It was this: Later on that same Ash Wednesday morning of their first days together, they have been walking the quiet Quarter and there have been some lovely moments between them and some awkward moments between them and Michael doesn’t know what to do about this woman and they find their way to the Café du Monde. They sit at street’s edge in the café’s open-air pavilion and order beignets and chicory coffee and the waiter moves off, and Michael and Kelly sit across from each other at the tiny bistro table, and he is afraid there will be talk, earnest talk. But instead, they look each other in the eyes and she doesn’t ask him to speak, she doesn’t seem to wish to talk at all. They look each other in the eyes and they don’t look away and this goes on for a few moments and a few moments more and her face is not compressed into questions, not restless, her face is not seeking something, her face is placid, an unrippled pond bright from daylight but without even a reflection there, and Michael untenses, unlocks, he feels his own face go calm, and he and Kelly don’t look away from each other. And this goes on. They look at each other steadily for a long while and then somewhere about her eyes she shows the tiniest moon-ascension increment of a threshold smile, but it too holds and persists without pushing on and he does not have to deal with it, does not have to smile as well or be forced not to smile in return, it is a simple thing with no demands on him, and his chest and arms and shoulders go quiet, his mind goes quiet, he knows he can be good with this woman and she can be good with him. And as they look each other silently in the eyes just like this for a long while more, this impression of Kelly burrows deeply into Michael, and the memory of this moment will vanish from his conscious memory and only the impression itself will remain. And so, as Michael sits on the side of the bed now, asserting his characteristic control over his mind, backing away from the past, thinking to put on an antebellum tuxedo and missing the irony of that, he does not overtly remember those few minutes when there was only silence and hope and the sudden inevitability of the future between him and the woman who, he assumes, ceased being his wife this morning.
∼
Michael stands inside the front door of the cottage, dressed for Laurie, his hands clasped behind his back, thinking to step outside to wait but hesitating as he deals with a niggling unease at showing himself in public in costume. He finished dressing while Laurie was still knocking around in the bathroom and he has a faint moue of a thought about how his wife — his ex-wife now, surely, given that declining sun before him — how his ex-wife and this woman from an entirely different generation share in some sort of ancient female gene which makes them compulsively and needlessly worry that their men won’t get dressed in time. And now, this glancing off of Kelly, even vaguely, even over some little quotidian quirk — how she always fussed at him to hurry up, hurry up and get ready — this murmur of Kelly in him makes his hands unclasp and drop to his sides for a moment and then bury themselves in his pants pockets. And he shuts down his mind on this whole subject. He can’t let himself think about Kelly.
“So.” This is Laurie’s voice, behind him. She speaks just the one word. A verbalized clearing of the throat. Michael takes his hands from his pockets, and he turns to face her. Laurie is framed in the doorway from the dining room. She is wearing her white silk hoop-skirted gown and her shoulders are bare and she has her hands demurely clasped before her at the waist. She smiles a small-scale, self-satisfied smile, and her hands separate and float out beside her, and as they do, her smile expands, calibrates itself for a multitude. She steps into the room and does a slow, elegant twirl. And Michael is standing in the central reception hall in his house, and behind him he hears the rustle of his daughter’s expected descent from the second floor. She makes a sound to let him know she is there. Perhaps even a single, simple word: So. He turns. Samantha is seventeen and she is going to the prom. She poses near the bottom of the staircase, her hands clasped before her at the waist. Her shoulders are bare. They shouldn’t be bare, he thinks, though when she swims, they are bare — at the pool far more of his teenage daughter is also bare — and he has come to accept that, but he can’t help thinking her shoulders shouldn’t be bare in a dress like this, worn for a seventeen-year-old boy as dumbshittedly hormonal as the boy who is soon to arrive, and Michael knows that he has to let all this go, that inside his head — even in there, where he should know how to be reasonable and controlled — he is being a foolish cliché of a father. What does not occur to him is that he should be saying something to Sam now about how beautiful she looks. He stands looking at her and the standing part becomes a bit unsteady, for her beauty actually staggers him. But he does not know how to put that into words — does not have the emotional mechanism to put that into words — so he shoves his hands into his pockets. Sam waits and then she steps forward and she twirls for him, slowly. Kelly arrives from the back of the house. “Sam!” she cries. “You’re so beautiful!” And though Kelly is also in the room, Sam ends her twirl facing Michael. “You’ll be the Queen of the Prom!” Kelly cries. Sam waits for her father. He pulls his hands out of his pockets and he tilts his head slightly to the side and he is certain he is smiling his approval, he feels certain that he is smiling and that smiling is enough. Sam steps closer to him and he opens his arms and she presses against him and he hugs her. And this is more than enough. He is proud of himself for not saying anything about her shoulders. And Sam lets go of him and moves off to her mother and wordful hugs, and he does not realize he has disappointed her — he has no idea whatsoever — and she does not know how to ask for what she needs from him and so she does not understand that her beauty has truly registered on him, registered so powerfully, indeed, that six years later, in the presence of this other young beautiful woman, he is spontaneously filled with a vision of his daughter’s beauty even though that is the last thing he wants in his head right now, a reminder that the woman he will have sex with in a few hours is — as he expects will be murmured about in a room full of strangers tonight — young enough to be his daughter.
“Is the jury still out?” Laurie says.
Michael doesn’t understand. “What?”
“The verdict, counselor. I’m awaiting the verdict.” Laurie’s voice is keeping it light, but she is realizing she has some work to do with this man, and if she hadn’t just dressed herself up and if he weren’t looking so soothingly sturdily handsomely fine in his high collar and white marcella tie, she’d start right now. Some loosening spade work. But his reticent stiffness still has a certain charm for her, and it certainly feels antebellum, so she waits for a long moment with her smile turned indulgent and then says, “Am I stunningly beautiful?”
The question actually surprises Michael. His first thought is: you know damn well you are. But he knows not to say that. “Yes,” he does say, and if he had his way, that would be sufficient. But he can see her wanting more, and he says, “Of that you’re guilty beyond any reasonable doubt.”
Laurie laughs. “Cheers in the courtroom,” she says.