A Song in the Daylight. Paullina Simons

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      “I’m happy,” she said. “Don’t worry about me.”

      “I know how much you used to love it. Directing.”

      “Yes.” Her eyes remained closed. The true unspoken inquiry hung in the air, the real issue, the only one worth having an answer to, the thirsty dilemma at the crux of each human heart: How it best for me to live?

      Soon Larissa would be asleep. She felt herself drifting, even as excitement built up in her from the feel of his man’s body on top of her, from the smell of his liquored-up breath, from his lips on her lips, on her throat. “I’ll think about it,” she said. It was like a placeholder to end the conversation. I’ll think about it meant she would endeavor never to give it another thought. Theatrically she moaned. Jared forgot about theater, as she hoped he would.

3

       Aisle 12

      The cast came off a few days later and Larissa limped with a walking stick to her car, like Uriah Heep, like her grandmother who had died aged ninety-eight, and then drove to Pingry and finished painting black the backdrop for Desdemona’s death, went to the library, got some books for Asher’s school project on Abraham Lincoln, and then dropped by Nee Dells to see if there were any new boots (there weren’t), afterward driving to Panera Bakery in Madison to get a mozzarella and pepper baguette and chicken noodle soup. After finishing lunch, she still had an hour left before Michelangelo. This day and every day was punctuated by the regimen of her children. When she was a kid, all she and Che wanted was to be free of school; little did Larissa realize that she’d never be free of it, that morning, afternoon and night, the homework, the projects, the notes home, the agenda books, the signatures on tests, the packed lunches, the bought lunches, the chaperones and the school trips, the exams and the #2 pencils, the rulers and compasses and looseleaf paper, the parent-teacher conferences, all of it, wasn’t just twelve years of her life. No. It was the rest of her life, the better part of the better part of her life. Sure, eventually it stopped, but when it stopped, you stopped too. Larissa would be over fifty when the last child would graduate high school, and who said it would be over by then? Who said that her daughter wouldn’t be back home, living as a single mother in the room upstairs, and suddenly it was playgroup and kindergarten and first grade again, and Larissa would be sixty, picking up her grandkids from school, still looking at her watch, saying, two hours left, one hour left, thirty minutes left.

      How could Ezra not see how impossible it was for her to take on theater, too? What did mothers who worked outside the home do? Did their bodies also shift slightly downward, as if some perverse internal clock was ringing its alarm at them—it’s 2:30. It’s 3:00, it’s school bus time. Every day. Every year. Whatever it was they were doing, did they also lift their heads from their desks and acknowledge that while they were in their cubicles, their children were getting off the bus to come home to a house where their mothers weren’t?

      Larissa wouldn’t have her life any other way. She would not pay someone else to take care of her kids to rehearse plays with other people’s children whose mothers were working.

      Today she had an hour. Not enough time to choose, edit, cast and direct a play for spring. It was bitterly cold. She drove to Stop&Shop instead. She went because she needed detergent. Jared needed tissues for his office and some chewy caramels for his candy jar. Asher needed posterboard and glue, and Michelangelo colored pencils (of course he did). Emily needed her own shampoo because the family’s Pantene Smooth and Sleek just wouldn’t do. Larissa parked by the cemetery again, hurrying in from the cold.

      She was scheduled like a mother. Every minute of her life was accounted for.

      Every minute, except for the tiny present one after Panera and before Michelangelo’s bus.

      She was getting laundry detergent in aisle 12 when she heard his voice.

      “Hey, what are you doing here,” he said, like a voiceover narrative track, “in the laundry aisle?”

      He was pushing his own cart, in which he had nothing but three containers of sushi and some dried almonds. She switched her gaze from his cart to him.

      “Um—getting laundry?” Why did he smile like that was amusing? “Family’s run out.” She got that in there. Family.

      Larissa wasn’t trying to be coy. She wasn’t trying to be much of anything. She actually was shopping for her family. She had just finished lunch in Panera down the street. She liked Panera. Why did she have to explain herself?

      “How’s your ankle?”

      “Good,” she replied. “Cast came off.”

      “I see that. Feeling better?”

      “Meh.” She stood awkwardly next to the fabric softener. The aisle smelled faintly of fake lavender. Best to go get some food now.

      Larissa got some softener just in case, since she was standing right next to it. Got big containers, two of them, so she wouldn’t have to come back to aisle 12 anytime soon, and also to show him that she had a family that needed giant amounts of fabric softener because she was a good mother and softened their laundered clothes. He rolled his cart down the aisle beside her. He was wearing his torn jeans, brown boots, brown leather. His hair didn’t look brushed. He looked underfed in that skinny young guy way when they can’t keep the weight on no matter what they do.

      “You ride in this weather?” she asked him. “That’s crazy.”

      “Yeah. It is pretty crazy. I’m not used to it.” He pointed to his splotched face. “I get windburn.”

      Her mother taught her to be polite so Larissa said she couldn’t tell. But where was he from that he wasn’t used to it? One winter in Jersey and you pretty much knew what to expect. She didn’t ask.

      When she turned to aisle 13, to the frozen section and the bread, he turned, too. She didn’t need any frozen food. She bought some anyway. Frozen hash browns, frozen broccoli, ice cream. And some frozen pizza since that’s what they were having for dinner tonight. They got in line, he right behind her. Outside in the stinging sunshine, he asked where she was parked and they both saw she was parked close to his bike.

      “You’re like me,” he said. “You don’t want to forget where you left your transportation.” His fingerless gloves clutched the paper bag full of sushi.

      “Can’t imagine you’d forget where you parked that,” Larissa said, pointing. “I don’t know much about motorcycles.” Risk-averse and proud of it. “But it looks nice.”

      He looked amused. “Well, you’re right. It is a nice bike. It’s a Ducati Sportclassic.”

      Her face didn’t change; she couldn’t even fake being impressed. “You bought it new?”

      “Nah, it’s way expensive. It was my old man’s. I got it when he died.”

      “Oh.” She studied him closer. “Sorry.”

      “Yeah, but,” he said, “look at the bike.” He raised his eyebrows and smiled, slightly ironically, but maybe not. Slightly ruefully, but maybe not.

      He СКАЧАТЬ