That was the scariest thing about Caroline. She was totally unpredictable. I would have expected her to freak out knowing that we had watched the show. But she didn’t. She let it roll right off. But tomorrow someone would use up all of her coffee creamer, and she’d blow a gasket. If I’m honest, I know she’s hard to live with. And while she has a lot of good qualities that I’m sure make her a great wife, James had to have had his hands full. No doubt about it.
“Girls,” I said, “I think I’ll take a quick walk.” This was my favorite time of night on the water, when the stars were bright and the air was crisp. Evening walks had been one of my favorite traditions—back when I had an empty house, that is.
I think I denied, even to myself, that I purposely walked down the boardwalk in the direction of Jack’s boat. I could see his legs propped up on the stern, a newspaper in his hands. As my footsteps got closer, he turned and, when he saw me, grinned broadly. But he didn’t move for a second. Then, slowly, he folded the newspaper, climbed out of the boat, and walked up to where I was.
“Well, hi,” Jack said.
“Hi,” I replied. “Just taking a walk. It’s such a nice night.”
He nodded. “So you weren’t hoping to run into me?” He winked.
I blushed. I was terribly transparent.
“Are you OK?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yeah. Just needed a deep breath.”
Jack squeezed my shoulder. “Those are good every now and then.” He paused. “Do you see how good I’m being? I’m trying to stay away to avoid becoming one of those pathetic TV characters who won’t get a clue.”
I laughed. “You’re doing a good job. I think I’m the pathetic TV character tonight.”
He smiled. “In that case, can I walk with you?”
I nodded. “Sure.”
We walked in silence into the dark night. The sunset earlier had been hot, fire-orange and brilliant, giving way to an iridescent crescent moon. It looked to me like a perfect half. A perfect half. I grinned to myself. Why, oh, why could I not keep myself away from him? I was too old to be acting like this.
The shops were closed, and the restaurants had served their last patrons. The boardwalk was totally deserted. We walked a few yards, and I leaned over the railing and looked into the night sky, feeling infinite, feeling eternal, feeling so very small and unimportant in the scheme of this great, wide universe. It was perhaps my favorite feeling.
“Well, I’d better get back and clean up my mess,” I said.
I turned around and bumped right into Jack. Before I could think about what was happening, he kissed me. Not a little kiss but a big, wrapped-in-strong-arms, dipped-toward-the-ground kiss to remember. And I did remember. In some ways, it was like my mouth had never left his, like my body had never forgotten exactly how it felt to be in his arms and was simply acting on muscle memory.
Jack and I had had so many perfect moments together since he came back into my life. Romantic moments. Sunsets and starlit dances, rainy coffee runs and long, lingering stares. But this, when I was distracted by my daughters’ worries and he wasn’t expecting me at all, was the perfectly imperfect moment. In my life now, perfectly imperfect seemed exactly right. And for the first time in a long time, I could honestly say that it felt wonderful to lose control.
TWENTY-EIGHT
more than words
caroline
Sloane and I were seven and nine, it was snowing, we were bored, and I wanted to go sledding.
I remember how she scrunched up her nose at the idea. She did it so much when she was young that her nose had a little red line across the bridge.
“How will we go sledding?” she asked. “There aren’t any hills.”
We may have been short on hills, but we had steps. It was basically the same thing, if you asked me. Emerson wasn’t quite one yet, and while Mom was putting her down for a nap, the best thing happened: Mom fell asleep.
“Grab that cardboard box out of the closet, Sloane!” I said.
She did, and I wrestled the plastic purple toboggan out of the storage area outside our house. Dad would pull us down the sidewalk in it when there was a lot of snow like there was that day.
My strategy was simple. Lay the cardboard down the steps like a trail, cover the cardboard with snow, slide down. I was very confident in my plan. Well, I mean, kind of confident. I still instructed Sloane to get our bike helmets.
“OK,” I told her. “When we get to the bottom of the steps, we have to fall off to the side.”
“Fall off to the side?” Another nose scrunch. (I realize now that that little red line was because of me.) You could tell she was becoming less convinced that this was a good idea. “But won’t we get hurt on the concrete?”
I poked her down jacket. “Nah. We’re padded.”
That was the optimistic part of the day. The part before the screaming and the bruising and the “You are so lucky you didn’t break any bones.”
But it was worth it for that one moment of glory. I was in the front, holding the rope to steer, and Sloane was in the back, holding on to me for dear life. And right before we made our maiden—and final—voyage down the steps, Sloane yelled, “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this!”
Now I finally understood how she felt back then. Because I couldn’t imagine that I had let James talk me into this. I mean, yes, I realize that I was, in some ways, culpable in this situation. I had told Vivi that we could go to the Cloister for spring break. It was really close by, but I didn’t feel anywhere near ready to leave Preston. He was only two months old, for heaven’s sake. I didn’t leave Vivi until she was eighteen months.
But my milk had dried up all of a sudden, so it wasn’t like I was an integral part of the whole feeding thing anymore. And James promised that Hummus could stay one more week. We’d only be gone two nights. That was all I would agree to. But even two nights under the same roof with James would be tricky.
“I got us the penthouse at the Beach Club,” he said that morning, standing in Mom’s kitchen, smiling very proudly. “Vivi can have her own bedroom.”
My heart stopped beating. “Excuse me? If you think I’m going to stay in the same room with you, then you really have lost your mind.”
“So what will we say?” he asked, sliding a stool out from under the island and sitting down. I pulled a bag of sliced pepperoni out of the fridge and started munching. I had three pounds to go, and I was to that point where the only thing that was going to singe them was no carbs. So, sure, I could have been having a grilled chicken salad. But my thought was why not live a little?
James sighed and shook his head. “Caroline, honey, honestly. You are going to die. You just had a baby. Give yourself a break. You don’t need to live on processed meats over three pounds. It will come off.”
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t need to live on processed meats over three pounds two months after I’d had a baby. But for some strange reason, being left for a twenty-year-old model had not made me feel my best.
I sighed. “I don’t know what to say, James. She’s eleven years old. She knows you left me for another woman. How about Mommy and Daddy are getting divorced, so they don’t sleep in the same room?”