Forever is the Worst Long Time: A Novel Read online

  You had started to squirm, so my father put you on the ground to crawl around. He walked over to the fridge. “It’s just that I thought you would have written a book by now, even if you didn’t have it published,” he said, and stuck his head behind the fridge door. “I know that was important to you.”

  “Well, it’s not anymore,” I said, dropping the peppers onto the skillet. They cracked and sizzled as I pushed them around on the cast iron with a wood spatula. “I have bills to pay. A family to take care of.”

  He retrieved a beer and returned to the table without responding.

  “I feel good about it,” I insisted, though of course my insisting this only underscored the fact that I felt anything but.

  “Okay,” he said.

  One of my earliest memories is of my father standing over me at the dining room table as I did my math homework. Back then, most parents’ idea of getting involved with their kids’ schooling involved signing report cards and attending the occasional conference; homework was a matter overseen by teachers. But there was my father, watching me arrive at one wrong conclusion after another.

  “Come on, son,” he said, pointing at the numbers I had just bungled. “You can do this. You can figure it out.” His voice was stern, but I remember thinking that he must love me—not just to help me, but also to be so convinced that I actually had it in me to get the answer right in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

  But that memory didn’t come to mind as I angrily tossed the steak I had just seasoned onto a pan and placed it beneath the broiler. “Anyway, what do you care?” I asked. “I’m not writing about cars.”

  A stranger could have looked at my father and seen that I had wounded him. He stood and grabbed his beer. “I just thought it would be good for you to be doing what you claim to love so much,” he said, and walked into the living room.

  “I’m a jerk,” I told Lou that night. My father had spent dinner talking to everyone but me and had not even looked me in the eye when we said good night. Yes, he was stubborn, and yes, he could be selective in his affection. I still knew I had been wrong.

  Lou was sitting in the armchair across from the sofa, her knees hugged to her chest. She had recently cut her hair so that it just barely reached her shoulders. I liked it better before, but it looked nice on her.

  “You’re not a jerk.” Noting my skeptical expression, she said, “Okay, maybe that was a little jerky, but you’ve been programmed to respond that way. Why don’t you apologize the next time you see him? Or even call him tomorrow. That would go a long way.”

  “Yeah. I guess an apology wouldn’t be the worst idea.” Beside me, there was a navy throw pillow embroidered with yellow stars, which made up some sort of constellation that I could not identify. “Is this new?” I asked, pointing to the pillow.

  She nodded. “Do you hate it?”

  “No, no, not at all. It’s nice.”

  When Kathryn and I lived together, I remember wishing that our everyday involved more passion and less humdrum. Now the humdrum seemed its own sort of bliss, particularly where Lou and I were concerned. I didn’t want to give up our comfortable living arrangement, and her small domestic acts—like buying throw pillows or rearranging the living room furniture—fueled my hope that she intended to stay in town, in our house, where we would raise our child. Together.

  “So . . .” She scrunched up her nose. “I got my first alimony check today.”

  “Really?” I had not been expecting that. Their divorce had long been final, but the collapse of Rob’s company had tangled up their postdivorce negotiations. He had to make a statement to a government panel, and Andrea had been called to testify before Congress. They had each emerged with their Teflon coating intact, and Rob had quickly found work at a small financial firm run by one of his old business-school classmates. I was glad; this seemed like a sign he was on his way to putting his life back together. I didn’t know if he was still with Andrea. I didn’t want to know.

  “Yeah. Saturday would have been our eleven-year anniversary,” she said quietly.

  They could have made it, I thought. They could have come back together after their separation if I had not inserted myself between them. “Eleven. Wow.”

  “I know. Technically, we made it to ten; the divorce went through just after our anniversary. But I only think of us having been married for nine. For me, it was over from the minute I saw him with his hand on her lower back.”

  I looked at her with surprise. “When was this?”

  “Two weeks before Jason’s funeral, maybe? Three? I had been downtown, and I thought I would surprise him at the office, since he said he wouldn’t be working super late. I was just outside the building and saw them coming through the revolving door.” She bit her bottom lip. “They were going through together, instead of one at a time, like everyone else. When they came out, he was touching her back. That was the moment I knew it was over between us.”

  I shook my head, unsure of what to say.

  “To this day, he swears they weren’t fooling around then. But there was an intimacy between them, you know? It seemed like the first real nail in the coffin for us.”

  A year earlier, even six months before, I would have felt vindicated by this news. (See! He deserved it!) Now I felt sad for Lou, and for Rob, too. After all, if anyone knew about the aftershocks of an ill-advised decision, it was me. “I’m sorry, Lou.”

  “Thanks. And I’m sorry I never told you that before. I probably should have when I came over after Wisnewski’s funeral.”

  “It’s okay. Thanks for telling me now.” What had driven him to Andrea? Had he been depressed? Wisnewski’s death must have hit him pretty hard. And his work was taxing in a way that I had not fully appreciated until after his company collapsed. Maybe what I had registered as stress was really a crisis. Why hadn’t I paid attention to the signs? Why hadn’t I tried to intervene?

  Because I had been busy obsessing over his wife, I realized with disgrace.

  Lou sighed and stretched her legs out in front of her. “Anyway, the alimony isn’t much, which is fine with me. It’s almost enough to live on.”

  “Here? Or in New York?” I asked.

  She looked at me with surprise. “I guess we should talk about that, huh?”

  “I was hoping we would at some point.”

  “The longer I stay, the harder it will be if I leave.”

  “So don’t,” I said. “The schools are great here. It’s better for you and Emerson to have me around. You . . . you’ve been doing so well.”

  “My mood, you mean.”

  I nodded. “We don’t have to live together. We could find town houses in the same neighborhood or something like that, so I’d be there for you, but you and Emerson could have your own place.”

  “In this market? I couldn’t get a decent mortgage to save my life.”

  “You could rent. I could help you. There are all kinds of options. Do you really want to go back?”

  “I don’t know that I do. New York feels like a city for premotherhood me. And . . .” She looked at her nails. “It was the place I shared with Rob. Going back would be incredibly painful. That’s part of the reason I came to live with you—I just couldn’t be there anymore.”

  She still loved him. That kept you near me for now. But one day it might be the very same thing that pulled her away. She added, “I’m not so sure this is it, either. Haven’t you ever wanted to live anywhere else?”

  “Of course. I’ve always wanted to live in a city. Chicago, maybe, or somewhere warmer, like Austin or New Orleans.”

  She smiled wistfully. “That sounds fun. Let’s see how the next few months go.”

  A few weeks later, Lou got a job at our neighbor Yvonne’s bookstore, and there was no more talk of her moving elsewhere. The bookstore was the kind of place that sold dream catchers and crystals and served fifty-two varieties of tea—but not espresso, which was apparently bad for one’s root chakra, wherever that was located. She coul
d take the bus there if I needed the car, and Yvonne had given her a flexible schedule.

  “You’re sure about this?” I asked Lou. She was sitting on the counter, looking pleased.

  “Positive. I want to make sure I’m able to take care of Emerson. Given the pickle Rob got himself in, there’s no saying if alimony will last, and poetry doesn’t exactly pay the bills.”

  “But you have me,” I said. It wasn’t that I was making an incredible amount of money, but it was enough for the three of us. “And now that you’re feeling better, wouldn’t you rather use that time to write again? After all, your last book—”

  “The publisher paid me two thousand dollars for it,” she said, almost apologetic in tone. “And that was generous. I’m not exactly Maya Angelou.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, know that I’m going to keep helping, and that won’t change.”

  “I know, and I appreciate it. I’ll write at night and on the weekends. Anyway, I don’t have the drive I did before. I’m sure it will come back, but for now, the muse is missing.” She eyed me. “What about you, Jim? Are you back at it?”

  “Nothing more than the occasional paragraph, but maybe I’ll try a novel again soon,” I said, so confidently that I almost believed myself.

  The first year of your life was the fastest long time I have ever lived through. When your birthday came, we did what parents do and threw you a big party you would never remember. We invited the neighbors and their kids, and Victoria and her boys flew in from Oregon. My father came over with Miriam, whom he had finally begun referring to as his girlfriend.

  “Where is my princess?” he asked as he came shooting through the door. He scooped you up in his arms and then showed you the wooden rocking horse he had made for you, which you spent the next hour climbing on and falling off of.

  Lou decorated the house with streamers and clusters of inflated balloons and made cupcakes with buttercream frosting and brightly colored sprinkles. Your face lit up as we sang “Happy Birthday”; you knew that song was for you, sung by the people who loved you most. I expected you to try to stick the whole cupcake in your mouth or maybe smash it with your palm, but you stuck a careful finger in, lifted it to your lips, and broke into a grin as the sugar dissolved on your tongue.

  “Let’s get a picture,” my father said, clapping my shoulder. I had apologized for snapping at him months before, and we had since resumed our cordially distant relationship.

  “Good idea,” I said, motioning for everyone to come over.

  My father shook his head. “No, I mean just the three of you.”

  I frowned, but he pushed me forward, firmly enough that I knew he meant business. “Could you trust me for a single second of your life?” he groused.

  “Fine,” I said, and sighed. I motioned for Lou to come toward me. “My father wants a picture of the three of us.”

  Lou and I positioned ourselves behind your high chair, but my father kept motioning for us to crouch lower and get closer. “Come on, pretend you like each other,” he said with mock exasperation.

  Lou put her arm around my back and pulled me toward her. “Who needs to pretend?” she shot back.

  After everyone left and Lou and I had put you to bed, we were in the kitchen washing the dishes that hadn’t fit into the dishwasher. I raised one of the wineglasses I had just rinsed. “To Emerson, and making it a year.”

  She lifted another goblet and clinked its edge against my glass. “To our girl, and making it. We did better than could be expected, considering the circumstances.”

  “Cheers to that.” I hesitated, then decided that yes—your birthday was as good a time as any to demonstrate, even in a small way, that I was moving on, that I was working hard to really, truly, let her go. “Lou?”

  She had just set down the glass and was reaching for a bowl of chips. “Yes?”

  “I think I’m ready to start dating.”

  She dumped the leftover chips in the waste bin and looked at me questioningly.

  “Other people,” I clarified.

  “Okay . . . ,” she said, and handed me the bowl to wash. “What does that mean for us?”

  “I’m not sure. Nothing has to change unless we want it to. Are you okay with that?” I asked.

  I couldn’t quite read the expression on her face. “Of course I am. I want you to be happy.”

  “You can, too, if you want. Date, I mean.”

  She grabbed a platter from the table and passed it to me. “I appreciate that, but I’m not there yet. I may not be for a while. I want to make sure I’m okay. It’s been a rocky couple of years.”

  “That makes sense. And if that changes, that’s okay, too.”

  Lou handed me the bottle of milk you had polished off before bed. It was mind-boggling to think that less than two years earlier, she and I had split a bottle of champagne and given in to the fantastical notion that nothing mattered but that moment.

  Now I was constantly thinking ahead. In the next thirty minutes, I would check on you to make sure you weren’t wet or twisted up in your blanket. I would need to get myself to bed within the next hour if I was going to make it to the office on time the following morning and begin to plow through the twenty-seven projects that were waiting for me. At the end of the month, the largest of those projects was due, and I was fairly certain it was a steaming hot pile of garbage that would eat up most of the next two workweeks. And so on and so forth.

  But then I looked over at Lou, who gave me the same lopsided, dimpled smile that you have, Emerson. And for just a few seconds, I forgot all about what was next and was able to soak up the good fortune of here and now.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Winter 2010–Summer 2010

  Having not truly dated in so long, I had serious reservations about the whole ordeal. I soon found it was easiest to be myself when I pretended to be someone else.

  With Lilah, an attractive cellist who was about to go on tour in Europe, I carried myself like a man with innate confidence in his ability to delight women.

  To Amy, a radio producer with a wicked wit, I was a writer who was on the verge of penning the next great Canadian novel (this, Amy and I agreed, seemed slightly less impossible than attempting the next great American novel; no matter that I had no claim on Canada and would have to go up against Margaret Atwood).

  Mallory, who never did say what she did for a living, found in me an adept conversationalist. I quickly came to regret my conversation skills when it became apparent that Mallory only wanted to discuss her pet skunk. They’re quite pleasant after you remove the glands that produce their signature scent, she informed me, showing me a picture of the striped beast lying prostrate on her bed. And as companions went, she said, they were as fun as any ferret. I didn’t have it in me to tell Mallory that I found ferrets, skunks, and her terrifying.

  You’d think that being a single father would put me at a disadvantage in the dating world, but no. Apparently using the phrase shared custody on one’s online profile signifies a certain level of trustworthiness and reliability—or maybe it just highlighted my virility. And so I met many smart, captivating women. It was a shame that I wasn’t interested in pursuing a long-term relationship with a single one of them.

  “How was she?” Lou would ask after I came back from a date.

  “Fine, but nothing to write home about,” I’d say, and we would laugh. But when I went to bed alone each night, I wondered why I wasn’t able to have a deeper connection with any of these women. Lilah, for example, had emailed from Prague to say she would like to see me again as soon as she returned to the States. Why could I not fall in love with her—or at least give it the old college try? Or what about Amy, or perhaps Bridget, who was cute and cultured and eager to bring me home with her?

  And of course, there was my failure with Kathryn, which still played on a loop in the back of my mind. One evening I was sorting through my inbox and came upon an email she had sent me not long after we had started dating. The message was only inq
uiring about whether I would join her at a friend’s art show, but it was so clever and warm that I found myself thinking that if we met for the first time now, and we were both single, I would want to be with her—even if marriage and children were what she was gunning for. What a terrible shame, I thought as I refiled the message, unable to bring myself to delete it.

  “What are you even doing, my friend?” said Pascal when we met for drinks downtown one evening. “Surely there’s at least one woman who you could see for, say, a third date.”

  “I’ve gone on third dates,” I said, when in fact the only person I had seen three times was Lilah, and that was because I knew she was about to hop on a transatlantic flight. “Anyway, this coming from a serial dater.”

  “It all looks so shiny in the rearview mirror,” he said in his songbird lilt. “I wouldn’t wish my postdivorce years on my worst enemy. Now that Winnie has finally taken me back, I’m as happy as a clam in possession of the world’s largest pearl.”

  I tipped my drink at him. “Isn’t a pearl a trapped granule of debris that builds up with years of irritation?”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “The point is, Pascal, I’ve moved on from Lou. You should be proud of me.”

  “I’m glad you’re feeling better, James. I am. But as long as you and Lou are living in the same house, can you really move on?”

  Maybe he has a point, I thought that night as I heard Lou tinkering in the bathroom. But what would it do to you, Emerson, if we separated? This was the question that woke me at two in the morning, and again at four, and sometimes left me staring at the ceiling until my alarm went off hours later.

  The night I had seen Pascal, Lou knocked on my bedroom door on her way to bed. “Jim?” she said without opening the door. “You check on Em yet?”

  “Yes,” I called.

  “Thanks. Let me get her if she wakes up.”