Her heart stretched and contracted. Why now? Of course now! I’m sure you’ve heard from my brother about him and Caroline, Liz thought, and the idea of sitting in a bar listening to him describe his renewed romance made her glad she’d left Cincinnati.
She was ready—more than ready—to once again inhabit her life in New York. So it hadn’t worked out with Darcy; she was thirty-eight, and it hadn’t worked out with plenty of guys. Actually I’m back in NY, she typed hastily. Looks like we’re ships passing in the night. Take care. Then she hit Send, and within a few minutes, she was off the plane and hurrying through the terminal, buoyed, however temporarily, by the relief of resolution.
FOR THE MORNING of the Women’s League luncheon, Liz had ordered a large bouquet of pale pink roses, hypericum berries, and sweet peas to be delivered to the Tudor, along with a card bearing her and Jane’s names. During the luncheon, she texted Mary and Kitty to ask how it was proceeding.
Fine, Mary texted back. Almost over.
Picture a sorority that time traveled 50 years, Kitty texted back. Except drunker.
Neither of which exactly answered Liz’s question.
The day before, Liz had heard from Shane Williams that another couple was preparing to make an offer on the house, and she had purposely withheld this information prior to the luncheon. Upon calling the Tudor in the late afternoon, she learned from Mr. Bennet that her mother had retired to bed.
“In defeat or triumph?” Liz asked, and her father said, “It’s hard to tell sometimes, isn’t it?”
THE INITIAL OFFER was for $899,000; after negotiations, it stalled at $920,000, which Shane told Liz and Mr. Bennet in a conference call he strongly recommended accepting. “Unless you want to take the house off the market, make improvements, and put it up for sale again in the spring,” he said. “But with the school year under way, and the holidays on the horizon, now just isn’t when most people are looking to move.”
The second time around, the inspection did not yield surprises; a closing date was set for October 18, and Liz booked a ticket to Cincinnati accordingly.
SEPTEMBER IN NEW York was still prone to unpleasant hotness, but by October, which had always been Liz’s favorite month, the city was at its best—the leaves in Central Park were changing color, the stylish women who worked at Mascara and its sister magazines were wearing belted coats, and her favorite deli was selling pumpkin soup. It had occurred to Liz that her extended stay in Cincinnati might distance her from her New York friends, or even from her own habits there, but in fact, she appreciated the city anew, and the affection appeared reciprocal: She went out often for drinks, dinner, or brunch, in many cases with people she hadn’t socialized with for over a year, and there was much to gossip about and discuss. Though she made a point of calling her parents every other evening, and texting her sisters as often if not more so, the absence of constant familial obligations made her feel as if additional hours had been inserted into each day, hours in which she could read novels, attend movies, go for long runs, or visit museum exhibits that she probably, the previous spring, would have intended to see without actually doing so, believing herself to be too busy.
A few weeks had passed before Liz realized that these auxiliary chunks of time were attributable not simply to no longer being at the beck and call of her family but also to the conclusion of her relationship with Jasper. It was in the second week of October, with neither delight nor vengeance, that Liz discarded the red sheer teddy and matching thong underwear, never worn, that he’d sent her in Cincinnati. She also recycled the piece of computer paper on which, over a decade and a half, she had written what she’d once deemed Jasper’s best sentences: I talk way more openly with you than I do with her. Sometimes I think you and I would be a good couple. I love you in my life. How meager these offerings had come to seem, how provisional their compliments. Yet surely she was as culpable as he was; recalling her casual speculation about when Jasper’s wife’s grandmother might die and thereby free Jasper and Susan to divorce, Liz wondered if a stronger sign of a relationship’s essential corruptness could exist than for its official realization to hinge on the demise of another human being.
In any case, when the autumn nights most filled Liz with yearning—when, as she was leaving work, the smell of candied cashews and fallen leaves wafted through the cool air—the person she thought about wasn’t Jasper.
CONGRATULATIONS, KATHLEEN BENNET! read the email Kitty had forwarded to Liz. The Kenwood Institute of Cosmetology is pleased to offer you a place in our rigorous and state-of-the-art 16-week Manicuring Program; your session will begin on MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2013.
Happy now? Kitty had typed above the institute’s digital letterhead, and Liz wrote back, Yes, very. Good for you!
MRS. BENNET WAS the one who called Liz, which was unusual, unless there was a sale on bath mats at Gattle’s. “Your father has gone to a lecture with that deviant,” Mrs. Bennet practically hissed. “Can you imagine?”