Lauren Grodstein - The Explanation for Everything

He loved her, so he tried not to notice that he disagreed with her. Especially because he wanted so much to agree.

“I don’t know,” Andy said, miserable.

“Well I do,” she said. “I know. You asked me if God is just. The answer is yes, and the proof is that this man was denied parole. See?”

Andy tried to see, but he couldn’t. He wanted Lou back. That’s all he could see. He had loved Melissa Potter five seconds ago but now he wasn’t so sure. Still, when she came to him and hugged him, he let her, and when she kissed him—how rarely she initiated any sort of contact!—she kissed him, and he let himself be kissed.

“See?” she whispered again, his overweight seductress.

And suddenly she was kissing him hard, in the mess that was his office. They were pressed against the wall as though by centrifugal force. He put his hands inside her shirt, felt the warm firm folds of her back . Papers everywhere, books strewn around them, he moved his hands to her cheeks, held her head against the wall, next to the Exton Reed calendar that was stuck there with a thumbtack . “Andy!” she gasped. Here, it would happen here. She put her hands in his pants—he hadn’t fucked her yet, why hadn’t he fucked her yet?—and yanked at his waistband.

Another knock, twice, firm, the twist of the doorknob. He jumped away, almost tripped over the carpet of books. From tragedy to comedy. The door opened. Melissa Potter still stood against the wall, her face red, her hair messy. Her shirt untucked.

“Everything okay in here?” asked Rosemary. “I got a call from your 202 class. They’re waiting for their midterms.”

“Right,” Andy said. “We were just finishing up a discussion.”

Rosemary looked at Melissa, then back at him. “Okay,” she said. Her tone was so flat it was impossible to know if he should read suspicion there or just boredom. “It’s a quarter after eleven,” she said then. “In case your clock doesn’t work.” And then she closed the door.

Melissa blinked at him.

“I better get to class.”

“Right,” she said. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Melissa,” he said. He put his arms around her one more time and kissed her more gently, because the door was closed, because he didn’t know what had come over him, because McGee was in jail. “Are you okay?”

“I’m great,” she said. “I’m just worried about you .”

FROM THIS MOMENT on, perhaps a wiser man might have cooled it with Melissa. How close had they come to being caught? And what if they’d been caught? How humiliating for everyone, for him, for Rosemary, but especially poor Melissa, getting manhandled in the office of a biology professor.

“Cool it, Andy,” he told himself, driving home along Deborah Boulevard. “Cool it now.” Or, if not, just tell her look, let’s put this thing on hold, whatever it is—we can wait a year and then whatever it is between us will be scandalous, but not actionable. Or maybe just say thanks for the memories, sweetheart. It’s been grand.

But how could he say that to her? How could he look at her open, honest face, and not want to cradle it between his hands?

“You look great,” Melissa said. She’d come that night to watch Belle while he and Rachel went to the fifth-grade father-daughter dance. Andy was wearing a new tie. He’d bought Rachel a corsage, an orchid, which was staying fresh in the refrigerator, wrapped in green paper. She was in her bedroom, getting ready, while Belle watched television in the den. “This is a new tie, right?” Melissa said.

“It is,” he said, and again that urge to take her face in his hands, but he didn’t—he just let her adjust his tie.

“I don’t understand why Rachel always gets to do these special things and I don’t ever get to do anything special,” Belle said, plopping onto a kitchen chair. “It’s always like Rachel’s soccer game or Rachel’s dance show or whatever and my question to you is, how is that fair?”

“How is what fair?”

“I want to do something special too,” she said. She stood, draped herself against the kitchen counter in the melodramatic pose she’d learned from her older sister. “Like, it’s always Rachel’s special day and Rachel gets a new outfit and Rachel gets to stay out late and I’m stuck with a babysitter and my question to you is, how is that fair?”

“Since when do you care about new outfits?” First Rachel, now Belle. Who was about to turn nine.

“Wow!” said Melissa, as Rachel made her entrance. “Look at you!” She had pulled her hair off her face with a sparkling white band, and she was wearing a white skirt and a white shirt with rhinestones around the collar. She looked a bit like a fairy princess and a bit like a teenager and entirely like her mother. And she was growing up. And one day, only a few years away now, she would leave. All of them—they all would leave.

“You look terrific, Rache,” Andy said. Gutted, he was gutted. He removed the corsage from the refrigerator and strapped it to her wrist. “There you go.”

Rachel twirled excitedly across the kitchen, stopping only when she hit the counter. “What’s your problem?”

“I am so, so sick of you!” Belle sputtered. “It’s always special Rachel day and I am so sick of it!”

“Oh my God, would you relax?”

“I will not relax!” And Belle sat down again on a kitchen chair and started to sob. Melissa sat next to her, rubbed her back. Whispered something in her ear.

“C’mon, Dad, we’ve got to go.”

“Rachel, we can’t leave her like that,” Andy said, marveling at the compact way Melissa was able to soothe Belle, whose back stopped heaving after a few minutes, who stopped making panting sounds.

Melissa whispered something else, and Belle, head still hidden behind her arms, nodded.

“Should I ask your dad?” Melissa said, and Belle nodded again. “Belle would like to be baptized.”

“I’m sorry?”

“In a white dress.”

“You’re kidding,” Rachel said. “Why?”

Again, from behind her arms, Belle started to sob. “Because Rachel was baptized when she was a baby and I want to be too! Because it’s not fair that Rachel gets everything and I get nothing!”

“Baptized, Belle?”

“Rachel’s going to heaven and I want to go too!”

“Heaven?” Gutted, and now he had been steamrolled too.

“I told her we could do it at my church, if you guys wouldn’t mind the drive. Of course, we could do it anywhere, the beach if you wanted—”

“No,” Belle said. “I want to do it in a church, like Rachel had it. With our mom. I want to do it in Melissa’s church.”

He was going to Melissa’s church. A wiser man would have cooled it.

“Please, Dad?”

“We’ll see.”

“Why we’ll see?”

“Because I—”

“You were the one who said we should try going to a church,” Belle said.

“Did you say that, Andy?” Melissa asked. “Oh, I’m so glad. I think it would be so good for you too.”

“Dad, can we go already?” said Rachel.

“You really want to do this?” Andy asked Belle. She looked up at him with reddened eyes. She looked half-hopeful, half-scared. She reminded him as she so often did of himself, the deepest part of him. She nodded. “So then we’ll do it.”

“Fine, good, let’s go,” Rachel said, grabbing him by the hand, dragging him to the door.

“Really? And it’ll be my day, not Rachel’s?”

“Oh my God, what’s your problem?”

“It’ll be your day, Belle,” Andy said, as Rachel pushed him out of the house and out toward the car.

THE DANCE WAS all streamers and Kool-Aid and music Andy couldn’t abide and girls dancing in circles with each other while their tubby, embarrassed fathers stood in corners of the room and watched them and talked about the Phillies’ spring training. Every so often Rachel would find him, make sure he was okay—what a thoughtful girl!—and then return to her friends in the center of the room. Rachel did seem to have lots of friends. They spent a lot of time giggling. Andy didn’t know how to talk to the other dads.