There were things about this museum that Ava loved: the big elephant, the squid and the whale, the gemstones. She has bad memories of the dinosaurs and even worse memories of the Hall of Indigenous Peoples. She was sick to her stomach one Sunday and threw up in her father’s hands in front of the diorama of the Maoris.
“Where shall we start?” Ava asks. She has the map in her hand and is filled with optimism. The offerings in this day and age are almost overwhelming. There’s the Butterfly Conservatory, an exhibition on the Arctic, an exhibit on bats, an exhibit on the city of Petra, and one on the jewelry of Native Americans. There’s the planetarium, which they’ll save for last. There are the fossil halls, the dinosaurs, the mammals, the gems and minerals—they’ll have to stroll through there for old times’ sake—the Hall of Human Origins, and… the Discovery Room! Ava forgot about the Discovery Room, but she can vividly recall whiling away the hours there while Kelley read the Week in Review section of the Times on a bench. He didn’t realize that quality time meant he should get down on his hands and knees and marvel with Ava over the drawer filled with cowrie and turret shells.
But Kelley made up for it later. He was a wonderful father. He is still a wonderful father, Ava thinks. She fights to keep composed, but neither Potter nor PJ is paying attention to her anyway. PJ is staring at the phone, and Potter is looking around the museum, clearly at a loss.
“Dinosaurs,” Ava says. “Let’s start with dinosaurs.”
“Dinosaurs,” Potter says. He’s clearly relieved that Ava has taken charge. “You like dinosaurs, right, bud?”
PJ is too engrossed with his game to answer, and Ava looks up at Potter. Take it away from him! she thinks. We are in a museum! Surely, there are plenty of interactive screens here now, many more than twenty-five years ago. She can’t believe Potter is allowing him to willfully ignore his surroundings.
“PJ… ,” Potter says, but he stops. He looks helpless. What can Ava do but reflect back on Margaret’s words: You may think you know Potter inside and out, but just remember, you’ve never seen him be a parent. You may be surprised.
Potter is the most intelligent, evolved, kind, sexy, charming, and fun-loving man Ava has ever met. He’s everything she could dream of wanting. And yet as a parent… well, the most flattering word Ava can come up with right now is ineffectual. But she, for one, isn’t going to let PJ miss the wonders of this museum.
She crouches down. She realizes she hasn’t seen the color of PJ’s eyes. Are they blue like Potter’s?
“Hey,” she says. “PJ, we’re in a museum, and the museum has a lot of cool things in it, like dinosaurs and bats. Bats echolocate. Do you know what that means?”
PJ doesn’t flinch, or even blink. He is intent on his game, moving a finger with a sad, chewed-up nail over the screen. It’s like he’s hypnotized. Ava puts one hand on his arm, and with her other hand she reaches for the phone.
“Bad touch!” PJ screams. “Bad touch! Bad touch!”
Ava recoils. She stands up, her cheeks blazing. “I’m sorry,” she says.
Potter says, “Buddy, put down the phone. Here, I’ll take it.” He reaches out a hand, which PJ ignores.
Just take it from him! Ava thinks. But PJ is not her child. She needs to tread lightly.
Potter retracts his hand and shrugs. He offers Ava a lame smile. “Shall we go see the dinosaurs?” he asks.
They wander through the museum, two adults feigning enthusiasm for arachnids and the rings of Jupiter, while PJ tags along, playing Minecraft. Ava hardly sees the point of all this. At the threshold to each new hall, she wants to tell Potter she’s going home. She will leave them alone for the rest of the weekend; she will join Drake and Margaret at Le Coucou tonight. But if she tells Potter this, he’ll be upset, maybe even angry. He’ll say she’s abandoning ship… then she’ll tell him he’s a piss-poor skipper… and then they will become one of those couples—a couple who bickers in public places.
So instead Ava plays along, and at one point, in the lush, steamy greenhouse that is the Butterfly Conservatory, Potter reaches for her hand and gives it a tight squeeze. And for just a moment everything is okay.
When they leave the museum, Ava is starving. She and Potter have been so busy trying to find an exhibit that would snatch PJ from the grasp of his device that they forgot all about lunch.
“Should we try for a table at Cafe Luxembourg?” Ava asks Potter once they are out in the mellow sunshine of the street.
He shakes his head. “Subway home,” he says.
“All right,” Ava says. “I’ll say good-bye now, then.”
“No!” Potter says, so loudly that PJ actually stutter-steps and looks up. “Please come back with us. I’ll order you the shrimp tebsi from Massawa.”
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.