Jennifer DuBois - Cartwheel

And the Kellerses: Despite the details, their loss was, fundamentally, his. It pained him not to send a card, at the very least. And not reaching out to them would be even harder on Maureen, he knew; she had always been very into sending sympathy cards. It’s the ritual , she was always saying, swirling her cursive into a note destined for some barely known neighbor or long-forgotten aunt. It’s the acknowledgment. Love is expressed through pragmatism. It may be just a card, but it’s also the objective correlative of their loss .

The objective correlative? Andrew would say. Maureen taught high school English. I thought we said not to take work home .

The phone rang and Andrew put the computer on the floor. “Hey,” he said.

“You made it,” said Maureen.

“So it would seem.”

“How’s Anna?”

“Running.”

“Outside?”

“Of course not.”

“Good.”

Talking to Maureen tended to lift Andrew’s spirits—this was not the typical experience of men speaking to their ex-wives, he realized, but then theirs had not been a typical divorce. In a way, Andrew often thought, the divorce had actually been deeply optimistic. Right after Janie died, all they’d cared about was stanching the hemorrhaging hole in the center of their lives; romantic love, or any of its shadowy iterations, was no longer a concern. So the fact that they realized, almost a decade on, that they weren’t dead to the world, that their sexual selves still existed, that the notion of an adult relationship that wasn’t irredeemably destroyed actually held appeal for both of them—well, this was a sign of progress, in a way. It was probably the most hopeful thing they’d done since having Lily; it gestured toward the idea that things could be better for them both. Though it was true that nobody else saw it that way, and that all of their mutual friends tended to treat Andrew like Oedipus with his eyes clawed out—his situation no less distressing just because fate had ordained it.

“So,” said Maureen. “I have some not great news.”

“Oh, Christ,” said Andrew. Maureen was notoriously understated.

“It looks like they were maybe sleeping with the same man.” Maureen inhaled; it sounded like she was breathing through her teeth. “And that maybe they had a fight about it.”

“What?” Andrew stood up. “Who? That Sebastien character?”

“It seems so.”

Andrew walked into the bathroom and turned on the light. In the mirror, he looked abominable—flyaway hair, leaking red eyes. Coffee on his collar, though he couldn’t remember when he’d last had any. It seemed to Andrew that his eyes were sinking into his face; receding, somehow, like his hairline. Was this normal? His eye sockets were twin apses now, overshadowed by the dome of his forehead. “And they fought about it?” he said.

Maureen coughed. “Yes,” she said. “Or anyway, they fought about something.”

“How did they, ah, establish this?”

“The fight? They’ve got half a dozen witnesses. It happened at that bar she worked at.”

“And the other thing?”

“Emails.”

“Of course.” Andrew’s eyeball was throbbing. He took a tissue and dabbed at it. He didn’t know why his eyes were seeping quite so much; maybe he was having an allergic response to some South American tree, the relentless fecundity of this awful city. He wasn’t crying. Like his daughters, he was not a crier. “Was there anyone else?”

“Down there, you mean?”

“Yes. Or, I mean, at home, too. How many total, do you think?”

“You’re asking me how many men did our daughter sleep with?”

“Trust me. It will be relevant.”

“Andrew. I don’t know.”

“You really don’t know?”

“I really do not know. You know how Lily is. I mean, there was this guy, obviously.”

“Yes.” Andrew approached the mirror and put his eye right up against it. Up close his eye was comical and a bit spooky, with cirrus strands of bloodshot threading out from the pupil. He could see no clear evidence of damage. He could not believe that something invisible could hurt so much.

“And the economist from Middlebury, of course.”

“The economist?”

“Andrew. You met him.”

“Did I?” Andrew turned on the faucet and ran his hands under the water. He splashed his face. He slapped himself on the cheeks, lightly.

“They dated for months. We had lunch at the Impudent Oyster. What are you doing over there?”

“The Impotent Oyster? What a name for a restaurant.”

“Impudent. Andrew. Don’t you remember? It was tremendously awkward for all of us.”

A vague, repressed memory came to Andrew. Maureen had insisted on arguing with no one about IMF loans to Peru; she had jabbed her fork in the air to make a point. What lifetime was this, when they had all met prospective suitors together for lunch? When the biggest challenge was presenting a sufficiently united front? “Okay,” said Andrew. “Okay. So that’s two. And anyone else?”

Andrew could hear Maureen thinking for a moment. “I imagine there were a few others,” she said finally.

“I see.”

“I mean, nothing outrageous, I’m sure.”

“What’s outrageous?”

“I just mean, she’s, you know. She’s of her generation. They have different ideas about sex.”

“I thought our generation invented all the different ideas about sex,” said Andrew. He didn’t know if he really thought this, but it sounded like the kind of thing he might once have thought.

“Well, sure,” said Maureen. “I just mean, you know. The girls now are like the boys. They sleep around. They expect not to be judged. I’m not saying I think it’s the right thing for her. I’m just saying it’s normal now.”

“Right.” Andrew flipped off the bathroom light.

“Not that the norm is what matters. I mean she could sleep with a hundred guys and it doesn’t mean she did this, right?”

“Right.” Andrew walked to the bedroom and drew the curtains. He sat heavily on the bed.

“Not that she slept with a hundred guys.”

“What—fifty?”

“Andrew!”

“What?”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“I have absolutely no idea what’s absurd.”

“No. No. Of course not, no. Like, ten maybe. Like ten would be a very, very liberal estimate.”

“I see.” Andrew sighed. “Didn’t you ever talk to her about this stuff?”

“About sex? What do you mean? We both did.”

“Well, I mean. About, I don’t know. About not having quite so much of it.”

There was a dark pause. “Would you have talked to a son about that?”

“No,” said Andrew reasonably. “Realistically, no. But then it matters more for her, doesn’t it? It doesn’t help our case.”

“Well, yeah, her entire personality doesn’t help our case. It doesn’t mean I wish she didn’t have one.”

Andrew closed his eyes. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t see it, the wound: why it didn’t appear against the backdrop of his swollen eyelid, lightning shaped, blood colored. “I really cannot believe this,” he said. He kept his eyes closed, afraid that if he opened them, he’d somehow see Maureen’s face. “Can you?”

“Yes, actually,” said Maureen. All of a sudden, she sounded old. “You know, I’m not sure anything could ever really surprise me again.”

Andrew spent the first full day in Buenos Aires learning that he could not see Lily until Thursday. On this, everyone—the police, the lawyer, the Internet—was firm. He could not see her until Thursday, and there was nothing to be done, even when Andrew snarled at the diplomatic representative from the U.S. embassy over the phone.