“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.
James took her upstairs to look in on Finn. Ann Silvan went to the edge of the bed and leaned over his gently sleeping form. She didn’t wake him. She said she would return in the morning. She told them the police were not concerned, that everything was routine. She told them not to worry.
Ana took almost nothing from the house. A large suitcase stood in front of James’s desk, where their printer sat. James leaned in the doorway as she ran off her ticket.
Down the hall, Finn napped.
“What about your books?”
“Don’t need them.”
It was the first time she had entered the house in a week, but she’d been in his dreams so much lately that her actual presence made James feel like he was asleep. He was exhausted; sleep came in quick furious bursts, electric with Ana, and then he’d wake and stay that way until the sun came up, looking at his empty room, his empty house.
She had been living in a downtown suite that the firm owned and working until one or two in the morning and then collapsing into bed. Only when James asked her about the hotel did she realize she couldn’t describe a single physical detail of where she’d been sleeping. Maybe wallpaper?
And now she was going to live in another hotel suite in another city.
“You’ll need your winter jacket,” said James.
“I shipped it.”
Seeing him made her angrier than she had expected. She didn’t flick aside her anger, either, but kept it close, her eyes down, pushing past him with her suitcase jostling his body.
“I’ll take it,” said James.
“Don’t,” she said. They collided a little, disentangled, and made it downstairs with Ana carrying the bag.
“Ana …” said James.
He shadowed her as she did one final sweep of the house, picking up a few letters and a reusable coffee mug. She considered the mug, then put it back down on the edge of a bookshelf where it had left a brown ring. She called a taxi on her cell phone, giving the address with the prickly awareness that she might never say it again.
In the living room, James moved in front of her. “Ana, I’m sorry. I said this in my e-maiclass="underline" It was nothing, a drunken grope—I was going to tell you—I was even writing it that day.…”
Finally, she looked at him, scanning his face angrily. James was relieved to have her eyes; it seemed like progress somehow. “So you get to shed your story and I get to carry around forever a picture of my husband getting blown by a twenty-year-old or whatever it was?” said Ana. “I don’t want your confession. That’s your burden.”
Ana walked past him, kicking at the mess on the floor, the toys and dirty clothes. The entire house smelled like blackened banana. She opened the door. Leaves spun on the pathway outside.
James suddenly moved in front of her, slamming the door.
“Let me go,” said Ana.
“Ana, I’ve—been thinking.…” He moved to grab her arms, then thought better of it and clasped his hands together. “Here’s the thing: We don’t have to live here, right? We could move to one of those small towns outside the city, with a big yard. People are doing that now. We could scale down. Maybe I could do something totally different, get into my music—you can take the train into the city. I’ll look after Finn—just simplify, right? Just get back to the land—”
“We were never on the land, James.” Ana tried to get past him.
“But we could try it. We could leave and really try being a family—”
Ana threw her hands in front of her face and yelled: “I don’t want it! I don’t want to be raising everybody!” Her jaw clenched. “What if I had gotten pregnant? I’d be here, at home, glued to a baby, and where would you be? Off with some intern?”
“I would never do that to you.”
“But you did it.” She wiped her nose with her sleeve. “For one night, you did what you wanted. You’re always the one who gets to be free.”
“Okay then, let’s go back. Let’s go backward. We’ll be like we were before, but with Finn—”
“And have more brunches? And go on more holidays? And all the time, you’ll be thinking: My empty wife. My poor empty wife. The one thing you need, the one thing that will make you grow up, I can’t give you. Do you forget that? Do you forget that I don’t make babies?”
“Neither do I! I can’t make babies either, you fucking idiot!” James yelled. Ana went for the door, opening it. Again, James slammed it shut, blocking it with his body.
“Don’t go—I’m sorry—don’t go—”
“Let me go.”
“Don’t go—” Ana opened the door, and James slammed it again, louder. Ana breathed heavily.
“Ana, look at me.” She wouldn’t, her eyes fixed on floating space. “Don’t leave. You’re always leaving—”
The sound of fist on wood was a dull whack that left no mark, but James pulled his hand away and swore. Shreds of skin flapped from his knuckles, tiny white sheets. Blood seeped onto his wrist. They both looked down at the useless hand.
“What are you doing? What are you doing?” Tears were streaming down Ana’s face. “I can’t help you.”
She opened the door at last, and he followed her, the blood from his hand seeping down his arm now. “Ana!”
The taxi idled outside.
Ana managed to carry the suitcase, and the driver met her halfway up the walk, grabbing one of them, glancing at James with suspicion.
At the same time, Ana and James heard it: Finn crying, distantly, through the open door.
“Ana—” said James, straightening, clutching his ragged fist.
“Go get him,” she said, and she meant it.
But James stood on the walk as the driver loaded her bags, and Ana climbed in. He stayed there as she shut her door, and the car pulled away. Only when he couldn’t see it anymore did he turn and stagger back to the house and the boy waiting for him.
December
ANA HADN’T HAD much to unpack. The movers had brought a few more suitcases and boxes. She had taken a junior suite, not because it was cheaper, but because she imagined something sparser and more monastic than the Grand Suite option. Instead, rooms were opulent in ambition, but cheap in materials, with yellow throw cushions in the tones of a fast-food restaurant occupying all the extra space on the couch and the wing chair. A miniature Christmas tree sat in a bucket next to the kitchen table.
On a Saturday afternoon a month after her arrival, Ana sat on the edge of the couch, looking at the tree, decorated in gold balls. She felt tired and light, but not sad.
She had done it in such a way as to never have to see them. She had left the car. Everything else could be dealt with later, in six months, when she would decide whether or not to return. She didn’t miss any of her things. She felt that she was readying for something and wondered if this was how James had felt all those years, waiting for their baby—the great, exhilarated anticipation.