The Grown Ups Read online

  Sam didn’t want to be standing in the doorway, but he couldn’t move. His mind kept chewing over the fact that Bella was sleeping in here and not with Ted. He turned his gaze from Michael and Suzie to Bella, and found that Bella was looking right at him, her eyes wide and unblinking.

  FOURTEEN

  Depth of Field

  Bella—2010

  Bella always felt like a little girl when she went to her father’s office, especially if she had to wait for him, like she did today, in the reception area. When he was done with his meeting he came rushing toward her, shoving his arms into his coat sleeves and offering apologies even though Bella didn’t need one. He bent down to kiss her and Bella tossed the magazine she had been holding on her lap back onto the side table. She offered him her cheek and said, “Dad, you need better magazines.”

  In the restaurant her father waited until Bella was seated before he sat down. She smiled at her father across the table, grateful for his manners. She wasn’t hungry; her stomach had been twisted since she woke up. She hated asking for money. Hated that this many years out of college, even with a teaching job at a decent college, she wasn’t making enough money to pay rent. That Ted was supposed to be carrying half but wasn’t obviously was an issue, one that she most definitely didn’t feel like bringing up. She opened the plastic-coated diner menu, sticky around the edges, and glanced over the top at her father. He was making a show of looking even though she knew he would order the Reuben. He always ordered the Reuben.

  They managed to get through most of their food by exchanging family information. They talked about Thanksgiving, four weeks away, and what Bella’s brothers and their families were doing, the many grandchildren and the two more on the way.

  Just last week Bella and Ted had been in the park on an unseasonably warm October day, the kind of day that felt like the last of its kind until April. Ted caught Bella watching a toddler trying hard to lick his ice cream without making it fall off the cone. The boy’s father had offered a hand but the child had stubbornly refused, and moments later, on their way out of the park, Bella heard the high-pitched wail of disappointment that could mean only one thing. Ted had heard it too and he’d given Bella a sidelong glance. “Reason number nine hundred seventy-three that I will never be a father.”

  Bella’s inclination had been to dismiss Ted, to tell him that you never felt that way about your own child. But something about the way he said it made her hear what he was saying. That he wasn’t waiting to be joked out of it by Bella. That he probably wouldn’t change his mind. That he really didn’t see himself being a father and Bella, if she was going to be with him, was going to have to accept it.

  The crazy thing about all of it was that Bella wasn’t so sure, like Suzie apparently was, that she was meant to be a mother. But still, she wanted to have the choice. Lately, being with Ted made her feel as if she had no choice about anything.

  “So.” Her father leaned forward over his plate, the last bite of meat and bread in his fingers. “How’s Ted?”

  Bella poked the lump of cottage cheese on her plate. She always ordered the salad special, and she always forgot it came with cottage cheese. She looked away from her food and smiled at her father. “Great.”

  “How’s the writing?”

  “He might be almost done. His agent thinks so, anyway.”

  Her father shook his head slowly from side to side. “Publishing is a mystery business, I guess. Not a lot of logic involved. Lots of delicate personalities.” Her father smiled, but it was tight and not at all sincere. Bella was pretty sure the “delicate personality” he was referring to was Ted.

  “I know the payoff isn’t supposed to be about fame, or money even, but Ted’s book is so beautiful.” Bella believed in Ted, believed in what she was saying to her father, but she was also getting tired of defending him. If Ted were there he would tell her to knock it off, that he didn’t need her sticking up for him, that he didn’t give a shit what people thought about him and that Bella cared too much.

  Her father frowned. “I hope so, Bella. I really do, for Ted’s sake and for yours.” He took a deep, gulping breath. “What about you? Your writing?”

  Bella was always surprised that anyone remembered she was a writer. Her father always did, and Suzie. The only writing Bella did lately was correcting her students’ papers and editing Ted’s work. She had not felt the pull of her own work in years, and she had never enjoyed it in the way she enjoyed teaching. But she didn’t have the nerve to admit to that out loud. It still sounded like too much of a failure. “It’s always there, but I don’t get a lot of time.”

  “It’s hard,” he acknowledged. “You will make it happen.”

  Bella nodded, afraid still to disappoint her father. The last time she had felt like writing she had been in love with Sam. She refused to believe that one had anything to do with the other.

  Bella put down her fork. She was done mashing the cottage cheese. “Dad?” She twisted in her seat and looked across the room at a table where an elderly woman sat, her hair unnaturally red, her eyebrows dyed to match, a dish of cottage cheese in front of her untouched, a spoon held in a shaky hand over a cup of tea. Bella had to force herself to look away. “I’m sorry. I need some money.”

  Her father nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” Bella said again, wishing that Ted knew what this felt like. In all the years they had been together Bella had never met Ted’s parents and had spoken to them only briefly on the phone, once, when they had called Ted for his birthday. Bella always had the feeling that Ted was mildly disappointed in the paths his parents’ lives had taken: his father worked for the post office while his mother ran a dog-grooming business and kennel. Ted was an only child who as far as Bella could tell had never been denied a thing in his entire life, although he made a show of never taking anything from them as an adult. If Bella wasn’t positive his parents existed, she would have thought he was an orphan.

  Her father swallowed and wiped his mouth. “New York is expensive, Bella. Please don’t apologize. I’m happy you are close to home.” He tapped the top of the table with his hand. “Don’t apologize,” he said again.

  “You make it too easy for me.”

  Her father smiled. “You want it to be harder?”

  Bella shook her head. She felt miserable about the state of her finances.

  “Bella, listen to me. You are my daughter. I love you. I would do anything for you, that’s my job.” He paused. “You don’t believe me now, but everything will even out. You’ll see.”

  Bella nodded. The unqualified love was almost too much to bear. She looked back across the room at the old lady, who was now daintily eating her cottage cheese. She smiled slightly after each spoonful. Maybe she had it all right, Bella thought. Maybe she was concentrating too much on what was wrong all the time instead of what was right.

  She watched her father get up from the table and pay the check, and make small talk with the waitress, who had stepped behind the register. They were speaking loudly enough that Bella had no problem hearing everything they said, even above the noise of the restaurant. The woman had a glittery pumpkin pinned in place of a nametag and Bella’s father commented on it. The waitress explained that her son had made it for her when he was five and now he was in college. Bella smiled as her father pointed to her back at the table.

  The weeks leading up to Thanksgiving passed in a blur for Bella. She had a full course load and too many papers to grade. Every night she trudged to the subway feeling more and more like a hunchback, weighed down by her canvas totes and the voluminous winter coat and scarves. Snow had already stalled the city once in early November, leaving even the most hard-core winter romantic dreading the long months ahead. There was nothing wonderful about numb fingers and toes or frizzy hair from all the forced dry heat.

  After that lunch with her father, and a loan that had paid November’s and December’s rents, Bella made a promise to herself that by the New Year she would be self-sufficient
. That meant she and Ted had to have a real discussion about money, specifically about his intention to contribute. She had put it off night after night, but now that November was hurtling to a close she was going to have to bring it up.

  She smelled the stew as she trudged up the four flights of stairs to their top-floor walk-up. Inside, Bella released her baggage onto the bench by the door and sighed as she massaged her arms and kicked off her boots. The music was loud, an experimental jazz station that Ted favored. She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths before she walked down the hallway and into the main room.

  Ted was at the desk by the windows that overlooked the air shaft, surrounded by teetering piles of moldy old paperbacks. When he saw her he looked up, put down his pen, and smiled as if she was the best thing he had seen all day. Bella noticed, as she took the few steps across the room, that he had set the coffee table with place mats, real napkins, candles, and wineglasses.

  Ted circled her waist with his arm and brought her down onto his lap. Bella put her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. They were heading to her father’s house the day before Thanksgiving and she hadn’t realized how much she was looking forward to the long weekend away until that very moment. She loved the noisy, chaotic domesticity that was unique to her brothers’ families.

  Ted kissed the side of Bella’s neck. “You smell like snow.”

  “Hmm,” Bella said, wondering if dinner could wait as Ted found his way under her sweater. He kneaded her spine, then reached around front, brushing the outside of her bra with his thumb. Bella tried to shift in his lap, but Ted held her hip firmly with his other hand. Then abruptly he removed his hand and his mouth.

  “What?” Bella mumbled, her eyes blinking open.

  Ted laughed. “The stew! Wine or beer?”

  “Beer,” Bella answered reluctantly. “But can it wait?”

  He shoved her gently off of his lap. “Go sit on the couch.”

  “You don’t want help?”

  “Nope.”

  Bella plopped down on the couch and reached behind her for the pile of mail from the sofa table. She turned on the light by the sofa, the better to read the mail by. Ted turned it off as he handed her a beer. “Ruins the mood,” he explained.

  Bella pushed the mail between the couch cushions. She was willing to shift the mood to whatever Ted wanted if it ended up getting her laid. They could talk about the rent afterward, when he was in a relaxed state of mind. She took several deep swallows of the cold beer; it was nearly half done and she was feeling a little buzzed by the time Ted returned with two steaming bowls of stew. The chunks of carrot and potato were coated in a glistening brown glaze that smelled faintly of red wine and bay leaf. Bella first had Ted’s stew at the cabin in Montana, made with venison from the deer Ted had killed, not beef from the Fairway Market. She speared a potato and chewed, searching already for a hunk of bread to mop up the soupy bits of meat and gravy. Reading her mind, Ted tore off the end of a crusty baguette and handed it to her as he sat down, the remainder of the loaf balanced on his lap in a dish towel. They ate in silence, breaking it only to murmur appreciation and, in Bella’s case, to ask for seconds.

  When she was satisfied, when her stomach was pressing against the waistband of her skirt, Bella relinquished her empty bowl to the coffee table and leaned back against the pillows, watching Ted. He chewed slowly, methodically, like a prisoner savoring his last meal. She teased him about this habit, but it was probably why he was naturally thin. He tasted his food, and didn’t inhale like Bella did. Bella was always hungry for more before her body had even registered that she had eaten.

  Ted finished his stew and pushed everything to the center of the coffee table so he could put up his feet. Bella took this as a chance to extend her legs and put her feet in his lap. Ted massaged Bella’s arches through her thick-cabled socks.

  “Oh, that’s nice,” Bella said. Ted looked at her, distracted but happy, as if he had a secret. “What’s up? Good day of writing?”

  “You could say that.”

  “What?” Bella nudged his thigh with her big toe.

  Ted took a deep breath. “I got an invitation to Essex.”

  Bella struggled to sit up. “What? Wow! Seriously? When?”

  “A few months ago.”

  “Wait a sec—what are you talking about?” Bella shook her head. Ted was looking across the room instead of at her. “I don’t understand.”

  “Essex offered me a residency. Two months. A cabin in the woods. My meals delivered in a dinged-up metal lunch pail, walks on the grounds where Capote and Mailer and their fellow writers once frolicked, and stimulating conversation in the evening with other like-minded individuals.”

  Bella was afraid to hear what came next. Essex was the residency most of the writers she knew aspired to. The application process was rigorous. She knew many talented people who had been turned down multiple times. She had no idea Ted had even applied. “When are you going?”

  Ted finally turned to face her. “I turned them down.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I agreed to stay here with you.”

  “So you’re saying I kept you from Essex? I would never—” All of a sudden the stew that had sat so satisfyingly in her belly churned ominously.

  “I’m saying that I have my own cabin. I certainly don’t need Essex.”

  “But it’s so—”

  “Prestigious?”

  Bella nodded and Ted made a face at her, as if she knew better than to use that argument on him. He held up his thumb and forefinger. “I’m this close to finishing.”

  “What’s stopping you? You have all day every single day. You can have the nights too, if that’s what it takes. I’m working. You have no pressures.” Bella almost said you have no pressure to make money, but she didn’t. He needed to pay rent, and this seemed like a great time to remind him. “You haven’t given me money for rent in months, and I let it slide because I thought you were really pushing through to the end.”

  Ted ignored her comment about the rent money. “Essex’s offer made me really reconsider all of this, Bell. I have to go back to Montana. I can’t, I just can’t work here.”

  “But what about my job?”

  Ted sighed and shook his head. “If we are going to be together I just can’t see it being here.”

  “I like my job.”

  Ted nodded slowly. “I know you do.”

  “Is that bad? That I like my job? That I like to teach?”

  “No. I just could never choose that.”

  Bella felt as if she had been slapped. She removed her feet from Ted’s lap and swung them off the couch and onto the floor. She put her head in her hands and rested her elbows on her knees. “I thought everything was going so well,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I like it here.”

  “Bella—”

  “I’m good at my job.”

  “So am I.”

  Bella looked up, confused. “What?”

  “I’m better than good, Bella. I haven’t given myself a real chance. I met you. I fell in love. You were so passionate in Iowa. I allowed myself to be distracted.”

  “I’m a distraction?” Bella’s heart pounded in her ears. It felt as if a chunk of potato was caught in her throat. She coughed, but nothing moved. “You don’t want me anymore, just like that? After all this time?”

  “Bella—”

  “What? What happened? You don’t touch me anymore. We never have sex. I thought maybe we were just in one of those ruts, you know? That if I tried a little harder we could turn it around.”

  Ted shook his head. “I don’t know what to say to that.”

  “Fuck you!” Bella was incredulous. Was he agreeing with her? That he didn’t want to have sex? That it was somehow her fault? “I thought we were going to be together forever.”

  “Did you really? You knew I didn’t want kids. I can’t be domestic all the time.” He gestured around them at the apartment. “I can’t be tied t
o this life, Bella.”

  “What life? You mean the one we created together?” Bella put her face in her hands. The enormity of what Ted was saying had begun to hit her in bitter waves. “Oh my God.”

  “I’m going back to Montana.”

  “Am I invited?” Bella asked.

  Ted said nothing.

  Bella inhaled. “Okay.”

  “Maybe we just need a few months.” The sincerity behind Ted’s words was so false Bella couldn’t even look at him.

  “Is that why you were so happy when I came home? Because you had decided to leave?”

  “You have no idea how good it feels to have made a decision.”

  Bella stood up and walked the few feet to the alcove that housed their bed. The sheets and pillows were tangled, the elastic stretched out at the corners of the bottom sheet. It looked as if the people sleeping there had wrestled the entire night. “When are you leaving?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Bella turned to look at Ted. He looked like a man who had broken the news about a fatal illness and was waiting for the patient to melt down once the information sunk in. And yet she could already see herself arriving alone for Thanksgiving, could picture the relief on her father’s face. “I think you should take everything. Ship what you can’t carry. I can’t afford to stay in this apartment. I—we—haven’t been able to afford to stay here for a while. My father has been helping us, in case you thought the bills paid themselves.”

  “You knew when we moved to New York that my income was limited.”

  “You said you would contribute,” Bella said weakly, as if that would matter now.

  Ted shrugged. “I knew you wanted this, so I said what you wanted to hear. I’m sorry. Your father has always helped you out. I assumed you didn’t have a problem with that.”

  Bella looked around the small apartment. Most of the things belonged to her. Even her books she kept separate from Ted’s. It would be easy for him to pack his duffel. They had been together for nearly three years and had nothing tangible to show for it. Not a joint checking account, a TV purchased on credit, or a couch they had deliberated over in a showroom. How had she never seen this before? This part, the less sticky part, would be easy.