Page 41 of We All Live Here
It had taken Lila two hours to get ready for the school run that day.
Hey—Lennie wants to know if Violet would like to come over some time. Apparently they dug up some worms together at lunch break. Sounds like a solid basis for friendship.
(Violet had been annoyingly reluctant when she asked. “What? Why? But she’s in the year below me!” and “Mum, it wasn’t even a live worm!”) Lila has bribed her with ten pounds to say yes. It will probably cost her another ten to ensure she doesn’t just stomp off to another room and stare at the television if and when they actually go.
And best of all:Sorry you had a bad day. Your ex is clearly an idiot, if that isn’t overstepping a line.
Dan had arrived unexpectedly for the school pickup with Marja, his hand resting proprietorially on the small of her back, his expression loving and concerned. They were back from a hospital appointment, according to the snatches of conversation that floated above the playground. It was an unseasonably warm autumnal day and Marja had been wearing a soft black jersey dress that showed off her full breasts and rounded belly. She is one of those women who seem to have an inexplicable all-year-round light golden tan and the dress had slipped off one shoulder toreveal smooth, sculpted skin. He had nodded awkwardly at Lila as she hurried, head down, to where Gabriel was standing.
“That him, huh?” Gabriel had said, watching, and Lila had been so overcome with rage, sadness, and humiliation at the sight of them that she had been unable to reply. She and Gabriel had stood beside each other in silence for the seven interminable minutes it took for the children to come out. He had touched her elbow in solidarity as he left.
It’s not. And thank you x, she had replied. And felt suddenly a lot better.
Sometimes she thinks about asking him on a date. An actual date. Eleanor says it sounds like he’s interested, so why not? “For God’s sake, Lila, if there’s one advantage to getting to this age it’s being able to say the thing you’re thinking. You like him, he clearly likes you, so just ask. What’s the worst that could happen? C’mon—you’re a big girl.”
He could say no. He could look embarrassed and shocked, as if he had just been kind, and explain that, thanks, he was flattered, but a forty-something single mum with two cranky daughters wasn’t really part of his game plan. She could make the school run even more excruciatingly uncomfortable for herself than it already is. At the moment she can look forward with a flicker of excitement to one minuscule part of her day, to dream in the bath about his floppy chestnut hair, the wounded expression in his eyes that she is sure she could change, those long, sensitive artist’s hands. She can close her eyes and play out a million scenarios in which she and Gabriel Mallory end up together, him propelling her gently across the playground, his arm slung lightly around her shoulder as Philippa and Marja and all those other mean mothers look on. Possibly while he talks to her softly in Italian. No, she thinks, better to keep a little prospect of something lovely for herself than to test it and lose it altogether. So she says nothing.
•••
“I thought Imight bring my old Steinway,” says Bill, who is helping her take out the rubbish.
“What?” says Lila, hauling the reeking black bin bag into the wheelie bin. She is still haunted by the sight of Marja in her fecund state, Dan’s hand resting on her back. Bill has the recycling box, and has washed and dried all the items before tipping them in. “The actual piano?”
“I miss playing. It’s very…comforting.”
She stops and wipes her face with the back of her sleeve. She really wants to say,Couldn’t you just play it at your house?But Bill asks for so little and gives so much, and tolerates Gene’s presence with, if not grace, at least a sort of grim stoicism. “But where would it go?”
Bill has clearly thought about this for some time. “I thought I could move that bench in the hallway and put it there. That way it wouldn’t be in your way in the living room. You could just shut the door if I played.”
Lila’s heart sinks. Two years ago she had wept when Dan removed his meager selection of clothes, books, and technology from the house. Even though he had barely taken any furniture, the gap where a photograph had been, or the empty sections in the bookshelves—even the absence in the garage of the four-thousand-pound carbon-framed bicycle she had always resented—had made her feel it was all impossibly empty. Now, perversely, this house feels as if it’s filling up with people, with their stuff. There is no place in it that is not cluttered with either one or the other. And—she realizes with a stab of discomfort that she feels awful admitting to—this means Bill is here for good. Nobody moves a piano if they’re not planning to stay forever. She is now going to be living with a slightly depressed old man for the rest of his life.
“That’s fine, Bill,” she says, and hopes her smile stretches as far as her eyes.
•••
Over the nextcouple of days, Lila’s good mood is punctured again and again, like a series of soap bubbles popped on the spikes of a holly bush. The piano arrives, wheeled up the road on two dollies by Bill,Jensen, and two Polish friends, who smoke roll-ups and shake their heads mournfully when they see the steps up to the hallway. The piano is in place after forty minutes of sweating and cursing, and when the dollies are removed it lands in the hall with a dissonant chord and a horrible air of finality.
That afternoon Jensen hits a concrete layer while trying to build the new vegetable beds, and from four thirty the air is filled with the sound of his pneumatic drill as he attempts to break it up. This prompts two angry calls from the neighbors and the swift delivery of the last of Lila’s emergency-gift bottles of wine.
Celie arrives home from school in a filthy mood and sweeps through the house without talking to anyone, her face like thunder and shrouded by a cloud of hair, then slams her bedroom door and refuses to come out. Bill sits down to watch the six o’clock news in the front room, as is his preferred habit, but Violet and Gene have congregated in there, away from the noise in the garden, and keep interrupting him with their YouTube videos ofStar Squadron Zero, Gene providing a running commentary of what it was like to play that part, the high jinks the crew got up to, the guest director who was—inevitably—a dick. At twenty past six Bill, apparently tired of competing with the iPad, retreats to the hall where he sets up a rousing rendition of “Strangers in the Night,” the notes filling the whole house because of the tiled floor and lack of soft surfaces. This leads Gene to turn up the sound of the iPad even further.
It is against this backdrop of piano, ancient sci-fi, and pneumatic drill that Anoushka calls. Lila stands in the kitchen with her hand against her free ear, trying to make out what she says.
“…love it but saying it’s not quite as discussed…”
“What?” says Lila, as Truant, maddened by the noise levels, decides to add to it with a manic, staccato bark.
“…sex!…want more adventures…”
“What? Sorry, Anoushka, I’m having trouble hearing you.”
“…sexytimes…example…”
“Sexytimes?”
“You…extra chapter…just so they get full…”
“Jeez, pal,” comes Gene’s booming voice, as Bill’s piano reaches a crescendo. “We’re trying to watch TV in here!”
