“Jack”—she nods toward the boy—“this is Elinor. Ellie, Jack.”
“Hey,” Ellie says to the little boy, offering her hand to him. She used to babysit, when she was fourteen and fifteen, before people in the neighborhood knew enough to call other, less troubled kids. But Ellie had always been a hit with this age group, mostly because she treated them like peers. Jack’s eyes are small and blue and set wide on his face. His skin is nut-brown and he has a full head of white-blond hair.
Jack looks at his mom, then over at Ellie. “Nor,” he says, then smiles big.
“That works,” says Ellie. “Hi,” she says again.
“I like it,” says Jeffrey. He’s close to her suddenly. He kisses Annie on the cheek and offers his hand to Ellie. “Wonderful to see you again, Nor.” His eyes wander up the length of her and he leans in to kiss her too. “You’ve aged much better than we have, it seems.”
Jack fingers the thin white linen of his mother’s shirt, glancing at Ellie. “You want to go swimming?”
Annie repositions Jack on her hip and chirps a bit too loudly, “What do you say Ellie, no better way to welcome you back down here than a swim?”
Ellie smiles at Jack, then glances briefly at his father. “Sure,” she says. And she’s not tired suddenly. “I guess.”
Jeffrey walks past her into the room Annie has said is Ellie’s and turns on the air conditioner. “All right, then,” he says. “You two get changed before it gets too late.” He turns toward Ellie and she feels small beside him. He’s only a couple of inches taller than Annie, but he’s so much broader. He has a little stubble spread across his chin and cheeks.
The air conditioner chokes, then coughs, getting started, then blows cold and hard with a low chug against her back.
Jeffrey rests his hand just below her shoulder. “Leave this on while we’re out so it cools down for you,” he says. “It’ll take you a while to get used to this heat.”
Ellie nods and waits for them to filter into the main part of the house. She goes into her room and breathes in deep. She unpacks her toiletries in the bathroom, where Annie has laid out clean towels and washcloths. There’s shampoo and conditioner in the shower, face wash, lotion, Tylenol, two kinds of sunscreen (one for face and one for body), and aloe all lined up in the cabinet over the sink.
Ellie washes her face, then applies the sunscreen. She stands naked in front of the full-length mirror that hangs on the bathroom door. Her hip bones jut out below her abdomen and she runs one hand over her pale stomach, then up to her chest. She thinks briefly again of Annie long ago, tan and perfect in that dress. She walks out into the main room and begins rifling through her suitcase. Of course the bathing suit has managed to fall to the bottom.
She hears the door to the main house open. She’s cold from the window unit that continues to blow hard across her skin. She hears the smack of flip-flops and then nothing but the chugging of the air conditioner. Through the clear slats of the door she sees a wide expanse of shoulders. She stands still a minute, freezing without her clothes on, then pulls a shirt over her head and dumps her bag over the bed to find her bathing suit.
Winter 2013
“I didn’t. . I’m so sorry,” Charles says.
Maya looks around. The hall outside the room is empty. The paisley on his shirt makes Maya want to cry.
“No,” she says. “I’m sorry. I just. .”
He grabs his book from the desk and holds it. It’s like a shield against his chest.
She smiles at him, slowly. She wants to sit somewhere and let him put his head across her lap.
“I’ve been wanting—”
She stops him. “Oh, honey,” she says. “Don’t.”
She’s been too hard. The “honey.” He steps back from her and his face closes off.
She walks quickly back to her office. She’s hot. It’s twenty-three degrees, but she holds her coat over her arm. She’s left him there, Charles. She feels twelve years old.
She brushes past a colleague, then another, nods, cannot broach a smile. She thought she’d remembered the lock, but her office door is open; she goes in.
He’s sitting in her desk chair. She stops and thinks he knows, then realizes that he can’t.
She breathes out long.
He holds up his key ring. “I forgot I had a key.” He looks more closely at her.
“You okay?”
She’s fine. She’s been silly. Nothing even happened. Everything is fine.
Her husband’s legs cross at the ankles, stretched out beneath her desk. His shoes have tassels that hang above his toes. “Maya?”
“Fine.” She attempts a smile. “What do you need?”
He looks at her. Careful. He cocks his head, his eyes rolling down her length.
“I was in class.” Her vowels are all wrong. She watches Stephen swallow hard a wince. He sits up straight in her desk chair. He wears a dark blue blazer, a yellow shirt, no tie. He’s hung his coat up on the rack near the door to Maya’s office. She still holds hers over her arm.
“I know Maya. You sure you’re okay?”
“Just cold out.”
He leans forward, motioning toward her. “You forgot to put on your coat.”
She sits down across from him. She’s not sure she’s ever been on this side of her desk.
“Maya, listen.” He’s trying to be careful with her. His voice is like balancing an egg out on a spoon. “Her doctor called.”
There are options here that she feels she might be privy to. Crawling underneath the desk, for example, holding tight to Stephen’s tassels as he talks to her about these things she’d rather try not to look directly at.
“You have to stop with the letters, Maya.” He’s acting as if there has not been a fight. As if, if he works very hard to help direct her toward actions that are good and reasonable, he should be forgiven for not loving his wife or his children as he should.
“It’s the only way we’re allowed to communicate with her.”
She’s only written two. She has both of them memorized, runs over and over them now to see if maybe she’d gotten at least some of what she means and needs to tell her daughter right.
“Maya.” He’s gaining strength now, the words are leveling. Her name’s a word he’s said confidently and just like this so many million times. “He thinks you should be seeing someone.”
“How does he know to be worried about me?”
“You know they read the letters. They screen everything.”
She must have been told this. But Stephen would have been the one to tell her. She was still refusing to speak to the doctors those first few months.
“You didn’t even tell me you were writing her.”
“I have to tell her everything I can,” Maya says. “I’m trying to give her something, Stephen, to help her. I keep thinking, maybe if I shape things properly. .” She tries not to think when she writes to her. Her hope is that something greater than what she’s tried to give all these years will slip through these almost unconscious utterances, that something whole is passing through and into Ellie, helping fill her up again.
“He says you’re enabling.”
“What kind of asshole doctor tells on me to my husband, instead of calling me?”
“You can’t give him the impression we’re negligent,” he says. He’s trying so hard to be steady. He rubs the curve of the left side of his collar with his thumb. “He’s concerned that you’re not fully competent to make decisions without me.”
“This is serious? Like I’m some hysteric? We need to find her someone else to see.”
“I’m worried about you, Maya.”
She looks past him through her one small window. The snow has started up again. “We have to get her another doctor. A woman.”