The Grown Ups Read online

  Sam was thinking about ducking out and cutting his losses when Michael reappeared. The phone was still in his hand, but he didn’t seem to be on a call. He seemed surprised to see him standing there. “Oh, Sammy.”

  Sam grinned, but felt out of place. He wasn’t sure if Suzie and Michael had had an argument or what, but he didn’t want to be there to find out. He listened, but there wasn’t a sound. No music, no one sobbing into a pillow. It felt weird. “Did I get the night wrong? Were we having dinner? I can go if it’s not a good time.”

  Michael frowned. “Listen, it’s, it’s Suzie.” Michael scratched the back of his head. “She, well, she had a miscarriage this afternoon.” He squinted at Sam as he delivered the news, as if he didn’t quite believe it himself.

  Just a month before, Sam had met his father, Marguerite, Michael, and Suzie at a dim sum place in Chinatown to celebrate the pregnancy. They had raised their cups of green tea to the unborn Epstein-Turner. “Wow, oh shit. I’m sorry, Michael. Is she okay?”

  “She’s okay,” Michael said with a scrap of hesitation. “She’s resting. I just gave her something. I wasn’t here when it happened.” He shrugged. “If it’s going to happen, this is the best way. Now, I mean. Rather than later.”

  “Sure.” Sam nodded, although Michael looked entirely unconvinced by his own words. “Can I go get you guys anything? Food? What can I do? Leave? You name it.”

  “We never should have said anything so early. We should have known better by now.” Michael walked over and collapsed onto the couch. He was still wearing his coat and it puffed up around him, the collar standing up around his ears. He held the hand with his cell phone over his heart. “I need a drink.”

  “By now?” Sam asked as he glanced over at the bar cart by the table. “What do you want?”

  “Something hard. I called Bella, she’s coming over. I just need to get out of here. Do you want to go down the street? One drink?”

  Sam shook his head, hoping he hadn’t heard correctly. “Bella?”

  Michael shrugged. “It’s what Suzie wanted.” He sighed. “We’ve been through this before, I just don’t know how much more . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head.

  Sam didn’t know what to say to Michael’s revelation. He felt awful, but ill equipped to comfort or ease his brother’s pain. All he knew for sure was that he wanted to get out of Michael’s apartment before Bella arrived. “Are you okay with leaving Suzie alone?”

  “She probably won’t wake up anytime soon.” Michael rubbed his face. “And anyway, she has Bella. She asked for her, that’s what she wants.” Michael pushed himself up off the sofa with a soft groan and headed toward the door, so Sam followed him.

  Michael was drinking scotch on the rocks. He’d already finished two in fast succession and was now nursing his third. He and Sam were sitting in a booth by a pool table in a bar that was filled with people who looked like Michael.

  As Michael drank he peeled off layers until he was down to a blue button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow. On the table in front of him was his badge from the hospital, his wallet, phone, and keys. Sam had just started a second beer and had ordered them two roast beef sandwiches when Michael’s phone vibrated. He tilted it toward him, peered at the screen, and put the phone back down. “Bella is there, says Suzie is fine.”

  “Good.”

  “This is the third time, you know? She knows what to expect.”

  Sam was shocked. “I didn’t know, Michael, I’m, I’m really sorry.” Suzie was a third-year resident in psychiatry at Mount Sinai, where Michael was on staff as a pediatric cardiologist, and Sam had thought this pregnancy was a surprise, considering everything they had going on.

  “Yeah, well.” Michael studied the glass of scotch but didn’t take a drink. “She really wants a baby.” He passed a hand over his glass, rubbing his pinkie along the rim. “She’ll be all right.”

  The sandwiches arrived. Sam was too hungry to pretend he didn’t want to eat. He inhaled the first half while Michael picked at his. “You should eat,” Sam said, gesturing toward his brother’s sandwich with a spear of garlicky pickle.

  Michael stabbed the bread with a toothpick and picked up his scotch. “We talked about kids. But in a far-off-in-the-future way.” He laughed. “And then in the moment I said: what happens, happens. But I didn’t picture us here. Like this. Three failed attempts.”

  “But you want kids? Still, I mean?”

  “It’s getting harder the more shit happens.” He shook his head. “Three miscarriages?” He frowned. “Is it all some master plan? I see kids every day, sick kids and their desperate parents. Do I want to be one of those?”

  “Who says you would be desperate?”

  “You can’t fucking guarantee anything, Sam. Despite technology and intervention, we can’t take away the chance that something will go wrong at any given time, or that I can’t fix it when it does go wrong.” He stuck the toothpick in his mouth. Sam watched the muscles work in his jaw. “The miscarriages? They are the natural rejection of the body. They are not an indictment of our marriage or our incompatibility or my lack of enthusiasm to procreate.” He spit the words out along with the toothpick.

  Sam had a feeling that Michael and Suzie had had this conversation before.

  “Look.” Michael’s voice softened. “You don’t get this because you have no obligations, no real life you are committed to. No other person who can take your morning breath and dirty boxers kicked beneath the bed and still want to fuck your brains out and forgive you when you forget to pay the mortgage or pick up the dry cleaning or buy milk.” He paused and drew a circle with his index finger on the tabletop. “The thing about you is that you let go of everything. You step out of something if you don’t like it. You disappear. How could you even begin to get it?”

  Sam flinched. How had this become about him and his faults? “You’re right, I don’t get this at all.” Sam picked up his beer and took a long swallow. What a romantic picture Michael painted of his marriage and Sam’s wanderlust. “But maybe you are so critical of my life because you can look at it from the safety of yours.”

  Michael leaned forward and jabbed an index finger on the tabletop. “She thinks she failed me, me. How twisted is that? She is upset because she can’t make me a father.” He picked up his scotch and swirled it around once before he drained the glass.

  Sam didn’t want to know any of this. He wanted Michael to stop talking about Suzie. “Why don’t you tell her?” he suggested. “You should be telling her this, not me.”

  “Fuck!” Michael slammed his palms on the tabletop, making everything bounce. “You haven’t been listening to me at all.” He swept his keys and wallet off the table into his lap. Spit clung to his lip. “I’m fine, Sam. It’s not your deal.”

  “Listen—”

  “Nah, we’re done, right? We’re done here.” Michael opened his wallet, swaying slightly as he considered what to leave. He dropped a handful of money on the table. “That’s good enough.”

  Sam picked the bills out of his sandwich. Two hundred and sixty dollars. “That’s too much.” He tried to hand most of it back but Michael waved him off.

  “We invited you to dinner. Keep it. Keep the money. Give the money away. What the fuck do I care right now?” As he spoke he gathered all his clothes from the bench. His eyes were bloodshot little slits, the corners of his mouth clogged with spittle. There was a catch of a sob strangled in his throat that twisted Sam’s gut. “I have to go home,” Michael said quietly. “I just have to go home.”

  Sam walked beside Michael the two wide blocks back to his building. They didn’t talk. From beneath the canopy Sam stood on the sidewalk and watched through the double glass doors as Michael brushed past the doorman, refusing assistance, and waited for the elevator. Once Michael was gone Sam felt stupid for still standing there, as if Michael were going to reappear. The doorman caught him waiting and walked to the door and peered out, frowning. Sam had the feeling that h
e barely believed he was Michael’s brother.

  Sam smoothed down the dark gray down jacket Marguerite had given him for Christmas, and adjusted the collar of the denim shirt that was caught in the folds, self-conscious of his appearance. Sam had had to dig the coat out of a pile of crap on the floor in his room, so it could look and smell like death for all he knew. The fucking weather was more like February even though it was late April, and he was sick of the cold, sick of waiting for the seasons to really change.

  Feeling stupid for lingering on the sidewalk, he held up his hand and waved to the doorman. The doorman did not wave back. Sam turned and walked south toward the subway.

  He was about to round the corner, heading toward Broadway, when he heard his name. He turned and looked behind him. Bella was leaning against a streetlamp, shaking something out of her boot. She was wearing a dark coat and pink scarf, and her hair, under the fizzy light, looked like a halo. When she saw that he had stopped, she raised her boot in greeting. “Hey,” she called. “Sam? Can you wait up?”

  She put her boot back on and shuffled over while he calculated the months (eighteen) between now and her witnessing his sloppy removal of Mr. Epstein at Michael and Suzie’s wedding, and then before that (two, nearly three years) when they didn’t speak. When they finally were inches apart she got shy and looked down at her feet, then up at Sam from under a fringe of bangs. He couldn’t ever remember Bella having bangs before.

  “You were with Michael, right?”

  “Yeah. How’s Suzie?”

  She ran her tongue across her top lip. “She’s okay. I mean, I think this time she really thought . . . so . . .” She shrugged and reached up and adjusted the pink scarf. “She really just needs Michael now.”

  “Sure.” Sam paused. “Is your hair different?”

  “From what?” She gave Sam a funny look but didn’t answer his question. “You heading home?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I live downtown.”

  She nodded. “Ted and I are in Morningside Heights. I’m teaching at Hunter, so it’s kind of a pain-in-the-ass commute, but not too bad.”

  “Are you, I mean, is it a full-time job?”

  “Well, it’s an independent contract thing. I have the position through the end of the year but I don’t know what happens beyond that. It sort of makes it hard to plan. Especially for Ted.”

  “Oh, what’s he doing?”

  “Well, he’s working on a book.”

  “Great.”

  “Yes, yes it is. He is a brilliant writer.” Bella said the words quickly. The tip of her nose was bright pink. “So I’m working and my writing is kind of on hold anyway. It’s a good time for him to finish his book.”

  “Sure. Absolutely.”

  “And Ted really misses the West. Eventually we’ll probably head back there. He lived for three years in a cabin without running water or electricity.”

  “Wow, impressive.” Bella’s enthusiasm for Ted’s resume was exhausting. “But until then, nice that you’re so close to Suzie.”

  “Yeah, and my dad, of course. He’s glad I’m back for a while.” She paused. “How’s your dad?”

  “Happy. He’s happy.”

  “He looked great at the wedding.”

  “Yeah, well, you know, or maybe you don’t, he had a heart attack a couple of years ago. But he’s good now.”

  “I had heard that.” Bella nodded. “So now he’s a changed man?”

  Sam laughed. “Well, yeah, sure.” He wondered when Michael would tell their father about Suzie and the baby. Sam thought of the look on his face at the restaurant. His father hadn’t said it out loud, but Sam knew he was thinking that he was glad to be alive to see his grandchild. “Hey, so was Michael okay when you saw him?”

  “Just now? Well, he was a little unsteady.” She gave Sam a half smile, as if she approved of his getting his brother drunk after his wife lost a baby. “Suzie and I were sitting on the couch and she was still a little groggy from the painkiller. But when he came in they sort of fell into each other’s arms so I took it as my cue to leave.”

  Sam sighed and looked up at the night sky. Why did people always think you could never see any stars in the city? He could see plenty. “Well, I guess I’m going to head home then.” He really wanted to touch her. He couldn’t think about anything else but touching her. He missed her so much. But he had lost his chance. Before he did anything stupid he said, “Bye, Bella.”

  Bella looked surprised, but she echoed, “Bye, Sam.”

  They laughed at the awkwardness of the exchange, and Sam could see in her face that she was as relieved as he was that it was over.

  Michael was always right. As summer hit the city, and with it the wedding season that demanded the need for endless trays of bite-sized food, Sam quit the catering gig, cleared out of the sublet with the few items he owned stuffed in a duffel bag, and went home. He managed to walk away with about fourteen hundred dollars in his bank account. Once again, New York had knocked him on his ass.

  Marguerite and Hunt were in Italy for a month, and Sam had promised to check on the house while they were gone. He didn’t think they expected that he would quit his job to bring in the mail and water the lawn, but the opportunity to have a place to be for a month with a pool and fresh air, and without the pressure of roommates or poaching endless filets of salmon, was too good to turn down.

  Dozing in a lounge chair, lulled into a semiconscious state by the click of the pool filter and the soft strum of the compressor that kept the house a cool seventy-two degrees, Sam had plenty of time to consider his life. He had the vague idea that if he had his own kitchen he could do as he pleased. But Sam knew there were as many failures as restaurants, guys like him who were passable cooks but who couldn’t run a business. Sam couldn’t fool himself into thinking that the odd success story would be him. Which brought him to the realization that maybe he just wasn’t enough of a dreamer, that somehow he had become careful to the point of being paralyzed, and that was sobering.

  When Hunt and Marguerite returned from their trip they didn’t have much of a reaction upon discovering Sam had moved back into his old room. The fact that this was simply part of their expectations where he was concerned was annoying yet true. So how was Sam to be offended? As it was he was spending most of his waking hours by the pool or at Peter Chang’s house, and he kept to that routine when they returned.

  Hunt looked tanned and rested from the trip. He and Marguerite brought back several outstanding cases of wine, and in the summer evenings they sat out on the patio side by side in matching lounge chairs, going through photos and enjoying a glass. Sam usually ducked out before they could offer him one. He knew they wanted to talk; he could see the concern in Hunt’s face. It was just that his topics-to-avoid list was growing.

  For the first time in a long time Sam had run out of ideas. But then Peter rented a house in Chatham out on the Cape for the month of August and invited anyone who was around to join him. Frankie, Peter, and Sam drove out together and met the real estate agent for the keys. She walked them through the house, pointing out the two-sided gas fireplace, sunken bathtubs, sauna, remote control skylights, gourmet kitchen, and the long table that sat twenty. Peter followed dutifully while Frankie took the steps two at a time to the second floor to get the first pick of the six bedrooms. Sam went outside to check out the view. The house sat on the curve of a bluff overlooking the ocean. It had a wraparound deck on each of the two floors. With the sliding glass doors open, the breeze pulled the white curtains horizontally until it appeared as if they were floating.

  After the real estate agent left, Sam went to the store to pick up provisions. Even after spending six hours trapped in the car to get to the Cape, he appreciated the quiet, meandering drive into town: the salt-tangy breeze of the stop-and-go traffic on the narrow two-lane road, the classic New England architecture of weathered shingles and painted shutters.

  The grocery store was flooded with people who, like them, had just started their rent
als. Food and children perched precariously in overloaded carts that reminded Sam of the Grinch’s sleigh after he had looted Whoville. The only bags of charcoal left behind had been gutted. He weeded through what remained and left the grocery store with thick, bloody steaks marbled with fat, gold potatoes, greens, lemons, parsley, butter, several six-packs of locally brewed beer, coffee, milk, and cereal. At a roadside farm stand he stopped for a dozen ears of corn and a bushel of warm tomatoes to round out the meal.

  When Sam got back to the house there was another car in the driveway besides Peter’s. Bella, Ted, and Suzie were on the deck with Peter and Frankie, an already empty bottle of wine in front of them and a second bottle uncorked between them. Sam wanted to ask where Michael was, if he was coming later or at all, but he didn’t.

  Sam and Ted had never officially met at Suzie and Michael’s wedding, so Bella performed an introduction. It seemed odd, and slightly suspect to Sam, anyway, that he was the only one of Bella’s “friends” who hadn’t met Ted. From the way Ted kept his arm wrapped around Bella’s waist, Sam thought Ted must feel the same way. As soon as Sam could, he escaped to the kitchen.

  For dinner Sam grilled the corn and steaks, pulverized the parsley, lemon, garlic, and oil into a pesto that he drizzled over thin slices of meat and roasted potato, and served everything on the deck. As the sun dipped into the water the breeze slowed, but the air was cool. Unwilling to abandon the gorgeous views, Peter dragged blankets from the house and they sat huddled over their plates until there wasn’t anything left.

  Sam’s impression of Ted from the wedding was that he was unlikable. Sam wanted him to remain unlikable to his friends. So far, Ted stared hard at his plate, concentrating on his food, and only looked up when Bella spoke. Then he appeared overly attentive, a ghost of a smile hovering over his lips before he added a comment or reached over to whisk an errant strip of hair off her cheek. Sam, at Ted’s glimpses of humanity, consoled himself with the notion that charm was a trait held by sociopaths. Especially when Ted directed a sudden stream of conversation toward Sam. They talked about the feasibility of eating locally, sustainable organic farms, and Sam’s mother’s award-winning goat cheese. Ted seemed enamored with the idea that Sam’s mother had taken such a risk.