Emma Straub - Modern Lovers

“How are you?” Lydia cooed. She turned her gaze toward Elizabeth. “Your cheeks look different.”

“I just had a baby,” Elizabeth said. “We just had a baby.”

“Breeders!” Lydia said, and laughed. Her entourage laughed, too. She patted Andrew on the chest. “Look at you, Daddy.”

“Congratulations on the warehouse movie,” Andrew said. “Or is it about a factory? We haven’t seen it yet, but I hear it’s great.”

Lydia shrugged. “They tell me its good,” she said. “But they tell me everything’s good, so…”

Under the table, Harry began to cry, little hiccupping bursts of sound. Elizabeth bent down to pick him up and quickly jostled him sideways until he latched onto her breast. She was still standing in the middle of the restaurant, and everyone was looking at her. At Lydia and now at the pink cushion of her nipple, which slipped in and out of Harry’s mouth as he fussed.

“God, he’s like a cannibal,” Lydia said, and pretended to gnaw on her own hand. “That is so scary.” She kissed the air. “Good to see you,” she said, looking at Andrew. She made a loud munching noise at Elizabeth and turned away. A waiter pointed her and her friends to a table in the far back corner, and once she was sitting, the noise in the restaurant rose up and swallowed them. Elizabeth sat down again and found herself blinking back tears.

“What’s the matter?” Andrew said.

“Nothing,” Elizabeth said. “Let’s just go. When he’s done, let’s just go.” She looked down at Harry’s sweet face, sucking away. A year and a half later, Lydia was dead.

• • •

I’m sorry,” Elizabeth said. It had all been a mistake. She couldn’t even blame Naomi for talking her into it — Elizabeth could see herself nodding along at the idea, so eager to sign on the dotted line. It was like an O. Henry story, only she’d sabotaged herself. She had been her own sacrifice. “It was for you,” she said, knowing that he wouldn’t see it that way. “I did it for you.”

“Did you?” Andrew said. “The door is unlocked. I’ll be back later. And just so you know, what I’m doing over there isn’t just yoga. It’s self-care. I’m not pretending that it’s a present for you. You should try it sometime.” He slipped his feet into his sandals and flopped down the stairs and onto the sidewalk.

The Waves was going to be gorgeous — it would help revitalize the Rockaway community, it would be an emissary of deep Brooklyn values, it would be less expensive to renovate than a hotel in Manhattan. It turned out that Dave had been planning it for a while — it was all part of the EVOLVEment plan. Dave had taken a couple of meetings with architects, some EVOLVEment yoga practitioners who lived in the neighborhood, just to get a sense of time and money. Now he wanted Andrew to come along — he really “got it,” Dave said. They were meeting at one of the coffee shops on Cortelyou, a few doors past Hyacinth. Dave and Andrew walked down from EVOLVEment.

“I hear that place is good,” Dave said.

“It is. The couple who owns it are our good friends,” Andrew said.

“Should we meet there instead?” Dave stopped.

“No,” Andrew said, and kept walking.

They were in front of the café, and Dave waved to a guy sitting in the window. He held up a finger— One minute— and then turned so that his back was facing their date.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you this,” Dave said. “And there’s no really good way. I don’t want you to feel awkward, or like there’s any pressure coming from me. You know that I am all about comfort and good vibes, and if this is not your thing, man, that is cool . But I think it might be your thing.”

Andrew squinted into the sunlight. “Uh-huh,” he said.

“I want to bring you on as an investor. For the Waves. I think that it would be a really amazing project for us to do together. What do you think? Do you want to be partners?”

“How much are we talking? I mean, in terms of money, how much?” Andrew could see it so easily — himself as a hotelier. Picking lamps and records for the guest rooms, talking to reporters at the New York Times about giving back to Brooklyn, about introducing people to places beyond the bridge, beyond Williamsburg.

“It’s hard to say,” Dave said. “We could probably get the whole thing going for under a million, give or take. The place is on the market for seven hundred thou.” He ran his hands over his beard, giving the whole thing a squeeze. “There are other investors, of course, but they don’t really see it , you know, which makes the whole thing way more of an uphill battle.”

“Of course,” Andrew said. It could be his new circuit — he could sit in the back during guided-meditation classes and look over lists of vendors they needed to contact. He could write checks — he could make something new. “I’d love to,” Andrew said. He put out his hand, but Dave dove into his body for a hug instead, giggling.

Elizabeth was forgetting things everywhere — she forgot her dressy shoes at the office, she forgot the keys to her listings at home. She’d texted Zoe to make a dinner date but hadn’t heard back. She and Andrew weren’t talking, and she reluctantly understood why, even though he was obviously the one acting like a crazy person. Signing his name on one piece of paper wasn’t betrayal. Still, she understood: marriage was supposed to be a sacred covenant, and if that wasn’t quite achievable on a daily basis, marriage was about always getting the okay from the other person before doing something major. Want to go bungee jumping, or switch health-insurance policies? Want to pierce the kid’s ear? Want to buy a new sofa, book airline tickets to France? You had to confer. It wasn’t the same as asking permission, nothing so archaic — it was about being on the team, being equal partners. She wanted to blame the fact that she’d said yes on being the kind of woman who wanted to be accommodating to everyone, but that was only part of it. The other, larger reason was that she really did want to see the movie. Elizabeth imagined seeing it by herself, in the middle of the afternoon, and weeping into a bucket of popcorn. That was what she wanted — to celebrate and mourn her youth simultaneously.

• • •

Elizabeth wanted to take some photos of Zoe’s house, mostly for her own reference. They still hadn’t pulled the trigger, and maybe they never would, but she wanted to take a few pictures for herself. The house had never belonged to her, of course, but Lydia had never belonged to her either, and they both had helped to build whatever it was that made up Elizabeth’s life. She wanted to walk around the house without Zoe, for the first time in a hundred years with no actual purpose — not because she’d agreed to walk Bingo or to watch Ruby or to bring in the mail. She just wanted to think about the house, and about Andrew. It was easy enough to convince herself that it was a business visit — no matter how well you knew a house, pictures were important — and that way, eventually, she could talk to Deirdre about the list price, just to get a second opinion.

Zoe hadn’t said anything about moving forward lately — in fact, she’d been a little hard to pin down — but she didn’t hesitate to give her blessing for Elizabeth to pop over and poke around. It was all a part of her figuring out what she wanted to do; that’s how Elizabeth saw it. She didn’t want to feel like an angel of death, hovering over her friends’ marriage — she was just trying to be helpful. If Jane and Zoe could split up, it could happen to anyone. They’d always been stable, and happy enough, happy as anybody. Sure, Zoe sometimes complained about Jane, but no more than Elizabeth complained about Andrew. Having someone close to you decide to quit — or even seriously consider it — was axis-knocking. Why them? Elizabeth found herself wondering. Why now? Zoe didn’t seem clear herself, which was the scariest part.