When It Happens to You (18 page)

Greta draped her jacket on the back of a chair. She sat down and began scrolling through her phone.

“Would you order for me?” Phillip asked.

“I don't know what you want,” she said, without looking up at him.

“The usual.”

She looked up at him and he saw her eyes flash. “I don't know what the usual is,” she said.

“I'll order when I get back,” he said quickly. “Come on, honey,” he said, taking Charlotte's hand.

Phillip and Charlotte walked across the street to the children's art studio. He turned and looked at Greta watching them through the window, but her expression was obscured by the sunlight reflecting in the glass.

 

When he returned, he sat down across from her. She had ordered him a double espresso, and she held a mug of something hot in her hands.

“Thanks,” he said.

“How did she go to class?”

“Fine, fine. There were only two other kids there.”

Greta took a sip of tea. “She hasn't been so good lately. I don't know if you've noticed or not.” She looked at him, and he braced himself for the accusation. “I think she's depressed.”

Phillip took a deep breath. He exhaled slowly, taking a moment to compose what he would say. Most conversations with Greta outside a therapist's office deteriorated in a matter of minutes. It didn't even have to be about something as important as their daughter. It could be a trivial comment: “I went to the market and they were out of eggs.” This would be followed up by Greta demanding, “Did you ever go shopping with her? Did she cook for you?”

“Charlie doesn't seem . . . depressed,” he began. “She seems a little angry. Aggressive.”

“Depression is expressed as anger in children,” Greta said. “It's what her pediatrician said anyway when I took her in for her checkup.”

Phillip removed a sugar packet from the wooden container on the side of the table and poured the contents into the espresso. He stirred it with a wooden stick. “Do you think we should bring her in to talk to someone?”

Greta sighed. “I don't know. Maybe. I don't think she'll go by herself, so we would need to go with her.”

“I figured we would.”

She looked out the window. A woman with five dogs on two leashes navigated her way through families pushing wide colorful strollers down the busy sidewalk. Greta sighed and shook her head.

“This is not how I saw us turning out,” she said. “Our family. You and me.”

“It's not too late,” Phillip said. “Please, Greta.” He reached across the table and took her hand in his. To his surprise, she allowed her hand to be held for a moment before removing it.

“Your lawyer told mine that once we get through the discovery process . . .” she began. Her eyes filled with tears. He reached for her again, but this time she pushed his hand away. “We need to decide what to do with the . . .” She modulated her voice lower as her eyes darted to the other tables. “Embryos,” she finished quickly.

“I know,” Phillip said.

“Did you get that form I sent you?”

“I did,” Phillip took a sip of coffee. It tasted even more bitter than usual. He took another packet and tore it open. He half waited for Greta to remind him of the threat of diabetes that ran in his family. She watched him pour the packet into his coffee, silent.

“Do we have to decide this now?” he asked.

“It needs to be in our divorce agreement.”

“Oh God, Greta. I don't want this.” He put his head in his hands.

“What do you want, Phillip?”

“I want you. I want our family. I want . . .”

She glared at him. “At what point exactly, Phillip, did you decide to want me? Was it when you took her to bed the first time? The second time? Is it—” She stopped herself and looked down at the napkin that she had been twisting in her hands. After a moment she looked back at him with renewed composure. “I know now that you didn't want any more children.” She waited a fraction for him to interrupt her before continuing. “It would have been nice of you to have let me know before all that . . .”

“Greta—”

“Did you ever even want Charlotte?” she asked.

It wasn't the first time over the course of the year that she had asked him this. It was unclear to Phillip if she had forgotten his answer, or if she was checking for inconsistencies.

“I wanted
you
, Greta. I wanted Charlotte because you did, and now . . .”

“Now?” Greta leaned forward in her chair.

“Now I can't imagine my life without her.” He looked into the painful depths of her eyes. “Or without you,” he added quietly.

She blinked at him. “So we get rid of them. Give them away to other . . . happy families. Or we give them to research.”

“I think if we had made another child, then I would be okay with the adoption option. Or maybe the stem-cell research?” He shuddered. “Research sounds so gruesome.”

“You would be okay with either of those options? Really?”

“I said
if
. If we had made another child, then yes. What I
want
is to go back and start over. To have a second child like we always planned to before . . .”

“It's not going to happen.” Her voice was flat and dispassionate.

The cell phone that she had placed on the table lit up with a text. She picked up her phone and tapped out a lengthy reply while holding it in her lap. Phillip looked away to avoid watching her. A crowd of people was gathering near the counter, waiting for their drinks. Abruptly, he noticed Marina, the mother of one of Charlotte's school friends. She was wearing faded cargo pants and a T-shirt with a swatch of blue that read
PANTONE
#292. He hadn't seen her in months, and he felt a flash of embarrassment at the prospect of running into her now, of all times. She leaned on the counter, oblivious to him, lost in the Arts & Leisure section of a borrowed copy of the
New York Times
. Slowly Phillip turned toward the window, hoping to render himself unidentifiable without also alerting Greta, but at precisely that moment, Marina glanced up from the paper and her eyes met his. She squinted at him but didn't move. He waved to her, and Greta turned around to see what had caught Phillip's gaze. Marina hesitated slightly before approaching the table.

“Hi. How are you?” she asked Greta.

Greta smiled at her. Phillip recognized it as her polite smile reserved for strangers. She started to wave and then, noticing Marina's outstretched hand, she reached out and shook her hand instead. “I'm Marina. Oliver's mom. Charlotte's friend?”

“Yes. Charlotte talks about Oliver all the time. I'm Greta. I know we've met but . . . nice to meet you again.”

Phillip drank the rest of his coffee and looked desperately into his empty cup, concentrating all of his energy on willing Marina to leave.

“Large Americano for Marina!” the goateed barista called out. “Marina!”

“That's me,” Marina said, turning to leave. “Have a good weekend, you two.”

“Thank you,” Phillip said. As Marina walked away, he exhaled, only then realizing that he had been holding his breath during the women's entire exchange.

Greta watched her retreat and then turned back to Phillip. “I keep forgetting her name.”

He nodded.

“Do you know her?”

“Charlotte and her son, Oliver, used to have playdates.”

Greta cocked her head slightly. “Used to? What, they don't anymore?”

“Not for a few months,” Phillip said. “I thought maybe they went away for the summer.”

Greta raised her voice. “So you
do
know her.” She turned around to see if Marina was still there.

“Through her son. They played together . . .”

“You like redheads . . . never mind.” Greta picked up her cell phone and tossed it into her purse. “Don't tell me. I don't want to know.”

 

The following weekend Greta headed down the 405 South to pick up Charlotte, who was returning on the 7:55 p.m. flight from Seattle, at LAX. Greta sped down the freeway grateful for the steady flow of traffic. She turned the radio to a science show on NPR, trying to distract herself from thinking about Peter, whom she had left minutes earlier at his beach apartment.

He had just received an unexpected offer to play a small but pivotal role in a television movie that was shooting in Canada, and he had asked Greta to come with him. The part was of a janitor at a small women's college who is the first victim to fall prey to a band of sorority werewolves. He was set to fly to Vancouver that Wednesday.

“I thought werewolves were men,” Greta said.

“The director has a feminist take on it,” Peter told her. “And he has a background in music video,” If he was aware of his non sequitur, he didn't acknowledge it. He dropped to the floor and started doing push-ups.

Of course, Greta knew that he was an actor. She herself had watched Peter when Charlotte was in preschool. But in the months they had spent together, either by choice or design, the topic of the children's show that he had been the long-standing host of rarely came up.
Peter & Pooka
had been one of Charlotte's favorites and Greta had even bought the first three seasons of it on DVD, much preferring Peter's voice to that of the whiny and fearful Caillou or the boundlessly enthusiastic Dora who seemed never to stop screaming. “SWIPER, NO SWIPING!” Peter's voice was pleasant and relaxing, and unlike with the other frenetic animated shows, Greta found that she was able to sleep while Charlotte immersed herself in the universe of
Peter & Pooka
. Sleep. An act whose merits are wholly underappreciated except by victims of torture and by new parents.

It took at least a month of knowing the real Peter for Greta to stop inadvertently yawning whenever she heard his voice. She confessed this to him one night as they lay on their backs on sleeping bags in his empty apartment, thinking it would make him laugh. Instead, it had the opposite effect. The amiable humor that had attracted her since she had known him vanished. Helpless and embarrassed, she watched him as his face darkened. Almost immediately he apologized, but she refrained from discussing his acting career after that and was surprised when he sprang the Canadian movie on her.

“It's kind of a big deal to get this offer,” he had told her after completing a set of push-ups. “I just signed with APA less than two weeks ago, and to get an offer that quickly is a huge vote of confidence.”

Greta nodded as she regarded the flush of excitement in his face. His color was lighter and brighter than she had seen it since she had met him, and she became aware for the first time how important his acting career was to him. For reasons that she wasn't even sure of (fear? convenience?) she had incorrectly assumed that his acting was something that he no longer cared about. He rarely spoke of it except to make the occasional self-deprecating comment about the show, and she'd had neither the thought nor inclination to investigate further.

“I'm really happy for you, Peter.” She sat down on a box with
BOOKS
scrawled across the side. He sat across from her in the middle of his still nearly empty apartment. “But I don't think I'll be able to join you. Maybe for weekends . . .”

Peter frowned. “But you don't have a job.”

“I have Charlotte.”

“I know you have a kid,” he said.

His comment unnerved her. The word was harmless, but the way he said “kid” sounded to her like “dog” or “houseplant.” An inconvenience that needed to be fed and watered, looked after by single friends on vacations. Her face must have betrayed her because he smiled and extended his sneakered foot toward her, tapping the toe of her shoe.

“Vancouver is supposed to be incredible for children. . . .”

From outside the window a woman jangling a can of coins called out, “
Hep hep hep the homeless. . . .”
Peter listened for a moment and then walked over to the window and lowered it. He came back and sat next to Greta on the floor. She reached out and ran her hands through his hair. His hair was so different from Phillip's. Longer, coarser, and curlier. She could never get the thought out of her mind that she was touching something that didn't belong to her. Peter closed his eyes and leaned his head on her knee.

“She's starting school in a couple of weeks,” Greta finally said.

“Second grade? First grade?”

“First grade.”

“So what's she going to miss if she's a couple weeks late? The Pythagorean theorem?”

“No . . .”

“Are they dissecting Gaddis?”

Greta stared at him. A frustration with his utter lack of understanding began to gnaw at her, like wearing a shoe a half size too small.

“She'll miss making friends. Feeling a part of a community.”

Peter raised his head as if he were about to say something. Then he seemed to change his mind and laid his head back down on her knee.

“And anyway, until Phillip and I are divorced, neither one of us can take Charlotte out of the state. Let alone the country.”

“Well, there we have it.” He gently took her hand from his hair and held it in his on her lap. He kissed her hand before releasing it. “I'll miss you,” he said.

He stood up and walked into the kitchen. Greta watched him take a beer out of the refrigerator and open it. He tossed the bottlecap in the direction of the makeshift trash and missed.

It was exasperating that he could be so oblivious about what it meant to have children. She already deeply regretted letting her daughter know that she was seeing another man romantically, and she was sure that if she hadn't had such a fragile command over her own emotions, she would have trusted her own better judgment and waited. From the moment he met Charlotte, Peter had valiantly tried his best to charm her, confident that all children were predisposed to like him. Charlotte, however, was a proud outlier. She resolutely refused to accept him. She declined to speak to him, challenged Greta on the most basic request, and as her grand denouement, she began sucking her thumb around Peter, a habit she had quit at two years old. After that, Greta stopped trying to do anything with the two of them together.