CHAPTER 9
By the end of Friday afternoon rehearsals, Mrs. Sasaki is pretty much just bringing Leo cups of water and nodding at his ideas.
Weezie texts me as I am falling asleep: What’s going on out there? He says he’s staying another three weeks???
I think it’s restful for him here, I tell her.
Okay, then, I guess he’s your problem. I’m going to “rest” in his penthouse until I hear differently.
Good for you.
• • •
On Saturday, Leo wants to come to Bernadette’s soccer game. He can’t believe how many trees line the field and how comfortable my stadium chairs are. He thinks Bernadette is unusually aggressive for a girl her age and should have a private trainer before middle school. I roll my eyes a lot and try not to look at his feet. He’s wearing flip-flops for the first time, I guess on account of the warmer weather. His feet are like his hands, strikingly beautiful but strong. I think of those feet walking up and down my stairs in the middle of the night. I try to never think about his hands.
My play-related problems are fixing themselves as Leo parades himself from the soccer field to the baseball field, shelling out hellos and smiles. We are twenty days from opening night and no one has volunteered to start working on sets or costumes. The backup plan was to have an old burlap curtain hanging on the stage and to have the children wear their dirtiest clothes, orphan style. Suddenly, everyone wants to be involved. In fact, they’re swarming us.
Leo stands to his full height to meet Tanya Chung. He gazes deeply into her eyes until she agrees to have a full set of costumes by four P.M. a week from Wednesday, our first dress rehearsal. Evelyn Ness agrees to do all the sets, and I swear I saw her knees buckle a little.
“You’ll never quit acting,” I tell him.
• • •
“So what happens here on Saturday nights?” he asks us on the way home from Arthur’s extra-innings disastrous Little League game.
“I have a sleepover at Sasha’s,” says Bernadette.
“I have a birthday party,” says Arthur.
“Oh, looks like we’re out of luck. Can I take you out to dinner?”
Giggles from the back seat and now I might be blushing. I crack the window. “Sure.”
“Someplace decent?”
“We have a bistro in town that’s very good. Don’t be a snob.”
Leo rolls his eyes in the rearview mirror to more giggles.
• • •
I think I’m wearing too much makeup, but I have no one to ask. I’m not comfortable with black stuff on my eyes, and I feel mildly like an assault victim. But it seems rude not to make a little effort on a Saturday night, so I pick my navy blue silk dress, the one with no sleeves in case I sweat.
My hair is right today, thank God for small favors. “You’re a grown-up person,” I tell my reflection. “Don’t act like a teenager.”
“Damn,” he says as I walk into the kitchen. He’s in a crisp white shirt and a navy blazer. He’s shaved and smiling, and well, he looks like a movie star.
“Too much?” I really just need someone to be honest with me.
“Just right.”
As expected, we walk into the restaurant and everyone takes a collective gasp. People who know me even in passing give enthusiastic waves. People who know me well plot their frequent trips to the bathroom so they can stop and say hi.
The hostess takes us to a table in the back corner, facing out into the restaurant. Leo puts his hand on her forearm and she almost faints. “I don’t want to be a pain, but would it be possible to seat us at that table over there?” He motions to a table nestled in front of a banquette.
After one glass of wine, I forget that my entire community is staring at us. We’re laughing about how he charmed those poor women into working on the play. We talk about the kids, like they’re a shared interest of ours. He wants to know about my brief career in publishing, and his responses make me realize I learned more than I thought.
“Do you date?” he wants to know.
“No.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“Why not?”
“These are some pretty rural suburbs. Singles don’t exactly congregate here. Plus, I get up early, as you know.”
“Are you ever lonely?”
“Not as lonely as I was when I was married to Ben.”
When our desserts come, he wants to play his new favorite game, Romance Movie. “Okay, here’s one. Male talk-show host from Akron, Ohio.”
I stab a bite of chocolate cake as I think. “He goes out to the country to interview a reclusive movie star and falls for her caregiver, who probably dreams of opening a cupcake shop.”
“They all do.”
“An inordinate number of bakers in these movies,” I agree. “And no one’s overweight.”
“Community activity at the end?”
“Hmm.” I take a bite and think it over. “Oh. He’s going to MC the auction for the county fair.”
“Where she’ll be selling cupcakes.”
“Naturally.”
“And he has to leave before the event, breaks her heart but then comes back and there’s a big kiss,” he says.
“The kiss is never really that big, actually.”
He’s finished his wine, so I pour him half of mine. “So that’s it?” he asks.
“Well, there’s small stuff. If either of them has parents, they’re always exceptionally loving and self-sufficient. No one’s parents are a pain.” I take another bite of cake. “And the woman usually has a quirk that would be annoying to most men, but that this particular guy finds irresistible.”
“Seriously?”
“It’s part of the fantasy. Like the woman who’s really uptight and makes tons of lists appeals to the musician who needs to get his act together.”
“This is diabolical. What about the lunatic woman who schedules her life to run like a Swiss watch?”
“Well,” I say, draining my glass and placing my napkin on the table, “she gets a lot of shit done. But, in my experience, it’s not exactly the kind of thing a man finds irresistible.”
“I do,” he says. “We should go home.”
• • •
The house is dark when we get back and neither of us switches on a light. We’re just standing there in the dark kitchen, and he takes a step toward me. “Do we need to pick up Arthur?”
Arthur? I wonder. Oh right. “Kate’s giving him a ride home.”
“Okay,” he says. He’s close enough that if he took half a step forward he could kiss me. I wonder again if my imagination has gone rogue, if maybe it’s time to lay off the romance genre. And the wine.
“My salmon was perfectly cooked,” I say literally out of nowhere, mainly because I need to break eye contact. I sidestep so we’re no longer facing each other. “I mean sometimes it’s too rare, and they say pink in the middle, but it’s practically still breathing. Not that fish breathe.” I laugh a little at my truly unfunny comment, but now I can breathe. I turn to the counter and start straightening an already straight stack of papers in the dark. “Want to get that light?” I say.
“No,” he says and steps right behind me.
“Oh,” I say, turning around.
He moves a loose tendril of hair from my eyes and rests his hand on the side of my neck. I can’t remember his having touched me before, and from the tingly heat spreading through my body, I think I would have remembered. I cannot look him in the eye, but I can feel him studying me in the dark. He leans in, and his face is so close that our noses brush against each other. His breath is on my lips. The space between us is electric with want, mostly mine probably, and I’m afraid to meet his eyes because he’ll see all that want, laid bare. For some reason I want to stay in this moment, ride this line, so I can both know and not know what’s about to happen. It will be the Schrödinger’s cat of kisses.
He whispers my name and moments pass. I finally raise my eyes to his, and Leo kisses me. First a small, testing kiss and then an endless kiss that dissolves me. He is kissing me with such urgency that I want to believe he’s been imagining this as often as I have. There is nothing in the world more natural or inevitable than his hands on my hips, my hands in his hair. I don’t know where I am when headlights are pulling into my driveway. A car door opens and closes, and Leo mutters, “Arthur.”
Leo hits the light as Arthur’s coming through the front door. We’re both a little breathless, so I say, “Hey, honey, perfect timing, we just came up from the garage.” Even though my car’s parked out front. “How was it?”
“Good. We watched a movie and played Nerf wars in the woods behind their house.” He gets himself a glass of water, and we watch, maybe not wanting to look at each other. “Well, good night,” he says and gives us each a hug.
“Good night, sweetie. I’ll be right up to tuck you in.” I say this because it’s what I say. Every single night. There is no part of me that wants to leave this kitchen.
When we can hear the water running upstairs, Leo takes my hand and entwines our fingers. “Well,” he says.
“Yeah.” I can’t stop looking at our hands together. His hand right there, all mixed up with mine.
“I guess I’ll turn in too?” he says.
“Okay.”
“Okay,” he says and he kisses me again, just the tiniest tease of a kiss. “I’ll see you for sunrise,” he says and walks out the back door, across the lawn to the tea house.
• • •
I barely sleep, of course. I text Penny: I hope I’m not waking you, but if I am can you still text me back? He kissed me.
I text the same thing to Kate. I get no response. My heart is racing, and I need to talk myself down. Fact: I will probably never recover from that kiss. Fact: This is a man who dates starlets. Fact: I am a regular woman who’s nursed two babies. Oh, dear God. Maybe he was drunk. He didn’t seem drunk. Maybe he’s acting. He seemed sincere. Maybe he’s just acting sincere. For what? To steal a few kisses from a lonely suburban mom? He’s really been playing the long con if that was his angle. He could kiss anyone he wanted. Maybe he really likes me, I think in my tiniest thinking voice.
When the light starts to fill my room, I open my eyes and remember. I jump out of bed and analyze my pajama situation. White flannel with little yellow stars. I swap out my pajama top for a T-shirt and throw a light blue sweater over it. My neck looks weird so I add a scarf. When I see the whole look together, I realize that I’ve done it again. I look like my giveaway pile threw up on me. I change back into straight pajamas.
I enter the kitchen and see the coffee’s already been brewed. He’s left a mug out for me. I pour my coffee and make my way out.
“You’re late,” he says. I sit, and he covers me with his blanket. I look for signs that something’s changed, that this is a more intimate gesture. But it’s the same way he’s shared his blanket since the first day, a thousand years ago, back when my nightgown was see-through. I am oddly aware of my lips on my coffee mug. They feel like ordinary lips, but they’re not because they were kissed by Leo Vance last night. I don’t want to look at him, because I know I’ll be staring at his lips.
We watch the sky as the leaves are backlit by the sun. The show’s almost over, and I need to hear him say something, anything that will indicate that this actually happened and that he plans to kiss me again.
“What’s the schedule today?” he asks. Ah, romance. The mention of “the schedule” feels like a blow, like maybe I thought he was going to suggest eloping to Cap d’Antibes. What’s the schedule today? It takes me a beat to remember that it’s Sunday, and I shake my head clear.
Deep breath. “It’s Sunday,” I say to buy time. “Bernadette has a soccer game at one, and it’s an hour away in Yardsmouth. Arthur has another birthday party, a noon movie.”
“Is Yardsmouth any good?” Ugh. He’s clearly grasping at any possible topic that doesn’t relate to that kiss. Girls U9 soccer will certainly do the trick.
“They’re terrible. It won’t be much of a game.”
“Interesting,” he says.
I’m a little vulnerable. I’ve opened myself up to the possibility that this kiss was a real thing, the beginning of a thing. And here he is staring straight ahead, talking about the household calendar. Soon he’ll be asking about how the Crockpot works and if you should wash dark clothes in hot water.
“Not really,” I say. I pull my legs up into my chest. I ache, and I’m a little mad. You can’t just go around kissing lonely women for no reason. It’s irresponsible and borderline cruel. It’s like giving a dog a steak one day and then switching back to kibble the next. You don’t know what you don’t know, and that kiss wasn’t something I needed to know about.
“Is there any way to get Bernadette a ride to Yardsmouth?”
“Why?” I’m still not looking at him.
“Because if we did, we could be alone here from eleven-thirty to two.” He’s looking at me now.
I flush, like actually flush. “Oh,” I say.
“Can we?”
“I’ll call Jenna,” I say. I still haven’t looked at him, but he reaches for my hand under the blanket. Like that’s the most normal thing in the world.