It was one of those early-fall parties where every story required exposition. Apparently Kim Bender’s mother had died in August, and Julia hadn’t even known she was ill. This necessitated a ten minute summary of diagnosis, surgery, chemo, hospice -- Kim rattling off the plot points of her mother’s final months as if it were a Netflix recap. In the midst of listening Julia glanced across the patio at Brian and found him looking at her wearily, webbed in his own conversation with Chapin Canfield, whose tween daughter (Julia had learned earlier) had such an aggressive eating disorder that she’d spent three weeks in July in a medically induced coma. Hadn’t anything good happened to anyone over the summer? Julia wondered. Hadn’t anyone gone on a second honeymoon or bought a boat or even adopted a puppy?
They were exhausted when they got in the car at 10:45. They’d told the sitter they’d be home by 11:00 and were 2.5 miles from their driveway, but they’d be lucky to make it in time. Julia was driving, but that didn’t matter; whichever of them was driving, and wherever they were traveling from, and whether the kids were with them or not, the object was the same: to avoid the places where dormant sorrow or hostility would rise in either of them, to not ruin the night (if they were in a good place) or to not make the night worse (if they were in a bad place). This unspoken rule unified them. It was the last, best thing they had in common.
They were on Garland. It was impossible to go south on Garland because the Grahams lived on the corner, and seven years before Hank Graham had been Julia’s running partner for eight months. They’d started sharing small secrets in month three and by month six were texting silly emojis during the day and in the 8th month they had, one rainy afternoon when taking shelter under the overhang at the U-Haul place, a jokey conversation about running away together that left Julia bewildered, sleepless, and in a damp bra for 24 hours because she could not bear to remove it. That had been their last run together. She’d never told Brian what had happened, and he’d never asked, but it was obvious that something had passed between them and so forever after when they saw Hank running Brian scoffed, “that guy,” and whenever Julia saw Hank, or even his home, with the silhouettes of his four daughters gliding across drawn curtains, she imagined him that day in the rain with his receding black hair plastered to his head.
So they turned north on Garland, the opposite direction of their house. At the stop sign of Garland and Walnut they turned west. They could not turn east because that would take them past the spot where four years before their son had tumbled off his bike on a ride with Brian, and instead of calling Julia for a lift home (there’d been tears, Brian admitted later… but Daniel was prone to tears!) Brian pulled his seven-year-old to his feet, smacked him on the butt, and told him to shake it off. It turned out Daniel’s ankle was broken, and Brian had made him ride his bike the whole way home, and just last winter – though the ankle had supposedly fully healed -- Daniel had said “why does my ankle hurt when it’s cold?” and Julia had looked across the living room at Brian with murder in her eyes. So there was no turning down Walnut.
It should have been easy to double back, but once past Walnut they entered a neighborhood of one-way streets, and on the one-way that went their-way was the house with the pool that Brian had desperately wanted to buy and Julia had said was overpriced and Brian had said “Let’s just make an offer!” and Julia had said “What’s the point?” and then days later the house sold for less money than they’d have offered and Brian left the Zillow tab open on his laptop on the kitchen counter so Julia couldn’t help but see it while she packed the kids’ lunches the next morning. Not only could they not drive past the house, they couldn’t drive on the cross street, because once when they foolishly did so Brian had looked longingly down the street and her eyes followed his and there, in the middle of the road, was a beach ball, and it was painfully clear to them both that the beach ball had been whacked out of the pool that was not theirs by some kids who were not theirs and Julia gritted her teeth so hard that something in her ear clicked.
On Sherwood was the office of the marriage counselor they’d bailed on after one visit. On Pine was the shoulder where they’d been pulled over and Julia, after three vodka-tonics in two hours, had somehow gotten away with a warning. On Fleetwood Brian had once called her pathetic. On Hillside she’d said they should have broken up after their third date.
Just two streets from theirs, on Yorkshire, lived the woman about whom last year Brian, standing on the front porch with his divorced brother, had said, I’d hit that in a voice she didn’t even recognize, when the woman waked by with a Sheepdog, and Julia had stood out of sight in the hall thinking of Hank Graham under the U-Haul overhang.
It was 11:00 and they were nearly there. They lived on a cul-de-sac: Red Bud Lane, though there wasn’t a red bud in sight. That morning, walking home after dropping both kids at a birthday party, they’d stood at the top of the cul-de-sac and argued about... what? Julia couldn’t remember, but she’d been pissed. Or maybe he’d been pissed. Someone had. Now, behind the wheel, blinker blinking, she hesitated. From their running car they both looked down the lane at the dark windows of their home.
