Claudia took it with the gentlest touch, as if any more pressure might set off an alarm. “Can I—” she began, but left the question unasked. With an uncertain step she closed the gap between them and hesitantly pulled him to her. Much as Max wanted to, he kept himself from falling into her embrace. He stood straight, spine rigid, for the few short seconds she held him, looking numb but feeling anything but. He might sink into tears. He might break into laughter. A dark, manic wave with no outlet rolled about inside him, tossing his mind like a little boat with no lights to guide it. Oliver needled his way between them, embroidering his introduction with a sycophant’s overstatement and praise, before Evelyn stepped sternly in and asked if they wanted something to eat.
“I’ll get plates,” Claudia said as Benji went for more chairs. “Max?” she asked from the doorway. “Maybe you can help me?”
He had the sensation of blacking out, a dark shroud draped over him in one room then pulled away to reveal him in another. How did he get there? She seemed magical to him. Standing not three feet away, speaking in a language he found beautiful but couldn’t understand, she was the New Possibility — capital N, capital P—in a life that felt (for all its stunning and remarkable moments, since the day he could hold a cello bow) predictable, predestined, plodding. Amanda Davis had anticipated every step, and Max had puppied along. Violin at three, cello at six, eight hours a day, 365 days a year, music theory, composition, practice, practice, practice, Carnegie Hall at the age of twelve, the Eastman School, Juilliard, one step after the next.
Even with his illness, erratic and havoc wreaking as it could be, his life had seemed an utterly known quantity. Everything was anticipated, every day accounted for. He understood the cycle of it, the ups and downs, the highs and lows. He could tally the weight of all it contained, except the woman before him. The greatest unknown, the biggest unanswered question of his entire life stood just three feet away.
Max stayed where he was, watching as she took plates down from the cabinet and opened a drawer with a clatter of forks. She sat at the kitchen table and waited for him to take a seat across from her. When he did, she looked at him with a practically painted-on Mona Lisa smile, mesmerizing and unreadable. Three pies, an inordinate amount for nine people, lay atop the table. Pumpkin. Pecan. A lattice-topped apple. Claudia took up a knife and sliced, looking in the other room as if they might be caught making the transgression of this private, preemptory dessert, a risk that made the moment that much more precious. She served Max a piece, took one for herself, and raised her fork, waiting for Max to raise his and clink, like a toast of champagne. They ate their pie in silence, not comfortable but not entirely unlivable either, until Evelyn came and shooed them away.
By the time Claudia and Oliver had finished their meal, Max was beside himself. He wanted to be back in the kitchen with Claudia, in the quiet of that bright cocoon, patiently awaiting a dawning of wings, but the dining room and its chorus of voices insistently tugged him in other directions.
“Play,” they said. “Play.”
Offering an extemporaneous concert was the furthest thing from his mind, but Benji and Cat and poor, obsequious Oliver swirled into a vortex that slowly sucked him in. Like a prisoner who feels the rope tighten about his hands the more that he struggles, Max gave into the idea that some coveted moment with Claudia would come sooner if he simply gave in and did what they asked. She stood at the other end of a field crossable only by the coaxing of strings. He ran out into the freezing night for his cello.
Claudia lay awake on the pullout couch in her father’s study, Oliver breathing deeply beside her, dead to the world on even the thinnest of mattresses. She faced away from him, only their naked asses touching as was their habit, the closest to cuddling Claudia could bear, especially after their first month of dating when — honeymoon period over — she named her future husband and his body heat “The Furnace” and pushed him to the other side of the bed. That hump-to-hump contact acted as a security blanket of sorts and also a fail-safe GPS, broadcasting any movement Oliver might make that would require her to stow her phone. Now, with him drugged with tryptophan and the soporific satisfactions of star fucking, she could blanket herself in the moony light of a tiny screen and type her texts to Nick with immunity.
Are you awake?
It was after one o’clock, but Nick’s response popped up instantly, as if he had simply been waiting to press “Send.” Did u survive?
I’m typing, aren’t I? Did you?
Nothing 2 survive at my brother’s. Other than his wife’s cooking. Would rather have been w/ u 2.
Too tired to type your words?
All the kids are doing it.
I thought people our age were beyond that.
OMG. WTF? LMFAO!
No emoticons.
How did it go?
I’m a terrible person.
:-/
!!!!!
Why terrible?
Gutless.
You’re there. That’s not gutless.
All I do is hide. I hid from him. I hid him from you.
U keep beating urself up about that.
Then, before she could answer: You’re there now.
Here and hiding!
Go easy.
I came to get my mother and brother off my back. And you.
That’s not true. U wanted to see him.
I did.
He wanted to see u.
He needs something.
Who doesn’t?
I don’t know if I have it to give.
U don’t even know what it is.
I’m like a mute around him.
It will get easier.
I wish I’d been better.
Ur expecting Mother of the Year?
No. Not up for that one.
U get to be nervous. And awkward. And confused.
Claudia didn’t answer.
Ambivalent even.
You weren’t. You played football! That’s fatherhood 101. Textbook.
He doesn’t want u 2 b textbook. He wants u 2 b u.
He told you this?
He doesn’t have to.
I think he thinks I hate him, Claudia typed.
Why? Bc you didn’t play football?
Because I’m hiding in my father’s study.
Oh. When you said hiding…
I meant it. Something crazy?
Shoot.
I was thinking of us as a family.
Who family?
The three of us.
You have a family.
You know what I mean.
You have a husband.
Forget it.
We’re not here to play house. Him or me.
Chastened, Claudia typed, I don’t want to play house.