“Good morning, Mr. March.”
Gina’s always so formal with me, despite the closeness that’s grown between us all since the Robbs moved in. She dresses formal, too, in a high-necked, round-collared overcoat that looks too warm even for our cold snap, and a velvet thrift-store beret, just in case the French Resistance needs some backup. When she comes down the stairs, her eyes light up in a way that makes me cringe with anticipation.
“I like your blazer,” she says. She would like it. “Is that what you call it, a blazer?”
“You got me,” I say. “It’s one of the ones Charlotte brought back from her father’s. She’s trying to make me look more distinguished.”
“She’s doing a good job.”
“Thanks.”
When I first met her, I didn’t see the appeal of this rather plain and eccentric girl, and certainly couldn’t understand what it was Carter, with his more athletic, unreflective cast of mind, would find appealing. Now I do. She’s constant and bright, an optimist grounded in reality, an eccentric with breathtaking disregard for how other people perceive her.
“Your husband’s a lucky man, you know that?”
She bunches her lips the way she always does when I say something silly. “I’m sorry we missed you yesterday, but I know they work you so hard.”
“I guess we’re both the early risers in our families.”
“Carter’s up,” she says quickly, almost defensively. “I can get him if you want to-”
“No, no. I’m just on my way out, like you.”
“He does want to talk to you about something, Mr. March. It wouldn’t take long.”
“Right now, you mean?”
“We just weren’t sure when we’d see you, and here you are.” She pleads with her whole body hunched forward, hands together in a prayerful gesture. “Let me go get him real fast, okay? It’ll take, like, two minutes.”
Set loose by my nod, she bounds halfway up the stairs before stopping herself, ascending the rest of the way at a calmer pace. When she returns, Carter is with her, his hair still matted from sleep, looking ridiculous in shorts and an unzipped hoodie.
“I do have to go,” Gina says, getting on tiptoes to kiss his stubbly cheek.
Once she’s reversing down the driveway, leaving us alone together, Carter wipes the traces of a sheepish grin from his lips, signaling that whatever he wants to tell me must be important. In his mid-twenties and no stranger to tragedy, he still has a boyish way of steeling himself for serious talk, like he’s afraid of not being taken as an adult.
“Roland,” he says. “There was something I wanted to talk to you about.”
“So I gathered.”
“It’s. . really, I don’t know if it’s awkward or not. But we thought we should say something to you first-in case it might be, you know?”
The hoodie falls open. I scan the words on his wrinkled T-shirt. MY SAVIOR CAN BEAT UP YOUR HONOR STUDENT.
Nice.
“Gina,” he says. “We just found out that she’s pregnant.”
My chest tightens, like somebody just inflated a balloon under the ribs.
“You’re having a kid?” The words sound hollow in my ears. “That’s great, Carter. Congratulations. That’s. . wonderful news.”
“It’s just. .” His shoulders rise and his head starts shaking, physically disowning his own thoughts. “We were worried, you know? About how to tell Charlotte.” Not able to look me in the eyes. “You know,” he says. “Because of Jessica.”
“Oh.”
I’m not prepared to hear her name on his lips, not ready to talk like this about something I hold deep inside, cherishing it like a cancer. My mouth twists and I feel my whole body tensing up, which Carter sees and goes wide-eyed over, the way he would if he’d inadvertently knocked over a vase.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he says. “I know we’ve never really talked about it. Theresa Cavallo said something, and then. .” His voice trails off. “I wouldn’t bring it up at all except that Charlotte said something about her in church. About Jessica.”
“Let’s. .” I begin, but my throat tightens. “She said something at church?”
“During prayer time, she shared how she still struggles with what happened. How God could let it happen, you know-and also the way she misses her daughter, misses just having a daughter. It was really honest of her. . and it just made us worry that maybe we shouldn’t say anything yet.”
I’m moving my head. I’m clamping my hand over my mouth. Trying to look thoughtful while buying time. Trying to get control of what’s happening in my head.
She talked. She told these people. She shared.
The way she misses her daughter.
Even having a daughter.
Words I couldn’t bring myself to think, let alone broadcast, words I couldn’t whisper to Charlotte in the dark. She shared them. She was really honest.
“Tell her,” I say. “She’ll be fine. Or if you want, I’ll do it. But I know it would mean more coming from you two. Congratulations again-”
“I know you’ve gotta go.” He reaches for my arm but stops short of contact. “But I thought we should talk about this other thing, too. Charlotte and church, I mean. We’d really like to see you there, too, but I’m sensing that’s not gonna happen anytime soon. Is it a problem for you, her coming with us?”
I throw my briefcase into the car and slump behind the wheel. “Carter, it’s a free country. She can do whatever she wants-” Pulling the door shut. “Obviously. She does what she wants already.”
He has more to say, but the engine drowns him out. I reverse down the driveway, smiling my heartfelt and skin-deep good wishes, leaving behind a household I’ve increasingly lost the ability to understand.
I know how Simone Walker must have felt, having a spouse turn religious on her. There’s not much chance of Charlotte cutting me open-not literally-but otherwise I can relate. The rules change in the middle of the game, and it’s not enough for you to stand by and let it happen, to pretend you’re okay with it. No, you have to bend with the rules. You have to go along. At first they’ll accept lip service and platitudes, but before long it’s sincerity or nothing. The line will be drawn and if you ignore that line it will be pointed out to you. Cross here, but do it with both feet and never think of crossing back.
As I drive, the memory comes to me, Charlotte apprehensive on the bedroom threshold, saying it was only polite to go to church since they’d asked her. Saying it would be interesting to go back.
“Do it if you want,” I’d said. “If it makes you happy.”
“I think it would make them happy.”
And I’d said: “Some people find comfort in the ritual,” or words to that effect, which earned a quizzical smile from her, like she was amused and surprised all at once that a thing so obvious would be inaccessible to me. We’d once laughed together about the cross-wearing Theresa Cavallo, a missing persons detective I’d worked with and grown to respect, who’d psychoanalyzed my professional faults as the result of my anger toward God.
Only Charlotte wasn’t laughing anymore and isn’t laughing now. Every Sunday she goes with the Robbs to their newfound church just inside the Loop, cloistered in the shell of a defunct electronics superstore. And every Sunday I find a reason not to go with them, excuses of a secondary order to keep me from having to address the real one, the obvious one.
I’ve been telling myself I’m fine with this, that I can live with it. There was a time not too long ago when Charlotte popped pills to sleep at night and we were at each other’s throats, and I am relieved finally to be through it-her low-wattage religiosity seemed like a small price to pay for peace on the home front. And I like Carter and Gina. Having them in our lives has been good for us, and I’d like to think the reverse is true, as well.