And then, for the second time that summer, and also for the second time in the entire time she’d known him, Rob hung up on Eliza.
For some minutes after that Eliza wallowed pretty comfortably in her pool of self-righteousness. Rob should have told her, they should have talked about it before he went to Judith. It wasn’t right that he hadn’t, it wasn’t fair!
She tried to banish the girl with the noodles, the motherless child with the tangled hair and the lobster traps and the chicken cutlets bought in a twelve-pack on sale at Dave’s Shop ’n’ Save, the girl who’d absorbed everything around her at Brown, always sitting back carefully, cautiously, in case someone noticed her and called her out for what she was: a fraud.
But the girl wouldn’t go away. No matter what Eliza did or how she turned the situation over in her mind, the girl wouldn’t go away.
———
Twenty-two minutes later, not that Eliza was watching the clock, Rob called back. “Don’t hang up on me,” she said, and to her own ear her voice sounded high and tight and not like hers at all. “Ever again. That’s not what we do, that’s not how we are!”
“I’m sorry, Eliza,” he said. “You’re right, you are. I never should have made that decision without you. We should have talked to my mother together.”
Eliza swallowed hard, and said, “I wish we had.”
After Brown, that same girl, grown into a woman, always watching before doing, always trying to understand, to learn, so that she wouldn’t make any shameful mistakes that would reveal her. Those college loans had been such a burden on her, driving her nearly into the ground, and the two years of medical school on top of that. Judith’s lifting of that weight, an easy gesture for her, merely a tiny fraction of her wealth, had felt like the lifting of a hundred bricks from Eliza’s shoulders. She’d liked being able to offer money, to her dad, even to Russell; she’d liked the feeling of being able to say, “Go ahead, get this treatment, fix that boat, buy that drink, that dinner, whatever you want, I can pay for it.”
She couldn’t explain all of that to Rob, not right then, not over the phone—she wasn’t even sure she could completely explain it to herself.
Then Rob said something surprising. He said, “Eliza. We talk all the time about how hard it was for you growing up without a mother.”
She felt herself start to bristle. Of course she talked about it! Her mother’s death was the defining event of her life: it had made her who she was, and it had also made her who she wasn’t. She said, “But—”
“No,” said Rob. “Don’t talk, Eliza. Don’t interrupt. Just listen. Listen to me.”
Meekly, chastened, she said, “Okay, I’m listening.”
“We talk all the time about how hard it was for you growing up without a mother,” Rob repeated, and Eliza remained silent. “But we hardly ever talk about what it was like for me, growing up without a dad.”
He paused, and the weight of what he was saying covered Eliza like a lead vest. Rob went on. “Nobody showed me how to work hard, how to be a good provider. I’m trying to figure it out on my own here. The only thing I ever learned from my parents about money was that it was something to fight about. A bargaining chip, in a shitty, shitty game.” Rob was right. He never talked about his dad; they never talked about his dad. She had always figured that because of the difference in their circumstances—her mother had been an angel, and she died, and hadn’t wanted to, and Rob’s father had been a bastard, and had left, and had wanted to—she was allowed to feel more pain than he was. After all, Robert Barnes I had deserted the family, had taken up with another woman, had begun a whole new life on the other side of the world. But now Eliza saw that that was such a grossly entitled way to look at things. Robert Barnes I chose Thailand and Malai, but he also didn’t choose his son and his first wife; he chose not-Rob over Rob. Eliza’s heart ached for Rob: suddenly, almost violently. She said, “You’re right, we don’t. It’s not fair. I’m sorry.”
There was a long silence. Finally Rob said, “Thank you, Eliza.” His voice cracked on her name. Then, to his credit, and with the perennial optimism she’d always loved about him, he tried again. “At least one of Mrs. Cabot’s friends will come through, I’m sure of it. There’s one woman, Nadine Edwards, she’s practically committed already.”
Eliza could still hear a wobble in Rob’s voice, and the molecules rearranged themselves again and she softened further. Here he was, her husband, a guy just trying, like everyone else. She blinked at the kitchen wall, where she could see the faint marks that measured her yearly growth from the time she could stand until her mother had died—they’d let the habit drop after that. The doorbell rang, but Eliza didn’t want to risk dropping the cell connection by walking to the front door—the signal was much stronger in the kitchen—so she ignored it. It must be Val; she’d call her later, or, if she felt like it, Val would come in without an invitation. “Of course,” said Eliza. “Of course they’ll come through. Of course it will be okay. You’re a talented architect.”
“Even though I just draw the pictures?”
She took a deep breath and made herself acknowledge how much she’d hurt him with those words, how fraught they’d been, and how she’d known they were harmful when she’d said them, and how she’d said them anyway. “Especially because you draw the pictures, Rob. Especially. Without the pictures, there’d be nothing to build, right?”
A sigh of relief traveled over the cellular waves, binding them together in a way they hadn’t seemed bound in a long time: because of Charlie’s illness, because of Eliza’s long absences over the course of the summer, because life was hard and marriage was complicated and there was really no such thing as smooth sailing.
“Rob?”
“Yeah?” His voice sounded rough. She took several seconds before she spoke again.
“I think it’s a really good idea,” she said finally. “We should be independent. I agree with you. It’s the right thing.”
“Thank you. Thank you, Eliza. I won’t let us down.”
“Anyway,” said Eliza. “I guess if something crazy happens and Cabot Lodge blows up—”
“Don’t even say that.”
“I don’t mean literally, like goes up in flames—”
“Even so.”
“I mean, if things don’t go the way you’re expecting, which I understand is a Very Big If, I guess we can always sell the Hinckley.”
“Don’t say that either. Take it back.”
“I’m kidding,” she said. “Of course.”
“Still.” His voice was strained. He was such a believer in jinxes and superstitions: he always picked up pennies, never walked under ladders, didn’t allow open umbrellas inside. It was one of the first things she’d found endearing about him. Forget about black cats: he’d cross three streets to avoid one. And, of course, there was the irreplaceable ten-baht. “Take it back,” he said, and then, more gently, “Please.”