34. My Little Cabbage
Caroline isn’t fool enough to answer Isaac’s call—it’s definitely Sofia, laying a trap! But after she declines, a text comes in: Pick up, mon petit chou.
Mon petit chou, a French endearment, one Caroline hopes he uses only with her. He calls Sofia ma chérie.
The phone rings again and Caroline is helpless to resist. She is his little cabbage. She picks up. “Hello?” She tries to make her voice as bright and sunny as a Nantucket afternoon.
“Caroline,” he says, emphasis on the last syllable, which he always pronounces as “lean.”
“Hey,” she says. She has been strong up to this point, but hearing his voice is too much. “What’s going on? Sofia texted, then called.”
“She suspects something,” he says. “Not you, just someone. Because she says I sounded too happy while she was away. She was calling you to see if there had been any women visiting or if I’d gone out.”
There’s a lot to unpack in those statements but Caroline is, initially, relieved. “So she doesn’t suspect me?”
“No,” Isaac says, and Caroline realizes that she would fall way beneath Sofia’s consideration. Sofia is reaching out only to use Caroline as a spy.
Ouch.
“Are you sure?” Caroline says. “Because when she met me, she said, ‘Please, no trouble.’ What did that mean?”
“No trouble meant don’t be late, pay attention, don’t check your phone all the time, don’t use me as a network,” Isaac says. “You were not that kind of trouble.”
There’s a moment of silence during which Caroline and, she assumes, Isaac think about what kind of trouble Caroline was.
“If she calls again, just assure her it was no one, there was no one, I was a good boy. Please, I need you to do this for me.”
“Because you love her?”
“Yes,” Isaac says. “But she is right, I was happy while she was away. I was happy because we were together.”
Caroline would like to point out that if she is the one who makes Isaac happy, then maybe he should be with her and not Sofia! But she senses there’s some elusive knowledge about love that she’s not adult enough yet to understand. Something like True love makes you miserable.
“How’s your little project coming?” he asks.
“Oh,” Caroline says, perking up, though she’s wary of saying too much lest she jinx herself. “It’s turning out better than I expected.”
“Hmm,” Isaac says. “When you get back to New York, we’ll take a look together at what you have. Okay, mon petit chou?”
He’s patronizing her, but she likes imagining the two of them shoulder to shoulder in front of Isaac’s computer. “Okay,” Caroline whispers. She wants the conversation to end sweetly, she wants Isaac to say he misses her, but at that second, there’s a beeping on her phone.
Sofia is calling.
“She’s calling me now,” Caroline says. “What should I do?”
“Decline, please,” Isaac says. “She’s been out to lunch with Mauricio and Gemma; I’m sure she’s been drinking. Wait and call her back tomorrow, then put her mind at ease.”
“Okay,” Caroline says. The beeping ends; Caroline knows Sofia won’t
leave a message.
“You’ll be back Monday?” Isaac asks.
“Tuesday,” Caroline says.
Isaac sighs. (With longing?) “Until then, mon petit chou,” he says, which isn’t exactly what Caroline is hoping for, but she’ll take it.
She hangs up just as a text from Sofia comes in. Are you on the phone with Isaac?
A chill rolls up Caroline’s spine. The loneliest place in the world, she realizes, is between two other people.
