“Do you feel tense?”
I hoisted myself to a sitting position. “I…” I started, and then I followed her back into the Jacuzzi and waited until we were both sitting again to answer. The funny thing was that I changed my answer on the way. I was going to say, “No, not really,” but what I ended up saying once I sat back down on the ledge and caught my breath was “I have to tell you, I am tense.”
The way Ana looked at me told me she understood. “What are you tense about?” she asked. Her voice was frank and kind of toneless and not judgmental at all.
“I don’t know.” I forced a smile. “Life?” I didn’t like how sad I sounded.
“Why did you move here, Nancy? I haven’t asked you that yet.”
I looked at the expanse of ocean. There were so many possible answers to give her. I thought of San Diego, of the water polo moms, of what I had told them. “It’s a great opportunity for Chuck,” I had said, smiling like a machine. That’s how we smiled at each other: like machines. Maybe we smiled at everyone like that. We were so fake, so cloaked in bullshit, so hidden from one another. We wore visors to hide our worry lines. We made bake sale cookies to support the team and binged on them in the shadows of our cars. I thought of how we would never think to sit in a Jacuzzi like this. Of how our version of a fun afternoon was water aerobics at the Y followed by lunch at the Cheesecake Factory while we complained about our husbands, but only fake complaints that would make each other laugh because no one trusted anyone, not really. I never told any of them about Chuck’s affair, not even Sheila, whose husband had cheated on her, too.
Ana—I wanted to tell her the truth. She was so easy to talk to, and maybe her being a near-stranger made it easier somehow. “To save our marriage,” I said. “Chuck cheated on me.”
I braced myself for her reaction, but there wasn’t one, not really. “Ah,” she said, her face totally calm. She was completely unaffected, completely unsurprised, and she said none of the I’m-so-sorry things I expected her to say. And then she winked at me. “Well,” she said, “I would say we should punish him, but I’m being good now so that’s not an option.”
“Yeah,” I said, and then I went on. I needed so badly to talk about it. “He’s taking me on dates,” I told her. “He’s trying to undo his mistake.” It felt great to share this with another human being, especially one who was actually listening.
“Oh, honey, that sounds exhausting,” Ana said. “You must be exhausted.”
That made me laugh. Because it was exhausting, but more because she had said this out loud. It wasn’t part of the script. Most people would have said, “Well, that’s nice he’s taking you on dates.” And then they would have tried to fix it. With Ana, there was no concerned babying tone, no trying to make me feel better with platitudes. (“Marriage is hard.” “It’s a phase.”) She was just honest. And clear. Clarity, like she had said. I wondered in what other ways surviving breast cancer could make a person into a better version of themselves.
After I had told her all about Shelly—“Of course her name would be Shelly,” she said—there was a long moment with me looking at Ana and then Ana looking up at the clouds and then me looking up at the clouds, trying to see if I could find any obvious symbols up there (besides that piece of Swiss cheese?), and then finally I asked her. “What are the bigger things you’re planning on doing?”
The look on her face told me she was happy I wanted to know. “My good deeds, you mean?”
I shrugged, maybe to show her I was still a little skeptical of her plan to manipulate destiny. “I’m curious,” I said.
“Are you?” She beamed. “That delights me.” Her perfect white veneers. “Because yours is the first feedback I’m getting.”
And after hearing that—I was the first?—I was more enthusiastic. “Really, I’m very curious. What are you going to do?”
“Well,” she began, and then she blew some cool air up into her bangs, which is when I realized it must have been hot in there under her wig. I felt terrible for not having thought of this earlier. “I was going to do this thing tomorrow…”
A wave crashed. Another wave crashed. Why had she stopped talking? Was she worried about her plan? Did she think it was stupid? Or that it wouldn’t work?
I wanted to make her feel better. If we were going to be friends, I should be supportive. I made sure to sound extra interested when I asked, “What thing?”
Ana looked at me and smiled. And then she waited. And waited. And the pause grew into a pause that was just too long. I couldn’t take it. Tick-tock, another wave crashed, and it was enough time to make up a whole story in my head about how Ana was embarrassed to tell me and how the best way to change that was to involve myself directly by offering something, and offering something seemed right because I’d been so selfish before, going on about myself and not noticing how hot she was under that wig, and that’s when I heard myself say, “Do you need help? Do you want me to come with you?”
8
I made quinoa with cranberries and roasted a chicken for dinner that night, and Chuck said, “You’re in a good mood.”
“Am I?” I delicately added a few sprigs of parsley to the quinoa. My new favorite health food blogger had written that color was important. We eat with our eyes first.
“It sounds like a good mood.” Chuck took off his red Costco hat. His hair was all matted. “You’re humming.”
He was right, I was humming. I hadn’t even noticed. And I didn’t know what I was humming either. Probably the last song I’d heard on the radio.
Chuck took a step closer to me. He wanted to kiss me on the cheek again because he had done this yesterday and I had let him. With so much hesitation, he leaned in. An inch from my face, he left a full second-long pause—my exit door if I wanted it. I didn’t want it. I wanted to say: If you’re going to kiss me, then kiss me, you idiot.
Finally, he did. The smell of his aftershave, the scratch of his stubble. Oh, Chuck.
I hadn’t noticed the boys standing there at the end of the table. Behind them on the wall was the nail I had abandoned.
“I’m glad you guys made up,” Cam said. His childlike face and his strong body—it was a man’s body now.
“Thank God,” Jed said, and rolled his eyes, which was so very Jed. He liked to pretend he didn’t care about things.
We sat down, passed the food around. Cam complimented my use of cranberries and Chuck noted how moist the chicken was and I gave myself a pat on the back for taking it out of the oven at just the right time.
Jed was stoked because he and Cam were obviously the best ones on the new team, and Cam, too modest to agree, said he liked their new coach, who was super chill.
“How are your classes?” I asked.
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
This was always a dead-end conversation.