“Snazzy outfit, Els,” he called down to her.
“Thanks!” she replied, breathlessly, still spinning.
Zach realized he was staring at her. Trying to notice everything about her. Knowing that the next time he saw her, myriad subtle changes would have taken place. She might even have outgrown the T-shirt with the ugly gray pony on it, or just lost interest in the creature, although that seemed unlikely. At the moment she seemed as upset about leaving the pony as she was about leaving her friends, her school. Her father. Time would tell, he supposed. He was about to find out if his daughter was an out-of-sight, out-of-mind kind of person or one for whom absence made the heart grow fonder. He hoped to God she was the latter. Zach downed the last of his coffee, shut the front door, and flipped the lock closed, then grabbed his daughter around her ribs to make her squeal with laughter.
Breakfast was eaten at a tatty pine table in the kitchen of the flat above the gallery, to the strains of Miley Cyrus on the CD player. Zach sighed slightly as his least favorite song by the saccharine pop star came around again, and realized to his horror that he had, gradually and against his will, learned all the words. Elise bobbed her shoulders up and down as she ate her cereal, in a kind of seated dance, and Zach sang a line of the chorus in a high falsetto, which made her choke and spray milk onto her chin.
“Are you excited about the trip?” he asked carefully, once Miley had faded into blessed silence. Elise nodded but said nothing, chasing the last few flakes of cereal around in her bowl, dipping them out of the milk like fishing for tadpoles. “This time tomorrow you’ll be on an aeroplane, high up in the sky. It’s going to be fun, isn’t it?” he pressed, hating himself, because he could see that Elise wasn’t sure how she should answer. He knew she was excited, scared, looking forward to it, sad to be leaving. A mixture of emotions she was too young to have to deal with, let alone express.
“I think you should come too, Dad,” she said at last, pushing her bowl away and leaning back, swinging her legs awkwardly.
“Well, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. But I’ll see you over the holidays, and I’ll come and visit lots,” he said automatically, and then cursed himself in case he couldn’t. Transatlantic flights didn’t come cheap.
“Promise?” Elise looked up at him and held his gaze, as if hearing the hollowness of the words. Zach’s stomach twisted, and when he spoke he found it hard to make his voice sound normal.
“I promise.”
They had to go before the end of the summer holidays, Ali had argued, so that Elise would have a chance to settle in for a couple of weeks before starting her new school. Her new school in Hingham, near Boston. Zach had never been to New England, but he pictured colonial architecture, wide-open beaches, and rows of pristine white yachts moored along bleached wooden jetties. It was these beaches and boats that Elise was most excited about. Lowell had a sailing boat. Lowell was going to teach Ali and Elise to sail. They were going to sail up the coast, and have picnics. Let him see one picture of Elise near a boat without a life jacket on, thought Zach, and he would be over there in a flash to knock Lowell’s smug head off his shoulders. He sighed inwardly at the petty thought. Lowell was a nice guy. Lowell would never let a child near a boat without a life jacket, least of all somebody else’s child. Lowell wasn’t trying to be Elise’s father-he appreciated that she already had a father. Lowell was so damn friendly and reasonable, when Zach wanted so badly to be able to hate him.
He packed Elise’s things into her Happy Feet rolling cabin case, making a sweep of the flat and the gallery for glittery hairclips, Ahlberg books, and the numerous small plastic objects that seemed to pay out behind his daughter wherever she went. A bread-crumb trail, for if ever he lost her. He took Miley Cyrus out of the stereo, then picked up her other CDs-readings of fairy tales and rhyming songs, more cheesy pop music and an obscure set of German folktales sent by one of Ali’s aunts. He picked up Elise’s favorite, the Tales of Beatrix Potter, and considered keeping it. They had listened to it in the car on all their day trips during the past week, and the sound of Elise speaking along with the narrator, trying to mimic the voices, and then parroting lines for the rest of the day, had become the soundtrack to the last days of summer. Give me some fish, Hunca Munca! Quack, said Jemima Puddle-duck! He thought for a moment that he might play it to himself, and imagine her rendition once she was gone, but the idea of a grown man listening to children’s stories, all alone, was too tragic for words. He packed the CD away with the rest.
At eleven o’clock sharp, Ali arrived and leaned on the bell for just a couple of seconds too long, so that it sounded impatient, insistent. Through the glass in the door Zach saw her blond hair. It was cut into a short bob these days; the sun glancing off it so that it glowed. She had sunglasses hiding her eyes and wore a striped blue-and-white cotton sweater that skimmed her willowy frame. When he opened the door, he managed to smile a little, and noticed that the familiar spike of emotion she usually brought with her was blunter than before, shrinking all the time. What had been helpless love and pain and anger and desperation was now more like nostalgia; a faint ache like old grief. A feeling more softly empty, and quieter than before. Did that mean he was no longer in love with her? He supposed so. But how could that be-how could that love go and not leave a gaping hole inside him, like a tumor carved out? Ali smiled tightly, and Zach leaned down to kiss her cheek. She proffered it to him, but did not kiss him back.
“Zach. How’s everything?” she asked, still with that tight-lipped smile. She’d taken a deep breath before speaking, and kept most of it in, pent up, swelling her chest. She thought there was going to be another row, Zach realized. She was braced for it.
“Everything is great, thanks. How are you? All packed? Come in.” He stepped back and held the door for her. Once inside, Ali took off her glasses and surveyed the virtually empty walls of the gallery. Her eyes were a little bloodshot, a sign of fatigue. She turned to Zach, examined him swiftly with a look of pity and exasperation, but bit back whatever she had been about to say.
“You look… well,” she said. She was being polite, Zach realized. They had regressed from being able to say anything to each other to being polite. There was a short pause, slightly awkward as this final transition in their relationship settled. Six years of marriage, two years of divorce, back to being strangers. “Still hanging on to Delphine, I see,” Ali said.
“You know I’d never sell that picture.”
“But isn’t that what a gallery does? Buys and sells…”
“And exhibits. She’s my permanent exhibit.” Zach smiled slightly.
“She’d buy a lot of flights to visit Elise.”
“She shouldn’t have to,” Zach snapped, his voice hard. Ali looked away, folding her arms.
“Zach, don’t…” she said.
“No, let’s not. No last-minute change of heart, then.”
“Where is Elise?” Ali asked, ignoring the remark.
“Upstairs, watching something loud and tacky on TV,” he said. Ali shot him an impatient look.
“Well, I hope you’ve been doing more with her all these weeks than just plonking her down in front of-”
“Oh, give it a rest, Ali. I really don’t need parenting lessons from you.” He said it calmly, half amusedly. Ali took another deep breath and held it. “I’m sure Elise will tell you what we’ve been up to. Els! Mummy’s here!” He put his head through the door to the stairs and shouted this up to her. He had been dreading her departure for so many weeks, since Ali had told him about the move and all the fighting and discussing and fighting again had changed nothing at all. Now the dread of it had grown almost unbearable, and since the time had come, he wanted it over with. Do it quickly, make it hurt less.