The Invisibles (7 page)

That weekend they were holding a party for his daughters. He remembered when he came into the kitchen of the quiet house (the twins were at school, and Cindy's note said she would be shopping until suppertime, and she had promised the girls Chinese and could he please take them), let Seamus lick his palm, and saw a stack of colorful party hats on the counter. Some weeks ago Amber and Ashley had seen a movie in which a cartoon hippo had her animal girlfriends over for tea, and they had begged their mother to give them a real tea party. Cindy had been reluctant at first, not wanting to spoil the girls when she already made such a big fuss over their annual birthday bash, but once she had given her assent she started planning as if the idea had been hers. It appeared this party would be the most impressive to date. In the backyard, around which they had built a high wooden fence to keep out the homeless who still wandered this part of town, a large blue plastic pavilion had been erected over rows of folding tables and chairs. There were two other long tables, one for the catered buffet and the other for flowers, each flanked by tall black speakers. Croquet wickets were configured in a double diamond in the grass, and the wooden trellis in the garden was laced with blue and pink crepe paper. He wondered if that was premature, searching the vast span of vivid blue sky for a sign of rain. There was still no word from Lindsay. It had been almost a week. Maybe, he thought, he had not been in love with her after all. Maybe the job had confused him, fooled him with the illusion of a second life with each new project. He had moved here ten years ago, and driving back from the airport today he had made three wrong turns.

When he checked his messages later there was an e-mail from her. He read it in the living room while Cindy talked on the phone and sipped cab sauv and his daughters lay on the carpet in their pajamas, watching
Cinderella
on television and protesting when Seamus licked himself. Her e-mail was brutally concise, in his view, though he was comforted to see she had not reverted to using a formal address.
Sorry I went without telling you,
the message read.
I guess I'm not ready for something this heavy. I don't know if it should be heavy. Should it be heavy? Maybe I'll see you later —.

She used a dash to sign off, always had. Before, he had found it charming, but now it was only more evidence that she had always been afraid of revealing true sentiment.

At the party he was distracted, thinking of her e-mail, its tentativeness, its
I guess
and
Maybe
and
I don't know
. What did a girl go out and do, anyway, after typing up a message like that? His suspicions depressed him. He doubted he remained a tempting alternative to younger men. He knew how to screw, but he could not deny that some of his energy had faded, and he could not match the intrigue of young men lurking in the clubs — and, if he was honest with himself, that thrill of being young and going home with someone new did make a difference. One of the caterers was about the right age, early to midtwenties, a wide-shouldered, friendly kid with fashionably shaggy blonde hair who introduced himself as Tristan. Tristan knew his part as the handsome hired help, rolling up the sleeves of his white button-down shirt to show off his forearms and grinning when the little girls turned speechless in his presence, standing straight and aloof while the youngish mothers stole glances at him. Maybe he would know what a girl like Lindsay would do after writing a message like that.

It was his first tea party, truth be told, and he was not sure what to do with himself. He was surprised to see how comfortable the
mothers seemed, making it up as they went along, as if tea parties were as commonplace in their lives as margarita night and trips to the mall. He was not sure Avril Lavigne was supposed to be playing. But he said nothing and did as he was told. Like the other adults, he was expected to sit in a small chair at the table with the girls. Amber and Ashley had insisted on assigned seating, and he was placed at the head of the table, where as the only male guest he seemed to play a strictly symbolic role. No one spoke to him as he drank his tea black and ate crackers and salmon pate and salty little sandwiches cut into fours. He accepted three pieces of strawberry cake and listened to the talk swirl around him, much of it rehearsed. Cindy and the other mothers discussed property values since the recession began and how smash-and-grabs were on the rise, but how even with its little crime waves, this historic midtown neighborhood was far superior to the north suburbs. The girls had begun by being polite to each other, saying please and thank you and would you like some more of this or that, but they had grown bored and moved on to comparing phones and Facebook pages. This turn of events had made Amber and Ashley begin to pout, because the twins were not allowed to have phones until middle school, though he doubted Cindy would hold out against the girls' whining until then.

Cindy took note of her daughters' moping, leaned over the table, a dark forelock dangling over her pale forehead, and smiled at him. “Honey,” she said, her eyes mildly entreating, “why don't you lead the girls in a game of croquet?”

“Yes, let's play croquet,” said Amber, only too happy to cut off the phone talk.

“Daddy's on our team,” said Ashley.

“That's not fair,” protested a girl down the table. “You'll kill us with him.”

“It's our party, so we should be able to win,” Amber said.

“Nuh-uh,” said the girl with the impressive phone. “You're supposed to let your guests win.”

“Daddy, who's allowed to win?” Ashley said. “Mommy?”

“Girls,” said Cindy in her instructive voice. “No one has the right to win. That's why it's a game. The hosts have to be polite and let the guests go first, but they can still win. In fact, they should try to win. To let someone else win is considered rude.”

A few mothers nodded to confirm this.

The brunette child pointed her phone at him. “But the teams aren't fair.”

Cindy glanced over at Tristan standing at attention, shoulders back, by the chafing dishes on the buffet table. “I bet that if you ask that young man over there, he'd be happy to play with you.”

“Oh,” said the girl, “we want him on our team.”

He could see his daughters were disappointed by this turn of events. They looked on, mouths hanging slightly open in envy and shock at their mother's treachery, as the girl put down her phone and went over to ask Tristan.

Ashley looked down the table at him, her expression fully reflecting his newfound inadequacy. “We're not going to lose, are we, Daddy?”

“No, sweetheart, we're not going to lose.” He stood, smiling grimly at Cindy and the other women as he rose and put his napkin on the table. They watched him with amusement and approval, and Cindy mouthed
Thank you
. It struck him as perverse that parenthood should reverse the order of who played along with whom.

He went out to the first stake, where the girls were deciding the playing order, and picked up a mallet and turned it so the sun shone in the finish of its wooden head. Tristan came over looking smug. “It's been a while since I've played this, man.”

“Me, too.”

The younger man looked at the two teams of girls and back
at him. “I bet this isn't how you'd prefer to be spending your afternoon.”

“No, I guess not. But there are worse things.”

Tristan gave a skeptical frown. “Like what?”

He looked at the young man's catering outfit. “Well, how do you like working Saturdays?”

“It's all right.” Tristan shrugged, untroubled by his predicament. “My friends aren't really getting into anything cool until later, so it's no biggie. Plus it's pretty sweet to see what these houses look like on the inside.” He glanced back at the women watching them from the pavilion. “Plus,” he confided, “there are other perks. If you know what I mean.”

He felt his ears growing hot. Not that he doubted that what Tristan said was true — he felt certain, with a measure of horror and fascination, that it was. But it annoyed him that this kid thought the comment would fill him with admiration and curiosity, and it disturbed him further that it had. He was taller than the caterer, and he looked down at him with open contempt. He wasn't afraid to tell him to get off of his property, put this kid in a position where he would have to explain himself to his employer. “What perks? Do you mean playing croquet with little girls?”

Tristan blushed. “Never mind, dude.”

“No, seriously,” he said loudly. “Why don't you list out the unusual perks of your job?” He glanced over at Cindy, who looked confused and grinned seeking reassurance that all was well.

The caterer turned and shrugged. “Let's just play this, man. Whatever. Look, it's your tea party.”

“Damn straight.” He said it louder than he'd intended, and the girls were staring now. “Come on,” he said, with maybe a little too much force. “Let's play.”

He got off to a strong start. He knocked the blue ball through four wickets on his first turn and then, nodding as his wife and
daughters gave him faint applause, settled back with his hands stacked on the mallet handle to watch Tristan. The caterer took to playing with intense concentration on what he was doing. His cheeks were still flushed with color, and he kept his head bent, his small bright eyes focused on the red ball he was hitting. On his third stroke he swung the mallet and popped the ball through the wicket and into Michael's ball, knocking it out of bounds into the gravel by the sliding glass door. The girls on his team applauded, as did some of the mothers in the pavilion. With a look of satisfaction on his face, Tristan lined up his next shot, seemed to consider what to do, and then hit the ball just short of the next wicket. He glanced up and smiled quickly, as if to say he had done it on purpose.

He watched the next two rounds in a barely contained rage. As soon as his ball was live again, he resolved to first make the next wicket and then to croquet Tristan's ball as far off the course as he could. His shoulders trembled as he took his next shot, knocking the ball further than he'd intended, but striking the caterer's ball just the same and sending it off toward the garden and out of bounds.

“Nice shot!” Tristan said.

He ignored this, as well as Cindy's cheering in the tent and the clapping of his daughters behind him. He went to his ball and lined up his next stroke, aware in his periphery of Tristan's broad grin. It was his turn to put his head down. He concentrated on making the next two wickets. From here, he knew, he would be far enough ahead that Tristan wouldn't catch him, and he would give the girls the lead which, for them, evened the field against girls who had phones.

He talked to her later that day, but the conversation felt unnatural. He was the one who called. He knew the gesture would not
help his cause, that phoning signaled he assumed it was over and demanded an explanation. He did it anyway. He knew it was selfish. If he had been younger, he might have said he couldn't resist, but now he knew better, that he was indulging himself by asking for what she must feel she owed him, even if that was all they had left.

He stood on the sidewalk in front of the black wrought iron fence. The caterers were packing up their white van, and up and down the street, trees were growing pale buds. The crocuses in the garden had already opened white and purple flowers. The spring was coming on relentlessly this year, an all-encompassing storm of pollen and light.

Her phone rang three, four, five times. His heart sank as he decided against leaving a message. But then she answered.

“Hey,” she said in the tiny voice she used to show fear.

“Hey,” he said, unable to disguise his pathetic hopefulness.

She was silent, waiting for him to speak, breathing loudly through her nose.

“I got your e-mail.”

“I'm glad,” she said.

“Are you sure about what you wrote? Are you sure about not being sure?” He said this with the smile that would have gone with the question, had she been there. He was grateful now as she laughed.

“Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure I'm not sure.”

The caterers were coming out now, carrying the chafing dishes. He wheeled away from them and walked down the uneven pavement until he was in front of the neighbor's white brick house. They had hung their hummingbird feeder, a bright red cylinder, beside their front porch.

His breath felt thick, like syrup in his throat and nose. He had not spoken the way he was about to speak in a long time. He felt
like a college boy again, like an amateur. “You know,” he was saying, “I have very strong feelings for you, Lindsay. I really, really do.”

“I know,” she said, like she was cringing, wherever she was.

“I won't tell you if you don't want me to.”

“Don't.”

He'd known it beforehand, he thought, feeling the tears well up. He walked farther down the street. At the end of the block two homeless men sat on a low wall at the corner drinking from bagged pint bottles. They leered at him, and he glared back, outraged that they should see him like this. He closed his eyes and asked the question he knew he should not. It came welling up out of him like laughter. “You feel differently?”

“Oh God, Michael.” She sounded miserable. At least there was that. “You know I don't want to be victimized by my past, right?”

He was confused. The feeling of her words was all wrong to him. He swallowed and his breathing slowed. “Wait. What are you talking about?”

“You know. You remember. All that stuff with my father? How he ran out on my mom and me?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said flatly. He had known that about her biography, but he had not seen their situation parallel to it. He stood frozen in surprise, his tears sliding back, falling into his throat where he could swallow them. He felt suddenly embarrassed to be talking to her, eager for the conversation to be over. He thought of the number of people who knew about them, Rajan, others she must have told. He would have to carry on now as if it had never happened.