Never mind that now, though. Safari. Google. Eliza and Zachary had been partners for the cadaver dissection, long before Eliza stopped out, long before Zachary got one of the three coveted spots in the Johns Hopkins neurological surgery residency programs. She remembered it like it was yesterday: the cadaver’s olive-green gallbladder, the toughened skin on the elbows and knees, the smell of the formaldehyde. After the first day with the cadaver, Eliza and Zachary had taken the T to Pizzeria Regina for a large pepperoni pizza and beer, which made a lot more sense at the time than it did in retrospect.
And now Zachary Curry was a neurosurgeon at Dana-Farber. Tough stuff, he’d scrawled on his card back to Eliza, but I hope we’re making strides. That was the thread she’d forgotten to pull at. Quick, Eliza, quick, hurry up, search. Dana-Farber was recruiting for a Phase II clinical trial studying the efficacy of an antigen vaccine to treat glioblastoma multiforme. Zachary Curry would be able to put Eliza in touch with the recruiters for the trial. Zachary Curry could possibly save her father’s life.
“I’ve got it!” Eliza called out to anyone who would listen. “I’ve got it, I think I figured it out!”
Nobody heard her, because at the exact same moment the fireworks started. Bang, bang, bang, pow, bang again, pop pop pop.
17
BARTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Deirdre
Deirdre could feel herself gearing up to pick a fight with Brock after the Fourth of July fireworks.
There was no reason for it, none at all. It was a treat to have Brock home for the holiday weekend, because he was so often away. The fireworks had been just as splendid as they always were. They’d watched them from the deck of Rob’s boat, moored out in the harbor, along with Eliza and Rob’s mother and the three children. It had been crowded and festive, just the way you wanted the Fourth of July to be, and both Deirdre and Eliza had made copious amounts of food, although Eliza’s roasted vegetable salad with walnut pesto had put Deirdre’s simple Caesar to shame. (Of course.) They’d had a cocktail called a Saffron Cooler, which was an update to the wine spritzers Deirdre remembered her mother and her mother’s card-playing friends drinking in Deirdre’s youth in Darien, a card table set up on the backyard patio, suntanned faces thin-lipped with concentration.
Yet she’d come home after the fireworks feeling prickly and out of sorts. It had nothing to do with the luxuriousness of A Family Affair: Deirdre really and truly didn’t care so much about boats, she’d grown up dutifully sailing with her father when her presence was required, she understood the difference between a mainsheet and a jib sheet, but she didn’t live and breathe the ocean the way many people did, the way Rob did, the way Brock did. If either of them were to envy Rob’s boat, it would be Brock. Brock, who was never impressed by anything, was impressed by Rob’s boat. Everybody was. Three million was the price tag being thrown about town for the Hinckley, but of course Rob hadn’t bought it himself, his mother had.
But it wasn’t the boat. It had more to do with…well. It had to do with a different kind of envy. It had to do with watching Rob and Eliza, who had sat together, the sun setting behind them, lighting them up like a tableau. There had been that odd little bit where Eliza had been glued to her phone, which was unlike her (even Evie had scolded her), and then she’d disappeared belowdecks for a while, until she’d suddenly shouted, “I’ve got it! I think I figured it out!” and after that her entire demeanor had changed, and she’d seemed for a little while almost like she was on something, jittery and unfocused.
But then, back up on deck, sipping her Saffron Cooler, Eliza had sat next to Rob and they had talked for such a long time. What had they been talking about? Deirdre didn’t know. But every now and then Rob would reach out and touch Eliza’s unfairly beautiful hair, or Eliza would put her hand on Rob’s arm to make a point and then keep it there long after the point had been made. And the prickly feeling had come upon Deirdre, and now it refused to leave.
It was a terrible thing, to envy your best friend. Made Deirdre feel like a monster. And she wasn’t a monster! She was a good person, she was just doing her best. Look at all she was trying to do for the EANY kids, look at all she did for her own family.
Standing in the kitchen, Deirdre could see a wobbly version of her reflection in the door on the microwave. She looked tired. An ex-boyfriend, in the process of breaking up with her, had once told Deirdre that she had a good heart but that her angles were too sharp. She even looked sharp: sharp nose, sharp elbows, sharp clavicle, sharp cheekbones.
She supposed she could get fillers, like Sheila Rackley, soften things up a bit.
If she got fillers, would Brock give up his occasional sleeping berth in the guest room and return full-time to the marital bed? (Did she want Brock to give up the guest room and return full-time to the marital bed?)
Once, when they’d both had one too many margaritas at Don Pepe’s, Deirdre and Eliza had got to talking about sex and Eliza had described her and Rob’s sex life as “robust.” Deirdre had experienced a flash of envy then that was so bright and hot she thought Eliza must have seen it.
Sofia had gone to spend the night at the Barnes’s house after the fireworks, and Deirdre supposed that Sofia’s absence had contributed to the prickly sensation. She always felt the fact of her one child most strongly when Sofia was gone overnight.
Because the quiet of the house on those nights when Sofia was invited to a sleepover made Deirdre painfully aware of what life would be like when Sofia went off to college and left them for good. Deirdre heard her own footsteps echo in the hallways (a slight exaggeration, fair enough, because of the no-shoes-in-the-house policy) and stood underneath the lintel staring at Sofia’s tidy, empty bedroom and wondering what would become of her and Brock, without a child to hold them together.
She’d wanted hordes of children, she’d wanted a whole army. She’d wanted the mess and the chaos and the crazy soccer schedules. One family in their town had five children—five! And not even a set of twins in the bunch. The Bryants. Becca Bryant was always running around like a chicken who couldn’t find the time to get its head cut off. She got at least a dozen speeding tickets a year and didn’t even care: that was just the price of the life she’d chosen. (“We count it in the budget!” she’d say breathlessly, dropping one kid at the soccer field, ushering three more into the minivan, some of them not even hers, but who was Becca Bryant to notice a small detail like that, for she was busy busy busy.)
But Brock wanted only one. He was first in line at the new vasectomy clinic when it opened.
And that’s where the fight started on the Fourth of July.
Brock turned on SportsCenter as soon as they got home, checking the baseball scores. Something about the sounds of SportsCenter put Deirdre right over the line. She couldn’t help but think of those SportsCenter voices as the soundtrack to the rest of her life.
“Maybe we could adopt,” she said, apropos of nothing.
Brock was a Yankees fan; they’d lost by six to the White Sox, so he was already in a mood. Deirdre moved so that her body partially covered the television screen and Brock shifted correspondingly on the sofa so he could still see.
“Adopt what?”
“A baby, Brock. Maybe we could adopt a baby.”