Sight Reading (16 page)

“Ingrate,” he muttered as the door to her room slammed. The girl he once knew had been replaced by this foreign creature who pouted and sulked. Nicholas blamed the teen novels she had been reading all summer—morbid tales in which the protagonist invariably had a terminal illness, a drug addiction, or multiple personality disorder. (Glenda the psychologist of course said they were “developmentally appropriate” and that Jessie was learning about the real world in a safe way.) The Barbies she and her best friend, Allison, once worshipped had been stuffed into a plastic bin in the hall closet; searching for something on an upper shelf, Nicholas would glimpse the mass grave of plumed heads, naked legs and feet in permanent demi-pointe, and recall cheerier times. These days Jessie and Allison spent hours locked in the bathroom, emerging with their hair tied in little twisting foam-rubber wires.

“She's thirteen,” was how Remy explained it. “It's what thirteen-year-old girls
do
.”

But to Nicholas a pouting female felt like an allegation against him. His daughter's new sensitivity seemed to him an indictment—yet what had he ever done to her?

Enough of this. He stood, went upstairs to her room, and knocked firmly on the door.

From the other side came harangued footsteps, and then, “What do you want?”

“I'd like to talk to you.”

The door opened slowly, like a bridge lowered over a moat. “Yes?”

“There's a matter I've been meaning to speak to you about.” But already he could feel himself faltering. After all, she was usually quite sweet, really.

“Fine, what?”

It wouldn't do to start a fight. He never did like to make trouble. Quickly he said the first thing he could come up with: “Wasn't Jasper to have returned to school along with you this fall?”

The guinea pig. Jessie claimed to have rescued the thing from a science teacher's menagerie last June, when students took the animals home for the summer. But Jessie still hadn't brought Jasper back.

“If I'm not mistaken, that poor, already sluggish creature is now nearly a month behind in his academic career.”

“Dad! If you saw the conditions there, you would totally cringe. It's inhumane.”

“Are you sure that's not an exaggeration?”

“Believe me,” Jessie said, “we're doing a service.”

“For . . . the guinea pig?”

“His name is Jasper.”

“For Jasper.” Nicholas frowned. “And his middle school education.”

“Yes. Believe me.” Jessie said this very seriously.

Nicholas thought for a moment. “Well, so. All right, then.”

He couldn't help it, couldn't help his pride, that this girl was his daughter, the same one who had once been a mere frog-shaped newborn who fit in the crook of his arm, sucking on his pinkie, with eyes that sometimes crossed, listening to his singing with an involuntary, twitchy, blissful smile on her tiny moist lips.

“Is that it?” she asked, as if forever interrupted.

“Well, yes.”

“Okay.” The door was closing. Nicholas's panic returned, as if he were about to lose something.

“What are you doing in there, anyway?” he heard himself asking.

The door stopped moving. “I'm
thinking,
” came the voice.

“Oh, well, yes, please, go on, cerebrate.”

The door closed.

Nicholas remained there even when he had heard the lock on the door click shut. Something was happening, he just couldn't put his finger on it. If only he could regain control of the situation.

Chapter 3

A
Monday, a night without concerts or symphonies, the first truly cold October night, dying leaves trembling, moon hanging like a shard of ice. None of Remy's sweaters was warm enough. She settled on a thick wool turtleneck the same brown as her eyes, and then she and Nicholas went to pick up Yoni. Nicholas was taking them to dinner.

“To celebrate!” he said now, steering the old Volvo down Huntington toward Yoni's building.

Remy asked what they were celebrating.

“Our anniversary!”

She raised an eyebrow. “And which anniversary would that be?”

“It's nine years ago that we took our first vacation together.” Nicholas's voice was chipper and matter-of-fact. “As I recall, the sand on the beach was so hot you leapt onto my back and ordered me to carry you back to the hotel.”

Remy had to smile as Nicholas continued. “It's six years ago that you cooked the best vegetarian bouillabaisse one could ever hope for, for the first and thankfully last time. It's—let's see—two years ago that you put on that polka-dot skirt for Vivian's opening. And it's twelve hours ago that I had the intense pleasure of lying next to you as you slept, watching your mouth twitch.”

“My mouth doesn't twitch.”

“Like a rabbit. Always nibbling.”

That was Nicholas. He might forget your
actual
anniversary, but he could come through with some other one when you least expected it.

It was part of the bargain that Remy had agreed to—though at the time she hadn't thought of it that way. She had just followed her heart and found herself in this shared life. If she pondered it too much, their ending up together seemed haphazard. But really that was how most things in life came about—people just didn't like to admit it.

People were always looking for
meaning
. Remy knew better than to second-guess her luck. When her birthday went unrecognized, her haircut unnoticed, she reminded herself that none of it meant much in the long run. When during intense bouts of work Nicholas seemed, for days, to forget her existence, when he tossed off some comment that made her feel small, discarded . . . she knew he would make it up to her without even meaning to, in some other way. And sure enough, at some other point entirely, Nicholas would remark, with an enthusiasm close to disbelief, on her very presence, the taste of her tongue, the warmth of her palm in his.

At times this was enough for her. Other times she found herself wanting him to be someone else: the man who had come back from Italy to claim her, decisive and confident—not the one who was easily impressed by the simplest things, whether it was a colleague's supposed friendship with President Clinton, or Gary's risky sports bets, or Yoni's real estate ventures. Not the one who was suddenly so ineffectual in dealing with his own daughter.

Yoni was there in front of the building, and hopped into the backseat with an air of propriety. He asked about the restaurant. Nicholas wouldn't quite say what it was, only that it sounded intriguing, that they simply had to go. “A gypsy place,” he added, as if it were a type of cuisine.

“What does that mean?” Remy asked. “Is it Czech? Rumanian?”

“We'll starve,” Yoni said.

Remy was glad to have him along. He often came to them for companionship, and for comforting, when his romantic escapades went awry. The conspicuous absence of the moment was Patricia, who seemed to have disappeared shortly after their trip to Madrid. And though Remy had thought Patricia perfectly nice, it was good to have Yoni back to his old self, independent of any one woman, reclined in the backseat as if this were
his
car and Nicholas and Remy his drivers. He claimed to be happier as a single man, said he was now cultivating a “friendship” with his previous girlfriend, Cybil—whom Remy had preferred to his other women, and who might even join them at the restaurant tonight.

“They have palm readers!” Nicholas added. “But for some reason there's never anyone there.”

Remy groaned. “I guess we'll find out why.”

“We have to help them out,” Nicholas insisted. “Who else is going to? Ah, here we are.” He pulled up to the curb. “Go ahead, hop out. I'll find a parking spot. See, doesn't it look like a cozy place?”

The restaurant indeed looked cozy, perhaps too much so, more like someone's living room, into which they hadn't exactly been invited: through the window Remy could see a few tables, two of them occupied, as well as a couch and an armchair. Warm, dim lighting. Racks of wine against the wall. “Go on in,” Nicholas said as Remy and Yoni stepped out into the brisk air. “I'll be back soon.”

“Good luck parking.” Remy pulled her coat tightly around her as Nicholas drove off. To Yoni she said, “He gets so excited about his own ideas.” It was what she liked about him; you never quite knew where you might end up.

They entered the little restaurant, just one small room, plastic flowers along the ceiling as if forgotten from another season. From stereo speakers came folk music played on some wailing instrument. Remy laughed at Nicholas's enthusiasm, unworried by the way he had deposited her and Yoni in this strange place and then driven off without them.

The hostess, a small, gray-haired woman in a pilled sweater, looked shocked to see them. “Table for four, please,” Remy told her, then asked Yoni, “Did Cybil decide she was coming?”

“I told her I'd call her at seven-thirty,” he said but made no move to do so. “She wasn't sure if she'd have finished her project or not.” Cybil worked at a high-end design firm near the waterfront.

They settled into a table in the corner of the room, near a small, square one where two men in wool caps were speaking a language Remy didn't recognize. At another table a man who looked like a bulldog and a woman who looked like a fashion model were sipping coffee and ignoring each other. Some of the tables were laid with linen and silverware, but others had no tablecloths at all. “Is this a café or a restaurant?” Remy asked.

“I think it's still deciding.” Yoni picked up the menu, a brief, handwritten one, and squinted. “What time is it?”

“Time to call Cybil.”

“Right. I'll go see if there's a pay phone.” He stood and went to the back hallway.

When Yoni had disappeared, the man in the blue felt cap pulled his chair closer to Remy's. “You speak good English?” he asked.

“I like to think so.”

“What you think of this?” He handed her a sheet of bright yellow paper with little tear-offs of a telephone number at the bottom. Remy skimmed the text—too long for a flyer—something about trading used cars for land in Costa Rica. There were numerous misspellings, but Remy didn't feel like correcting them.

“I give you some!” the man said brightly, trying to hand her some more flyers.

“No, no, thank you.”

“Oh, okay,” the man said, sounding hurt. Taking the flyers back, he turned abruptly away.

Yoni had reappeared. “She's not going to be able to join us,” he said, and then, nodding his head toward the next table, “What was that about?”

“A business proposition. Used cars and oceanfront property.” Yoni sat down across from her. “Too bad Cybil can't make it,” she added as he unrolled his cutlery from the napkin. Really, though, she was content knowing it would be just the three of them, their little family.

Yoni didn't respond; he seemed to be thinking to himself. “So, what's new, how are things? How's dear Jess?”

“Oh, you know, she always manages to have a good time.” Remy laughed. “I have to admit, sometimes I'm jealous of her. Or maybe just . . . envious.” Of Jessie's ease, her endless summer, lying around reading those paperbacks, holding lengthy telephone conversations with that boy Kevin, and long sessions of giggling with Allison. “I mean, when I was her age, I was this anxious girl practicing my violin for hours. I watch Jessie at her swim meets and soccer practice, and there she is, always enjoying herself, scoring goals,
winning
. . . . Of course, she's completely unmotivated about anything other than sports.”

The waitress, the same gray-haired woman, presented them with a basket of dark bread and a tray of olive oil and offered to bring a bottle of the house wine. Then she left them.

Yoni immediately began tearing at the bread though it had already been sliced. He always ate this way, Remy had noticed, zealously cracking things apart, so that when the dishes were cleared there was a ring of crumbs or seeds around where his plate had been. Sometimes Remy found herself watching his hands, entranced by the wounded one. It made her feel childish, the urge to stare at this deformity. Other times she didn't even notice it.

“Do you and Nicholas want to have a child of your own?” Yoni asked, dipping the bread in oil.

Remy watched him chew, heard the familiar pop of his jaw. Tonight his face was unshaven, so that he looked Mediterranean, tougher, his cheekbones more defined. Remy reached over and wiped some crumbs from his cheek. “I guess that's the one thing Nicholas and I can't manage to do together.” She shrugged, to show that really it didn't matter. She had made a decision to stop trying; it was simply too painful. It surprised her now to realize that Nicholas had never mentioned any of this to Yoni. “To be honest, I've always found something slightly greedy in people having kids all the time. There are already so many children without families and homes.”

“Oh, come on, cut the self-righteousness.”

“I'm not trying to be self-righteous,” Remy said. But she relented. “Look, I would love to have a baby. It's something I've wanted for a long time. It would be nice. Yeah. Really nice.” It felt good to say it aloud. This was something she rarely spoke about anymore, though there had been a few years when she had spent tearful hours talking her friend Vivian's ear off about it, until she realized that Vivian was tired of hearing Remy complain. Even now she felt the need to add, “At a certain point I realized that everyone has something like this.”

“What do you mean, ‘like this'?”

“Everyone has something they want but don't get to have.”

Yoni seemed to consider this. “Do you really think that's true?”

Remy nodded. “It's what makes us human. Or maybe what keeps us . . . moral.” She thought for a moment. “What about you?”

“What's my unfulfilled desire?” He seemed caught off guard.

“No, I mean do you think you'll ever want to have children.”

“Oh,” he said briskly, relieved, “yes, I do. With the right person, yes, I would. Very much.”

That he responded so quickly, and in the affirmative, surprised her. “I must say, Yoni, I'd assumed you were a perpetual bachelor.”

“I believe in family,” he said.

Remy thought about this. “The truth is,” she told him, “Jessie really is more than enough for me. I don't mean that as a complaint, by the way. I'm talking about love.”

Yoni smiled warmly. Feeling somehow embarrassed, Remy looked toward the door and said, “Nicholas appears to have vanished.” And then: “Should we be worried?”

“Knowing Nicholas, no.”

Remy smiled. “True.”

Then Yoni's face changed. “Does everything really come so easily to him? I've often wondered that. It seems that way, but then I think it might just be the aura he gives off.”

“He works incredibly hard.” Remy heard how defensive she sounded.

“Well, of course, I know that, I just meant—”

“There's no struggle,” Remy said flatly. “Believe me, I know exactly what you mean.”

Yoni nodded, almost imperceptibly. “It's hard, isn't it, when one of the people you love most in the world doesn't quite understand what it feels like.” He paused, as if revisiting some painful moment. “I mean that he maybe doesn't know what a certain kind of . . . frustration might feel like.”

Remy supposed Yoni must be talking about himself, about how Nicholas made him feel, and felt a sudden tenderness toward him. She reached out to take his hand in hers. “He doesn't mean to do it. That's what I have to remind myself. He can't help it if he doesn't understand.” Yoni's hand felt warm in hers. She heard herself say, “I do sometimes wonder what my life would be like with him if it hadn't been so easy. For him to win me, I mean. If he'd had to fight a bit more, to get me. If he'd had to fight for me.”

Immediately she felt that she had told on Nicholas. Ashamed, she looked down at her plate, and brought her hand back to her lap. Yoni, too, was quiet, just thinking, perhaps, until the waitress arrived with the wine—a bottle already uncorked, as if pilfered from some lunch table in Italy. The waitress filled their glasses and, without waiting for their approval, left the bottle on the table and walked away.

“It's perfectly fine,” Yoni said, somewhat awkwardly, after a small sip. “Could be fun to get drunk on it.”