Chapter 9: The Refrigerator
Three weeks later, Diane Forsythe came for dinner.
It had been Emily's idea, in the indirect way that children sometimes engineer things without knowing they're doing it.
She had asked me once if the woman who helped us was nice, and I had said yes, and she had said we should have her over because nice people should have dinner.
So Diane came on a Friday.
She brought flowers — yellow ones — and Emily took them very seriously and spent ten minutes deciding which vase was correct.
We ate pasta.
Emily explained marine biology in considerable detail.
Diane listened with the focused attention of someone who was genuinely interested, and when Emily described how dolphins communicate, Diane asked a question that sent Emily off the chair and to the bookshelf to find a specific page in a specific book.
After dinner, while Emily was in the bath, Diane and I sat at the kitchen table with tea.
"How is she?" Diane said.
"She stopped asking if she was going to have to leave," I said.
"About ten days ago.
She just — stopped asking."
Diane looked at her cup.
"Children do that," she said.
"When they finally believe it."
I looked at the refrigerator.
Emily's ocean painting was in the center, held up by four magnets.
Blue and green swirls, slightly uneven, the horizon line tilted at an angle that made the whole sea look like it was tipping toward something.
"I owe you a great deal," I said.
"You don't," Diane said.
"I did what I should have done sooner."
"You lost your job."
"I found a better one." She smiled briefly.
"Smaller firm.
Considerably less drama."
From down the hall came the sound of Emily singing to herself in the bath — something tuneless and cheerful that had no recognizable melody.
Diane looked toward the sound.
"She's going to be all right," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"She is."
We finished our tea.
Diane left at nine.
I washed the dishes and dried them and put them away, and then I went down the hall to Emily's room.
She was in bed, the stuffed whale under one arm, her hair still damp.
"Daddy," she said.
"Yeah."
"Are we going to be okay?"
I sat on the edge of her bed.
"We're already okay," I said.
She thought about this with the seriousness she brought to most things.
"Good," she said.
Then: "Can we go to the ocean this summer?
For real?"
"For real," I said.
She nodded, satisfied, and closed her eyes.
I stayed until her breathing slowed and her hand went loose around the whale.
Then I turned off the light and went back to the kitchen and stood for a moment looking at the painting on the refrigerator — the tilted sea, the uneven horizon, all that blue and green pressing toward something just outside the frame.
I didn't take it down.
I added a magnet to the corner that was starting to curl.
Then I made coffee for one, sat down at the table, and listened to the quiet house.
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*Some people smile for two years before you see who they really are.
But children always know — they just need someone to listen.*
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