Текст книги "The Vacationers"

Автор книги: Emma Straub

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Day Seven

WAITING FOR A BABY WAS LIKE WAITING FOR A HEART attack—at a certain point, you had to just surrender and make other plans, not knowing if you’d have to cancel. Charles and Lawrence had taken a trip to Japan the previous year but had put off Paris when it seemed—for no real reason, Lawrence had just had a feeling—that they might be chosen. They had spent holidays at home alone, their anxiety too toxic to make small talk. The hoops prospective adoptive parents had to jump through were legion: writing letters, making websites, culling flattering family photographs without any wineglasses in them. The goal was to make your family sound stable and appealing, to have the birth mother imagine her child having a better life in your arms. Gay men were attractive options, Charles was surprised to learn, in part because there would never be any competition as to who the child’s real mother was. They’d never actually been chosen before, though, and this time the waiting had taken on a surreal quality, like being told that you were going to win the lottery, maybe, just hang on for a week and see if the numbers actually match.

It had been Lawrence’s plan from the beginning, and after they were married, there was no stopping him. Charles, on the other hand, had never truly visualized himself with a baby. He had Bobby and Sylvia, after all, and other friends had pipsqueaks for whom he could buy expensive, dry-clean-only clothes and other impractical gifts. Wasn’t that one of the perks of being homosexual, being able to adore children and then hand them back to their parents? Lawrence didn’t see it that way. Some of their friends had gone through lawyers, which were more expensive but also more private. Lawrence said they’d try that, too, if the agency didn’t work. They went to informational meetings at Hockney, at Price-Warner, everywhere gay couples were welcome. They sat in brightly colored waiting rooms as quiet as an oncology ward, trying not to make eye contact with the other hopeful couples in the room. Charles was surprised that the carpet wasn’t polka-dotted with holes burned by a thousand downcast stares. There were no balloons or cheery smiles in the waiting rooms, only in the glossy brochures.

Now the best they could do was keep themselves busy. Lawrence wished for a Rubik’s Cube, or knitting needles, not that he knew how to use either. Mallorca would have to suffice. It was a hot day, and Bobby and Carmen and Franny seemed happy enough to stay in the pool. Jim read a novel in the shade. Lawrence couldn’t take another whole day of nothing, and the Miró museum was nearby, a fifteen-minute drive down the mountain. They took Sylvia and went.

The museum itself wasn’t remarkable—a few large, cool rooms, and Miró’s playful paintings and drawings on the walls. One room had an exhibition of other Spanish artists, and they walked through quickly, pausing here and there. Lawrence liked one painting of Miró’s—oil and charcoal on canvas, large and beige, with one red spot in the middle—that looked like a giant swollen breast. Charles took his time in the last room, and Lawrence and Sylvia waited for him outside.

Outside the museum, below the city, the ocean was enormous and blue. The day smelled like jasmine and summertime. Sylvia put her hands on Charles’s and Lawrence’s shoulders, and said, “This’ll do.” Up a hill and around a corner were Miró’s studios. They crunched along the gravel and peeked inside his rooms, set up as though he would be home any moment. Easels held canvases, and half-used, rolled-up tubes of paint sat uncapped on his tables. Charles loved visiting other painters’ studios. In New York, the younger artists moved farther and farther out in Brooklyn, to Bushwick and corners of Greenpoint that nearly kissed Queens. His own studio was neat and white except for the floors, which were spotted with so many years of accidental drips. In Provincetown, he worked on the sunporch, or in a small, bright room that had once been an attic. Had Miró had any children? Charles leafed through the small pamphlet they’d been given at the door, but it didn’t say. Lots of artists had children, but they also had wives, or partners, someone to stay home. Why hadn’t they talked about that? Lawrence could take some time off, of course, a few months, but then wouldn’t he go back to work? Who was going to watch the baby? Charles wished that the social worker had sent a photograph, but they didn’t do that—as they’d explained in the meetings, it’s just like when people have a baby biologically. You see the child when it’s put into your arms.

Lawrence tilted his head and walked around to the room on the other side of the studio, so respectful of this man’s sacred space. Charles loved that about his husband, his willingness to see what other people couldn’t, that art was both mining and magic, a trade and a séance at once. It hadn’t been easy to convince Lawrence to come—two whole weeks with the Posts was not everyone’s idea of a vacation. Charles reached over and petted Lawrence’s head. They never had time like this in New York, when Lawrence was always running to the office. When they were in Provincetown, Charles would walk over to the bakery to get them breakfast, or would be in his studio while Lawrence slept in. It felt luxurious, the two of them just wandering through a museum on a weekday. Sylvia walked back out onto the gravel lookout, leaving them alone. Maybe it would have been easier to imagine if the child—Alphonse, his name was Alphonse—was a girl.

“Hello, there,” Lawrence said, circling back toward Charles. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned his head down so that it rested on Charles’s shoulder. It wasn’t comfortable—Lawrence was three inches taller—but it was good for a moment.

“I was just thinking about how nice it will be to go home,” Charles said.

“What have you done with my husband?” Lawrence said, laughing.

“What?” Charles pinched him in the side, sending him scooting a few inches away. “You act like I’ve been ignoring you.”

Lawrence groaned. “Of course you’ve been ignoring me.”

Charles poked his head outside, checking on Sylvia, who was lying prone on a bench, ignoring the other tourists, who were all taking photographs of the view. “Honey, no.”

“Honey, yes.” Lawrence stayed put. He recrossed his arms.

“Lawr, come on. How have I been ignoring you? We’re with half a dozen other people. What am I supposed to do, pretend I don’t hear or see them?”

“No,” Lawrence said, walking slowly back to Charles’s side. A German couple tromped in, and they lowered their voices. “I’m not asking you to be rude. I’m just asking you to be slightly less of a bloodhound, always three inches behind Franny’s ass.”

“Your ass is the only one I want to be three inches behind.”

“Don’t try being nice to me now, I’m mad at you.”

Charles had often thought that if they’d had the wherewithal or the money to actually produce a biological child, a boy or a girl made with Lawrence’s sperm, he wouldn’t feel remotely conflicted. How could he not love anything that had a face like that?

“I’m sorry,” Charles said. “I’m sorry. I know I get distracted when I’m around her. You are more important to me, I promise you.” This was not the first time they’d had this conversation, but it always surprised Charles. Luckily, he knew what Lawrence needed to hear. Whether he believed him or not was another story. Sometimes he did, and sometimes he didn’t. So much depended on Lawrence’s mood, on the hour of the day, on whether their most recent sex had been good or merely passable.

Lawrence closed his eyes, having heard what he’d needed to hear. “Fine. I think we’re both just anxious, you know? This is it, don’t you think? Can’t you just feel it?” He shivered, and then Charles did, too, as if an icy breeze had somehow made its way through the studio.

“Of course,” Charles said.

Franny hadn’t packed proper exercise clothes, but luckily her feet were the same size as Carmen’s, so she could borrow a pair of sneakers, and Carmen was so happy to lend them that it seemed like she might levitate. Fran wore leggings and a T-shirt she liked to sleep in, even though it had small, soft holes around the neckline. Her hair was too short to put into a ponytail, but she didn’t want it flying in her face (Franny imagined herself moving as quickly as a Williams sister, zooming from one corner of the court to another), so she’d also brought along the stretchy black headband she used when she washed her face.

Antoni Vert was standing behind the desk, just behind the receptionist. As in the photograph, he was wearing a baseball cap pulled low on his forehead, and a pair of reflective sunglasses hung on a neoprene cord around his neck. His face, though wider when she had seen it so often on a television screen, still looked to Franny like a Spanish movie star’s—the dimple in the chin, the black hair. She smiled and rushed toward the counter.

“Hello, Mr. Vert, Antoni, it is such a pleasure to meet you,” Franny said, holding out her right hand, the borrowed sneakers in her left.

Antoni swiveled at his hips and pointed at the wall clock. “You’re late.”

“Oh, am I?” Franny shook her head. “I’m so sorry. We’re still getting to know the island roads, I’m afraid.” Franny said this knowing full well that Mallorca had the most clearly marked highways she’d ever been on, gigantic signs with arrows and plenty of space. The royal we seemed to help her cause, as if she were blaming her lateness on some invisible chauffeur.

“We start now,” he said. “You need a racquet, yes?”

“Oh, shoot,” Franny said. Gemma had had a closet full of sporting equipment, of course. She was nothing if not healthy and industrious. There were probably cross-country skis hidden somewhere in the house, just in case the earth stopped spinning on its proper axis and the mountains were suddenly covered with powdery white snow. “It’s in the car!” She waved the sneakers at Antoni and then bolted out to the parking lot. “I’ll be right back!”

Franny laced up while Antoni waited, clearly irritated at the delay. What was three hundred euros a lesson? Franny chose not to do the math. It was a priceless experience she was giving herself, a gift that could not be bought at any other time or place. She double-knotted, trying to remember the last time she wore sneakers. Her best guess was sometime in 1995, when she was trying to get back into shape after Sylvia was born, doing Buns of Steel in the living room. “Ready.”

“Come,” Antoni said. He opened the door and waited for Franny to walk through it. She had to get so close to his body in order to pass, and she walked sideways, as slowly as possible, a happy little crab.

The courts seemed more crowded once she was on the other side of the fence. On television, they always looked so enormous, with these lithe young bodies scurrying around, but in reality a tennis court wasn’t very big. In fact, the courts were so close together that Franny worried she might hit balls into someone else’s game or, worse yet, into someone else’s face. Luckily, Antoni kept walking until they’d reached the final court in the row, which had a few courts’ cushion from their closest neighbors, a boy of about twelve and his coach.

“So, you know how to play?” Antoni spoke with a thick accent, his voice low and his tongue heavy.

“I watch everything,” she said, lying. “Even the small tournaments.” Franny tried to think of one to name, but couldn’t. “I have an excellent grasp of the rules.”

“And the last time you played?” Antoni reached into his pocket and pulled out a tennis ball. Franny wished that Charles had come along and was close enough to make a joke. It was strange, having this experience alone, when it would clearly (so clearly) become something that she would write about, a story she would codify into a moment on the page. There would be a witty and slightly naughty joke from her best friend, right there. Only he wasn’t. Franny could tell him all about it after, he would make the joke then, and after that, it was a matter of editing.

“Oh,” Franny said. “Ages ago. A decade?” One of the women in her detestable book club played tennis every week in Central Park, as spry and mean as a goose, and she and Franny had had a game one morning. The woman pelted her with ball after ball, always giggling afterward in faux apology. The bruises had lasted for weeks. “I’m not an athlete. I’m a writer. You know, there haven’t been very many good books about tennis. Do you ever think about writing a memoir? I have a lot of friends who have ghostwritten sports books. We should talk, if you’re interested.”

“Okay, we start easy,” Antoni said, ignoring her. He walked over to the far side of the net. “Ready?”

Before Franny knew it, Antoni had served a ball. She watched it land three feet ahead of her and laughed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Did you want me to return that? It just seems so funny, actually playing with you.”

“This is not playing. This is practice. Warm-up.” He hit another ball, and Franny was surprised to find her feet moving and her racquet outstretched. She connected—the racquet smacked the ball back over the net, and Franny was so thrilled by her own sporty prowess that she jumped up and down, ignoring the fact that Antoni was, of course, going to hit the ball right back. He did, and the ball skidded by her, its bouncing path to the fence undisturbed. “Sorry, sorry,” Franny said. “I’m ready now. Sorry! I just didn’t know that that was going to happen. Ready.” She dropped into a half-squat like the players on television did, waving her hips back and forth.

Antoni nodded, his eyes hidden behind the reflective panes of his sunglasses. He arched backward, throwing a ball high into the air. Franny had watched him play for so many years, she knew the motion of his body. It wasn’t an OCD tic, like some of the younger players had (Nando Filani was notorious for turning his head to the side and coughing, which McEnroe always likened to a prostate exam). Antoni’s body moved purposefully, his shoulders as wide as a swimmer’s. He threw another ball up and hit it slowly, as gently as a mother to a child. Franny bounced from side to side, waiting to see where the ball would land, and then hurried toward it, getting the edge of her racquet underneath it just in time to send it back over the net. They volleyed lightly for a few more strokes before Franny missed a shot, and she panted happily, exhilarated.

“Not bad,” Antoni said. Franny wiped her forehead with her fingertips. “Let me see a serve.” He walked over to her side of the net, coming deliberately behind Franny. He slid his sunglasses down his nose and then crossed his arms. “Toss, then serve.”

Franny bounced the ball a couple of times and was relieved to find that it felt good in her hand, familiar. There had been a time when this was a normal function for her, and she willed all the atoms in her body to remember those days, standing outside in Brooklyn, the girls from her high school team all cackling and yelling. She threw the ball into the air and swung her racquet overhead. Franny heard a loud crack, and then she wobbled forward a few feet, and the next thing she knew, she was staring into Antoni Vert’s shadowy face, lying on her back in the middle of the tennis court. At last, he looked as delighted to see her as she was to see him.

Bobby and Carmen were out by the pool doing their exercises, and normally that would have made Lawrence do an about-face and sit in the bedroom reading for a couple of hours, but the day was too beautiful to stay indoors. He put on his hat and sunglasses and headed outside, a novel tucked under his arm.

“Hey,” Bobby said from the deep end of the pool. He was treading water in the most athletic way possible, bouncing up and down like a spring, the damp ends of his curls weighty and dark.

“Hey!” Carmen said, mid push-up. She dipped down halfway, stopped, and then went even closer to the ground before straightening her arms and rocketing back up to a plank position. Lawrence was impressed.

“You are really good at that,” he said, and then kicked off his flip-flops and settled into one of the lounge chairs.

“Thanks!” Carmen said without stopping. “I can show you, if you want.”

Lawrence squeezed out a dollop of sunscreen into his palm and began to cover himself—arms, legs, cheeks, nose—with a thin coating. It was the expensive stuff, chalky white and impermeable.

Bobby stared. “What is that? Zinc?”

“What, this?” Lawrence said, turning the tube over. “I don’t know. It’s made of things I can’t pronounce.”

“Don’t you ever want a tan?” Bobby swam over to the side of the pool. “Sometimes I go to the beach with just tanning oil and fall asleep. It’s the best. You wake up and you’re totally bronzed. Like, a statue.”

“That sounds like an excellent way to get skin cancer.”

“Well, yeah, I guess.” Bobby did some flutter kicks, his feet sending little plumes of water into the air. Lawrence tried to imagine having a baby and then watching the baby grow into someone who used tanning oil. It wasn’t as bad as smoking crack, but it did seem to signify major differences in ideology. Bobby dunked his head underwater and then hoisted himself out of the pool. “I’m gonna hit the showers, guys. See you in a bit.”

Carmen grunted, and Lawrence nodded. For a few minutes, they stayed in silence, Carmen doing her push-ups and Lawrence doing nothing at all, just staring off into space and watching craggy faces emerge from the mountains, which happened as often as they appeared in clouds. There was a man with an enormous beard, a cat curled up into the shape of a doughnut, a Samoan mask, a sleeping baby.

“How long have you guys been together now?” Lawrence heard himself ask. He didn’t want to read the novel he’d brought outside. It was the next movie he was working on, a period– piece adaptation. Nineteenth-century Brits, lots of party scenes with scores of extras, lots of horses. Those were always the worst. Every page turned into nothing but dollar signs—Lawrence read the cost of crinolines, of vintage lace, of imported parasols. Werewolves weren’t great, either, but packages of fake hair were less expensive than real dogs for a hunting scene. His favorite movies of all were the tiny ones where the actors all wore their own clothes, brushed their own hair or didn’t, and everyone rented a country house for a week and slept all piled on top of one another like a litter of newborn kittens. He could do the accounting for those in his sleep.

“Me and Bobby?” Carmen sat with her legs wide open in straddle position and leaned forward. “Seven years, almost.”

“Wow, really?” Lawrence said. “Was he still in college?”

Carmen laughed. “I know, he was a baby. He only had one set of silverware. One fork, one knife, one spoon. And then a drawer full of plastic ones that he got from take-out places. It was like going out with a kid in high school, I swear.” She swung her torso over one leg and then crab-walked her fingers to the toe of her sneaker. “Fucking hamstrings.”

“Not to be rude, but how old were you when you met? We have a big age gap, too, and people ask me all the time. I don’t mean to be offensive.” Lawrence didn’t actually know if he meant to be offensive or not, but he was curious. He hated when people asked him the same question—young men phrased it in such a way that meant they thought Charlie was old, and old men phrased it in such a way that meant that they thought that Lawrence was nothing more than a blow-up toy, available for sex at all hours, in any orifice. It was nothing like either of those things. Lawrence never thought about the ten years between them except when they were playing Trivial Pursuit and Charles suddenly knew which actors were on which television shows, and who had been whose vice president. In their practical, daily life, the age difference mattered as much as who finished the toilet paper and needed to remember to replace it with a fresh roll, which is to say, if it ever mattered, it was only for a split second, and then it was forgotten. They had worried about Charles’s age, for the birth mothers, and now that they’d made it past the first round, Lawrence hoped that it wouldn’t be the thing standing in their way. They could change apartments, or neighborhoods, lots of things, but they couldn’t change that.

“Well, I’m forty now, so I guess I was thirty-four? Maybe thirty-three? I can’t remember what month he joined the gym.”

“And were you pretty serious right away?”

“I guess.” Carmen closed her legs. She reached up and pulled the elastic out of her ponytail, shaking her hair loose. It hung in awkward damp curls around her shoulders, kinking out at funny angles where the rubber band had held it in place. “We try to keep it casual, but with respect, you know?”

Lawrence didn’t, and shook his head.

“I mean, we’re exclusive, but for the first few years, it was more like, we’ll see. Now we’re really solid, though.”

“I gotcha.” It sounded like bullshit, like the sort of thing men with several second-string girlfriends might say. Lawrence had a dozen friends of just that description, men who refused to commit, because what was the point? But his friends were older, and only a handful of them were interested in having children. Life would be so much more interesting if one could ask all the questions one wanted to and expect honest answers. Lawrence just smiled with his lips closed.

Carmen pushed herself up to stand. It was still light, but the needles on the pine trees had started to shift from glittery to dark, which meant that the sun was saying farewell for the day. “What about you? When did you guys decide to get married? I mean, when did you know you were ready?”

“When we could.” Lawrence would have had a thousand weddings to Charles. They’d had a party each time a law passed, and one with their parents at City Hall, followed by a giant party at a restaurant in SoHo where Charles had drawn murals on the walls, so they were all surrounding themselves, smiling in two places at once, Lawrence and Charles and even Franny. That was one thing Lawrence hadn’t known when he was young, when he had fantasies about his Dream Wedding, back a hundred years ago when he’d stolen all of his sister’s Ken dolls and laid them on top of each other on his bunk bed, way up there where no one would see. Lawrence didn’t know then, and wouldn’t know for decades, that marriage meant sealing your fate with so many other people—the in-laws and the grandfathered-in friends of the bosom, the squealing children who would grow into adults who required wedding gifts of their own.

“That sounds nice,” Carmen said. She wasn’t really listening anymore, but instead halfway into her own Dream Wedding. It would be a small affair, maybe on the beach, with a reception inside afterward. All of her Cubano relatives would want a band, and so they would have one, the men in their guayaberas, the women with flowers behind their ears. Even though Carmen herself didn’t eat sugar, her mother would insist on a cake—tres leches—and everyone would have a piece. Bobby would pretend to shove it into her face, but instead feed her the tiniest bite, knowing full well that each swallow meant fifty more jumping jacks the next day. But on their wedding day, she would eat a whole piece and not care, she’d be that happy. Together, she and Bobby could be a training team, maybe someday leave Total Body Power and start their own gym. Carmen had already started thinking about names.

Clive. Clifton. Clarence. Lawrence had always imagined the baby being a boy, maybe because they were both men, maybe because he wanted a girl so badly that it felt like bad luck to even daydream about the possibility. Alphonse wasn’t right, but they could change it. C names felt natural, and slightly old-fashioned in a way that he liked. For a girl, he liked something more whimsical: Luella, Birdie, or maybe even something cinematic: Scarlett. A couple they knew had recently been chosen by a birth mother and were now delirious from lack of sleep, happy as clams. That was all Lawrence wanted—the chance to stare through bleary, four a.m. eyes at a slumbering Charles, wishing that he’d wake up and feed the baby. He could smell the sour spit-up, the foulness of the soiled diapers. He wanted it all.

Sometimes it was pleasant to sit in silence with a near stranger, both of you lost in your own thoughts. Once the pressure to speak was gone, the quiet could hover for hours, covering you in a sort of gossamer cloak, like two people staring out a moving train’s window. Both Lawrence and Carmen found that they liked each other far more than they imagined they might, and they quite happily sat together without speaking until the sunset was complete.

Franny was in bed with an ice pack on her head, where a large goose egg had already formed. Antoni had driven her home himself, a ride that she dearly wished she remembered for more than just her own throbbing skull. Antoni tried to explain to Charles, who answered the door, what had happened, but there wasn’t much to say. She had hit herself in the head with the butt of her tennis racquet and briefly knocked herself unconscious. She would be fine, Antoni was sure, though he admitted that he hadn’t seen it before, not such a direct hit on one’s own scalp. Antoni had been very sweet about the whole thing—when Antoni had his sunglasses and baseball hat off, Charles could see what had made Franny’s heart go aflutter. He was still gorgeous, and spoke so quickly with his beautiful mouth, Charles almost didn’t even care what he was saying, just so long as he kept talking. She had a strong swing, Antoni said, and smiled. They would reschedule, if she wished, and he would call to check on her. Antoni wrote down the name of his personal doctor for Charles and then left, getting into a waiting car driven by one of his employees, who had followed them up the mountain.

They’d cooked and eaten dinner without her—Charles delivered a plate to her bedside and returned when Franny had taken a few bites. Carmen was eager to help with the dishes, even more so in Franny’s absence, but Jim shooed her away from the sink. He pushed his sleeves up to his elbows and turned on the faucet. “You go on,” he said. “I’ll do it.” Jim spoke with authority, and Carmen backed away, hands raised.

“You wash, I’ll dry,” Charles said, setting out a dish towel on the countertop. Bobby had vanished into his bedroom, and Sylvia was sitting at the dining room table, hypnotized by her laptop. The house was as quiet as ever, though outside the wind was picking up, and occasionally branches tapped against the windows.

Jim dampened the sponge and dove in. They worked silently for a few minutes, an assembly line of two. At the table, Sylvia gave a loud snort and then a louder laugh. Both Jim and Charles turned to her for an explanation, but her eyes stayed glued to the screen.

“I do not understand the Internet,” Charles said. “It’s a giant void.”

Jim agreed. “A limitless void. Hey, Syl,” he said. “How’s it going over there?”

Sylvia looked up. She had the crazed expression of a child who’d stared directly into the sun, blinking and temporarily blind. “What are you guys talking about?”

“Nothing, dear,” Jim said, laughing. Sylvia went back to the computer screen and started typing quickly.

Charles shrugged. “At least she could always get a job as a typist.”

“I don’t think those exist anymore. Administrative assistants, maybe, but not typists.”

“Franny seems okay.” They made eye contact for a moment while Jim handed off a dripping plate.

“Does she?” Jim wiped the back of his wet hand across his forehead. “I really can’t tell anymore. You’d know better than I.”

Charles clutched the plate in both hands, turning it over and over until it was dry. “I think she does. That bump isn’t pretty, but it’ll heal.”

“Do we need to sue that tennis player, whatshisface? I never liked him. That awful ponytail, now this.” Another lawsuit would balance out his own, force them to band together. Jim imagined himself and Franny striding into a Mallorcan courtroom, the bump on Franny’s head now the size of a tennis ball, hard proof of Antoni’s negligence.

“And how are you?” Charles asked. He purposefully looked toward the dishes, now dry and ready to be put away, and toward his wet hands, which he toweled off.

Sylvia had started playing a video, the sound of which blasted out of her tinny computer speakers. She was off in teenager land, content and miserable in equal measure, oblivious to the trials of any human heart that wasn’t her own. Jim turned the sink back on, though there were no more dishes to wash.

“I have no idea,” he said.

Charles placed his hand on Jim’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. He wanted to tell Jim that everything would be fine, and that his marriage was as solid as it had ever been, but lying seemed worse than offering a small show of sympathy.