It’s wasp season, but I have both windows open and the fan on high. This late in the summer, it takes forever for light to tilt into dark, heat to tilt into cold. I lie there, wide awake, wearing nothing but my underwear. Henry said he’ll contact me if he has news. I feel woozy; sleep clings to my legs. A wasp lands on the wall and inches towards me. It lifts off the wall, changes its mind, and floats back down, making a buzzing sound with its wings.
Henry calls as I slip upwards from a dream. In rusty sleep, I saw the edges of grief curling away from me, peeling themselves one by one off my body. House, heart, hands, hell or highwater.
“She’s okay,” Henry says. “Kelly’s still here.”
My body floods with relief. Kelly, Ethan’s wife. Ethan has been Henry’s friend since high school, when they’d stumble around blind-drunk like zombies on the edge of an apocalyptic forever. After Ethan married Kelly they both slowly crowded their way into our lives. Gatherings grounded in light and warmth: bare feet on summer grass, whispered hellos, Ethan’s hand on the small of Kelly’s back, an ethereal kind of happiness.
I press the phone against my ear and turn over, facing the window. A car rolls down the street with a low, sexy hip-hop song threading through its windows. Leo sits on his front porch and takes draws on a vape pen. I wonder if he reaches into his pants at night and thinks of me, whimpering for a saint, pushing towards the rose, close but not close enough.
“Iris?” Henry sounds impatient.
“That’s wonderful,” I say, and I mean it.
Kelly’s ex-husband, Bill, has a poisonous personality. All I know of him are fragments Henry or Ethan has told me. It is a miracle Kelly has been able to get her daughter back from Bill at all. Grace is a strong girl, nine years old, fluent in sign language. She ties her shoes the way Bill taught her: laces looped around the ankles and double-knotted in front. It’s the one thing Kelly has said she let Bill keep about his daughter. The knowledge that, wherever she goes, Grace’s sneakers will always match his.
Someone knocks on the front door. I reach for my t-shirt and jeans, keeping the phone balanced between my ear and shoulder. “Call me if there’s any other updates, okay? Someone’s downstairs.”
“Sure,” Henry says. “Love you.”
“You too.”
Henry left me to guard the house while he went to Graniteville to meet up with Ethan at the hospital to check on Kelly, and I didn’t complain. It was clear he needed this time with Ethan, and Kelly by extension. I close my eyes for a moment, sending them good thoughts. Then I put on my sneakers and head downstairs.
It’s Leo, of course. Leo King, first husband extraordinaire. I know without having to open the door. When I do open it, he stands there a bit shyly, looking down at his feet, studying the weave of the welcome mat. Wasps and moths swirl around the porch light.
“Hi,” he says.
“I saw you,” I say. “On your porch. When did you start—”
“After,” he says.
After. It was mind-boggling to me back then, and still is to me now, why he decided to stay in this neighborhood. Pine Crest Heights, suburb of suburbia, every house the same. And in the house across the street from us, no less. Other men might have had less nerve. Or maybe I’m the one with the nerve and he’s the one with the sanity.
“I wanted to invite you to the Fourth of July party I’m having,” he says. “That’s all. It’s on Saturday.” He turns to go. “Norah will be there.”
Norah: the mutual friend, my third girlfriend post-college, the one who has quit smoking four different times. A foul-mouthed sweetheart. It is always impossible to have a conversation with Leo without gazing at stars from the constellation of our life together.
“I’ll come,” I call after him. “And I’ll bring Henry too, if that’s okay.”
Leo doesn’t answer or look back. I watch his swaying back, his easy, loping gait, until he puts the garage door up and disappears back into his house. I can picture him standing in his mudroom, fingers on the garage door button, pressing until he hears the beep and the garage door slides closed.
Henry returns the next morning. No call, no text; just his warm body next to mine. He snuggles closer to me. At breakfast, sunlight slants back and forth over his face as he makes oatmeal, lazy with the motions, spoon lingering in the bowl.
“How is she?” I ask. He hands me the sugar and I spoon some onto my oatmeal.
“What matters is Kelly has Grace and Bill finally has a restraining order against him,” Henry says. “But yes, to answer your question, Kelly is fine. Better now than she was, at least.”
“And Grace?”
“Unharmed,” Henry says. “Thank God. She’s with her grandparents while Kelly’s still in the hospital.”
“We’ll have to go and visit them.”
“That’s the plan, yes.” Henry starts washing the dishes.
“I saw Leo last night,” I say, while his back is turned. “He stopped by to invite us to his Fourth of July party.”
“Good of him,” Henry says, in that voice he uses when he talks about Leo. “When is it?”
“Saturday. I told him we’d come.”
“Good of you.”
“And I thought I’d buy some popsicles, too.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Henry says. He hangs up the dishtowel, kisses me on the cheek, and goes to take a shower.
Leo occupies a space between us that we never really talk about. For Henry, there is no need; I simply moved out of Leo’s house and into the one he offered me. Someday, either we’ll move, or Leo will go. Someday, I will donate both of my wedding dresses. And the wasps are still here.
Pine Crest Heights is a small enough suburb of Watertown that I can walk to the grocery store. I take a basket from the front and circle past the fruit and vegetables on my way to the freezer aisle. Milk, chocolate bars, salad mix, toilet paper. I still have the last grocery list Leo gave me memorized. In the first few weeks that I was married to Henry, I found pieces of Leo everywhere. Even the way the local newscaster said “cheese sales” reminded me of Leo, his head tilted back, laughing about nothing. I would look down at my hand and wonder why my wedding band looked so unfamiliar. Then weeks passed into months, and Leo faded into the background of my life. I loved—love—Henry with a different kind of passion and joy.
Goosebumps rise on my arms as I pass through the freezer section. Each case exhales a puff of cold. I see someone that looks like Leo bending over the ice creams—rocky road or chocolate swirl? But it’s someone else. He stands up, gives me a quick, polite smile, and leaves the case open for me. I pick up a box of grape popsicles and leave, breezing through self-checkout and back into the sun.
Henry has wasted no time in returning to work. When I get home, the messy sheets on the bed are the only evidence that he’s been here. The kitchen is spotless, and his briefcase is gone. I look out the window. Leo is also gone; the truck he uses for his landscaping business is missing from his driveway. I have Friday afternoons off, so I start planning our trip to visit Ethan, Grace, and her grandparents.
On the weekend of the Fourth, Leo calls me to ask if I can help set up for the party. Our neighbors, either by circumstance or by choice, live happily self-contained lives. I am the only one on this street he still knows; Henry doesn’t count. Leo opens the door for me, bags of decorations in hand: inflatable palm trees, balloons, and a garland of multicolored stars. We start in the living room and make our way to the patio, Leo keeping up conversation the whole way. This is the first time I have returned to this house since I left him, and memories pool in the woodwork. There’s no evidence that he is dating someone new or has remarried. All the furniture is the same, of course; there was no reason for me to take any of it with me when I was only moving across the street.
Leo takes one end of the star garland, I take the other, and we hang it over the door to the patio. “Think that looks about right,” he says, climbing down off his ladder.
He comes over and circles an arm around my shoulder. Where is the yes, and where is the no? The couch is on the other side of the glass door. House, heart, hands, hell or highwater. His body as familiar as water and wine. Neither of us apologizes. Afterward, Leo puts his pants back on. I pull my dress down and drift back across the street. Henry sits in front of the TV, finishing a soda. He looks up when I come in but doesn’t ask where I’ve been.
“I’m going to take a shower and get ready for the party,” I tell him. Henry lifts his soda can to me in acknowledgement, and one TV show bleeds into the next.
The party is just beginning to fill when Henry and I walk across the street holding hands. Leo’s talking with Norah in the backyard, both of them holding beers and laughing. She’s wearing her usual dark lipstick, but she looks happier than I’ve seen her in a long, long time. She looks up, and I wave hello. Henry splits away from me to talk to some other people. Norah comes up and gives me a hug.
“Hello, sweetness,” she says, her voice still low and gravely from four years of cigarettes. “How are you?”
Leo walks back to the house. I follow him with my eyes. Norah laughs. “He still wishes it was you.”
“And you still wish it was me.”
Norah reaches in her bag—reflex; she’s looking for a lighter she doesn’t have anymore. “We all have our things.”
Someone comes around passing out glow-stick bracelets. Norah reaches out her wrist and I slip one around it, pushing the ends through the connector. We linger for a moment with our hands touching.
“Purple,” she says, looking at it. “Good color.”
“Are you seeing anyone right now?” I ask.
“Yeah, a woman I met at the bisexual support group, you know, over in Graniteville.” Norah reaches in her bag again, still looking for that lighter. “She’s good, you’d approve.”
“Hey, Iris?”
We both turn. Leo stands at the glass door leading into the living room. “Could I talk to you?”
“It’s been good to see you,” I tell Norah, and give her a hug. “It’s nice to see you so happy.”
Norah smiles and hugs me back. “Same to you, sweetness. Same to you.”
I find Leo. Everything moves in slow motion to the basement, past people partying in the dark: rush of skin, rising heat, flicking tongue. I touch him with the clarity that I have only been married to Henry for a year. Imagine a space. Now crawl into that space and claim it as your own. Buildings or fire or building a fire, either way, you are consumed. Sometimes you choose the demon, and sometimes the demon chooses you.
We separate after several minutes. Leo smiles down at me. “I needed this, this closure, before I leave.”
There’s the divide: he’s moving at last. “Where are you going?”
“Probably to Graniteville, my brother’s there. Or up to Hollow Hill, be near my mother. Lots to think about.” He kisses my neck. “And I know you will be happy. Be good to Henry, he’s good for you.”
“He is.”
We rise from the wall and return to the heart of the party. I don’t see Henry anywhere under the pink, blue, and purple lights. In the dark, every guest is a bobbing dot, a narrow point. Leo whispers goodbye. The night spins away from me and then I can see Henry on the patio, holding two sparklers, one in each hand. I open the door and take the one he hands me.
“You got plans later?” I ask him.
“Only with you. What’s going on?”
“Leo is leaving. He told me he’s moving to Graniteville or Hollow Hill.”
Henry pauses; clearly, that wasn’t what he was expecting to hear. Our sparklers burn down to nubs, and he swears when the heat hits his hand. “So, he’s finally going. Did he say why?”
“Wants to be near his brother or his mom, hasn’t decided which. I don’t think it’s a job thing.”
“A people thing, then.”
“It seems like it.”
The party ticks downward. Other people rise to leave. Purses zip, lighters click. The fireworks continue from the harbor. Henry takes my hand. It’s dark enough that the wasps aren’t out in force, at least for now. He kisses my neck and it’s time to go home. I think about Leo and Norah under the lights: Leo’s smile, miles and miles of Norah’s hair. Henry takes off my dress. Crickets chirp in the backyard. A muffled argument rises from the house next door: no, she said it’s—and I grip Henry’s hair and pull him down over me.
Leo is in and out of his house for days. His truck comes and goes. I watch piles of things vanish into boxes marked keep, marked donate, marked lover. We don’t speak at all. On the day before he leaves, he stops waving to me.
It reminds me of when I left him. Last summer the air was thick with pollen and the clouds were always threatening rain. Leo and Henry kept their garage doors open as I walked back and forth across the street. I carried my life with me to Henry’s house. I brought him my backpack, my suitcases, my duffle bags filled with shampoo bottles, jewelry, clothes, books from seventh grade. The purse that held my first secret tampon purchase; the iPod that no longer worked.
I know the moving trucks are on their way before I see them, before I hear the beeping signal that sounds like a wail. I know the goodbye I’d pictured in my head won’t happen, the one where I help Leo put the last bags in his truck. I look out the window. He is already gone. Only the moving crew is there. The donation box stays on the curb even after they leave that afternoon. Another truck finally comes and takes it away a week later. I remember the only thing I forgot when I left Leo. But I bet I could find it I wanted to.