You reached over Violet’s head to put your arms around me. I hugged you back, and so did Violet, her little arms wrapping as far as they could around your rib cage.
“You’re okay,” Violet said to you. “There’s no blood or anything.”
• • •
AFTER YOU CALMED DOWN a bit, and after I found a pen and a pad of paper in my bag for Violet to play with on the floor, you told me about your mom’s brain aneurysm. About how gutted you were that you hadn’t been to Arizona to see her in almost a year. About how you felt unmoored, like no one was connecting you to the earth anymore, like you could float away and no one would notice.
“I’d notice,” I told you.
While you were talking, Violet had wrapped her left arm around your calf, half hugging you while she colored.
“I think she’d notice, too,” I said.
You smiled slightly, sadly.
We walked over to a food stand, and you got some water. I suggested a sandwich, or at least a banana, but you said you didn’t think you could eat.
When Violet and I left, you seemed a little bit calmer than when we’d found you, but I kept thinking about what you said, about feeling unmoored. I was tied to so many people, I couldn’t even imagine what that felt like. And I didn’t think I’d want to.
lxiv
Kids are amazing. Really, truly they are. They’re open and caring and loving, four-and-a-half-year-olds especially.
Seeing you so distraught at the airport tugged at my heart. But it tugged at Violet’s too, apparently, in an even more powerful way.
“Mommy’s friend Gabe was crying,” she told her dolls the next day. “He’s really sad.”
“Can I give Gabe this picture?” she asked me. “It’s a heart and a sun and a lollipop. And smiley face stickers. Because they’re happy.”
“How about I take a photo of it, and we send that to his phone?” I asked her.
She nodded and solemnly held out her picture for photographing. “Don’t forget to charge your phone so it’ll work,” she told me, which tells you a lot more about me than it does about her, I think. Or maybe a little bit about each of us.
I took the picture and e-mailed it to you with an explanation. Do you remember? Your response came back a few minutes later: Tell Violet thank you.
“Good,” she said. “Tell him you’re welcome.”
Then at dinner Violet told the story to Darren. And to my surprise she added, “I need to cheer him up more. So I think he should come over for a play date. I’ll show him how to make cookies.”
We’d just started baking together, and Violet thought it was one of the most magical experiences in the world. She’d stare and stare through the oven window at the pan of batter until it bloomed into a cake, often narrating in real time.
Darren lifted his eyebrows at me.
“It’s the first I’m hearing of this too,” I said.
“He was so sad, Daddy,” Violet told him. “He was a grown-up crying like a kid. And when people are crying we’re supposed to cheer them up. That’s what Miss Melissa says at school.”
I bit my lip. I knew Darren’s feelings, but I also knew that I was as worried about you as Violet was and wouldn’t mind seeing you once more before you went back overseas.
“She’s right. That is what Miss Melissa says . . .” I shrugged at Darren, kind of at a loss. I wasn’t going to push it. I was going to let him decide. Because you did put another man’s wife in your photography retrospective, Gabe. And even if you hadn’t, I would’ve understood if he said no. Darren had every right not to want my ex-boyfriend at our home. To be honest I probably should’ve said no. I should have thought more about it, about what it would mean to have you there, but I didn’t. My marriage felt strong enough that I didn’t even wonder if letting you into my world would crack it, dent it, change the way I thought about Darren. But it did. I didn’t realize it at the time, or even in the months afterward, but if I trace things back, I think this was one of those fork-in-the-road moments, a decision that pointed us down the path we ended up traveling.
Darren thought about it, his chess-playing crease appearing between his eyes. “Fine,” he said, after a few moments of Violet looking at him with imploring eyes, of me looking down at my plate, cutting salmon into bite-sized pieces. “You’re right, Vi. We should cheer people up when they’re sad.” I wondered then if he’d maybe stopped seeing you as a threat—because of something I’d said or Violet had said. Or if he thought that being in our apartment, with photographs of our family all around, would somehow make me less desirable to you. Or if he simply thought, like I did, that our marriage was solid enough that it wouldn’t matter. I never asked him why he said okay. I just accepted it. But I’m sure there was a reason. With Darren there’s always a reason.
And that’s how you ended up with an invitation to my apartment, to bake cookies with my daughter. I have to admit, I was surprised when you said yes.
• • •
WE CHOSE A DATE over e-mail—a day that was supposed to be a work-from-home Friday for me, though I ended up taking the day off. You were planning to be in New York for forty-eight hours, and were going to come straight from the airport. Violet insisted we decorate the apartment with balloons for you, and that we draw happy faces on each one. So we did, some with tongues, some without. Some had eyelashes. Others, eyebrows.
“Do you want one?” she asked Liam. He was almost eighteen months old, and Maria was going to take him to the Transit Museum—he loved running up and down the trains.
“Green,” he said. She nodded and handed him a green balloon before he left with Maria.
I started the kids’ laundry, and then Violet and I got out all the cookie-making ingredients. As we were taking out the mixing bowl, the buzzer rang, and my daughter went running. Annie followed her, barking.
“Hello?” I said through the intercom.
“It’s me,” you answered.
“It’s him!” Violet said.
I buzzed you in and opened the door. A few minutes later, you arrived in my living room. The first thing I noticed was that you’d shaved your head. Violet noticed too.
“Where’s . . . where’s your hair?” she asked, her tiny brow furrowed. It was the one expression that made her look like Darren.
Your eyes went quickly to me and then back to her. “It’s . . . in the laundry,” you told her.
“The laundry?” she echoed.
You shrugged, your dimple making a brief appearance. “Don’t you wash your hair when it gets dirty?”
Violet nodded. “But in the bath!”
You put the bags you were holding down onto the floor. “I thought the laundry would be easier.”
Violet looked up at me. “Can I wash my hair in the laundry?” she asked.
“We’ll talk about it later,” I told her.
She took off into the kitchen, assuming you’d follow, reciting the cookie-baking plans. But you stopped next to me. I held out my arms, and you fell into them. I felt your tears on my neck. “Why’d you shave your head?” I asked, quietly.
You straightened up and rubbed a hand over your eyes. “It’s a mourning ritual,” you said. “It felt right. Do I look that different?”
“Different, but still like you,” I said. “Are you sure you’re okay enough to make some cookies?”
“Of course,” you said. “And thank you. For having such a sweet daughter. For indulging her desire to cheer up a sad old man. For being there for me. It may sound absurd, but part of how I made it through everything in Arizona was by looking forward to today.”
After we mixed the dough and dropped it in different shapes on the cookie tray, after I slipped the tray into the oven, Violet got out a pasta pot.
“This is what we do so we don’t burn ourselves,” she told you. Then she turned on the oven light, put the pot in front of the oven door, and sat behind it. “We can’t reach the door now,” she said, and patted the spot next to her on the floor.
You sat there with her, the two of you watching the entire twelve minutes while the cookies baked, neither of you saying a word. I wondered what you were thinking. What she was thinking. But I didn’t ask. I watched you both, hoping that this day would help you, that Violet’s concern would mean something, that you would feel like you still had people who cared about you even though your mom was gone. I didn’t want you to feel untethered.
When the timer rang, Violet brought me the oven mitt that hung on the drawer next to the sink. “They’re ready!” she said. “And we can play Hide and Go Seek Castle while they cool.”
“Hide and Go Seek Castle?” you asked, standing up and taking the pasta pot with you.
Violet turned to you while I opened the oven door. “We dress up like people from a castle, and play hide-and-seek. You can be the king.”
I almost dropped the cookie sheet when she said that. Darren was the only person she’d ever let be the king. When Jay came over she had him be the magician. And my father and Darren’s father were always court jesters.
“Are you my queen?” you asked Violet, as she took your hand and brought you to her box of dress-up clothes.