He told Mike about their seventh birthday party, to which Jackie had grudgingly invited him. It wasn’t one of those fancy parties — no magicians or ponies or cotton-candy machines — just a bunch of neighborhood kids running around the yard in goofy hats, climbing on the cedar play structure that Sims had assembled from a kit three years earlier. He tried chatting with some of the other parents, but they treated him with strained, wary politeness, as if he carried some sort of communicable disease. But at least his boys were happy to have him there. Trevor, the bigger and sweeter of the twins, kept running over to Sims and jumping into his arms, the way he had when he was a toddler. Jason, smaller and more verbally adept, kept telling Sims that he loved him, though he also kicked him in the shins a couple of times, completely out of the blue, with what felt like genuine animosity. Both boys cried when Sims said good-bye — Trevor kept begging him to stay for a sleepover — and when Sims got back to the condo, he opened a bottle of bourbon and drank himself to sleep.
“Tell me it gets better,” he said. “Tell me I’m not gonna feel like crap for the rest of my life.”
Mike stroked his upper lip, the bare skin where his mustache used to be. He had two kids of his own, both in high school.
“It helps to play the guitar,” he said. “That’s the only thing that works for me.”
IN EARLY September, six months after they’d separated, Jackie invited Sims to Trastevere, the new Italian place in the center of town. He figured she wanted to talk about the divorce settlement, though as far as he knew, there wasn’t a whole lot left to discuss. According to Sims’s lawyer, the negotiations were substantively complete, just a few remaining i’s to dot and t’s to cross, nothing too momentous. The process had been surprisingly amicable; both he and Jackie had acted like responsible adults, keeping the best interests of the kids front and center, neither of them picking petty fights or making unreasonable demands. Sims had grumbled a bit about the custody arrangement — he would only get the twins on Wednesday and Saturday, and only Saturday would be an overnight — but Jackie had convinced him that the boys needed as much stability and continuity as possible during this difficult time of transition. And besides, he knew how much space they required, how much they loved kicking the soccer ball in the backyard and playing Wii sports on the big-screen TV in the basement rec room. He had no doubt that the condo would feel as cramped and depressing to them as it did to him.
Jackie was ten minutes late, and Sims almost didn’t recognize her when she finally showed up. She was wearing a black-and-gray dress that he’d never seen before, very flattering, but it was more than that; it was the confidence with which she approached the table, the enigmatic smile and subdued little wave she gave him when their eyes met. He’d been aware of subtle changes in her appearance over the past few months — she’d lost weight, colored her hair, done something new with her makeup — but he hadn’t registered the cumulative effect until she sat down across from him. This was a new Jackie, a far cry from the frumpy, defeated woman he’d been living with.
“Wow,” he said. “You look great.”
“Thanks.” She studied him for a moment, her eyes narrowing with maternal concern. “You, too.”
He knew she was lying. Bachelor life had been hard on him. He’d put on fifteen pounds — too many burritos, too much beer — and hadn’t spent nearly enough time outdoors. His skin was pasty, and he’d grown a salt-and-pepper soul patch that Mike liked a lot, but that had earned him a lot of good-natured ribbing at the Health Plan. His colleagues called him Jazzman and Dr. Beatnik and asked if they could borrow his bongo drum.
“I gotta lose some weight,” he said. “I eat too much junk.”
“You should hire a personal trainer,” she suggested. “That’s the only thing that worked for me.”
“Trainers are pretty expensive. I don’t think I can afford one.”
If Jackie heard the implicit criticism — after all, it was Sims’s money that had paid for her newly toned physique, not to mention the haircut and the pretty dress — she chose to ignore it.
“It’s worth it, Rick. Not just for your appearance, you know? Just for the way you feel about yourself. About the whole world. It’s makes such a difference if you feel good about yourself.”
Sims couldn’t stop staring at her lips. They seemed so much fuller and more sensual than he remembered. Maybe it was the lipstick, he thought. She hadn’t worn lipstick for years.
“I’ve been playing a lot of guitar,” he said. “Getting pretty good, actually. I practice every night. It’s kinda what’s keeping me sane.”
“That’s great,” she said, opening her menu. “It’s good to have a hobby.”
Sims hated that word — hobby. Music wasn’t a hobby. It was a basic human activity, as essential as language or religion, though he didn’t imagine that Jackie saw it like that. Music had never meant much to her, not even when she was young. As far as Sims knew, she’d never had a favorite band, only went to concerts when she was dragged along by school friends or guys she was dating. It had been a rift between them, the fact that he had a musical life and she didn’t.
“How are the kids?” he asked. “Everything okay at school?”
“Jason’s doing fine, but Trevor’s struggling with the math, as usual. I think he’s gonna need a tutor.”
Sims nodded grimly, adding another fifty or a hundred bucks a week to his mental tally. But what could you do? If the kid needed a tutor, he needed a tutor.
“What about you?” he said. “Anything new?”
“Well…” She hesitated for moment. “I think I’m gonna start studying for my real estate license.”
“Really?”
“I probably won’t make a lot of money at first, but there’s a lot of potential in the long run. Especially if the market picks up.”
“Hey, that’s great. I bet you’ll be good at that.”
The waitress came and took their orders. Sims kept staring at Jackie as she pored over the menu. She reminded him of someone, though he wasn’t exactly sure of whom. But then she smiled and said she’d like the scallops, and suddenly it was clear: the new Jackie reminded him of the Jackie he’d met ten years ago, the woman he’d fallen in love with and proposed to on the Staten Island Ferry. It was like she’d gone up to the attic and taken her old self out of storage, not just the face and the body, but that glow, that fresh, lovely glow that a woman gets when she knows she’s loved and desired. Sims hadn’t seen that glow for a long time.
She must have been reading his mind because she smiled sadly when the waitress left and said there was something else she needed to tell him, a pretty big thing, actually: she’d been seeing someone for the past three months, a high school assistant principal named Paul Gutierrez, and they’d just gotten engaged over the weekend. She held up her left hand so he could see the diamond ring, right there where Sims’s bigger diamond had once glittered.
“Paul’s a sweet guy,” she told him. “And the boys really like him.”
“Wow.” Sims kept his eyes on her finger. It was a lot easier than looking at her face. “That was quick.”
“When you’re our age, there’s not much reason to wait.”
“Wow,” he said again. “How the fuck did that happen?”
SIMS TOOK the news pretty hard. It was bad enough to think about Jackie sleeping with another man, but what killed him was the idea of this Paul guy living in his house, raising his kids. It was a weird, demoralizing feeling, knowing that this stranger would be helping Jason and Trevor with their homework, dropping them off at school, picking them up from soccer practice. Paul would play catch with them in the yard and take them on beach vacations, where they’d body surf and collect shells and little pieces of colored glass, and in the evening he’d take them out for pizza and ice cream. Maybe he’d take them on a day trip to the amusement park, where he’d ride the roller coaster, screaming along with the boys, and years later they’d all think back to that vacation and remember how great it was, how much they’d felt like a real family.