back into the earth with my fingertips. I suggest she find a rock to serve as a marker for Otis’s grave, and again Maisie asks, “Why?” but she scampers off in search of a rock without waiting for my reply, Harriet following closely behind.
* * *
In the evening a knock comes at the door. It’s dark outside, far too late for Maisie to still be awake. And yet she is, sprawled on the couch in front of the TV, watching preschool cartoons because I haven’t the energy to put her to bed. I’m on my laptop in the kitchen, trying to pull up the Chase website in an attempt to access my father’s accounts. I’m thinking of the unpaid bill to the office of Dr. Barros, and wondering if my parents are in some sort of financial distress about which I should know. I try hard to call to mind my father’s password, an odd mix of letters and numbers that’s near impossible to memorize. I try only twice and then give up, worried that after too many unsuccessful attempts, the account will be locked and my father notified. I don’t want to ask him about it for fear of making him feel bad, and yet I have my concerns. What if my father has less money than I think? What if my father has less money than me?
At hearing the knock, I go to the door and unfasten the lock. I pull the door open a crack, peering outside, and there find Connor standing on my front stoop in a black T and vintage wash jeans. In his hands are a helmet and gloves; a motorcycle is parked in the drive. Connor isn’t a tall man, standing just a couple inches above my own five-eight height, with brown hair and eyes, the kind that make women swoon. His smile is sympathetic, a contorted smile that’s meant to be both a smile and a frown. His heart is heavy, as is mine, but the half smile proves that he’s trying.
“Connor,” I say, and he steps inside, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me into a warm embrace, and it’s there, in his arms, that I close my eyes and press into him, allowing myself to believe for just one split second that I’m in Nick’s embrace, that it’s Nick’s arms that hold me tight.
“Clara,” he says.
I’ve known Connor for half a dozen years, Nick’s dental school friend turned employee. But Connor was never quite an employee to Nick but rather a partner, one he collaborated with about patient care as well as business expenditures and what to get the office ladies for the holidays. Before we had kids, Nick and I shared many double dates with Connor and whatever girl he was dating at the time, but after Maisie was born, that type of lifestyle—basement dance clubs and parties in rooftop bars—no longer fit the bill and Connor was left going stag. Connor doesn’t have children of his own; he doesn’t have a wife. He’s the perpetual bachelor, abounding with good looks and charm, but lacking in commitment. He was engaged to a college sweetheart once, a woman for whom he would have gone to the moon and back, as Nick has told me by way of Connor’s drunken admission. They planned the wedding, church, hall and all, and then she changed her mind, having met some other man the night of her bachelorette party, breaking Connor’s heart. Nick and I often reasoned that never again would he pop the question to anyone, no matter how in love he was. As the saying goes, once bitten, twice shy.
I draw away from him and watch as a handful of bugs let themselves in through the open front door, making a beeline for the chandelier that hangs above us, a Medusa type contraption with chrome light bulbs twisting out like the snakes of her hair. I close the door, and Connor follows me to the kitchen, ruffling the hair on Maisie’s head as we pass through the living room; she is so intent on her cartoons that she hardly notices, though from the corners of her sleepy mouth I detect a smile.
The lighting in the kitchen is dimmed. Dinner dishes remain in the kitchen sink, our uneaten meals evident as the food hardens and grows cold in the red glazed bowls, chicken soup warmed in the microwave from a can. It’s the best that I can do. Neither Maisie nor I could eat it.
“I should have come sooner,” Connor says, eyeing the leftover food, the guilt in his voice tangible as he leans against the kitchen sink, pressing his hands into the pockets of his jeans. But I shake my head and tell him no. The last thing I want is for Connor to feel any sort of guilt for not coming to see me sooner. He, too, has been grieving.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, reaching into the refrigerator to snatch one of Nick’s old beers from the door, handing it to Connor though he never asks. I crave a glass of wine, just a few ounces of Chardonnay to help blur my sensibilities and make me indifferent and numb, but knowing the effects of alcohol on a breastfeeding infant, I make the decision to abstain.
“None for you?” Connor asks, but I shake my head and tell him no. He runs his hand through his hair, making the strands stand on end. He snaps open the beer with a bottle opener and drinks in a mouthful. “How have you been holding up?” he asks, though I don’t need to tell him. The bags beneath my eyes say enough, that and the swelling and redness, the fact that I haven’t slept for more than two hours at a time since before Felix was born, something that was only exacerbated by Nick’s death. I can no longer blame Felix for the lack of sleep. Now I blame Nick.
“I’ve been having trouble sleeping,” I confess, and Connor says, “Me, too,” and it’s only then that I see the dark circles beneath his eyes like mine. His skin looks sallow, jaundiced; he’s anxious and strung out. His eyes drift throughout the room from the stove top to the travertine tile, as if searching for Nick, finally settling on the beer in hand. He avoids my gaze.
“I remember the day I met Nick,” he says while picking at the wrapper on his beer, pulling it off in tatters, a pile of them gathering in his hand. His voice is quiet, subdued.
He goes on to tell me about the first time he and Nick met, crossing the campus to a shared class. It’s a story I’ve heard before, though only ever from Nick. They were in dental school, slowly chipping away on the many hours of labs, lectures and clinical practice before they’d be given a degree. They’d never spoken before, but the class was small, twenty students at best, and Connor had his eye on some girl, a brunette who also happened to be Nick’s lab partner. It was the reason for his introduction, the reason they became friends. Over some girl.
After graduation, Connor got a job working under an experienced dentist in town while Nick went into private practice. For a couple years it went on this way, until Connor’s ever-increasing dissatisfaction with his job got the best of him, and he quit to come work for Nick.
“I haven’t even begun to think how I’m going to support myself,” I admit to Connor. Since Nick’s death, I haven’t yet sorted through the mail, too terrified to see what awaits me there. The envelopes I pull every few days from the mailbox get tossed to a pile on the floor just inside the front door. Bereavement cards, mostly, those bearing their With heartfelt sympathy and May you find peace and solace sentiments, but also bills. Estimates of Benefits from the insurance company already telling me which of Nick’s hospital expenses they will and will not pay. A notice from the library of fourteen picture books that are a week overdue, each costing me five cents a day so that every day I tally up another seventy cents for the library, and still I can’t get myself to return the books. I haven’t the energy for it. Bills, bills and more bills. Catalogs for items I can no longer buy.
I had a savings account once, nothing extravagant, but an adequate savings account, money set aside for a rainy day, but we ended up putting each and every penny into Nick’s practice. We’d see the money back, he said, and promised me it was worth it. Had I told my father this he would have said no, but I took Nick’s word and invested every cent. The practice was Nick’s dream. Who could refuse a man his dream? Not I, said the fly. And so I said okay, and handed over all my money so that Nick could fulfill his dream while I set mine aside. My own photography studio. That was my dream.
Even our home is a money pit, constantly in need of repairs or renovation. The only thing left I have of value is the dental practice.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I confess to Connor, “about the bills. The mortgage. The hospital payments. Car payments. Saving for college, Maisie’s wedding. How will I afford health insurance?” I ask, thinking of Felix and his well-baby checks every two months, all running over with pricey vaccines. Without waiting for an answer, I say to him, “I can look for a job, but if I work, who will watch Maisie and Felix? How will