“How did it go?” I ask Hannah as we wave goodbye to the babysitter. Hannah demonstrates her new moves to me all the way down the street and then on the entire subway ride back to our neighborhood in Brooklyn. Fortunately, the subway is nearly empty, so I don’t have to steer her away from starting an accidental street fight.
“Hann,” I say, as she practices her posture in the middle of the subway car, “why did you want to learn some kind of martial arts? Was a friend at school learning it?”
“I have to learn because Marshall said he could beat me up.”
“He said that at school?” Marshall is one of the boys I hear about a lot, and never in a good way.
She shrugs. “Nina says he can’t beat me up if I know martial arts.” Nina is her best friend, a tall, dark-haired girl with natural confidence and a tendency to egg on Hannah’s worst instincts.
“You’re not going to do that, right?” I ask gently. “Get in a fight with him?”
Hannah shrugs. “The best defense is a good offense. That’s what Nina says.”
Maybe we should just move out to a suburb, I think for the hundredth time, but then I would have an even longer commute and less time to spend with my daughter. As if she can read my mind, she looks over at me. “Are we going to move back to Atlanta?”
She does this sometimes: articulates the thoughts I am thinking right after I’ve decided not to say them aloud.
“No, sweetie.”
“Is Daddy going to move here?” The question feels like its own Taekwondo kick in the chest.
“I’m sure he wants to be closer, but he has to go where his job takes him. Musicians have to tour, and his gigs are changing, so it’s not easy for him to stay in one place.”
“Does he have to be a musician?”
She has never asked me that before. It saddens me that she’s finally old enough to understand that maybe Nick is a bit selfish. I pick my words carefully. “Some people have only one job that makes them happy. I think your father is one of those people. But I know he misses you.”
“Do you miss him?”
I force a smile. “He and I will always care about each other.”
Recognizing this is a dodge, Hannah turns and lets another kick fly toward the middle of the empty subway. “Right,” she says pointedly.
I remember what Ollie said about the elastic band that is supposed to exist between the leader and the follower in dancing, the invisible string that connects your chests, always pulling you back to each other.
The thing is, if one of you doesn’t care enough about the string, and keeps pulling farther and farther away, then the string can snap, and then the connection is broken. You aren’tpulled back together anymore. That’s how I feel about Nick. We were pulled farther and farther apart until something inside me broke permanently.
Ollie callsme that evening at a little after eight o’clock.
“Are you free this Friday night?”
“I can be.” I am already mentally filing through babysitter options.
“I’d really like to take you out to dinner.”
Something in his tone makes me fall backwards onto my bed like a teenager.That’s not good, I tell myself.I can’t be this mushy already.
“Sure,” I say, keeping my voice steady with effort. “That sounds nice.”
I remember something Brant said last summer when I called him and asked him to put in a good word so I could get my old job back. I told him about the mess with Nick, and he listened with surprising sympathy and finally replied, “As soon as people know that you’ll do anything for them, that is when they really have you over a barrel.”
Ollieand I meet at a chic little restaurant on Friday evening at the decidedly un-chic hour of 6:30. I asked him to find a restaurant close enough to my neighborhood and a time early enough that I can still get home to start Hannah’s bedtime. If he wants to date a single mom, this is the reality: no tumbling into bed together after the first date. Not much tumbling into bed at all. I might as well make that obvious from the beginning; it would be worse to watch him slowly pull away as he learns what he’s in for.
Ollie lives on the Upper West Side, so I appreciate that he’s making the trek to Brooklyn just to make my eveninga little easier. He has chosen an upscale, quiet restaurant with seating under skylights in a back garden. I notice as we enter the front doorway that two jazz musicians are playing quietly in the corner, and I immediately think of Nick and the occasional ‘mood music’ gigs he used to suffer through—patiently strumming jazz standards to the sound of clinking forks and murmurs about stock prices.I close my eyes and make a face like I’m getting a blowjob, Nick used to say.Makes me look like I’m into it.
It’s a very nice restaurant, whatever Nick might say about it; it’s exactly kind of place I never go. Ollie glances at my little black dress and smiles.
“Another devastating dress, I see,” he says as we follow the hostess to a table in the corner.
