Page 14 of Winter Solstice
Ava does indeed love the shrimp tebsi from Massawa, but she also feels that what Potter and PJ need is time alone, time to bond, time to connect without interference from Ava. To tread lightly means to now make a graceful exit.
But when she looks up into Potter’s eyes, she sees fear. He’s afraid to be left alone with his own son.
“Okay,” she says. “Subway home, shrimp tebsi.”
Either the novelty of the subway wore off on the ride downtown or PJ was never really into it to begin with, because the wait, embarkation, ride, and disembarkation are all marked by the pinging and bleeping of PJ’s game. Ava begins to worry about the child’s eyesight and the unnatural bend to his young neck. She yearns to grab the phone and throw it at the third rail, where it will explode in a burst of blue electronic flame.
The doorman in Potter’s building, Keith, is a student at Columbia Journalism School. Ava has befriended him, and she enjoys talking with him about politics, but today his face is pained, stressed even, and Ava wonders if it’s midterm time already.
“Professor Lyons?” he says. “You have guests waiting outside your apartment.”
“Guests?” Potter says.
Keith shows Potter the IDs. “I told them you were out, but they said they wanted to wait. She said—”
“Yes, I know what she said.” Potter is suddenly abrupt.
“What is it?” Ava asks. She’s thinking it’s a disgruntled student, because Potter has this problem occasionally. He teaches plenty of kids who got used to coasting by with automatic As in high school only to arrive at the Ivy League and realize life isn’t always so easy.
Potter shakes his head and presses his lips closed as they enter the elevator.
When they step off on the seventh floor, Ava sees shadowy figures lurking outside Potter’s apartment door. Ava sees it’s a couple—a man with dark, curly hair wearing a gray flannel scarf wound artfully around his neck, and a woman wearing horn-rimmed glasses. The woman has a long braid trailing down one shoulder, and she’s wearing an adorable short white boiled-wool belted coat over a houndstooth skirt and boots. They look too old and too sophisticated to be students. Are they colleagues, maybe?
And then Ava gets it.
PJ drops his phone onto the carpeted hallway and sprints toward the couple.
It’s Potter’s ex-wife, Trish, and Trish’s boyfriend, Harrison. Ava remembers Harrison’s name because Harrison is British and Ava thinks of George Harrison, the Beatle.
Ava stands up a little straighter and runs a tongue across her teeth. She bemoans her own outfit: jeans and a J.Crew turtleneck in forest green, topped by her ancient brown corduroy jacket. The jacket is her security blanket, and she intentionally wore it hoping it would serve as a shield or armor against any insults or injuries inflicted by PJ. But now that she is faced with Trish in her supercute belted coat and fabulous suede stiletto boots, she wishes she’d worn something chicer.
When Ava said that she doesn’t feel (much) insecurity, she should have added an asterisk that said*except where Trish York is concerned.What does Ava know about Trish? That she’s a brilliant Shakespearean scholar, that she is a full professor at Stanford, that she comes from an aristocratic family (she grew up in one of the houses on Rainbow Row in Charleston, a city that Potter thinks is the most charming in the world). Trish grew up sailing and that is how she met Potter; they were both crew members on boats during Antigua Sailing Week.
Ava studies Trish now. She’s pretty in a sneaky way. The glasses are meant to obscure her clear eyes and impeccable skin. But Ava has learned by now—hasn’t she?—that beauty is as beauty does. She has wasted too much of her life fretting over supposedly beautiful women like Kirsten Cabot and Roxanne Oliveria, neither of whom proved to be a threat.
Potter says, “What are you doing here, Trish?”
Harrison steps forward, offering a hand. “Good to see you, Potter.” He has a very posh accent. “Potter” comes out as “Pawtah.” “We heard there was a bit of trouble, so we left that new fellow Simpson lecturing on Trump as King Lear and came straightaway.”
“Trouble?” Potter says.
Trump as King Lear?Ava thinks. She suspects most Shakespeare scholars have run out of things to talk about now, four hundred years later.
“PJ texted me about a ‘bad touch,’” Trish says. Her voice too holds a tinge of British accent, which comes across as an affectation to Ava. She expected a Southern belle. “You took him to the museum? Did someone fondle him?”
PJ buries his face in his mother’s coat. He’s clinging to her like a life buoy.
“The bad touch was me,” Ava blurts out. She cannotbelievethis is happening. She cannot believe that PJ, a seven-year-old without any discernible social skills, has manipulated four adults this way. She tries a smile. “I’m Ava, by the way. Ava Quinn.”
“That’s right,” Harrison says, returning her smile in spades. “You’re the daughter of Margaret Quinn. I think she’s brilliant, by the way. But I hear she’s retiring?”
“Next month,” Ava says. She is grateful to Harrison for the kindness, but she doesn’t want to veer off topic. “Anyway, I did touch PJ’s arm. I was trying to encourage him to lift his eyes from the game. He was really preoccupied.”
“That blasted game,” Harrison says.
“He only plays it when he feels uncomfortable,” Trish says.
“That’s bollocks and you know it, darling,” Harrison says. “He’ll play it nonstop if you let him.”
