Chapter 9
Too Close
Daniel's sister arrived on Sunday with a baby, a casserole, and an opinion.
Nina Moore did not knock. She had a key. She came through the kitchen door at four in the afternoon with Owen on one hip and a dish wrapped in foil in the other arm, kicked the door shut with her heel, and said, "Don't get up. I can see you're doing nothing."
"I'm doing something."
"You're staring at a sandwich."
"It's a very interesting sandwich."
"It's the same one you were staring at when I rang you an hour ago." She put down the dish. She was thirty-six, small and quick, with Daniel's brown eyes and a tired, humorous mouth, and a gray streak in her dark hair that she called her souvenir. She had on a gray coat with spit-up on the shoulder. She dropped into the chair opposite and set Owen on the table, where he promptly seized a salt shaker and began to explain something to it in a loud voice.
Pickles got up from the corner, crossed the floor on three legs, and sat down on her foot.
"Hello, sir," said Nina. "I've missed you. Has he been feeding you? Has he been talking to you?" She scratched the dog's ears. "You've got a sad face today. It's not your usual sad face. It's a new one. What's he done?"
"Nothing," said Daniel.
"He sighs," said Nina. "Did you know? He's been sighing for two weeks. Dad said so. He said that every time he comes, the dog's lying in front of the door with his chin on the mat." She looked up, with her head on one side. "And you've been going round with a face. Dad said that too."
"I haven't got a face."
"You've got a face, Danny. You've had it since the end of October. I assumed it was a girl. I said to Dad, he's met a girl. He said, don't be silly. I said, nobody gets that stupid without one."
"It's not a girl."
"All right."
"It's a person."
"Right."
"Who happens to be a woman."
"Mm-hm."
"And she's a friend."
"A friend," said Nina, gravely. She took Owen's hand off the salt shaker and gave him a spoon. "Okay. So tell me about the friend."
He told her.
He had not meant to. He had meant to say it was nothing, and take the casserole, and turn the talk to Owen's teeth. But it was a gray afternoon, and the kitchen smelled of onions, and his sister was sitting there with a baby in her lap and her chin on her hand, and she had a way of waiting that was nearly impossible to stand. She had learned it, he thought, over the past five years. She had learned it in a house where she had to be very careful what she said.
So he told it. He told it in the wrong order, and in the wrong voice, and without looking at her. He told her about a waiting room, and a crossword. He told her about a dollar that a machine had eaten. He told her about Tuesdays, and a chai with honey, and a mug that said Gus said twenty minutes. He told her about the phone, at noon on a Saturday, and a silence, and a voice that did not sound like anybody's. He told her about the diner.
He did not tell her about the voicemails.
"And she's got a boyfriend," said Nina.
"Yes."
"A serious one."
"Three years. He, I think they might get engaged."
"What's he like?"
"He's nice."
"Danny."
"He is. He's nice. He's, I don't know. He's very charming. He remembers things. He sent her bagels." He was turning a fork over and over on the table. "He's the kind of guy you'd be glad to have as a brother-in-law."
"That's a very odd way of putting it."
"It's the truth."
"Is it?" said Nina. She was watching him. She had stopped smiling. "What did he do?"
"What?"
"The nice boyfriend. When he met you."
"Nothing. He shook my hand."
"What else?"
"He sat down. He asked, he was very friendly. He asked if I had a girlfriend."
"Did he."
"And he said, look after her for me. On Tuesdays."
Nina did not say anything. She sat still, with the baby on her knee. She had gone a little pale, and her eyes, on his face, had grown sharp and bright and very dark. They were the eyes of a woman who has just heard a particular sound in the night.
"What?" said Daniel.
"Nothing."
"What is it?"
"It's just a thing Carl used to say."
The kitchen was silent for a second. Owen banged his spoon. Pickles, at her feet, gave a long sigh through his nose.
"Look after her for me," said Nina. She said it in a soft, flat, lightly mocking voice, as one repeats a line from a play. "He'd say it to my friends. When we left a party. You'll take care of her, won't you? She gets a bit emotional. He'd put a hand on my back. And they'd all laugh." She wet her lips. "And on the way home, in the car, he'd ask me why I'd stood so close to the man in the blue shirt."
"Nina."
"I'm not saying it's the same."
"I know."
"I'm not saying it. I haven't met him. You might be right. He might be perfectly lovely." She jiggled the baby, quickly, as if to keep something from spilling. "I'm only saying that I heard it, and it, I felt it. It went right through me."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry. It's a long time ago. I'm fine. I'm the best I've been." She gave a bright, crooked smile. "I'm just telling you what I heard."
He did not know what to say. He sat with his hands round a cup of cold coffee and his sister's old fear in the room with them, like a third person. He had been twenty-five when it happened. He had come to her flat one evening with a bag of groceries and found her in the kitchen with her face to the wall, saying, I'm fine, I'm fine, I just dropped a plate. He had not understood. He had seen the broken china, and the blue mark on her wrist, and he had stood there with a bag of oranges, and not known whether he was allowed to ask.
He had been careful ever since. He had learned the signs. He had learned the way a certain kind of silence sat in a room.
"Danny," said Nina.
"Yes."
"What do you want?"
"I don't want anything."
"You want her."
"I'm not, I can't."
"I know you can't. I'm asking what you want."
He put down the cup. He looked at the window, where the afternoon light was draining away, and the garage door across the yard stood open on a hanging frame. He was aware of a extraordinary sensation, in his chest, as of a thing that had been held down a long time, coming slowly up, like a bubble in a pipe.
"I want her to be all right," he said.
It was not what he had meant to say. It was not an answer. But he heard it go out, plainly, and sit in the middle of the table, and he knew that it was true.
"That's not the same thing," said Nina.
"I know."
"It's much better, in some ways. And much worse."
"I know that too."
"Don't be the man who waits," said his sister.
She said it softly. She reached across and put her hand on his, warm and small and rough from washing bottles. "Please. I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just saying. There's a kind of person, he waits at the door. He says he's being patient. And he's, it's the, it's a very quiet way of pushing." She squeezed. "If she comes, she comes. If she doesn't, she doesn't. You can't help her out of it. She's got to be the one who walks."
"I know."
"Do you?"
"I'd never, I'd never do that."
"I know you wouldn't. You're the best man I've ever met." Her voice was fierce and low. "That's why I'm saying it."
He decided on the Monday.
It was a plan, of a kind. He made it, as he made all his plans, on the walk to school, with the dog on the lead and the frost like salt on the pavement. It had three parts. It was perfectly sensible. He thought about it for the whole of the first period, over a lab on density, while thirty children dropped small metal cylinders into graduated cylinders of water and wrote down the numbers.
One. No more late nights. They had been talking until past midnight, three or four times a week, since Thanksgiving. It was too much. He knew it. No man who was only a friend had a right to be the last voice a woman heard before she slept.
Two. No more Saturdays. She had called him. He had gone. He had sat in a car. It was the sort of thing that a person did for a sister, or a very old friend, and he did not think he had the right to it. Not when he had sat in a diner afterwards and looked across at her with his heart in his mouth.
Three. Tuesdays only. An hour, in a coffee shop, with other people in the room. It was a thing a man could stand in the light of.
"Mr. Moore?"
"Yes?"
"This one floats."
"It's meant to."
"But it's metal."
"It's hollow," said Daniel. "It's got air in it. That's the density. It's not what it's made of. It's what's inside."
He heard what he had said. He stood there in front of the whiteboard, in the middle of a class, with a green marker in his hand and thirty faces turned toward him, and felt his ears burn.
"That's really good," said a girl in the front. "You should put that on a poster."
He told her on the Tuesday.
He did it at a quarter to six, at the corner table, with the two mugs between them. He had planned it very carefully. He had practiced it in the car. He said, I've been thinking, and he heard how it sounded, and said, no, wait. He said, okay. He said, the thing is.
Sarah looked up.
She had been smiling. She had come in with snow in her hair, and a bag of books, and told him a long story about a child who had put a raisin up his nose. She had sat down, and unwound her scarf, and her whole face had been bright with the story. Now the smile went off it, not suddenly, but in a slow, careful, descending way, like a lamp being turned down.
"What's the thing?"
"I think we should, I wanted to say. I've been, it's been a lot. The last few weeks. The texting, and the calls. I'm worried that it's, I don't want to be, I don't want it to be a problem for you."
"A problem."
"With Mark."
"He hasn't said anything."
"I know. But he, you know. He was, when he came. I think he's, I think he's a bit." He drew a breath. "I think he's not entirely comfortable. And I think he's allowed not to be."
"He said he liked you."
"He did. He was very kind." He turned his mug. "I'm just thinking about how it must look. From the side. A man's texting his girlfriend at midnight. A man's, he goes to her in a car."
"You were being a friend."
"I know."
"That's all you were."
"I know it is. I know that. But it's, I think we've been, it's been getting too, I think it's become a lot, and I think the way to do it right is to, it's easier if we just see each other on Tuesdays. Like we used to. And maybe not the late-night."
She said nothing.
She was looking at the table. Her fingers lay on the wood, still, and the sleeve of her red sweater had slipped down over the knuckles, and as he watched, she pulled it farther, until her whole hand was gone.
"Did I do something?" she said.
"No."
"Because I called. On Saturday. I shouldn't have."
"No. God, no. I'm glad you called."
"Then why?"
"Because it's, I don't want to be the guy."
"What guy?"
"The one who," he said, and stopped. He did not know the end of it. He sat with his mouth open, and the words in his head went to pieces, like a sentence in a dream. He heard himself say, in an even, stupid, courteous voice, "I think I'm just trying to be respectful of your relationship."
Respectful of your relationship.
It lay there on the table. It was the most dreadful sentence he had ever said. It sounded like a thing from a card.
Sarah lifted her head.
Her eyes were very clear, and rather wide, and gray as the winter sky. She looked at him for a long time. She did not look angry. She did not look as if she was going to cry. She looked, if anything, perfectly calm, and a little puzzled, as a person looks who has been handed a bill in a restaurant and cannot work out what was on it.
"Okay," said Sarah.
"I don't want you to think."
"No, it's okay. You're right."
"I'm not saying."
"I know. It's fair. I think it's a very, it's mature." Her voice was a little high, and bright, the one she used on the phone. "I should have thought of it. It's, I didn't want to, I wasn't, I never meant to put you in an awkward spot."
"You didn't."
"It's good. It's a good idea. Tuesdays."
"Sarah."
"Honestly. It's the right thing." She picked up her chai. She drank. Her hand was perfectly steady, and she set the mug down in exactly the same place, on its own ring. "I'll see you next week."
"Are you're leaving?"
"I've got a, it's early. I've got to cook." She stood, and put on her coat, and wound her scarf round her neck, quickly, three times. "Thank you for the, I'm glad we're, it's all clear. Thanks."
"Sarah."
"Say hi to Pickles."
She went out.
The bell rang behind her. It was a cracked, small, cheerful noise, and it went on for some time. He sat still. He watched her go past the window with her head down, a small dark figure in the snow, and turn the corner.
He did not follow.
He had told himself that he would not. It was the whole point. It was a thing that would have been easy, and kind, and wrong. He sat in the café with a cooling cup of tea and a pile of ungraded lab reports, and the bell, which had stopped ringing, and a very large, flat, silent, entirely new feeling, like standing in a house when someone has just turned off the heating.
That was right, he thought.
That was the right thing.
It was what a decent man does.
He picked up his pen. He wrote B- on the top report, in green. It was a very good paper. He did not notice.
Across the room, behind the counter, Mia was looking at him. She had a rag in one hand. She did not say a word. She looked at him for a long, level, appalled moment, as one looks at a man who has just thrown away a winning ticket, and then she shook her head, once, slowly, and turned back to the milk.
He wrote it that night.
He sat at the kitchen table, with the dog at his feet and the radio off, and wrote it on his phone with his thumbs. It took an hour.
Sarah. I think I handled that badly. I didn't mean to make it sound like a decision about you. I'm not trying to pull away. I just want to be a friend you don't have to feel guilty about. I miss
He deleted I miss.
I don't want to lose what we have. I think it's the best thing that's happened to me in a long time. I'm just trying to make sure it's
He deleted that.
I'm sorry. I'm an idiot. It's the least you deserve. If you want to talk, I'm here. Whenever. No matter what the schedule says.
He looked at it.
It was a good message. It was honest. It was also, he saw, in the cold light of a quarter to midnight, the exact thing he had told himself he would not do. It was a thread, left hanging. It was a hand in a doorway. He thought of Nina's voice. A very quiet way of pushing.
He held the phone for a long time.
Then he deleted the whole of it, one letter at a time, with his thumb. It went backwards, slowly, no matter what the schedule says, and I'm here, and I'm an idiot, and the empty box blinked at him on the screen with its small patient cursor.
Don't, he thought.
Let her walk.
He put it down.
Pickles got up. He crossed the linoleum and put his chin on Daniel's knee, with a long weary groan, and gazed up with eyes like dark wet stones. He had a very honest face. It said, with great clarity, that he had seen this before, and that it never went well.
"I know," said Daniel.
The dog sighed.
"I know. It's the right thing."
The dog went on looking.
"Stop it," said Daniel, and put his hand over his eyes.