“I did. You don’t remember.”
I give Chris my best Really? look. There is no way that I would forget my closest friend going on an official date with my husband’s law partner. She must have glossed it over, acting like she ran into him and they had one of their usual stilted conversations. “Well, give me details.”
She scans the table and groans. “Ugh. I need a drink for this story. Where’s the bottle we didn’t get to?”
Part of me feels that I should tell her that drinking before noon is a sign of alcoholism. But I have zero moral authority to warn her when I was the one who couldn’t hold her liquor the prior night. “There’s a Riesling in the fridge.”
She heads into the kitchen. “It was at the start of the summer, actually.” The fridge door opens, hiding Chris’s face. “I’d put Emma on a plane to see George a few days earlier and was feeling a bit lonely. So, because the universe tends to steel-boot kick people who are feeling sorry for themselves, I ended up bumping into Nick in the city.”
The fridge shuts. Sunlight from the screened back door glints on the green bottle in her hand. Glass clinks as she looks through a cabinet above the dishwasher for a wine glass.
“You’re leaving me in suspense,” I say.
“You’re the last person who can complain about that,” she quips, removing a stemless wine glass from the cabinet. “Anyway, Nick was looking GQ as always, so we started talking. Then he asked me what I was doing later . . .”
I try to catch Chris’s eye as she says this. I can picture her asking Nick on a date, but not the other way around. After her divorce, she’d asked me to set them up. David had insisted that he wouldn’t go for her.
Chris returns to the table with the white wine in her right hand and the rims of two glasses pinched between the fingers of her left. The mere suggestion of alcohol turns my stomach. “I’m never drinking again.” I take a massive bite of my sandwich for emphasis.
She shakes her head at me and twists off the cap. “So anyway, Nick takes me to this speakeasy-type place in Brooklyn, one of those bars without an officially marked entrance. I forget the name of it. I do remember lots of gold-framed mirrors and red leather booths.”
“Stalling.”
“Okay. Let me get a drink in me.” She pours a taste and takes it like a vodka shot, tilting the glass back until it has disappeared. “Okay. So I’m in Marie Antoinette’s bedroom, hanging on handsome Nick’s bicep, wondering whether it’s bad form to sleep with him on the first date given that we’ve known each other socially for years, and I realize that every single person in the place is gay.”
“He took you to a gay bar?”
“Well, it could have been a hipster bar,” Chris concedes, pouring herself a real portion. “Or maybe it was a straight bar most of the time and we stumbled in on gay night. So anyway, he acts like the whole thing is completely natural and takes me to a booth. We order drinks.” She takes a Pavlovian sip of her wine. “He spends the whole night basically bitching about you in hopes that I would relay the message, which I never did because fuck him, right?”
I’d known Nick wasn’t a fan of mine. But the act of taking out my best friend for the sole purpose of trashing me is something out of a mean-high-school-girls movie. “What did he say?”
Chris grimaces. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I want to know.”
“Typical complaining from an insensitive man.” She rolls her eyes to show she doesn’t take any stock in the forthcoming criticism. “The hormones had made you all emotional and clingy, and David couldn’t do the things he needed to because you might fall apart.”
“What, like work?”
She shrugs. “Nick said at one point that he brought in all the big-money clients, so maybe he thought David wasn’t pulling his fair share because he was busy taking care of you.”
If Nick had said such things to Christine, he’d undoubtedly been saying them to David daily. Was it any wonder now, with Nick’s voice ringing in his head, that all David wanted to do was work? That he didn’t want me to continue treatments? Nick had probably convinced him that a baby was bad for business.
The drummer in my head starts a new rhythm, something ferocious and tribal like an ancient hula. I drop my forehead into my hands and try to soften the beat. Angry tears spill from the corners of my eyes.
“Hey, don’t get upset. Nick was being an ass. I mean, David’s his best friend, right? He couldn’t shoulder the load for a few months?”
Chris comes around the table and crouches beside my chair. She drapes an arm around my shoulder. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No. I’m glad you did.” I sniff and wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. “And I know it’s horrible to say, but I’m glad Nick’s gone.”
Chapter 7
I tell my mom that Jake and I are having a long-overdue date night. She doesn’t believe me. Doubt restrains her smile as she stands in the doorway to the clapboard Cape Cod where I grew up, trying to make direct eye contact after asking how parenthood is treating “you two.”
“It’ll be good to have time together,” I say, pushing Vicky’s stroller past her waiting hug. On my shoulder hangs a massive bag stuffed with backup onesies, bottles, and bags of frozen breast milk. I drop it on her plaid couch and then remove the milk pouches as my mother takes her granddaughter from the stroller.
“Hello, Vicky-boo. Are you ready to spend the night with Nana? Huh, baby? Spend the night with Nana?”
I carry the milk through the small dining room into the adjacent kitchen. The floor is black-and-white-checked linoleum, a design so old that it’s become fashionable again. My mother has also held onto the retro-chic fridge of my childhood, an ancient white box with an attached freezer a little bigger than a beach bag. I lay my baby’s food atop a pack of chicken breasts encased in snow-covered plastic.
“I’m leaving you with forty ounces,” I shout as I reenter the living room.
“You look nice. Where are you going?” Though she calls out the question between coos at her granddaughter, I recognize when my mother is fishing. She’s searching for clues as to why I asked her last minute to watch Vicky, why I nearly begged that she reschedule her girls’ dinner with the neighbor. My urgency would make sense if, say, Jake scored concert tickets.
“You can’t defrost the milk in the microwave. It needs to be put in a hot water bath for five minutes, until it reaches room temperature. Microwaving kills all the good nutrients.”
“Please, Beth. I know how to heat up breast milk.” Again, she tries to make me look at her. “Is anything wrong?”
The little girl inside me wants to bury my face on her tiny shoulder and unload my entire burden. My better self strangles her. I take Vicky from my mom’s arms and kiss her forehead. She smiles, or at least gives me an infant’s best approximation of one. Her sapphire eyes glitter. Though Vicky’s irises are darker than her dad’s, her lids have his downturned shape. If we end things tonight, will I ever be able to look at her and not see him?
“Mommy will be back tomorrow,” I whisper. “I love you more than life.”
A hand lands on my upper arm. The lines on my mom’s brow deepen. “Beth, is everything all right?”
I hand her my baby. “I’m sorry. I’m in a hurry. Zipcar charges by the hour.”
She searches my face for something more. I gesture to the bag and start detailing everything inside, an attempt to overload her mother-radar. It’s not working. I can tell by her erect posture. The way she looks at me rather than at the bag from which I frantically pull out bottles, needlessly explaining how to ensure nipples don’t mold.
As I’m heading out the door, she tries one last time. “Are you sure nothing is wrong?”
I throw up my hands. “I’m a new mom.”
She gives me a wistful smile, as though that explains everything.
*