Sometimes, after I made my rounds, traveling from room to room and touching everything, I sat on the sofa bed I hated and tried to picture Zane with Alice, the two of them tucked under a pastel quilt, their golden retriever at their feet and a Duraflame log burning in their fireplace. Sometimes I even tried to imagine Matthew, who had moved to Los Angeles after we broke up.
But mostly I thought about the life Zane and I were supposed to be having. We had talked about taking a week off from work and flying to the Bahamas. We had talked about having all our friends over for Thanksgiving. We had chosen names for our baby—Benjamin after the hero of The Graduate, Skye after our favorite place in the world. I walked around and whispered those names like a mantra that would bring Zane back.
He called every week, but I never picked up the phone. Let him miss me, I thought as I listened to his voice on the answering machine. He sounded the same. Would you buy toothpaste from this man? I asked myself. Would you elope with him? Would you have his baby? When I rewound the tape, I always tried to imagine him here with me, with his bright white smile. But I could only picture him in a snapshot I once saw of him and Alice. In it, he is smiling, staring straight at the camera. She stands beside him, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, her face serious, her fingers locked together like a church steeple in that child’s game.
AURORA SAID, “THERE’S no way you’re spending New Year’s Eve alone.”
I had spent Christmas with my family, flown to St. Louis clutching jars filled with tiny star-shaped spice cookies, the lids tied with festive plaid ribbons. Everyone had eyed my baked goods suspiciously. They knew I was good for a basic spaghetti sauce, a pot of chili—but tiny cookies? Plaid ribbons? They all thanked me and averted their eyes.
When I got back to Rhode Island, there were two big packages from Zane wrapped in shiny paper on my doorstep. A plush stuffed panda for the baby. An antique silver Mexican tray for me. I put them both in the trash and didn’t go back outside until the garbagemen took them away.
“This will not do,” Aurora said. She went to each window and opened the blinds, letting in the glaring winter sun. “I’m getting you a blind date for this party.”
“He’d better be blind,” I muttered, looking down at my stomach. At my last visit, the doctor had smiled and said, “Twenty weeks and your fundus measures twenty. Everything’s perfect.”
“Hey,” Aurora said, “some men find pregnant women very attractive.”
“Zane didn’t.”
“Zane,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“Do you think he’ll come back?” I asked, trying to sound like it didn’t matter.
“Beth,” Aurora said, planting herself directly in my line of vision, “do you really want this guy back?”
“Of course not,” I lied.
WHILE I DRESSED for the party, I wondered what was wrong with me. Why did I, deep down, still want Zane back? Pride? Revenge? The baby? I remembered how I had broken up with Matthew with such confidence. How I had been so firm and sure.
I squeezed into some black velvet leggings, size large, and looked in the mirror. My blind date was named Arnie. “Think of Arnie Becker on L.A. Law,” Aurora had told me. “Then the name won’t seem so bad.” I wondered what Alice and Zane were doing tonight. An image of Alice in something slinky and Zane in a silk smoking jacket, champagne bubbles floating around them, came into my head. I decided to go downstairs and put the finishing touches on the cake I was bringing to the party.
By the time I was done, the doorbell was ringing. Arnie had arrived. He had a chic short ponytail and a bow tie. He taught at Brown and lived on the East Side. “It’s one of those historic houses,” he said, doing a bad imitation of humble. “Little brass plaque out front. Et cetera.” One thing was for certain, Arnie liked himself. A lot. All I had to do was smile and nod from time to time.
By the end of the night, he had drifted into a corner with a woman named Chloe who modeled. “Catalogue work,” she’d said, sounding very much like Arnie. I sat alone on the sofa and ate carrot sticks, watching Arnie and Chloe whisper together while everyone else dug into my chocolate mousse cake.
Aurora plopped down beside me. She wore a glittery minidress.
“Arnie’s a jerk,” she said.
I nodded. We both watched him rub his nose against Chloe’s, like an Eskimo.
“This time next year,” Aurora said, “you’ll have a great little baby and nothing else will matter.”
I was growing very tired of Aurora’s advice. It wasn’t midnight yet, but I didn’t care. All I wanted was to go home and crawl into bed. I stood and thanked Aurora for everything.
She looked puzzled. “But it’s not next year yet,” she said.
“It’s close enough,” I told her.
WHEN I GOT home, Zane was sitting at the kitchen table eating some white chocolate macadamia cookies I had baked.
“Are you here for an affair?” I said, surprised at how quickly I could retrieve a line from The Graduate, at how well I was keeping my cool.
“You don’t answer my calls,” he said. “I miss you.”