Chapter 7
Someone Notices
Mark noticed in January.
It was the kind of thing he would have noticed sooner, Sarah thought afterward, if he had not been so busy. December had been the end of the financial year for half his clients, and he had spent most of it on the phone with his jaw set, saying I understand your concern. He had been tired. He had been tender. On Christmas Day he had given her a silver bracelet, very thin and expensive, from a shop she could not have walked into, and fastened it on her wrist with his own hands, and said, So you'll always have something of mine. She had cried. She had thought: he's so good. She had worn it for three days and then, without meaning to, taken it off at the library one afternoon to wash her hands, and found it a week later in the pocket of her coat.
Now it was the fifth of January, a Sunday, and he was lying on her couch with his head in her lap.
It was a gray afternoon. The radiator was clanking. She was doing the crossword with one hand and stroking his hair with the other, and he had his eyes closed, and he was telling her about a golf trip.
"Colin thinks we should go to Scottsdale. In March. Four days. It'd be you and Jess, and a spa, and we'd play in the mornings." He opened one eye. "I know you don't like golf."
"I like the cart."
"You like the cart. That's right. That's why I love you." He smiled, and shut the eye. "You're so much more cheerful lately. Do you know that?"
Her hand paused in his hair.
"Am I?"
"You've been, I don't know. Lighter." He said it dreamily. "Since the fall. You hum. You hummed this morning, in the shower. I thought, she's happy. I haven't heard you do that since your dad."
"I didn't know I did."
"You do it all the time. It's nice." He reached up and took her hand, and kissed the palm. "I was only wondering what it was."
"What what was?"
"What's making you happy."
She felt it go through her. It was a small, cold, definite shock, such as one feels on missing a step in the dark. It lasted less than a second. She kept her hand where it was. She kept her voice even. She said, "I don't know. The roof got fixed. Nobody's been bitten at story hour for a month."
"That'd do it."
"It's the little things."
"It is." He opened his eyes and looked up at her, with the slow, loving, perfectly attentive gaze she had known for three years. "I'm glad. I just want you to know that I'd like to be the reason. I mean part of it. I'd like to be a part of the reason."
"You are."
"Am I?"
"Of course."
"Good." He sat up. He kissed her cheek. "I'm going to make tea."
He went into the kitchen. She heard the tap run, and the kettle click on. She sat on the couch with the paper on her knee and the pen in her fingers, and found that the clue in front of her had gone out of focus.
On the arm of the sofa, face up, there was a phone.
It was hers. She had put it there an hour ago. It was lit.
Daniel (Dog-Approved): happy new year!! pickles has written you a poem. it's mostly barking but there's a rhyme
She stared at it.
She had not seen it come. She did not know how long it had been there. She did not know if the screen had been on when he lay down, or when he sat up, or whether it had lit for a moment as he lifted his head. She only knew that a man had asked her what was making her happy, and that the answer was lying a foot from her knee in a gray plastic case.
She picked it up. She turned it over. She laid it on the cushion, face down.
Behind her, in the kitchen, the kettle began to sing.
It came out on the Wednesday.
It came as these things do, very gently, in the middle of dinner. They were at his place. He had made risotto, his best, with mushrooms, and a bottle of white wine that cost forty dollars. He had put on a record. He had lit two candles, and he was sitting across from her in a white shirt with the cuffs turned back, and he had been quiet all evening, in a thoughtful, tender, listening way, so that she had begun to relax.
"I read something," said Mark.
"Oh?"
"It was an article. It was about friendship. Between men and women." He turned his glass by the stem. "It said that it's very rare. That it's, you know, there's a thing. Studies. In almost every case, one of them's, there's an attraction. Even if they say there isn't. It's usually the man."
"Is it?"
"It said so."
"What was the article?"
"I don't remember. A magazine." He smiled at her across the candles. "I just thought it was interesting. I thought of that Daniel guy. The one you were helping."
Sarah put down her fork.
"What about him?"
"Nothing. It's just, he was nice. I liked him. He was very polite." He took a sip. "You said you'd got to be friends."
"We did."
"How often do you see him?"
"Tuesdays. At Ruth's. When you've got a client." She said it lightly. It was the truth. It was the exact truth, and it sounded in her own ears like something written down in advance. "We talk about books. He teaches science. He's got a dog."
"A dog."
"A beagle. With three legs."
"That's sweet."
"He's called Pickles."
"I'd like to meet Pickles," said Mark.
He said it so pleasantly that for a moment she did not hear anything wrong. Then she did. It was nothing she could have pointed to. It was in the small, patient pause before Pickles, and the way he said it, with his head on one side, as one says the name of a thing one has been told is harmless.
"How often do you text him?"
"What?"
"You said you talk. In person. I just wondered if you, if it's online too." He shrugged, lightly. "I'm only curious."
"Sometimes."
"How sometimes?"
"I don't know. A few times a week."
"A few."
"Mark."
"I'm not angry. I'm asking." He put down the glass. He folded his hands on the tablecloth. His voice was very soft. "I'm trying to understand something. You've been so happy. You hum. And I'm trying to work out if it's me or if it's something else. And I keep thinking, I'd feel so much better if I knew. I'd be so relieved. If I could see."
"See what?"
"The messages."
There was a very long silence.
It was strange. The candles went on burning. A saxophone played on the record. She sat still in the warm light with a fork in front of her, and she looked at the tablecloth, and saw that it was linen, very white, and that there was a faint pale stain by her elbow where somebody had spilled a drop of wine, and she found that she could not look up.
"I'm not saying you did anything," said Mark.
"I didn't."
"I know you didn't."
"There's nothing in them."
"Then it won't matter."
"It's not that it, I just. It's private."
"From me?"
"From everyone."
"I'm not everyone." His voice did not change. It was still low and warm. But there was something under it now, a very small thread of hurt, like a draft under a door. "I'm the one who sat with you in the funeral home. I'm the one who knows. I'm not asking to read your diary, Sarah. I'm asking you to, I'm asking you to trust me enough to let me trust you."
"That's not, that's not what trust is."
"Isn't it?"
"It's not. It's not proving it." She heard her own voice, thin. "You don't prove it. You just, you don't need to."
"Then why won't you?"
It was a good question. That was what was terrible about it. It was a good, plain, reasonable question, and she had no answer. She had been asked a thing that sounded so fair that to refuse it would have been to admit that she had something to hide. She stared at the wine stain.
There's nothing, she thought. There's nothing in them.
There's a dog.
There's a squirrel with pizza. There's an eleven-second voicemail.
She had a sudden, sick, searing sense of that last one. She saw it, clearly, in a stranger's hand, in the light of a candle. A man in the dark, at midnight, telling her about a chicken. She saw Mark reading it. She saw his face. She saw him understand it, without a word, in that clear quick way he had, and put down the phone, and smile.
She would not be able to bear it.
"Here," she said.
She took the phone out of her bag and put it on the table.
She did not look at him. She slid it across the linen with two fingers and let go. It lay between the candles. The screen was dark. After a moment, in a voice that she hardly knew, she said, "The code's your birthday."
He did not touch it.
That was the thing she would remember. He sat looking at it, for a long time, in the golden light, and she saw his throat move. His face had gone very still, and very young. And then, to her astonishment, his eyes filled.
"I didn't mean it like that," said Mark.
"I know."
"I didn't want, God, Sarah. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He pushed the phone back across the table, with the flat of his hand, quickly, as one pushes away a plate. "I don't want to read it. I don't. I'm an idiot. I'm a, I got scared. I just have this thing, you know I do. I'm trying to be better."
"I know you are."
"I'd never read your phone."
"It's all right."
"It's not." He put his hand over his mouth. He was shaking. "I saw that text. On Sunday. On your couch. When you were, I wasn't snooping. It lit up. It said happy new year, pickles has written you a poem. And I thought, she's, there's a man, and she's got, and I felt, I can't tell you. I thought I was going to be sick."
"It was a joke."
"I know it was a joke."
"It was funny."
"I know it was funny." He laughed, a wet, shaky laugh, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "That's the, that's what scared me. It was so funny. It sounded like somebody who knew how to make you laugh." He looked at her. "I'm not good at that. I never have been. I'm not a funny man."
"You're a lot of things."
"I'm not that."
"Mark."
"I just want you to be happy," he said. "And I don't think I know how."
She went round the table.
She did it without thinking. She put her arms round his neck, and he turned his face into her stomach, and held on to her waist with both hands, hard, and she felt his shoulders heave. It was such a plain and desperate grief that she forgot, for a while, that she had been afraid. She put her cheek on his hair. She said, It's all right. It's all right. You're all I need. She said it over and over, softly, in the voice she used for children who had woken in the night.
He's frightened, she thought.
He's only frightened. It isn't a crime.
She looked at the dark phone on the tablecloth. And she was suddenly aware, in some dim cold corner, that it was she who had comforted him, and that he had begun the evening by asking her for something, and that, somewhere in the last twenty minutes, without her noticing, the thing she had been asked to give had quietly changed into the thing she was sorry for.
He turned up at Ruth's the following Tuesday.
It was a surprise. He told her so himself. She had been there ten minutes, in the corner, with her chai and her book, with Daniel across from her in his hooded sweatshirt, drawing a diagram of a bicycle gear on a napkin. They had been laughing about something. She did not remember what. And she had looked up, in the middle of a sentence, and the bell had rung, and a man in a dark overcoat had come in out of the cold with a bunch of tulips.
"Surprise," said Mark.
He came across the café with a bright, delighted face. He kissed her on the mouth. He put the tulips on the table. They were yellow, and still a little wet. "The client canceled. A death in the family. It's very sad. I thought, I'll go and find my girl."
"That's so nice."
"I knew you'd be here. It's Tuesday." He straightened. He turned to the other side of the table, and gave Daniel a broad, warm, wholly affable smile. "Hello again. It's Daniel, isn't it?"
"Hi," said Daniel.
He had gone very still. It was only for a second. He half rose, and held out a hand, and Mark took it, and the two men shook. Sarah watched them. She had never in her life been so conscious of the shape of a table.
"Mark Hollis. We met at the library."
"Yes. I remember. Nice to see you."
"May I?" He had already pulled up a chair. It was from the next table. He swung it round, and sat on the end of the table, between them, with one arm along the back of Sarah's chair, so that it was he who was leaning in, and the two of them were on either side. "I hope I'm not intruding. I don't want to break up a party."
"It's not a party," said Daniel. "We're just, it's a coffee."
"I can see that." He glanced at the napkin. "What's that?"
"It's a bicycle."
"It's very good."
"It's a derailleur. I'm, I was explaining. How it works. Sarah wanted to know."
"Did she?" said Mark. He smiled at her. "I didn't know you were interested in bicycles."
"I'm not, really."
"She's very polite," said Daniel.
"She is. She's the politest person I know." He laughed. "She'll listen to anyone. It's one of the things I love about her. She'll let a person tell her the whole history of the spoon."
Nobody said anything.
It was a joke. She could see that it was meant as a joke. He had said it in a fond, teasing voice, with his hand on her shoulder. It was only that it had fallen into the little round space between them, and lain there, and nobody had known what to do with it.
Daniel's face did not change. But Sarah, who had learned in two months to read a great many things in it, saw something go through his eyes, very briefly. It was not anger. It was a small, quiet, polite recalibration, like a man who has put his foot on a stair that wasn't there.
"I'm sure she's heard worse," he said, evenly.
"I'm sure she has." Mark settled back. "So, Daniel. Tell me. What do you do, when you're not running a robotics club?"
"I teach."
"Yes, I know. I mean outside. Do you have a girl?"
"Mark," said Sarah.
"What? It's a normal question. We're making conversation."
"I don't, I'm, no," said Daniel. "Not at the moment."
"No?"
"I was seeing someone. It ended in the summer."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"It's all right. It was a good ending."
"What happened?"
"Mark."
"I'm only asking. I'm interested in people." He turned his palms up. "You can say it's none of my business."
"It's a bit of my business," said Daniel, mildly. He picked up his mug. "She said I was married to the dog."
"Were you?"
"A bit."
"That's very honest."
"I'm trying to get better at it."
Mark laughed. It was a good, hearty, generous laugh, and he reached across and clapped Daniel on the shoulder. "I like this guy," he said to Sarah. "I like him a lot. Why haven't you had him to dinner?"
"I haven't thought."
"We'll do it. Friday week. I'll cook. I'll make the risotto." He glanced at Daniel. "You're a man who likes risotto."
"I like most things."
"Good. That's settled. Sarah, write it down."
She did not write it down. She sat there with the tulips at her elbow and her chai going cold, and felt, not for the first time but clearly, as if a very polite hand had closed on the back of her neck. It did not squeeze. It was only there. It was warm and light and friendly and it was there, and every man at the table knew it, and nobody said so.
He stayed twenty minutes.
He charmed the barista. He told a long story about a client who had tried to bribe him with a canoe. When he left, he left it all perfectly: a handshake, a great to see you, a hand in the small of Sarah's back. At the door he turned, and said, over his shoulder, very warmly, "Daniel. Take care of the robots."
"I will."
"And look after her for me, Tuesdays."
"I don't, I'm not," said Daniel.
"I know. I'm only joking."
The bell rang. The door swung shut. Through the steamed-up glass, she saw him cross the street, with his collar up and his hands in his pockets, and stop at the curb, and look back at her once, and smile, and wave.
She waved.
She sat very still.
Across from her, Daniel put down the napkin with the bicycle on it. He did it slowly. He squared its corner on the table, and put the pencil on top of it, and folded his hands.
"I like him," he said.
"Do you?"
"He's very, he's a charming man."
"He is."
"He cares about you."
"He does."
"I'd, I just." He stopped. He rubbed his jaw. For a moment he looked straight at her, with his brown eyes steady and rather grave. Then he looked away. "I think I should go."
"You don't have to."
"I've got papers."
"Daniel."
"It's okay." He took his jacket from the chair. "It's really fine. I just, I think it's a good idea. Tonight. I'd like to, I think we should." He bent to clip the helmet to his bag. "I'd like not to be a problem."
"You're not a problem."
"I know. I mean, I don't want to be."
"You're not."
"Okay," said Daniel.
He said it quietly. It was the word. She had noticed it, before, that little breath, and the word that came after. She knew it now, and her stomach turned over.
"Okay," he said again. "The thing is. I think it's very, you've got a, it's a good thing. You have a, he loves you. I'd never, I wouldn't want to make anything, I'd hate to be the person who." He swallowed. "I'll see you."
"Tuesday?"
"Sure."
"Next Tuesday."
"If you, yes. If it's." He gave a small, strained, crooked smile. "I'll bring the dog."
He went out.
She sat alone in the corner, in the warm light, with a cup, and a bunch of yellow tulips lying on their side in the wet. The bell on the door rang again behind him. The barista was looking at her. Mia was standing still behind the counter with a dishcloth in one hand and a look on her face of perfect, silent, appalled understanding.
Sarah turned back to the table.
On the napkin, in blue pencil, there was a small, careful, curling diagram of a bicycle gear. It had a little arrow, and a label, in his sloping hand. It said:
you can't change it while you're pedaling hard. you have to ease off first.
She read it. She read it twice. She put out one finger, and touched the ease off, and the pencil came away on her skin, gray and soft.
She did not cry. She only sat there, in her red coat, for a long time, in the middle of a coffee shop, holding a napkin.
It was still there when they closed.