The Submission - Amy Waldman [16]
Marrying Claire had been, for him, a small rebellion. She was presentable, highly so. But his family didn’t know hers, and she plainly had no money of her own. She was in the Claire file now—photos (some nude, dating to their honeymoon; she scrutinized them for changes), scraps of middling poetry about her, ideas for her birthday presents. The documents recording Cal’s unexpected payoff of her college and law school loans, some $100,000 of debt. He’d wiped it out in a single day without asking her if he could. It had seemed monumental at the time, less so once she learned the staggering scale of his fortune. She wished that knowledge hadn’t diminished the gesture.
These documents narrated their history as much as their marriage certificate did. When they made love the night he told her about the loans, she sensed him expecting some new trick or abandon, some evidence of gratitude. This had made her tense because she wasn’t entirely grateful: in giving her freedom from worry he had stolen a hard-won self-sufficiency. But the next morning she had decided she was overreacting. He wanted only the surrender of her anxiety.
“I want to draw the Garden,” William said, clutching his coloring pad. He was at her elbow; she hurriedly shoved the nude portraits into the file and made space for him on the desk. He handed her crayons in wordless command.
They had been enacting this ritual for weeks, ever since she told him about the Garden, figuring that breaking her juror confidentiality pledge with a six-year-old didn’t count. As she devoted increasing time to the memorial selection, William had become ever more difficult. Each tantrum sent sadness and guilt, anger at his manipulations, irritation at his whining squalling through her. Suffocation. The children needed her more, needed more of her, than ever: one less parent and more parenting required. Do more with less; an emotional recession. Every so often, she would grasp that her pain at William’s pain was so unbearable that somehow she held it against him. His sadness, too big for his tiny frame, was like a shadow stunting a plant’s growth.
The Garden, she told him, was a special place where his father could be found, even though William wouldn’t be able to see him there. This was all too true: shards, less than shards, of Cal likely lay in the ground where the memorial would go, although William didn’t know that. The idea of the Garden seemed to console him, and ever since, together they had drawn the trees and flowers, the pathways and canals. William always drew in two little figures: himself and his father. In his drawings, the sun always shone.
“Sometimes it will rain in the Garden,” Claire said today, coloring a gray cloud. A small, inexplicable resistance quavered in her. William drew an umbrella over the figures.
The time for lunch was nearing. They left the study together, their sheaf of drawings in her hand. Glancing at them, she saw that she had mixed in the documents recording Cal’s payoff of her loans. Her first instinct was to return them to the file. Instead she continued down the hall with her son.
Paul slept poorly and awoke achy. The sunlight bounded in and punched him in the eyes when he opened the curtains. He pulled them shut, showered too long, dressed too slow. “Paul!” Edith began calling once she heard him astir. “Your eggs are ready.”
To the cook’s chagrin, the eggs were cold by the time he made his way to the dining table. Like a child