sits down at the table. Lucy will insist on swimming in the pool before she eats, as she’s been doing each day this summer, running out of her room buck naked and leaping into the water, requiring him, half dressed, to follow and sit by the pool until he can convince her his day needs to get under way. And Isabel will cry elephantine tears until Elena climbs into bed with her and reads her a story. The only kid he’s heard of who prefers being read to in the morning and not at bedtime. So, no, no reason to cook a family breakfast. And what’s even in the fridge? Didn’t Elena say she didn’t bother going to the market because they would be gone the weekend?
Most of today and all of tomorrow on Agapanthus Lane, with both of the children in tow. A babysitter will take care of the girls tonight while everyone else—Harry and Roma, Phoebe and her new beau, Camille, and he and Elena—dressed up in tuxedos and gowns, will be miles away at the resort in Rancho Mirage, sipping champagne on the Starlight Terrace rooftop, where he and Elena married in front of three hundred guests. They haven’t been back to the resort since their wedding, though they considered returning on their first, and second, and third anniversaries. They never did, never even made a reservation, and up there tonight his father will be named Palm Springs Man of the Decade.
What comes with that designation? Will Harry be handed a plaque, or a sculpted piece of glass with his name inscribed, or the key to the city? In their conversations the past month, his father has played down the honor, saying, “I’ve just done what any other person with resources would have done to help unfortunate souls.” Which isn’t true, and when Simon said, “Dad, that isn’t true,” Harry said, “Oh, I don’t know.”
Simon puts his hands to his face, feels his lips turning up, and he wants to laugh because it’s been such a long time since he has smiled in bed. He was crying, and now he’s smiling, thinking of his father. Thinking of their spring, summer, and fall camping trips, star-studded nights, sleeping bags unrolled in the desert sand drifts just beyond the back patio, sand that was soft at first, then scratchy as the hours piled up, Harry teaching him how to converse and debate, getting into the grit of politics and free will and truth; the long hikes traversing the mountain peak, talking about manhood, and what it means to be a rare man who qualifies as a full human being. No baseball throwing, no football tossing, no Frisbee silliness, no Boy Scouts, no Pop Warner, no Little League, those activities weren’t for Harry, and hence not for Simon. There’d been no sense of loss, of missing out, because they had all those special times together. How he loves his father and his inimitable qualities for probity, his infinite well of paternal love, and marital passion, and universal caring for those finding where they fit in their new world.
Sunday morning, tomorrow morning, he could say, “Dad, let’s do our regular San Jacinto hike,” and, on their ascent, ask his father if he ever experienced a lengthy bout of sleeplessness, and if he did, what he had done to solve it, where he had looked for the answers.
“Tell me, Dad,” he would say, “help me figure out what’s going on in my head.”
Yes, that’s what he’ll do. He’ll grab his father’s hand and say, “I need a little father-and-son time, just you and me alone.” And Harry will grin and grab Simon’s face, kiss him hard first