“Well, I’m glad things are fine, then.”
Blair waits for her mother to ask why she’s feeling off. But she’s moved on, to the deal she got on a train ticket to stay with Blair’s aunt at her new town house where the property manager cleans the exterior windows and does everyone’s seasonal planters.
And then her mother says she has to go. Blair knows she can’t think of anything else innocuous to fill the conversation with. Neither of them mentions her father.
She drops the phone on the seat beside her and stares at the tired entrance of the condo building.
When she gets home, Aiden asks where the bags are, and there’s a split second when she thinks he knows where she was. That he’s ready to pack her things in those bags, and there’ll be papers drawn up by a lawyer in a big manila envelope on the kitchen table. And this house can’t be hers anymore, and he can’t either, and the family she has made is really gone.
“The bags of groceries?” Aiden clarifies in her silence. “Weren’t you just at the grocery store?” He pops something in his mouth. Cashews, maybe. The last of them. Waiting for her to refill the jar, to replenish everything they ever need.
Although she will fall asleep that night hoping for the courage to change who she is, to be a stronger woman than her mother, she puts her arms around his shoulders and convinces herself that everything will be fine. That these phases come and go, and soon, once again, it will be gone. This life will be enough. He stiffens; he pats her back. They don’t kiss anymore. She can’t remember how kissing him feels.
“I forgot my wallet” is all that she says.
53
September
The Loverlys’ Backyard
Whitney’s lace underwear is at her ankles, and she is breathing into her palms that smell like strangers, like the hands she’s been shaking all afternoon. She’s replaying her reentrance into the party fifteen minutes ago. The averting eyes. The disparaging look on Jacob’s face, how she’s failed him again. She fights the humiliation, but it’s there, it’s hot on her skin, her anger still pulsing in her ears. Xavier’s recoil from her. She’s finished peeing, but she can’t move, she can’t leave this powder room. She leans her elbows on her knees and grabs fistfuls of her hair. Her eyes are welling but there is makeup to preserve, and there are hours left to go, and—
“Oh shit, I’m so sorry,” someone says.
She scrambles to cover herself. She isn’t in the habit of locking the bathroom door at her own home. She wipes, quickly tries to rub out the smudge around her eyes, and hopes the person who walked in on her is gone when she opens the door. But he’s not. Ben.
“I am so sorry about that, Whitney. I would have saved myself the embarrassment and gone back outside, but you looked . . . are you good?”
Whitney smooths her dress over her hips, tsks his concern. Of course she is good, of course she is great, is he having a nice time? Does he want another drink? Has he tried the mini burgers yet? She straightens her bracelets and tries to smile. Finally, he leans in, repressing a grin.
“What happened earlier isn’t a big deal, really,” he says. “The magician’s rabbit got a little wild right at the same time, so. You weren’t the only show in town.”
Whitney shields her eyes. She mumbles, “Oh God,” and then an apology, but they’re both smiling. They step to the side, let someone else through to the powder room. She remembers then that she had felt Ben’s eyes on her earlier that afternoon. Before she screamed at Xavier. When his hand was in Rebecca’s back pocket, cupping her ass.
“I heard you’re coaching the junior school softball team? Xavier wants to try out in the spring, but he’s not the most athletically inclined.” She raises her eyebrows, wants to seem softer now than she is. He seems a bit nervous around her. She likes this. She likes that she does something to him.
“I’m happy to spend some time with him before it gets too cold, throwing the ball around. We can work on his skills so he’s ready for tryouts.”
“That would be nice of you. Sports are not Jacob’s thing, but don’t tell him I said that.” And then because she feels she needs to: “He’s a good kid. That incident upstairs, it was just . . . that was on me.”
It feels easier to be honest with Ben than with those women outside. He shakes his head, he mumbles quick words about understanding, about forgetting it ever happened. They look at each other, directly at each other, and she waits for it to feel uncomfortable.
She thinks of what Mara had said to her about Xavier the spring before. She’d left an armful of beautiful lilac boughs from her bush at their front door. A reminder, maybe, that she was still there. Whitney stopped by Mara’s porch the next day to thank her.
And by the way, if Xavi ever gets to be too much, poking around the fence, just say so.
Mara had clucked, waved the concern away. And then as Whitney turned to leave:
Your son reminds me of a quiet little boy I once knew. Something in his eyes—
She had cut herself off, like she’d said too much. She didn’t look up from her marigolds, turning the terra-cotta pot so it sat in more sunlight.
Whitney thinks of this now, speaking about Xavier with Ben. Ben’s eyes feel familiar to her. They feel like her son’s. Was it sadness that Mara had meant? Is that what Mara had seen in Xavier’s eyes?
“You sure you’re okay?” Ben’s hand moves to her shoulder.
“I feel better now, knowing about the rabbit.”
They smile again, he at the floor, she at the boyish curl of his hair around his neck. Neither of them begins to walk away. Neither of them says, Well, better get back out there. Thanks for coming. Thanks for having me.
“I’m going to take you up on that offer to help Xavi with his throw.” She looks to the backyard where Rebecca is asking the bartender for a water, where Jacob is tipping the magician.
“Happy to. If it comes with a cold beer after.”
“Maybe something a bit stronger. But yeah. Let’s do that.”
The slow pace of their nods. The restraint of their smiles. And then the pink in his cheeks, the parting of his lips. Like there’s more he wants to say to her.
Much later, the conversation with Ben outside the powder room will not leave her. Not that night as she lies awake on her bed, Jacob’s screen glowing on his lap beside her. Not when she showers the next morning, eight hours of back-to-back meetings before her. Not that next evening as she stands in her kitchen after work, still in her suit, listening to Xavier kick the leg of the table over and over and over as he slurps a bowl of melted ice cream, and she feels the grip of this life tighten inch by inch up her spine, until she slams her hand on the table and the rage takes over again.
54
Rebecca
She slams Ben’s laptop closed.
Her brain finally cycles faster. Again, Whitney had written in the email. Ben’s never mentioned going over to the Loverlys’ for a drink. In the evening. He’s never mentioned the Loverlys at all. They were just the family across the street. She stares at the initial she signed off with. W. Something about it feels too intimate. Far too casual for a woman he barely knows.
She looks down at the feet moving across the white-oak floorboards as though they are not hers. She goes back to the open door and says Mara’s name. She knew about the pregnancy. And the other ones too. And she had waited outside to tell her this.
Mara is still sitting at the top of Rebecca’s stairs. She doesn’t turn around.
“I told you I had a son, and that he died.” Mara pauses. “Well, what I didn’t say is that I could’ve prevented it. I was responsible. And I think about that every day.”
Rebecca leans down and touches her shoulder.
“Oh, there’s no need for that, it’s okay. It was a long time ago.” But Mara puts her hand over Rebecca’s anyway and rubs it. “You don’t need to hear my problems at a time like this. I only wanted to tell you that no matter how bad things get right now, you’ll find the resolve to keep going, in ways you won’t expect. Something’ll land right there for you to find, just when you need it,” she says, gesturing to her worn slip-on shoes on the bottom step of the porch. “But, you have to wait. Be patient.”
She pats Rebecca’s hand and then struggles to stand. Rebecca steadies her. She wants to thank her, to say something kind, but Mara won’t want to hear it. She’s already down the steps and on her way back across the street. Rebecca moves slowly inside to the living room and stares at the laptop.
The heaviness growing from her pubic bone up her back starts to make her nauseated. She twists to get away, but it’s here. She goes to the powder room toilet, covering her mouth to keep the vomit in as the contractions begin to engulf her. She kneels on the tile and hangs her head over the cold lip of the toilet seat. She tries to find one last breath in the space between doubt and certainty, but the sourness fills her mouth, and she gives in.
55
Blair