“Joanna.” Charles followed her down the candy aisle. “This is inappropriate.”
“Go away,” she said, shaking him off. The lone counterperson looked over. The register to her right said out of service. Next to her was a big box of horoscope scrolls.
She zigzagged through the aisles, passing the mini-bags of chips, the refrigerator cases of soda. Pepsi. Nestea. Fresca. She kept her arms glued to her sides, her shoulders in.
“Will you come back to the car?” Charles protested. “We can talk about it there, okay? We don’t need to be in here.”
She walked down the row of car maintenance products, motor oil and wiper fluid and air fresheners. Charles let out a frustrated grunt, then turned to the do-it-yourself coffee bar, poured himself a cup of coffee, and brought it to the register. “Hello,” he said pleasantly to the counter-woman. After he paid, Charles lingered by the door, sipping his coffee, watching her.
She did another lap of the convenience store, gazing at every item. So she was disappointed. So Charles had his idealized Bronwyn. Joanna had her ideal, too. Someone who hadn’t disappointed her. Someone she’d probably never know well enough to disappoint her.
She dared to imagine the look on Charles’s face if she told him what sometimes went through her mind. The feeling that had coursed through her body the first time she’d seen his brother standing in the kitchen at Roderick, the very first day Charles brought her there. She’d walked into the kitchen before Charles and his mother, and there was Scott, standing at the fridge. She hadn’t anticipated the sultry, desirous heat to ripple through her when he turned those eyes on her, those mysterious, dangerous, heavy-lidded eyes, looking her up and down, looking inside her. When she reached out her hand for him to shake, her movements were heavy and dreamlike. She was rendered breathless.
She could tell Charles that whenever they had dinner at his parents’ house, she hoped Scott would join them. For Scott would sit there, thrillingly sullen and noncompliant. Sometimes she felt him watching her, his gaze predatory and primal. She had dreams about him, too. In her fantasies, Scott was rough and passionate. It was after those dreams that she woke up face-down on her stomach, her hand between her legs.
She looked at her husband, leaning against the rack of newspapers, drinking his cup of coffee. It was amazing how separate they were. Here she was with this huge, ghastly secret she could say, silent and closed inside of her. He had no idea.
An obese man gathered up a few bottles of soda from the counter and trundled out the door. The little TV behind the counter broke for commercials, and a local news teaser came on. “Unknown death at a local Philadelphia school leads to questions,” the newscaster announced.
Joanna froze. Charles pivoted, his eyes on the TV.
The newscast’s signature music blared. “We have the exclusive,” a second newscaster bragged. “Up next.”
The fluorescent lights pulsed. The hot dog machine creaked atonally. Joanna walked to Charles and put a hand on his arm. “It’s not the boy from Swithin,” she said.
Charles didn’t move.
“They said a Philadelphia school. Swithin is too far out.” A small noise escaped from Charles’s throat.
“And, I mean, Swithin wouldn’t release this kind of story to the press, right? They’d keep it quiet.”
Charles gazed at her, fear in his eyes.
“They would,” Joanna said.
They had no choice but to stay in the mini-mart to watch the rest of the news. The story came on almost at the end. It was about a boy from an inner-city Philadelphia school, just as Joanna had predicted, gunned down in his neighborhood for what police suspected had to do with drugs. They watched as snapshots of the boy paraded past. There he was opening a Christmas present, then standing with a whole gaggle of other Latino kids, then kissing the cheek of a woman of indeterminate age.
Joanna turned to Charles and put her hand on his waist. They didn’t say anything for a long time.
“They want me to interview someone for work next week,” Charles croaked. “Like, follow them around all day. They want me to write a story for one of the magazines. A magazine that’s advertising this community that lives like the Amish, but at least it’s a shot at writing something.”
Joanna put a finger to her mouth, not following why he was bringing this up right now.
“It’s weird,” he went on. “I’m not going to have anything in common with them. They had normal lives before this, like you and me. They live off the land, to build their houses, to get rid of TVs and cars. It’s not like we’re going to get along.”
She searched his face. “But you don’t have to be friends with them, do you? You just have to interview them.”
“No, you’re right. Of course you’re right. The thing is, it’s on Tuesday. The day of your mom’s … thing.”
“Oh.” Joanna raked her hand through her hair. “It’s all right if you don’t come. It’s not a big deal. It’s a good thing, like you said. You’ll get a writing credit.”
Charles picked at the plastic lid to his coffee. “I should just quit instead.”
“Quit?”
“I don’t have to do it. I don’t have to break my commitment to you.”
She breathed out. “I go to my mom’s all the time. It’s not a big deal.”
Charles’s jaw wobbled.
Joanna cocked her head. “You’re serious? You want to quit.”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Why?”
“It’s insincere, writing for things I don’t believe in. I feel like I lie for a living.”
She leaned against the window. “Everyone lies for a living. And anyway, it’s a group of people who want to live in log cabins. It’s a little weird, but it doesn’t seem amoral.”
“Maybe it’s not just that. I don’t feel right about any of it anymore.”
“And so then what? Would you look for another job?”
“I don’t know.”
The air around them felt fraught. She wondered if there was something more he was trying to tell her in all this. She glanced at the television again. The news had moved on to a weather report. Rain for the next few days. Today’s sun was a short-lived tease.
She turned back to Charles. “Don’t quit your job, okay? Try to have a clear head about this. Do the interview next week and then we’ll figure out your job situation together.”
He paused a few moments, and then nodded his head. She rested her head on his shoulder, relieved. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry,” Charles said, staring off toward the freezers.
And then they walked out to the car, unlocked it, and Joanna drove home. It ended the argument for the night, deflating the balloon of tension. Because really, after that, there wasn’t much more either of them could say.
Chapter 11
They sat on the couch and watched TV, quietly at first. Awkwardly. Then the next day, he said hi. She said hi back. They said nothing after that, but at least they continued watching together. Sometimes he laughed at the jokes on sitcoms. Sometimes she walked into the room and found him watching PBS nature programs— about the mating habits of weasels, about lions on the Serengeti—and was surprised, never knowing he liked these shows. Now when Scott went into his room, he didn’t always shut the door. He even joined Sylvie for dinner last night, whereas before he’d just eaten on his own, often standing over the sink, shoving bites into his mouth as fast as he could.
She offered to make him whatever he wanted. Finally he said he wouldn’t mind a banana cream pie. It seemed so random—banana cream pie! She’d never seen him eat a banana in his life. But after she made the pie, throwing out her first attempt at the crust because it was a bit too soggy, she watched him eat it with pleasure, every forkful a confirmation that she was doing something right. She didn’t want to comment on the sudden shift in their dynamic. Scott was like a flighty cat—the slightest thing would send him scurrying back under the desk. And what would she say, anyway? Gee, isn’t this nice? You and I are finally acting like mother and son! He’d sneer.
She listened to him breathing evenly as he slept in his old bedroom. It was the same thing she did when he was a little boy, hovering over his soft, twisted shape, wondering who he was, what the first eighteen months of his life had been like before she’d come along. Those eighteen months worried her, certainly; there were plenty of things that could happen to a child in that span of time that could affect them for life. Why had his mother given him up, ultimately? Had it been the right thing to do to not ask to know anything about her, beyond that she was healthy and living across the country? Scott was brought to them by plane; Sylvie had stood with James and Charles at the airport gate, her stomach jumping nervously as two adoption coordinators stepped off the Jetway dragging a baby carrier, a fold-up stroller, a bunch of cloth bags, and, finally, a stroller containing Scott. “Oh,” Sylvie had cried, clutching her hands at her breastbone when she saw him, those round, shiny eyes, that small dewdrop of a mouth, those fat cheeks. He was such a little person, so different than she was. It wasn’t the same having him in the house as it had been when Charles was a baby; she never had an intuitive, maternal sense of what he might do next. When he cried and cried, she had no idea what he wanted. Because she wasn’t his coauthor, because he hadn’t sprung from her, he would always be impenetrable and alien. Sylvie sometimes fretted that there might be a more suitable mother out there for Scott who would understand him instinctively and automatically, bringing him what he needed, instantly hushing him when he sobbed.
When Scott was about seven, he took piano lessons from the same woman Charles did: Rose, an African-American woman who taught out of her home. It didn’t take long for Rose to become smitten with Scott and Scott to become smitten with her. While she assigned Charles Chopin and Beethoven pieces, she taught Scott jazz standards, The Entertainer. “I can tell he’ll be a tough one, and I want to make it fun for him,” Rose explained to Sylvie. “I want to make sure he keeps coming to lessons.” Once, Sylvie arrived to pick Scott up from his lesson a little early and heard the two of them talking in the piano room, giggling and pressing keys. Her heart felt sore; she resented Rose for her easy rapport with Scott. Why couldn’t Scott be this way at home with her, his own mother? A year later, Rose announced that she was moving to Georgia to be with her mother, who’d been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Sylvie taught the boys piano herself for a while, drawing from her ten years of lessons, but Scott immediately lost interest.
And now, standing over his bed, she wished she could look inside his head. Because that was the thing—if Sylvie thought she didn’t understand him when he was a toddler or a seven-year-old or even a teenager, he was thick, cinder-block wall to her now. She hadn’t realized how good she’d had it, how much he used to let her in. But as she gazed down at him, one side of her wished she could know, truly, what had happened with the wrestlers. But at the same time, knowing for sure scared her. What if he had done something? Could she bear to have him under this same roof? Could she ever look at him in the same way again?