On Monday Sarah came home with a grocery bag and the announcement that Marcus ate most things and hated grape, which Claire already knew and wrote down anyway, because writing it down made the boy a guest and not a debate. In the produce aisle Claire stood with her hand on a bunch of grapes and pictured Richard saying something harmless and wrong. She put the grapes back and bought a lemon pie because pie did not have an argument attached to it. She drove home furious at herself for thinking in those terms in a grocery store at four-fifteen on a Monday.
On Tuesday Richard had lunch with a man from the office named Phil, who had daughters in college and opinions he treated as data. Phil asked how Sarah was. Richard said she was bringing a boy to dinner. Phil asked the questions men ask when they think they are being casual. Where’s he from. What’s his family like. What’s he doing with himself. Richard said deliveries and heard, in Phil’s small pause, the confirmation he had come for without admitting he had come for it. Phil said, “Sarah’s a smart girl. She’ll figure out what she wants.” It sounded supportive. It felt like a closed door with a compliment painted on it. Richard paid for both sandwiches and went back to the office and moved numbers around a screen with more force than numbers require. He did not tell Claire about Phil. He told himself there was nothing to tell.
On Wednesday Sarah almost canceled.
She sat on her bed and typed a message to Marcus that began with Hey, my dad’s in a weird mood this week and maybe we should wait. She stared at it until the words looked like cowardice wearing a calendar. She deleted them. She typed a second message: If you don’t want to do dinner, I get it. That one was kinder and still not honest, because the person who didn’t want to do dinner, in that minute, was her, and only because she was afraid of being ashamed of a man she loved. She deleted that too. She called him instead. He was between stops. She heard a van door and wind and the short beep of something backing up.
“You good?” he asked.
“I’m being dramatic.”
“You’re allowed. You’re also on the phone, so say the thing.”
“I don’t want him to be rude to you.”
Marcus was quiet long enough for a turn signal to click twice. “He might be. That’s not on you to pre-live.”
“It feels like it is.”
“It’s his mouth,” Marcus said. “You didn’t hand it to him. You invited me. Those are different jobs.”