Sarah is excited to get married and annoyed that it seems that Lauren is embarrassed by her excitement about this. She feels embarrassed herself, like someone has caught her wearing something out of fashion, like she’s admitted to liking a movie everyone hates. She thought this was what people wanted: a happy ending. Do people not want happy endings after all?
Lauren would be better off with a man. It sounds a stupidly unfeminist thing to say, but it’s what she thinks, not because she thinks a woman needs a man to be happy, not because she thinks a person who is single can’t be as happy as a person in a romantic relationship, but because she knows Lauren. She’s known her since she was a kid, she’s known her with boyfriends and without boyfriends and she knows which is the better Lauren. She knew her with Gabe, and the Lauren with Gabe was the best Lauren she’s known in the twenty years she’s known her. The Lauren with Gabe smiled, and laughed, and was never in any hurry, and always seemed so satisfied to be doing whatever she was doing. The Lauren with Gabe was a beat slower, almost like she was stoned—perhaps she was stoned, come to think of it. But he had a way of looking at her and Lauren had a way of being looked at by him: Sarah liked it. She liked him. Lauren pretends now that the whole thing meant less than it did, but Sarah is not fooled by this. She wants Lauren to be happy, and she wants her to be happy for her. She wants them to be happy at the same time.
The blocks are long. She prefers to walk on quieter ones, away from the avenues, away from the buses. A nanny on a cell phone pushes a stroller past, the baby sound asleep. An old woman with terrible posture is waiting on the corner, an envelope in her hands. A man unloads a van, shouting companionably at a man from the corner grocery to which he is delivering whatever it is he has in those cardboard boxes. There’s a siren, somewhere, and a car alarm, and a helicopter, and a jackhammer, and from somewhere, some music she can only barely hear. She steps around a puddle. She stops to wait for the light.
Getting things done makes Sarah so happy. She’s accomplished a lot: meeting with Carol, lunch with Fiona, picking up some sweaters, and now, stopping to see her mom. She’s solved what to do about the wedding bands and still has time this afternoon to send more e-mails, figure out what to do about dinner, maybe surprise Dan with mushroom risotto, the only thing she truly knows how to cook. A specialty of sorts. Just reviewing this list, these to-dos and dones, her pace quickens; she feels lighter, she feels smarter, she feels in control, she feels alive. She thinks about Dan, in his suit, in his office, somewhere blocks from where she is now, and smiles. She’ll call him in a bit, when she leaves her parents’ place.
A section of the street on this block is cordoned off with yellow tape. Some men are milling about, repairing or rejiggering something, it’s not clear what. They’re from the gas company, she can tell by their uniforms. It takes a million people to make life run the way it should run. Everyone has their own part to play in it. This is what she loves about being in the city, living in the city—seeing this all unfold around her. She likes to know the part she plays in the whole system, in the whole universe.
Her parents’ house is just here, on the left. Sarah climbs the steps, her keys are already out and in her hand, one of those actions your body performs before your brain even asks it to. She unlocks the door, gives it a shove, it’s a heavy door, prone to sticking. The door falls shut behind her, and the sounds, the alarm, the helicopter, the siren, the bus, they vanish. The house is quiet, though not silent. Footsteps from above.
“My darling.” Her mother walks down the steps, head held like a queen’s, smiling. She has been expecting her. There’s a lot to be done.
Chapter 5
His name is Rob. Lauren figures it out pretty quickly—the office isn’t big, she’s not an idiot—but she pretends, still, that she’s not a hundred percent clear on who he is when Antonia mentions him.
“You could ask Rob to pitch in on this one,” Antonia says, helpfully, she’s always very helpful. She’s not the boss, so she’s careful to never sound too bossy. Women learn this at an early age.
“Rob?” Lauren makes a face that’s vaguely unpleasant, a little confused, like Antonia has lapsed into a foreign tongue.
“The temp,” Antonia says. “He should have some time. And he’s got a lot of writing experience, so it shouldn’t take him long. You should divide the list and then edit each other, don’t you think?” Phrasing it as a question turns what is a command into something else.
“Rob?” She says his name aloud to him like she has no idea if it’s his name.
He swivels around in his seat. He’s smiling. He stands. “I’m Rob. We haven’t had a chance to meet.” He proffers his hand.
“Lauren.” She shakes his hand firmly. She hates weak handshakes. A lot of women give pathetically weak handshakes, but she doesn’t believe there’s a correlation between gender and the strength of one’s hand. She thinks women are taught to fake this.