“Didn’t you say they lived in the city?” Jess asked. “Why would she be driving?”
“They have a house on Cape Cod,” Siobhán answered, giving her a look that told her she was missing the point. Jess made her eyes wide to tell her friend, Stop talking, but Siobhán ignored her.
“Had a place, I should say. Chatham. Just sold it. The kids have friends there.”
“Selfish,” Amanda said, nodding, as if she knew the type very well.
“Where was he?” Jess nodded toward the slider to indicate Neil. “Why didn’t he go pick them up?” The yard was getting crowded. Siobhán must have invited everyone they knew. The women would share with each other what Siobhán told them, and they’d tell other people, and before you knew it Neil would walk into Food King and the seas of people would part, would begin a slow clap in their minds. What a man, to take full responsibility for his kids.
“At work I assume,” Siobhán said in a tone that asked what that had to do with anything.
“At night?” Jess asked. “While on vacation?”
Siobhán gave her another look, and Jess shrugged.
“It’s not the drinking per se that I don’t understand,” Amanda said and then paused. Jess alone recognized she was making a little joke, but when no laughs came she turned serious again. “It’s the neglect.”
“Absolutely,” Siobhán agreed.
Malcolm would ask why Jess’s first instinct was always to argue with people, but Jess was tempted to recall that it wasn’t all that long ago that she had to wake Patrick at two in the morning to come downstairs and help get his wife up to bed. Patrick came down in his boxers, wrapped his arm around Siobhán, and said, “That’s it, babe, you got it,” every time Siobhán climbed another step. Jess grabbed the decorative bowl off the entry table and followed them up, holding the bowl under Siobhán’s chin.
Neil was a nice-looking guy. He carried himself like an athlete. He was settling the kids, trying to do four things at once. After moving the baby to the shade of the hedge, he led the girls over to the corner of the yard where other kids were congregated. He went down on one knee to speak to them when they seemed hesitant, and Jess liked that he made his face level with theirs. More people arrived, and when he returned to the adults, he moved a chair to make room. He checked on the baby, who’d fallen asleep. He loosened the straps of the boy’s seat and moved him further into the shade. Jess saw in his movements a certain shyness maybe, like he was out of practice mixing with a large group and didn’t quite know how to be. There was a woman out there in the world who’d either lost him or given him up. Jess wondered what the ex was doing at that exact moment. If she felt her family had been ripped from her or if she felt free.
A few moments later, when he came in to ask if he could heat up a bottle and Siobhán introduced them, Jess spoke to him just like she’d speak to any of the men at the party, spouses within earshot. If anything, she decided later, she was more formal with him because she didn’t know him. More formal because she’d already decided he was attractive. Later she wondered if she already sensed her curiosity taking root, if she already felt a premonition about the degree to which she’d wonder about him—his habits and preferences and the music he liked and whether he drove fast or slow and what he thought about when he had a moment to himself. Siobhán introduced her simply as Jess, without mentioning whom she was connected to, so Jess was the one who added “Malcolm’s wife” when she shook his hand. At that moment, Malcolm was over at the makeshift bar. He shouted for Siobhán to bring him honey if she had any, bring him the bottle of hot sauce he saw on the counter, too, and she shouted back to get it himself.
“Jess,” Neil said as if the name rang a bell. “You’re the one who was at Kinney-Bartle?” Jess felt him appraising her. She felt him deciding that she was not quite what he expected. “I think I work with one of your old classmates.”
He named a guy Jess had been in school with, someone Jess hadn’t thought of in years. They’d gone on one very awkward date and had never spoken again.
“When I said I was moving here, he mentioned you. That you’d grown up here.”
“How in the world did he remember that?” Jess asked, not really expecting an answer.
“Well,” Neil said, making sort of a small bow, as if in deference to something. He smiled and Jess blushed. He didn’t seem half as serious as he’d looked out in the yard.
“Siobhán said you switched to a media company. How’s it going?”
“Ask me in a year,” she said. “It’s too early to say. The hours are better, I can tell you that.”
Later, when she was trying to figure out how much to lay at her own feet, she considered whether that was presumptuous of her, that they’d know each other in a year. As they were talking, the other women kept interrupting to ask if he needed anything for the kids. They used words Jess didn’t know. Do you need a Boppy? A binky? Do you have a Tommee Tippee? A Boon Orb? They were all impressed with him—a man who could bathe and dress three kids, get them to a party in a presentable state. A man who could tell when his baby was about to start fussing. “Sorry, Jess,” they said when they moved on. Amanda handed out plates with hot dogs that had been cut lengthwise first and then into smaller pieces.
“I have a friend who wants a change, and his background sounds like yours. Did you work with a recruiter? I’d put him in touch if you don’t mind giving me your number.”
“Totally fine,” Jess said, and watched as he tapped the numbers she recited and then typed J-E-S-S, as if she were the only Jess in the world.
Later, when they were walking home, Malcolm asked her what she thought of him. It was their standard review after meeting a new person, and she wondered if he’d forgotten how tense things were between them. Malcolm noticed that Neil hadn’t had a drink. “You think he’s on the wagon?” he asked. Later, Jess found out that he didn’t drink that day because his kids were with him, and he said it shocked him, upon moving to the suburbs, how often people strapped children into the backseats of their cars and crossed their fingers. “It’s only three turns!” they joked. “All back roads!” When he said that, Jess wondered what she and Malcolm would have been like if they’d gotten so lucky. Would they have been careful like Neil or would they have been like most and have no idea how lucky they were? The smaller girl was crying at one point and ran up to the deck where it was mostly women sitting around. “Hey,” Jess said. “Can I help?” She smoothed the girl’s sweaty hair away from her face and without the least bit of ceremony the girl placed her hot hand in Jess’s and told her she needed her daddy.
“I bet he grew up with money,” Jess said.
“Definitely,” Malcolm said. “Weird how it’s always obvious. I think the ex got a huge settlement. Maybe to stop her fighting him about the kids.”
“Who’d agree to that?” Jess wondered. “What woman?”
There was a section of street between the Hills’ house and theirs, where there were so many branches overhead, all thick with May blooms, that it felt like walking along an enclosed corridor. For a second Jess was sure Malcolm would take her hand, but instead he hooked his arm around her shoulder, pulled her in roughly for a kiss, and then he let her go. This was him calling a truce. This was him telling her that he hated arguing with her, that he loved her. She circled her arm around his waist and lay her head on his chest. That was her way of saying she agreed.
“He seemed a little blah,” Jess added, and didn’t know why she said that because she didn’t believe it.
“Well, he didn’t know anyone besides Patrick,” Malcolm said.
* * *
At the party, when she and Neil were talking, they were both looking toward the Hills’ old trampoline, so full of kids Jess was worried the bottom would give.