A Half Forgotten Song Read Free Page A

boat without a life jacket, least of all somebody else’s child. Lowell wasn’t trying to be Elise’s father—he appreciated that she already had a father. Lowell was so damn friendly and reasonable, when Zach wanted so badly to be able to hate him.
    He packed Elise’s things into her Happy Feet rolling cabin case, making a sweep of the flat and the gallery for glittery hairclips, Ahlberg books, and the numerous small plastic objects that seemed to pay out behind his daughter wherever she went. A bread-crumb trail, for if ever he lost her. He took Miley Cyrus out of the stereo, then picked up her other CDs—readings of fairy tales and rhyming songs, more cheesy pop music and an obscure set of German folktales sent by one of Ali’s aunts. He picked up Elise’s favorite, the Tales of Beatrix Potter, and considered keeping it. They had listened to it in the car on all their day trips during the past week, and the sound of Elise speaking along with the narrator, trying to mimic the voices, and then parroting lines for the rest of the day, had become the soundtrack to the last days of summer. Give me some fish, Hunca Munca! Quack, said Jemima Puddle-duck! He thought for a moment that he might play it to himself, and imagine her rendition once she was gone, but the idea of a grown man listening to children’s stories, all alone, was too tragic for words. He packed the CD away with the rest.
    At eleven o’clock sharp, Ali arrived and leaned on the bell for just a couple of seconds too long, so that it sounded impatient, insistent. Through the glass in the door Zach saw her blond hair. It was cut into a short bob these days; the sun glancing off it so that it glowed. She had sunglasses hiding her eyes and wore a striped blue-and-white cotton sweater that skimmed her willowy frame. When he opened the door, he managed to smile a little, and noticed that the familiar spike of emotion she usually brought with her was blunter than before, shrinking all the time. What had been helpless love and pain and anger and desperation was now more like nostalgia; a faint ache like old grief. A feeling more softly empty, and quieter than before. Did that mean he was no longer in love with her? He supposed so. But how could that be—how could that love go and not leave a gaping hole inside him, like a tumor carved out? Ali smiled tightly, and Zach leaned down to kiss her cheek. She proffered it to him, but did not kiss him back.
    “Zach. How’s everything?” she asked, still with that tight-lipped smile. She’d taken a deep breath before speaking, and kept most of it in, pent up, swelling her chest. She thought there was going to be another row, Zach realized. She was braced for it.
    “Everything is great, thanks. How are you? All packed? Come in.” He stepped back and held the door for her. Once inside, Ali took off her glasses and surveyed the virtually empty walls of the gallery. Her eyes were a little bloodshot, a sign of fatigue. She turned to Zach, examined him swiftly with a look of pity and exasperation, but bit back whatever she had been about to say.
    “You look . . . well,” she said. She was being polite, Zach realized. They had regressed from being able to say anything to each other to being polite. There was a short pause, slightly awkward as this final transition in their relationship settled. Six years of marriage, two years of divorce, back to being strangers. “Still hanging on to Delphine, I see,” Ali said.
    “You know I’d never sell that picture.”
    “But isn’t that what a gallery does? Buys and sells . . .”
    “And exhibits. She’s my permanent exhibit.” Zach smiled slightly.
    “She’d buy a lot of flights to visit Elise.”
    “She shouldn’t have to,” Zach snapped, his voice hard. Ali looked away, folding her arms.
    “Zach, don’t . . .” she said.
    “No, let’s not. No last-minute change of heart, then.”
    “Where is Elise?” Ali asked, ignoring the remark.
    “Upstairs,