Annie knocks on Ellie’s door.
She looks like she’s been crying. She’s still wearing the crisp linen pants and silk shirt she wears when she goes into the restaurant, and Ellie feels useless and absurd, so small. She sits back in the corner of the bed. Annie sits across from her. She’s brought her a plate of food, the fish and pasta Ellie’d listened to her cook. Ellie takes it and sets it down beside her on the bed. She says thank you and peels off a small piece of fish. Annie firms her lips.
“I lost him once,” says Annie. Ellie looks down at her feet, where there are still grains of sand from when they sat out on the beach after they’d been brought to shore. She’d left her flip-flops on the boat. She and Jack drove home barefoot in bathing suits, with the towels wrapped around them that the boy with the hat and peeling nose had given them before he went out in a rubber-rimmed dinghy to try to save the boat. “I was at the grocery store and he was wandering behind me. You know how he gets distracted.” She shakes her head. Ellie stays still. “I was alone with him all the time then.” Her memory takes her far from Ellie now and Ellie doesn’t mind it. “And it doesn’t matter how much you love him, you know? He still drove me insane. It was one of those days, and I was counting the seconds till Jeff would be home to relieve me. I didn’t even need anything at the grocery store, but I couldn’t be alone with him anymore. And then all of a sudden he was gone, and I couldn’t breathe, because it felt like I’d wished it, you know? I went to that kiosk thing and had them call for him. He was three and knew his name — he thought it was cool, being called over the loudspeaker — and we found him right away. But those seconds. .” She looks up at Ellie then and Ellie leans away, startled to be sitting so close.
Ellie wraps her arms around her shoulders. She burrows her chin into her chest.
“I want us to be good for each other, Ellie,” she says. She angles herself closer to Ellie and reaches toward her, her hand resting lightly on her knee. “I want this all to work.”
Ellie wants to respond properly, to give her whatever it is she needs. She uncrosses her arms, then crosses them again.
“Listen,” Annie says. She looks searchingly at Ellie, right in the eyes, and Ellie wonders if she’s checking if she’s stoned. “It’s our fault.” It takes Ellie a minute to realize the “our” isn’t she and Annie. It isn’t Ellie or her mom. “We kept him so isolated. .” Ellie’s slowly catching up with Annie, whose voice falls a little. Her hand stays on Ellie’s knee. “I didn’t think it mattered when he was really small. It might not have.” She looks older, less sure. “There are probably plenty of kids who don’t see other kids when they’re little who acclimate fine to socializing later on. But he was brought up in the restaurant. It’s the problem with having kids so late; it all feels so precious, you know? You’ve worked so hard for it. Even when I did just want a break, it felt ungrateful, spending any time away from him. I don’t know how I expected preschool to go well. But you know.” She stops a minute and takes her hand back. “You think just loving is enough no matter what. I thought my love had this sort of primacy over every other person’s. But then all those kids I’d pitied when they were two in those carts they’d push around downtown with gaggles of little children, those kids just laughed that first morning I took him, and greeted one another happily, while Jack screamed and kicked and refused to let go of my shirt.” As she says this she holds her shirt, which has come untucked near the bottom, rubbing her thumb along the edge. It’s a thin, nearly translucent silk, light blue against the tan curve of her hand. “We thought that it’d get better. Lots of kids throw fits. But the kid has a will like nothing you’ve ever seen.” She lets go of her shirt and grabs hold of her own knee, harder than she held Ellie’s. “The first week we were back to get him every day before noon. And the worst part.” Annie shakes her head. “It was only then I began to think of spending time with him as some kind of burden. Because I had made peace with him being away from me for a few hours every morning. And then to not get that after all. I’d signed up for unlimited yoga.” She points her eyes to the floor. “I’d made plans to see friends I hadn’t spent more than an hour with in years. I didn’t want to give it up.” She holds her hands, palms up, in front of her, then sets them in her lap. “After two more weeks they recommended we try to transition him more slowly. Jeff and I took turns shadowing him for a couple of weeks. But every time we tried to leave: the same thing. And you know they tell you to let him just work it out himself. That that’s the best way.” She looks up. She looks past Ellie’s right ear, at the wall behind the bed. “I could feel the teacher’s judgment from across the room every time I went to him when he cried. But the idea that I could do something to stop it and I didn’t, I know it’s not that simple but it felt that simple then. Finally they told us either he would be placed in special ed until they found a full-time aide or we’d have to find another place.” She stops a minute. She looks Ellie, briefly, in the face. “Jeff’s a therapist, you know? You think rational thought should get you somewhere. We tried to talk to him about it, but my whole body would tense up even thinking about the word school. We decided to take another year and do homeschool. We had a woman come three days a week, and one of us was always there. And he was a dream as long as we didn’t leave. I started to feel as if I would never have a moment free again. The past four years began to fold in on themselves and taunt me with all the things I hadn’t been able to do. We got him a therapist. Who gets a therapist for a four-year-old? But the school recommended her. We stopped going when she started trying to give us diagnoses. Spectrums, medications. I wasn’t ready yet to call him something other than himself. We worked on smaller increments of separation. None of the help we got ever lasted long. He’d throw the tantrums and they seemed to be getting worse. By the end of the last school year, we couldn’t even do school at home anymore. I found someone on the Internet who said live-in help might be the best option. But the idea of a stranger in our house. . I don’t know. And your mom said you needed to get out of New York for a while. And I remembered you when you were little. You were such a perfect little kid, the way you always were with Benny. I thought maybe you and Jack could do each other good. He’s wonderful, really. He just. .” She holds her hands in front of her again, palms out, then holds them to her face. “We all have shit, right?” She speaks through the gaps between her fingers, then places them back on her lap. For the first time since she started speaking, she holds Ellie’s gaze. “I know it doesn’t feel like it, but he likes you,” she says. “You understand him, I think. I think you might understand each other. This can be good for both of you.”
Annie looks down at Ellie’s half-eaten dinner. She nods toward the plate, looks up. “But Ellie,” she says, “I am going to ask you to be careful.”
Ellie picks up another piece of fish and slowly chews it. She wraps her arms around her shins and tries hard not to look away from Annie. If only she were someone else.
“I’m going to beg you to love my son as much as I do. I want you to know I trust you and I want you to be okay too.”
Ellie wipes her nose with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “I. .” She wants to promise she’ll be good.
Winter, 2013
The new family has left them, the baby tucked back close to her mother, Bryant going dutifully behind. It’s just Maya, Charles, and Caitlin, and no one seems sure of what to say next. Maya dumps her wine glass in the sink and grabs her coat. “I guess,” she says.