“See you Sunday!” Sofia shouts, gone that fast.
Rachel turns back to the window. In a few seconds, Sofia appears, skipping again, across the front yard, a sad lot of dirt and tufts of brownish grass that remind Rachel of an old man’s head.
“Daddy!” Sofia is shouting, happily.
Rachel’s stomach tightens. Peter gets out of the car and picks Sofia up into his arms, bear hugs her, spinning slightly. Sofia’s thin legs wrap around her father’s waist. Rachel sees the bottoms of her Keds as the two of them twirl. She sees the bright blond—dyed, her friends had assured her—of Yvonne’s hair. She wants to turn away; there are things to get done. But behind her the house hums with quiet, and Rachel finds she cannot move from her spot at the window.
RACHEL HAS CONVINCED herself it is not a date. It is just dinner at Mary and Dan’s.
“I’ve never fixed anyone up before,” Mary told her on the phone that next morning, Saturday. “So I can’t say that’s what this is. But Dan’s cousin Harry is coming over for dinner tonight and he was supposed to bring Victoria, his girlfriend, well, his ex-girlfriend, I guess, because he called fifteen minutes ago and said they’ve broken up but could he come anyway. And Dan and I immediately had the same thought: Rachel.” She paused, then added, “He’s an architect.”
Rachel was nursing a hangover; she’d had too much white wine the night before while she’d watched Four Weddings and a Funeral, a stupid movie to rent on a night when you’ve pulled out your own wedding album and cried over it.
Dressing for dinner, Rachel blames that early morning hangover for making her agree to go to Mary’s. She hardly knows Dan; she has been single ever since she met Mary and, politely, Mary doesn’t usually invite Rachel to couples’ things. At Sophia’s birthday parties, he is always there, grinning behind the video camera, handing out little Cinderella napkins and paper plates, pouring lemonade. But Rachel can hardly say she knows him. Tonight seems like one of those lines that she and Mary do not cross. On weekends, they don’t even speak on the phone, never mind having dinner together.
But she is too cotton headed and embarrassed to cancel.
So she puts on her black cotton sheath, what she thinks of as her summer date dress, and black strappy sandals, and, because there is finally at least a breeze, she decides to walk to Mary’s. Once she leaves her own neighborhood, with the clusters of tough looking teenagers on the corners and the loud music spilling from open windows, she actually enjoys the walk. She has brought a bottle of wine that her last date brought to her, a good wine that she’s been saving for something special, and she cradles it in her arms as she meanders through the streets of Providence, walking slowly now that she’s in the better part of town.
The houses here are large, like Mary’s, with yards that have green grass, flower beds, neat hedges. When she can, she looks into the windows. There is a family eating dinner, an old man alone reading a book, the blue glare of a television. She should have been a spy, Rachel decides. Or something where she could watch things unnoticed. In college, she sat at the periphery of war protests, attending more for the free drugs that always got passed around. She remembers watching Peter and Sofia yesterday. Yes, she decides, she is a good voyeur.
Since her divorce, she has worked as a manager for various stores—books, shoes, and now an upscale toy store. She is ready to leave that job; it annoys her. All the overpriced wooden trains and planes, the complicated puzzles, the precious dolls that live behind glass. She did get Sofia’s Madeline doll there, thirty percent off with her employee discount, but no other good has come from this job. In her mind, before she goes to sleep, Rachel tries to imagine what she will do next. But she majored in sociology, and never went on for her MSW. She is not trained for anything really. As crazy as it sounds, Rachel believed she would stay married to Peter, have children with him, grow old like that. She believed she would volunteer for good causes, help out in a soup kitchen, have friends over for good vegetarian meals from recipes in Laurel’s Kitchen. In a way, she supposes as she turns down Mary’s street of renovated Victorians, a street that seems to rocket you back in time, she had imagined she’d have a life not unlike Mary’s.
The thought unsettles her, so that she is awkward again as she climbs the front steps and rings Mary’s doorbell.
Rachel is surprised when Dan answers the door. She has come to think of the house as just Mary’s. This too tall man with the slightly basset hound face startles her, as if he is the one who doesn’t belong there.
“Finally,” he says.
“Am I late?” Rachel asks, surprised.