Everybody Has Everything (31 page)

To the girl, Chuckles said: “He’s at number ninety-four. Come by if you hear anything, please.”

She nodded, pushing her hair behind her ears.

“Yes, I will,” she said at the door. “Yes, we are neighbors. So I will look for the boy.”

The girl stood in the doorway with her arms wrapped around her torso, watching the men, one supported by the other.

They completed the street, door to door, ahead of the police, their pleas generating alarmed faces and offers of help. Neighbors put on their coats and followed them. Mothers stood on porches and watched them walk away, teary, grasping their children’s hands.

James crossed the street and continued south, banging on doors, while Chuckles stayed a few steps behind him, working his cell phone.

Finally, it was too late for trick-or-treaters, and the children vanished from the streets. Pumpkins were extinguished. At the top of James and Ana’s block, a police officer ran a piece of yellow tape between two stop signs. No cars were permitted to drive on the road, and people gathered under the streetlights, organizing into groups to descend onto the streets beyond. A few of the adults were in costume. One middle-aged man was trailing mummy bandages. Ana, staring through the picture window, her arms wrapped tight around her body, recognized the mother of that new baby. She was dressed as Pippi Long-stocking. The woman walked from car to car, peering in windows, the wire in the wig of red braids holding them in the air like smiles.

It had been nearly three hours.

James’s foot was throbbing, his stomach churning with hunger. He was far from home, so far that he couldn’t imagine Finn could have made it through the traffic alive. But he had no thought of stopping. Finn was somewhere, and he would find him.

Suddenly, Chuckles cried out. James turned. Chuckles was close behind, running, holding up his phone. His face was alight.

“Get home!” he yelled.

James broke into a run on his beaten toes. He tried to push aside the thought of the worst ending, ignoring the distant wail of an ambulance. It could not go that way, back to the morgue, back to the drawers in the bottom of a city hospital.

Then Sandra was coming toward him, jogging past the skinny Victorian houses, deking between the hovering people.

“You didn’t answer your cell phone!” she called.

“I didn’t hear it—” said James, and then he saw her face: joy. “We found him! We found him! Come home!”

He limped and dragged as fast as he could until he reached his house, the picture window framing a crowd of strangers. In the center, Ana. And Finn, his head buried in her shoulder, the panda hood slack around his neck.

James pushed through the wall of people.

“He was in Mario’s van, can you believe it? He fell asleep in there,” called Sandra to his back.

“Oh my God, I left it open. Jesus Christ …” said Chuckles somewhere in the din of voices. But James couldn’t answer. He looked at Ana, and he could not identify the expression on her face.

“Finny,” said James, moving his own body around both
Ana’s and Finn’s, collecting their bodies in his arms. Somehow, in the crush of limbs, Finn shifted and came apart from Ana, attaching himself at James’s neck. James took in his scent, the warmth of him, and the two stood separately, breathlessly.

“Don’t ever do that again,” whispered James. “You scared us so much. You scared us to death.”

“Okay,” said Finn.

When James lifted his head from the boy, Ana had already moved across the room and stood talking to the police officer.

The crowd began to thin. The young couple from next door waved as they left.

“I can’t thank you—” said James, and Sandra shushed him, taking her husband’s hand. Their son, the boy in the Spider-Man costume, grabbed the final handful of candy from the blue glass bowl.

The bath was hot with lavender sweetness. James used Ana’s special bubble bath. He rubbed the washcloth over Finn’s shoulders. The boy did not feel fragile to him.
This is new
, thought James; he had always worried he would break him.

Ana sat on the toilet behind them, holding a white towel. James glanced at her and thought,
Ah, there’s the broken body
. Her thinness shocked him.

He returned to Finn and began his patter: “What’s the boat do? Does the boat go
pshew
?” James picked up a yogurt container, flew it through the sky.

Finn squealed. “No! That’s airplane! Boat stays in water!”

“Ah, like this?” said James, driving the yogurt container along the side of the tub.
“Vroom, vroom.”

“Noooo!” Finn was laughing now, his shoulders sprinkled with soapsuds. “That’s car!”

“Oh, I see,” said James. “This is a boat. Delicious!” He pretended to eat the yogurt container. Finn could barely control himself, laughter pealed out of him. James glanced at Ana. She wasn’t smiling.

“Finn show you,” said Finn. He dropped the container on the water’s surface. It floated. “See?”

The phone rang. Ana handed the towel to James and left the bathroom.

James finished the routine: the small toothbrush, the Pull-Up, the flannel pajamas covered in monkeys.

He sat on the bed and read to Finn a book about a mole looking for love. He laid the boy down, moved his hands along the sides of the body as if encasing him in a tomb. Then he leaned in, nose to nose.

“You can’t go anywhere without me, or without Ana,” said James. “Do you know that now? I was so worried.”

Finn wriggled his arms out of the quilt and reached for James’s face.

“Okay,” he said.

“What were you doing anyway? Why did you leave?”

A look moved across Finn’s face, inquisitive and pained. James braced himself. “I look for Mommy,” whispered Finn.

James’s throat constricted. He put his hands on the boy’s face. He kissed one eyelid, then the other. “Yeah? You thought she was outside?” he asked. Finn nodded.

“I go home now?” he asked.

James took his hands from Finn’s cheeks, pulled at his beard.

“I don’t know, Finny. Your mommy’s really sick. You might have to stay here with us for a long time. Would that be okay?”

Finn searched James’s face. He didn’t reply.

“We would love to have you. We would be—honored to have you live with us,” said James. His voice dropped to a whisper. “We could have this extraordinary life. We can do anything. I think it’s possible.” He stroked his arm.

“I go home,” said Finn.

James pulled the boy from the mattress, engulfed him. He assumed Finn was crying, but when he placed him back on the bed, he saw that he was wrong; only James had been crying.

With his head on the pillow, Finn’s eyelids fell, and he was asleep.

Ana was sitting in the kitchen nook, surrounded by dark windows. Her hands were clasped in front of her on the empty table.

James filled a glass with red wine.

“Want one?”

Ana shook her head.

He stood at a distance, leaning against the island in the middle of the room.

“Who called?”

“Ann. The police called her,” said Ana. “She’s coming by in an hour.”

James stared at her. “Did she say anything? Does she think it’s unsafe here for Finn?”

“I don’t know. She said it was procedure.”

“Procedure.” James paused, sipped his wine. “Fucking bureaucrats.”

Ana could not look at him. She could feel him standing there with Finn on his side. Their allegiance was suffocating. It had filled the house, crowded her out.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” said Ana. She felt strange as she spoke, dry.

James put down his wine.

“What do you mean?”

Ana looked out the window.

“I don’t want to be a mother,” she said blandly. James breathed. He saw her suddenly as something barely held together, like a stack of sticks that happened to be piled up on the chair. She was a liar. There was a lie in their house. Anger welled up in him.

“Why did we spend two years with your legs in the goddamned stirrups then, huh? Why did we spend thirty thousand dollars? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“
We
didn’t spend it.
I
spent it. It was my money,” said Ana. “You wanted me that way.”

James stared at her. “You don’t get to say that.”

“I don’t? What do I get to say, then?” Ana turned from the window and locked James’s eyes. “How about: Who are you sleeping with? Or who did you fuck? Was it in the bathroom at the club, like last time? Was it that classy? Or is it something real? Is it love, James? Are you in love with Ruth the Temp?” The word “love” was twisted and wretched.

Then she turned back to the window.

“Never mind, actually.” Ana continued, in the same blank voice: “I’m not sure what I’m looking at. I recognize this house. I think I do.”

“Ana …” said James. “Ana, it was nothing. And it wasn’t Ruth. This girl—this woman I used to work with—not even sex, I swear—”

She waved her hand. “I don’t want to know,” she said.

James stammered, “What do you want me to say?”

“You never asked me what I wanted. We just kept moving somehow. We were grabbing at things as we moved along, and it seemed like the right moment, so we grabbed at a baby. But what if I never wanted that?”

“Don’t conflate this. You’re angry—”

“Yes, I’m angry,” said Ana. A blackness rustled in the yard.

“You did want a baby, you did. We both wanted it—”

“No,” said Ana. “I was relieved. I was so relieved. I went up to Lake Superior and I stayed in that hotel—”

“When you lost the baby—”

“But it didn’t feel like a loss. It felt like a reprieve.”

James shook his head. “Don’t say it—”

Ana continued: “And a woman—if you’re a woman—you can’t say that out loud. Did you know that? You cannot say it—” Ana began to weep. Her body rippled, her face went liquid. James stared at her. He had not seen her cry in years. “Because it makes you monstrous. To not want to be a mother is a monstrous thing for a woman. It’s grotesque.”

“Don’t cry, Ana, please,” said James. He leaned across the table toward her, reaching for her hands. She kept them at her sides, hidden.

“Being with you was good for me because it was like being alone. You—you were your own planet. I could just watch you from down here. But now—you’re something different. You’re so small now,” said Ana.

James bent his head. He knew this was true; something had broken off from him, some potency that they had both pretended was not required. But what it had been replaced with was better, he thought, what it was replaced with was Finn. He, James, had in him the possibility of something hallowed.

And then—the alley—the girl—

He expected the explanation to come up in him, to tumble from his lips, but there was nothing. He struggled: “I’m not good at being old, Ana. I don’t feel old, but I’m old, and I hate it,” said James. “I don’t know why I do the things I do. Nothing is wrong in my life. Nothing is wrong. We have everything. We even have a kid now.”

Ana shook her head. “You have a kid. You’re the father,” she said, rising to her feet.

He grabbed for her, knocking the glass of wine. It fell from the table, shattering on the tile.

“I wanted it. Ana, I wanted to be a father. I need it—”

“What do you think it’s giving you, James? Wisdom? It doesn’t change who you are.”

“It does, Ana.”

Ana shook her wrist free of James’s hand. “It was a great gift they gave us, really, these people we didn’t really know. The ultimate audition.”

She began pacing the room. She was still wearing her work clothes, and her black stockings made no sound as she moved back and forth, never glancing at him. She stepped through the wine, leaving footprints.

“Watch the glass,” said James.

The wine spread across the floor, and suddenly, as if emerging from the dark puddle, James saw a future without Ana in it. He could call Doug about a job. He could sacrifice something. For the first time, he could see himself with Finn, two guys in a crowded apartment. Elsewhere.

It was ruthless in this way, the shift. It started only with this image, this ability to see a life even if it did not exist, like one of Finn’s picture books, like a segment for his TV show. It gathered momentum.

“Do you love me?” asked Ana.

She could not mean this, thought James, she could not be serious that, in the end, he had to choose. When he considered the question, he knew the answer, he knew it by its weight, the scales of history upon it. The entire past of them, the creation of them, the idea of them, bore down upon him. But he could not answer.

Ana had her own picture in her head: the whiteness of a bed.

“You love him more,” she said. James crumpled against the wall and slid to the floor, his feet out in front of him. His head slumped. Now he was crying, and Ana remembered: James is a crier. Ana knew that this was the kind of useless detail she would carry with her forever, long after they ended.

“It’s okay,” said Ana. “I don’t know if I love you anymore, either.”

James shook his head. “I hadn’t answered yet,” he said.

“Oh, James,” said Ana. “You did. You answer it all the time. And it’s okay. We’re not enough. It’s too weak, this life we made. It can’t carry what we’re asking it to carry.” She crouched, ran her fingers over his slumped head: “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

“Ana …”

She began to pick up the broken glass. She made a stack of it on the counter. She took a piece of newspaper from the recycling bin and wrapped the glass in it.

“You are so careful,” he said.

She nodded, her hand on the newspaper, pressing down, feeling a slow searing pain in her palm.

As she did this, James came behind her with a cloth and
began wiping up the wine, all of Ana’s dark footprints vanishing.

By the time Ann Silvan arrived, Ana had showered. They sat on the couch, side by side, Ana’s hair dripping down her neck, onto the collar of her sweatshirt. They answered more questions. Ann smelled of dinner. She apologized for not coming faster; her own daughter was ill from Halloween candy. Her demeanor had changed. She was warmer, less wary. Something had been proven in the handling of the averted disaster. They were publicly competent at last, but privately ruined.