“Your mother would rather drink strychnine than not belong to the Cincinnati Country Club.” Mr. Bennet’s expression grew mischievous. “Shall we offer her some?”
“Are there other major expenses I’m not thinking of?” Liz asked. “Mom’s jewelry must be worth something, right? And there’s that portrait in the front hall of whoever it is.”
Seeming impressed, Mr. Bennet said, “My dear, you’re positively cold-blooded.”
“I bet you guys will feel relieved to live somewhere smaller, without so much stuff. Do you prefer a real estate agent you already know or someone outside your social circle?”
“If your mother and I lived somewhere smaller, we might have to actually see each other.”
“The bills you’ve gotten from the hospital,” Liz said. “Have you done anything about them? Have you called anyone?”
For a few seconds, they watched each other silently.
“Give them to me, and I’ll make an appointment and go in with you,” Liz said. “The situation won’t get better by ignoring it.”
JANE’S CONVERSATION WITH Chip had not gone well. Although he hadn’t explicitly accused her of dishonesty, he’d questioned her assertion that she was pregnant via donor insemination rather than through an encounter in New York of the more traditional kind, which was almost the same thing. It wasn’t, Jane told Liz, that he showed a heretofore concealed cruelty; he still seemed like himself, just no longer besotted. “I’m not an idiot,” he’d said. “It’s not like I thought you were a virgin before we met.”
When Jane had insisted that there was absolutely no chance her pregnancy had resulted from anything other than the IUI procedure, he’d said, “Then I don’t understand why you never told me you were trying to have a baby on your own. How could you keep such a huge secret?” And this question, Jane had to concede, was a fair one.
The exchange had taken place at a restaurant downtown, where Jane had driven herself, which, she said to Liz, had been an intimation about the way things would go: Rather than picking her up, Chip had met her in public to break up with her.
“And did he?” Liz asked.
“Not in so many words,” Jane said. “But he claimed it wasn’t a good night for me to come over because he and Caroline needed to talk about some business stuff. And when we said goodbye, he kissed me on the forehead.” Liz could tell that her sister was fighting tears. “He said the news was a lot to digest, and he’d probably need a few days. But, Lizzy, I’m sure it’s over, and I don’t blame him.”
As Jane spoke, it was just after nine P.M., and the two sisters were standing in the Tudor’s basement. Instead of watching television in the den, Liz had decided to investigate this subterranean wilderness to which she normally did not descend except to do laundry or retrieve food from an extra refrigerator; the room containing these appliances was reasonably clear, but three additional rooms were nearly impenetrable storage units for all manner of familial detritus. It was in the largest of the three overstuffed rooms that Jane had found her.
“I should have told him from the beginning,” Jane said. “But I guess I was waiting for things to not work out or else for him to fall for me so completely that he wouldn’t care I was knocked up.”
“He’s a good guy,” Liz said. “I bet he’ll realize this isn’t insurmountable.”
“Maybe.” Jane pointed to a witch’s hat encircled by a dusty orange velvet ribbon. “Isn’t that from my fourth-grade Halloween costume?”
“And check this out.” Liz lifted the hat to reveal a high, narrow marble table with curved legs ending in deer hooves that had once occupied their maternal grandmother’s living room. “Remember how this used to scare Mary?”
“Why are you down here?” Jane asked.
“Oh, you know,” Liz said. “Memory lane.”
LIZ STAYED IN the basement until past midnight, though as fatigue overtook her, she was chagrined to look around and realize that her efforts had, if anything, made the room look worse. She’d been trying to sort items into broad categories—dishware, sports equipment, holiday decorations—and she’d partially succeeded, while also eliminating already-scarce floor space. Plus, she’d encountered at least a dozen spiders, not all of them dead. She’d deal with the mess later, she thought, and she flicked off three light switches and climbed the steps to the kitchen. She didn’t, until it was too late, realize that Lydia and Ham Ryan were kissing avidly by the stove. They noticed her at the same time she noticed them, and they sprang apart, Lydia saying in an accusatory tone, “What the hell?”
“Sorry,” Liz said. “I was in the basement.”
“Hi, Liz,” Ham said.
Lydia scowled. “Doing what?”
Oh, to be twenty-three, Liz thought, to make out in that way that left your lips swollen and your skin blotchy. Not that Lydia was by any means an innocent, but still—something about her kissing her new boyfriend in their parents’ kitchen while everyone else in the house was asleep made Liz wistful.