“Anyway, you’re not going to lose the job,” said Deirdre. “You’re the architect. You’ve already designed the house. How can you lose the job?”
“It’s complicated,” Rob said. “But believe me, it can happen.” You draw pictures for other men, for the real men, to build with their hands. What was Ruggman doing right now? Probably something manly, watching, oh, who knows, manly internet porn, or drinking moonshine or washing his balls or downing a large glass of raw eggs, Rocky style.
“I get it,” Deirdre said, nodding, drinking, nodding and drinking, all at once.
“You do?”
“Sure,” she said, shrugging. “Everything is complicated.” He wondered how her top stayed on when she shrugged; there must be some sort of magical work with elastic or tape, because the shirt didn’t move. “People think nothing is complicated, if you live in a nice house and have a boat. But that’s bullshit. Things can still be hard.” She hiccuped, and Rob saw that she was drunker than he’d realized. Well, sure. She must weigh about three pounds.
“Right,” he said. How nice it felt to have someone utter those three simple words: I. Get. It.
He reached for a new subject. “When’s that tennis camp start?” If Eliza was going to be in Maine for a while longer, pushing through her scheme to help her father, he’d better get a handle on the scheduling end of things.
“I don’t know,” said Deirdre morosely. She was having a bit of trouble holding her bottle straight; it kept leaning to one side or the other, like a heeling boat.
“Okay,” said Rob. “I just want to make sure I have it down before they start. I get mixed up sometimes, the two different schedules—it’s confusing, right? All this kid stuff.”
He had meant this as a demonstration of camaraderie, mucking through the details of parenting together, but somehow what he said had flipped a switch in Deirdre. She started crying.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey, hey.” He almost patted her consolingly on the shoulder, but she was wearing so little that he couldn’t find a reasonable place to put his hand without looking like he was molesting her. “Hey,” he said again. “What is it? Deirdre? What’d I say?”
“Nothing,” Deirdre said, wiping savagely at her nose with the feeble cocktail napkin the bartender slid toward her. “It’s just that when I was out with the ladies earlier, Shannon Markum announced that she’s pregnant. With her fourth.”
Rob waited; he still didn’t understand the problem. He didn’t know who Shannon Markum was. Sometimes it was hard to keep track of the women in Eliza’s crowd: most were tall, blond, some shade of tan much of the year, clad similarly in yoga clothes or tennis clothes or sundresses, holding water bottles or Starbucks mugs, driving Tahoes or Expeditions or Suburbans, small blond children spilling out of them, those children also clad in tennis clothes, also toting water bottles and sometimes even their own Starbucks cups.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” she said. Deirdre hiccuped and then went on. “You know those pajamas kids wear? With the feet?”
That was out of left field. But he did know those pajamas. He said, “The fluffy ones. With ducks or bunnies on them.”
“Right.” Deirdre pointed her bottle at him and a few drops spilled out onto the bar. “Or, at Christmastime, elves or Santas. Sofia doesn’t wear those anymore. Of course she doesn’t! She’s too big. She’s almost as tall as I am. She’s a teenager. They would look ridiculous.”
Rob brooded over this. “Zoe’s too big for those pajamas too,” he said. “Evie’s borderline.” A memory came to him, Zoe on a Christmas morning, so young that Evie wasn’t even born yet, asleep in the middle of the Christmas presents, exhausted by all of the fuss and bother.
Now he was depressed. Time was passing. He was aging. Right here at The Wharf Rat, with Deirdre Palmer crying next to him, he was aging. Charlie Sargent was terminally ill, Cabot Lodge was in trouble, nobody in his family wore pajamas with feet. He never should have come out on Ladies’ Night: he should have known better. Ladies’ Night was a dangerous, dangerous business.
He ordered another round.
He could see now why Eliza valued Deirdre’s friendship. She was a good listener, a solid presence.
If only he could get this one thing clear in his mind, this thing from last December. He could, actually, if only he asked. So he did.
“Do you remember the Colemans’ holiday party?” It was a clumsy segue, but no matter. It made sense in the depths of his own addled mind.
Deirdre laughed, revealing her extremely white teeth and a silver filling toward the back of her mouth. Old-school fillings; now they were all tooth colored. Not that the mollycoddled children in Barton were allowed to get cavities. “That depends,” she said.
“Oh.” Rob fiddled with the label on his beer bottle. “Because I was wondering…do you remember when we were standing under the mistletoe? Near the half bath off the kitchen with the marble floor?”
“The half bath off the kitchen with the marble floor,” said Deirdre. “Always the architect, Rob.”
“Do you?”
“I remember. Sort of.”
“Well, what I was wondering…”
“Yes?” prodded Deirdre.
“I was pretty drunk,” Rob said.
The next morning, he’d call Eliza and apologize. She’d said some shitty things on the phone but he’d been the one who’d put her on edge first, getting angry that she’d gone out on a lobster boat. It was only his fear of losing her that made him do that, but still. What kind of husband was he, losing his shit over something like that with Charlie as sick as he was? He should be oozing nothing but understanding and caring. He should be reaching over to Eliza’s plate and taking every single worry off of it and moving them all over to his so that the only thing left was her father. And that, starting now, was exactly what he would do.
“Everybody was drunk at that party,” said Deirdre. “The Angel’s Delights.” She smiled. “Brock and I had to take an Uber home!”
“Okay, so my question is, did you—” The memory was hazy, but it was right there, if he could just reach his hand out a little further he could grasp it.
“What happened was…” Deirdre paused, and the very bar seemed to take a breath.
“Yes?”
“You kissed me.”
“I did not.”
She shrugged again, and this time one strap of her top slipped a little bit. She pushed it back up. “Okay,” she said. “If you insist. But you did.” She said that emphatically, almost kindly, like a teacher explaining something to one of the slower students in the class.
“Impossible. That’s impossible. I’d never do that. I’m happily married. I’m so in love with Eliza.”
“I know you are.”
“And if I did something like that—well, I’d remember.”
“Okay,” Deirdre said again. “But before you say that. Why don’t you tell me if this seems familiar.” She grasped the buttons of his shirt and pulled him toward her. And kissed him. Full-on, unabashedly kissed him, in The Wharf Rat, in plain sight of the bartender and God and everyone else.