Back at her apartment, the consummation of their whatever-it-was also was not a dream come true—certainly fourteen years of buildup and more than a half dozen cocktails between them didn’t help matters—but it was adequate, and afterward, when Jasper fell asleep holding her, she wished that her twenty-two-year-old self could know that it would, in the end, happen for them. Her twenty-two-year-old self might have been less charmed when Jasper woke up forty minutes later, took a hasty shower, and hurried home to his wife and child; despite Jasper and Susan’s conjugal agreement, it was Jasper’s turn the next morning to get up with Aidan at five A.M.
Within a week, Jasper had made three more visits to Liz’s apartment and in two cases slept over; patterns had been established. The drawbacks to this version of a relationship were so glaringly obvious—because members of Susan’s extended family loyal to her grandmother lived in Manhattan, discretion was necessary, and Liz and Jasper therefore didn’t dine together in restaurants, nor were they each other’s dates for work-related functions—that they hardly seemed worth dwelling on. On the other hand, she was able to enjoy genuine closeness, as well as physical intimacy, with someone she knew well and cared for deeply, while still having time to work and run and read and see friends—perhaps, in fact, more time than when she’d been scouring dating websites or spending three hours at a stretch analyzing her singleness with Jane or other women. A few friends knew about Jasper, as did her older sister, and their skeptical reactions were for Liz sufficient deterrent to discuss the unusual arrangement further; it was too easy for it to sound like Jasper was doing nothing more than cheating.
One Friday evening in late May, two years into Liz’s reconciliation with Jasper, Liz was at Jane’s apartment; Jane chopped kale for a salad while Liz opened the bottle of red wine she’d brought. “Are you really making me drink alone again?” Liz said.
“I’m fostering a hospitable uterine environment,” Jane replied.
“Meaning, yes, I’m on my own.”
“Sorry.” Jane frowned.
“Don’t apologize.” Liz pulled a glass from Jane’s shelf. “And any fetus would be lucky to inhabit your womb. I bet you have the Ritz of uteruses. Uteri?” Liz held her filled glass aloft. “To Latinate nouns and to reproduction.” Jane tapped her water glass against Liz’s as Liz added, “Remember Sandra at my office who took three years to get pregnant? She said she went to this acupuncturist who—” In her pocket, Liz’s phone buzzed, and she wondered if it was Jasper; apparently, Jane wondered the same thing because she said, with not entirely concealed disapproval, “Is that him?”
But it wasn’t; it was their sister Kitty. Liz held up the phone so Jane could see the screen before saying, “Hey, Kitty. I’m here with Jane.”
“It’s Dad,” Kitty said, and she was clearly crying. “He’s in the hospital.”
HALF AN HOUR after complaining to Mrs. Bennet of heartburn that he attributed to the veal cacciatore she’d made for dinner, Mr. Bennet had climbed the staircase from the entry hall on the first floor of the Tudor to the second floor and collapsed, gasping for breath. Lydia had heard him fall, Mary had called 911, and he’d been transported by ambulance to Christ Hospital.
Upon receiving Kitty’s phone call at Jane’s apartment, Liz had immediately begun trying to find flights while Jane put away the food; as it turned out, the evening’s final flights to Cincinnati out of both LaGuardia and JFK had already departed. With reservations for the early morning, Liz returned to her apartment, tossed clothes into a suitcase, slept fitfully for a couple hours, and met Jane again beyond LaGuardia’s Terminal D security checkpoint at six A.M. By then, their father was out of a six-hour surgery, intubated, and unconscious in the intensive care unit.
Though he was awake and his breathing tube had been removed when Liz and Jane arrived at the hospital straight from the airport, he was alarmingly subdued and appeared much smaller in his hospital gown than in his usual uniform of khakis, dress shirt, and navy blazer. At the sight of him, Liz bit back tears, while Jane wept openly. “My dear Jane—” Mr. Bennet said, but he spoke no more; he offered no drollery to reassure them. The many wires monitoring his vital signs beeped indifferently.
He remained in the hospital for a week. But on his second day after surgery, he’d moved from intensive care to the step-down unit, and his health had improved consistently. In increments that were less steadily apparent than manifest in sudden moments, his coloring brightened, his energy increased, his mordant humor returned, and it seemed then that he really would be all right.