Page 13 of No One But Us

It’s the second week of kindergarten. I wait in the carpool line with my classmates, watching as the mothers descend to hug and kiss their offspring as if they’ve just returned from war, oohing and ahhing over today’s art project, the way they do each day. My mom has never oohed or ahhed. She arrives each day flustered and slightly irritated, because she thinks she shouldn’t have to come get me at all.

But maybe today will be different, because I at last have something worthy of praise. I’ve built a hotel out of cardboard boxes and toilet paper rolls, so extravagant my teacher held it aloft for the rest of the class to admire. It’s a fragile thing, carried with two hands and even then at risk, and I can’t wait to show it to my mom. I wonder if it will be enough to make her ooh and ahh this time.

Kids walk away with their parents, hands clasped and swinging. Ginny’s nanny, Marta, hovers close by, hesitating for a moment before she and Ginny turn and walk away.

I curl my arms around my stomach, a habit when I get nervous and something I do often since my mother fired the nanny.

“Maybe I should call her?” my teacher suggests. Her smile is over-bright—instead of disguising her concern, it highlights it.

My parents’ carelessness is a source of shame for me. If I were a different child, a better one, maybe they’d care the way they’re supposed to. So I lie. I tell my teacher I was told to walk home today. She scolds me for not saying so sooner.

I make it to the end of the block, but that’s where my knowledge ends. The houses on both sides look familiar to me. I turn right solely because I don’t want to have to cross the street, but after a block, something feels wrong. This street is too long. I start to turn, and a big kid on a bike knocks my art project out of my hands, yelling at me to watch where I’m going.

I look down at my feet. My building lies shattered on the sidewalk, beyond saving. The world is all tall homes and empty sky, cars that fly by without slowing down. The truth sinks into my stomach, into my bones: I am alone in the world. No one will fix my things when they break. No one will help me find my way home.

That’s when James appears, looking in dismay at my project scattered all over the sidewalk. I start to cry—in part over the ruined project, in part because of the look on his face, which tells me something I think I already knew: life is not supposed to be this way. I’m not supposed to be here, lost and alone, the way that I am.

His friends yell at him to hurry, and he waves them on, dropping his bike and kneeling to the ground to pick up all the pieces. “We can fix it,” he promises.

I wake remembering this, realizing that at heart, James is still that same boy. The same boy who’s going to marry someone else.

* * *

I remain vaguely depressed when I get downstairs, and it must be obvious, because Max sees me and insists I accompany him to yoga. “You’re way too serious for someone your age,” he informs me.

The odds of me accepting life advice from a stoned college dropout are slim, but I agree to go. If I’m really going to stay here all summer feeling heartbroken about James, I will probably need a little outside support.

When we return, Ginny is running around getting ready to leave for work, and James is reading, his brow furrowed in concentration.

“What would you guys do without me?” Max asks. “I’m guessing it would be all Downton Abbey re-runs and Scrabble tournaments.”

“I’d kick your ass at Scrabble,” says James.

“I’m sure you would, but the fact that you’d even brag about that is a perfect illustration of my point,” counters Max. “We’re having a blow-out tonight, by the way, since you’re all off.”

“As opposed to what you host every other night of the week?” Ginny asks.

Max’s parties irritate Ginny to no end. Actually, everything about Max seems to irritate Ginny to no end. Mostly, she’s just appalled that he’s not more like her—that he dropped out of college only one semester shy of graduation and appears to have no interest in returning, that he spends his winters as a ski instructor and his summers tending bar and seems completely content. These are decisions Ginny finds unimaginable.

“I’m doing it for you, Gin Gin,” he replies. “To help you remove the large stick that seems to have accidentally been wedged in your ass.”

“How do you think you’ll ever support a family, living the way you do?”

He grins. “What part of my behavior has led you to think for one moment that I’m interested in having a family?”

“So all you want out of life is to bang a different girl every night?” she demands.

“No,” he says with a shrug. “If we’re talking about ideal outcomes, I’d bang two or three.”

* * *

“He’s such a pig,” Ginny says that night as we get ready for the party neither of us wants to attend. “But at least there will be lots of men.”

“Did something happen between you and Alex?” The idea is almost unthinkable. They are as alike as two people ever were.

“No,” she says. “But I can look. Besides, I meant for you.”

“I think I’m over men for a while,” I tell her.