“Jake?” she said.
“Mom,” he said. “I need my bed.”
Ava took a drag of her cigarette-a nasty habit, one she would have preferred to keep secret from him. She exhaled, then nodded. She let him go.
For four years she had been adrift. She had lost a baby. Her son Ernie. She had carried him for nine months, pushed him out of her body without any drugs, she had nursed him and cared for him for eight weeks. These weeks had been blissful. Ernie was constantly in her arms, his hungry mouth tugged on her breast, his tiny hands grabbed at her hair. How smitten she had been, how helplessly in love. Jordan got tired and occasionally grumbled when he had to get up for a feeding, but she never complained. She wasn’t tired; she was bursting with purpose, dizzy with joy.
And then the inverse of that. The horror.
He had been perfectly healthy. Ava had just taken him for his two-month checkup, and Ted Field had declared him thriving. There was no discernible reason for the fact that he stopped breathing. And since there was no reason, it was impossible to comprehend. There must have been some mistake, he would wake up and be returned to her, squirming and flashing his toothless smile. For days afterward Ava had awoken each morning believing that she would find Ernie alive.
But no.
Jordan had been at the newspaper. He walked in a few steps behind the paramedics, holding his briefcase. Ava was confused by this at first. The head paramedic lifted Ernie out of her arms and laid him on a mat and tried to revive him, doing CPR with two fingers. Ava dissolved into Jordan, and he held her, both of them shaking, as they watched the fruitless efforts to save their son.
Jordan whispered, “I am so sorry, Ava. I am so, so sorry.”
The apology made sense only later, once she’d pieced together the fact that Jordan hadn’t been in the house that night. He had been at work.
Ava fancied herself a reasonable woman. She had grown up in a family of six children, she had lived on two continents, she had a reservoir of understanding about human beings and the things that motivated them and the ways they sometimes acted.
But Jordan’s being at work, on the night Ernie stopped breathing? That was something she could not reconcile. She knew that Jordan’s absence hadn’t caused Ernie’s death, and yet the two facts were linked in her mind. Ernie’s death was a mystery. There was no one to blame. Jordan At Work was a reason Ava could cling to. It was a shard of obsidian that she polished over and over.
“He was in distress. You might have heard him if you’d been home! You might have been able to save him!”
In the grip of Ava’s mind, Jordan was at fault. He hadn’t caused Ernie’s death, but he had made the circumstances of Ernie’s death unbearable.
Ava knew about Jordan and Zoe. She had first suspected they were having an affair in May of the previous year. Since Jake and Penny started dating, Jordan and Zoe had shared the responsibility of transporting the young lovers back and forth. One day Ava looked out the window of Ernie’s nursery and saw Jordan and Zoe sitting on the hood of Zoe’s orange car, talking. Jordan seemed happy and animated, and Ava thought, He never looks that way when he talks to me. Then she thought, He never talks to me.
And then, a month or two later, she climbed into the Land Rover to drive to the cemetery with a bouquet of while lilies for Ernie’s grave, and her senses were assaulted by a foul smell. It was a hot day, the car had been closed up overnight, and Jordan had left a crumpled brown lunch bag on the passenger seat. The bag had a dark stain spread across the bottom, and it was leaking some kind of milky liquid all over the leather. Ava carefully picked up the dripping bag and carried it to the trash can in the garage. Before she threw the bag away, she looked inside. There was a small Tupperware container-not quite closed-of spoiled, reeking coleslaw. That was the culprit. Also in the bag were some sandwich crusts and a fudge brownie, wrapped in wax paper. Ava studied the brownie. This particular kind of brownie… in wax paper.
Ava thought, Zoe.
Huh?
Then she saw that there was a recipe card in the bag, folded in half.
It was a note. It said: It’s ridiculous how much I love you.
Ava didn’t say anything to Jake about their encounter in the backyard of the bungalow in Fremantle, and eventually her silence was rewarded: on August 14, the coldest day of the winter-the temperature was a brisk 52 degrees Fahrenheit-Jake entered the kitchen at five-thirty in the morning. Ava was at the table, drinking Lady Grey tea and doing the crossword puzzle from the previous day’s newspaper. Jake was wearing a pair of jeans that Penny had scribbled on and his navy blue Nantucket Whalers sweatshirt. He entered the kitchen with an air of intent, as though he and his mother had an appointment, and Ava thought that while some warning would have been nice, she had no reason to be surprised. She had caught him at something, and Jake was the kind of kid who would want to explain himself.
Ava said, “Would you like some tea?”
“Actually, I’ve started drinking short blacks,” he said.
“Short blacks?” Ava said. She had to suppress a smile. She didn’t want him to know how much it delighted her to hear him use the Australian term. “Have you really?”
He gave a serious nod, and she brought out the French press and the espresso powder and started the kettle. This bought her some time. All she hoped was that Jordan would stay asleep. On Nantucket he was always up at the crack of dawn, but here he woke when he wanted to, sometimes as late as eight-thirty.
When the coffee was ready, Ava poured a cup for Jake and brought it to the table.
“Thanks,” he said, and he took a sip as she watched him.
“As good as at the Dome?” she asked.
“Better.”
He was lying, but it was sweet.
“So,” she said.
He took a big, heaving breath. Then he stared at her, mute.
She was afraid to prompt him. She was afraid of scaring him away.
Finally he said, “I want to ask you about Penny.”
“Penny?” she said.
“When the two of you… when she was with you in Ernie’s nursery, what kind of stuff did you talk about? I know you were close. I know she told you things, Mom.”
Ava had not confronted Jordan about Zoe. She had thought she might, especially in the first days after finding the note. It’s ridiculous how much I love you. Ava felt betrayed. Of course she felt betrayed! Ava and Zoe had been good friends before Ernie died. The five of them-she and Jordan and Zoe and Al and Lynne-had been a group, a merry band. All those weekends together, so many shared hours with the kids. Ava thought back to how Jordan and Zoe had acted together over the years. They had been close, they had been aligned, they had had that American camaraderie, they had the same political views, they liked the same music, that kind of thing. Ava had never cared about that. And the fact of the matter was, she didn’t care what Jordan and Zoe were doing behind her back now. Let them carry on like Penny and Jake, like a couple of horny teenagers! Let them leave little love notes for each other! Jordan had proved himself to be no better than his father, a common philanderer! Jordan could seek comfort in another woman’s arms, even if that woman was Ava’s friend. Ava didn’t care. They could both go to hell. She had bigger things on her mind. She had lost her child.
Their affair alleviated her guilt. She had abandoned her marriage, and also her friendship with Zoe. Now the two of them didn’t need her anymore. They had each other. Ava wanted to be left alone. They would leave her alone.