Saturday, November 14
Simon brought a black zippered pouch and a paper bag from the bakery. Willa had expected Beth at some point that afternoon, not him at ten in the morning. He stood outside her building holding the bag against his chest, as if he were delivering something that had to remain upright.
“She said you might be seeing her.”
“I am.”
“Can you give her this?”
He held up the pouch. It was Beth's little traveling kit, the one with adapters and short cables and a screwdriver no bigger than a pen. Willa had watched her produce it in venues while grown men went looking for a grown man.
“Of course.”
“Sorry. I should have called.”
“No. Come in.”
He looked past her shoulder, then came. She had to move her bag from the kitchen chair. The notebook lay open on the table, yesterday's new lines running down the page. She closed it without thinking.
“Coffee?”
“If you're having it.”
“I am.”
She wasn't. She put the kettle on anyway.
He sat with the paper bag between his feet. His coat was buttoned, although the room was warm. Willa hung the pouch on the back of the chair where she wouldn't forget it. The action seemed both helpful and terrible, his wife's belongings attached to her furniture.
“What's in the bag?”
“Buns. I got too many.”
“You were planning to come.”
“Yeah.”
He smiled briefly, accepting the small exposure. She took out two plates. The buns were still warm enough for the icing to mark the paper. Simon had brought four.
Willa put one in front of him. He didn't touch it.
“How is she?”
“Busy.”
“Friday,” he said. “She's going on Friday. Is she all right for the car and things? She's stopped asking.”
Willa leaned against the counter. The kettle began its slow internal clatter.
“I don't know what to tell you.”
“Has she said—”
He stopped, rubbed his face, and began again.
“She's got most of her things. Clothes. I don't know what else to pack.”
“She can do that.”
“I know she can.”
The words sounded wrong in his mouth, too familiar. Willa turned to put coffee in the mugs.
“She'll be back for some of it Monday,” she said. “She asked me to help.”
“Right.”
He looked at the closed notebook. She didn't move it again.
“I didn't know you'd done material about her. Not like that. I thought you mostly talked about driving.”
“Mostly.”
“Was it the chair?”
Willa kept her eyes on the coffee.
“Some of it.”
“Your mother said something about a chair. I couldn't get past the other bit.”
“The apartment.”
“Yes.”
He unbuttoned his coat at last. One button resisted; he pulled too hard, then slowed down and did it properly.
“What was it?”
“You don't want—”
“Don't tell me what I want.”
Willa put the mugs on the table. She didn't sit.
“That she wanted to be the first person to sit in it,” she said. “How ready she'd made everything. I made it into—”
“A replacement.”
Willa said nothing.
He picked a crumb from the plate.
“That's good.”
“It wasn't about you.”
He looked up, tired and suddenly ugly with anger.
“Then why am I sitting in it?”
She had no answer. He pushed his cup away, then pulled it back as though that small refusal were childish.
“I'm sorry,” he said.
“You don't have to be.”
“I don't like speaking to people like that.”
“I don't either.”
He looked at her for a moment, then down at his coffee.
The coffee was too hot. Simon blew over it, watching the surface tremble. Willa sat down opposite him.
“At school yesterday,” he said, “we had the Christmas concert rehearsal. Not the actual thing, just the children who think playing from the beginning will fix the part they don't know.”
She waited.
“There are two clarinets. They've decided they don't like each other. No reason I can get out of them. They sit side by side and play at different speeds. Deliberately. I spent forty minutes trying to get them to hear what the other one was doing.”
He took a sip and winced.
“Did they?”
“No. I moved one of them. That's not good teaching. That's moving furniture.”
“Maybe it was what they needed yesterday.”
“Maybe.”
He looked down at his plate. Willa could remember watching him at the dinner table, delighted to tell them the boy with the saxophone story. Only four days ago. She wanted that man back in the room, not for Beth, not even for him. She couldn't stand having a part in what he looked like now.
“I didn't know,” he said. “That's what keeps—I'll be doing something, putting a plate away, and I think, I didn't know.”
Willa wrapped both hands around her mug.
“Did she talk to you about leaving before she got the place?”
“No.”
“Before this month?”
“No.”
He nodded, as if keeping the answer would be possible if he could put a date on it.
“She said she wasn't happy.”
“When?”
“Months. Last year too. We talked. I thought we talked. I asked what she wanted me to do. She said that wasn't what she meant. So I tried to work out what she did mean, and then she said I was trying to fix it.”
He gave a tired, almost apologetic shrug.
“I know. Apparently that's a thing men do. We all got the same instruction sheet.”
“Beth fixes things too.”
“I know. That's one of the things I liked.”
Willa took a small bite of bun.
“I don't want you to tell me what she's said,” he said.
“All right.”
“I do. But I don't want to ask.”
Willa nodded.
“I keep thinking she'll get to the end of the tour and want to come home. Then I remember she knows where she's going.”
He touched the pouch hanging from the chair.
“She asked for that Thursday. I said I'd find it. Took me this long to think of the drawer. It was exactly where she said.”
“I'll give it to her.”
“Thank you.”
He pulled the bag of buns onto his lap, folded the top twice, then seemed to remember the two that remained were for Willa. He put it back on the table.
“I don't need you to take sides.”
“Good.”
His face tightened.
“Sorry,” she said. “That came out—”
“No. I heard it.”
He looked toward the little shelf over her sink. There were three mugs on it, none of them matching. Willa thought of Beth's glasses and almost hated herself for being able to make the connection while he sat here.
“Would you tell her I can come out less?” Simon asked.
“What?”
“The tour. I don't have to visit. I know she wanted work that wasn't my thing. I can leave it alone. She can do the six weeks.”
Willa set down her cup.
“She knows she can.”
“No, I mean she can do that and come back. I won't make it into our holiday.”
“You should say that to her.”
“I have.”
“Then she knows.”
“I don't think she's hearing me.”
Willa looked at his coat, hanging open now, the collar folded under on one side. She wanted to straighten it. She didn't.
“Simon, I can't take her a better version of what you've already said.”
“I didn't ask for a better version.”
“You asked me to tell her.”
“Because she talks to you.”
Willa reached for her cup, then left it where it was.
“She asked me to carry some boxes.”
“That's talking.”
“Not about you.”
“Could it be?”
She could say yes and become useful. Beth would have to speak to her then. Even angrily, even to tell her to stop. There would be a conversation in which Willa had something urgent enough to put between them.
“No,” she said.
Simon leaned back.
“Right.”
“I'll give her the pouch.”
“Of course.”
“But I can't do the rest.”
“You've done quite a lot already.”
He looked at her, then away.
“I know that's a nasty thing to say.”
Willa let him have it. He had already apologized more than she could bear.
At the sink, the kettle gave a small cooling click. Upstairs, somebody dragged a chair. The room had all the sounds that made a place feel inhabited. Willa wanted to turn something on, music, the radio, any voice they weren't responsible for.
Simon took another sip of coffee.
“You should tell your mother it wasn't her fault.”
Willa stared at him.
“Not all of it,” he said. “Beth was going. I don't want everybody saying that one dinner did it.”
“I won't.”
“I hate that you get to have that dinner. A thing to tell. I didn't know the week before.”
His eyes had filled. He put the cup down carefully and pressed his thumb against the inside corner of one eye, a motion so private Willa had to look at the floor.
She waited. After a while he took a breath and lifted his head.
“I'm not usually like this.”
“I know.”
“Don't say you know.”
She closed her mouth.
He laughed once, embarrassed. “Sorry.”
Willa pushed the paper bag a little nearer him.
“Take some back.”
“No. I've got bread.”
“Not enough sugar in bread.”
He looked at the bag, then at her. It was a weak offering. He accepted one of the buns and wrapped it in a napkin.
She walked him downstairs. At the door he stopped to put on his gloves, one thumb refusing to find its place.
“She likes that job,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I am glad. I don't want you thinking—”
“I don't.”
He nodded. Then, unexpectedly, he leaned forward and kissed her cheek, the same ordinary family goodbye he had given her before. His face was cold.
After he went, Willa stood on the step until a neighbor had to ask to get past her.
Upstairs, she opened the pouch to check the zip hadn't caught. All the cables were coiled separately, tied with the little straps Beth used. A square adapter had a strip of yellow tape on one side. Willa closed it.
She put it in her own bag, then took her phone out and sent Beth a message.
Got your kit from Simon. I'll bring it.
Beth replied a minute later.
Thank you. Two thirty. Back entrance.
Willa typed, He's having a hard time.
She sat looking at it. Then she deleted the sentence and wrote, See you there.