And then one thing, or a series of things . . .
Maybe a woman, suffering from depression, drives her car onto the tracks a moment too late for the conductor to stop the train on which you’re commuting. Your path (and the conductor’s and other commuters’) and hers collide. What happened to her in her life and what happened to you in yours—everything, where you were born, how you were raised, if your parents were nice, if you were bullied in school, if the gene for depression was turned on in her or not, or in you, all of these infinitesimal elements of her existence and yours lead you to be in the exact same place at the exact same moment and—KABOOM.
Or a gust of wind takes your scarf, and who should catch it but your husband-to-be, who happens to be walking past you on the same street, in the direction the wind is blowing at the exact moment on the right trajectory so that it trails beside him a flash of red and he reaches for it and turns around and your eyes meet and—SHAZAM. Love at first sight. These moments—less dramatic but equally meaningful—happened every day, Claudia often thought, and almost no one seems to notice how many things have to go wrong or right for them to occur.
It’s never one thing that leads to a tragic accident, she was sure she’d read once—though she couldn’t say where. It’s usually seven things—seven mistakes, or errors in judgment, or acts of negligence. If you reverse engineer any major disaster—oil spill or train derailment or airplane crash—there are usually seven things that had to go wrong in order for them to occur.
Claudia had spent a lot of time thinking about that theory, even though what happened to her wasn’t an accident by any measure. Especially in the darker moments—like this one—when she questioned the wisdom of almost every decision she’d made since that night. It was comforting in an odd way to look back and think that if she had changed any one of those seven things, she’d still be on that figurative train heading in the right direction.
The first thing was that her (now ex-) husband Ayers wanted to live in Midtown, since it was where they both worked. But she was in love with the East Village and had been since college. That was the real New York City—Yaffa Café and Trash and Vaudeville and St. Marks Books. There was still grit, even though it was very stylized now, and most of those wonderful places were gone or going. And very expensive even then. But she’d found a place she just loved on Fifth Street. Out back there was a garden, and it butted up against a church and an old graveyard, and the windows opened. It was utterly unlike the place Ayers wanted in Midtown, a tower with a doorman and central air, a pristine gym, and Friday socials on the sun deck.
Ayers was not a fan of grit. But he gave Claudia her way, because that’s the kind of man he was. The kind of man who subordinated his wants and needs for Claudia’s. A good man, a darling husband who she knew right away would be a lovely father.
There were gates on the back windows, of course there were. It was the East Village and as much as New York City was gentrified, junkies still busted in and took your stuff if you didn’t have bars on the windows. So they got bars, even though it bummed Ayers out. He loved unmarred city vistas. They were nice gates, painted white, with wrought-iron ivy and twisting branches, and they opened like French doors. Claudia was terrible about closing them and locking them. She forgot sometimes. That was two.
They had been married a year and they were trying to have a baby. Not in that sad, desperate way that people often seemed to. More in a joyful, let’s fuck all the time with no protection because we’re—wink wink—trying for a baby. They’d been trying for about eight months, and no baby. But hey, said Ayers, it’s about the journey, not the destination! Now take off your panties, you little tart.
Because they’d had a glass of Prosecco, Ayers got frisky. Then they messed around, having a quickie with her underpants around her ankles and her skirt hiked up, while he took her from behind over the couch. They were late to meet his parents at Café des Artistes. She never went back upstairs in their charming duplex, but mopped up carelessly in the little bath off the kitchen, putting on lipstick and sweeping up her hair, feeling dirty and naughty and loving it because Ayers’s mother was so proper. Neither Claudia nor Ayers went back to the bedroom to close the gates. That was three.
Claudia and her mother-in-law were almost exact opposites—which was probably why they got along. Claudia admired Sophie’s buttoned-up, ever stylish, cool (not cold, but unflappable) demeanor. And Claudia often caught Sophie smiling at her when she rambled on, or got exuberant, or passionate. If Sophie was pressed linen, Claudia was crinoline. If Sophie was crepe, Claudia was sequins. It worked. And her father-in-law Chuck was a bear of a man, always sweet and looking sleep-tousled, with a big appetite and sudden, explosive laugh.
After dinner, Claudia tried to convince everyone to have one last drink. But Ayers said he was tired, that he had an early meeting and wanted to work out first thing in the morning. That was four.