Michelle finally set down her tube of icing and turned around. “Next year you can go back to cigars in the library with Dad, I promise. I just wanted to show you off a little. And, Julie, hon, hi,” she said, looking a bit sheepish. “I got so wrapped up in frosting that I didn’t even hear you come in.”
The three of us stood there looking at one another for a moment while no one said anything. I felt the secret I wasn’t telling them as though it were physically present in the room with us, hanging in the air like a dense fog. I just stared at Michelle as she delicately smoothed her apron front, and noticed that it was embroidered with her new monogram, the O for Oster in place of the familiar D. The apron lay flat against her stomach, and for a moment I had the irrational thought that I might look pregnant somehow, that Michelle would somehow be able to see it, even though that was impossible. “Nice apron,” I said finally.
“Early surprise Christmas present from Jake.”
“Nice.” I nodded approvingly, while realizing that if a man ever bought me an apron as a Christmas gift, our relationship would be over by New Year’s. “Wow, I can’t believe we’ve been doing this since we were eight.” These days, when I didn’t know what to say to Michelle, our shared past was a haven we could always retreat to.
“Ever since my mama thought we were old enough to be trusted with frosting. Though some of us probably still shouldn’t be.” She shot a flirtatious glance at Jake.
He held up his hands. “Just here to observe. I leave the baking to the ladies.”
I tried not to roll my eyes. “Well, Michelle is the only real pastry chef out of all of us.”
“I know. That’s why I’m marrying her, right?” Jake playfully slapped Michelle on the butt and I looked away immediately. Maybe it was time to start drinking.
I crossed over to Michelle’s other side and sidled up next to her at the island. I asked what I could do to help.
“Everyone should be here soon. I don’t know what’s keeping them,” she said, referencing the traditional crew of Rebecca, Ellen, and Darcy with the slightest note of annoyance in her voice. “Let’s just move all the cookies off the oven trays and onto platters, so y’all can pick what you’d like to decorate.”
I busied myself with the simple task of plating cookies by type, trying not to eavesdrop on the sounds of Michelle and Jake cooing at each other as she worked and he watched. On the one hand, I was happy to see them so content together; after all, even if I thought he was too much a model of old-school masculinity, well, she was the one marrying him, not me. On the other hand, it had me wondering again when we had started wanting such different things out of the men in our lives—and, by extension, out of our lives in the grandest sense.
Now that I was back in her parents’ house once again, the place that had been the true home of my childhood, I realized the too-obvious truth that I was the one who had changed the most. I remembered a time when I lit up with the promise of being the Davis family’s other perfect daughter. My sophomore year of high school, not long before the disastrous road trip to Chattanooga, Marcia and Rich had pinned my honor roll report card to their refrigerator right next to Michelle’s, and it made me happier than making the honor roll itself.
“They’re here!” Michelle exclaimed as the doorbell rang. “I’ll go take coats, and when we get back, let’s talk bachelorette party.”
“Great,” I said through clenched teeth, and then I accidentally set down a gingerbread man cookie hard enough to crack it.
* * *
• • •
Once Darcy, Rebecca, and Ellen had joined in, we fell into the usual routine. Decorating cookies with icicle decals hadn’t been my idea of a good time since we left middle school, but the mindless rhythm of chatter about the Davises’ neighbors refusing to trim their hedgerow or an acquaintance’s wedding taking place a week after Michelle’s helped to settle me a little. Anything that kept me from thinking about my gynecologist appointment back in New York made for a welcome distraction. For the moment, my biggest worry was trying to figure out Michelle’s plans for her bachelorette party and what I needed to do to organize it—and, most important, how expensive it would be.
She waited to raise the topic until we had carried the finished cookies into the next room to share with Marcia, Rich, and their host of guests, as was tradition. Then, while Jake stayed behind for a scotch, Michelle’s bridesmaids made our way out into the sunroom to drink champagne out of the crystal flutes that the Davis family saved specially for Christmas Eve and New Year’s.
“Another year in the books.” Michelle smiled. “And I’m so glad y’all are here. It’s these traditions that really make me glad to be where I am.”
“Hear! Hear!” I raised my glass from my position on the rattan porch sofa, and Darcy shot me a glare that suggested I had spoken out of turn. I took a sip of champagne and shrugged meaninglessly.
“I’ll try to ease off the wedding talk after this, but we do need to discuss the bachelorette party. I have a few ideas.”
“Isn’t that the maid of honor’s job?” Darcy said faux innocently. “Julie?”
“Julie planned the dates for the last weekend in January, of course, but you know me,” Michelle said sweetly, but she shot Darcy a withering glance that made her stare down at her lap. I wanted to hug her. “I want a say in everything, so I told Julie we’d make the plans over the holidays. So, thoughts on Cabo?”
My stomach flipped. She wanted to leave the country?
Fortunately, Rebecca spoke up first. “But is it . . . safe? You know, with Zika?” I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at that, but Rebecca had always been the mother hen of the group, sweetly volunteering for safety patrol and passing out hand sanitizer to battle germs. “Whatever you want, Michelle, but there are a lot more safety concerns to Mexico in general. You know.”
“Well, we all went to Cabo in high school,” Ellen pointed out. “And the resorts are nicer now. I’ve heard.”
Michelle looked around coolly. “Darcy? Jules?”
“The only thing for me, hon, is that Emma is barely six months old.” Darcy named her infant daughter. “I’d rather stay closer to home, all things equal. But this should be about our bride, y’all.”
I took another sip before I spoke. Clearly, no one really wanted to go to Cabo, but no one wanted to outwardly say no or offer another option. I had never known how much passive-aggressiveness was involved in wedding planning—or maybe it was unique to the women I had grown up with. I suspected the former. Whatever the case, I decided someone had to say something, since in a rare move, Michelle wasn’t outright forcing an agenda. “What about Nashville?”
“Nashville?” Ellen parroted.
“That’s practically right here,” Michelle said.
“But we’d make it fun,” I added hurriedly. “No one has to fly far,” other than me, I thought, “and so we can put that money toward hotel suites, fancy meals, anything you want. What do you think?”
“Well, I suppose it would be easy for Emma to stay with Warren or my mama for just a night or two,” Darcy offered after a pause, now caught in the difficult position of wanting to celebrate closer to home and not wanting to enthusiastically approve any idea that I had proposed.
It would have been to my advantage to push New York or Atlantic City, but I knew that was all a lost cause. “So, an all-out weekend in Nashville? Michelle, do you have any other ideas?”
“I guess I’d rather Nashville than something tacky in Vegas,” Michelle mused. The room waited to read her mood, but in an instant she had plastered a bright smile back on her face. “Okay, let’s do it! But I want everything big, ya hear?”
“Promise,” I said, opening an iPhone note to start taking down ideas. Nashville would be more manageable, but I still felt faint. Could I possibly pull this off, even in normal circumstances? Michelle started to tick off ideas for activities I co
uld plan, like a burlesque dance class and a themed bar crawl, and I tried to keep up. Everything will be fine, I told myself, not believing it.
* * *
• • •
After Darcy excused herself early to put Emma to bed, everyone else followed suit until it was just Michelle and me left on the rattan sofa in the sunroom. I had stopped after two glasses of champagne for several reasons, but Michelle was on number four or five. Jake came out to check on us after all the other women had said their good-byes, and Michelle had that sleepy, faraway look in her eyes when she told him that she’d be in shortly.
“Just leave us another few minutes, hon,” she said, giving him a little wave as he looked at us from his perch against the doorframe. She pulled a chenille blanket up over both of us.
“I know exactly what that means.” He looked at Michelle tenderly, and when their eyes met, I almost felt like I should look away. “I love you. Take your time.”
“That was sweet,” I said as Michelle moved to lean her head against me.
“He is sweet, you know. Most of the time.”
“Good.” I wanted Michelle to be with someone who wanted her, not just a wife. Not just someone to frost the cakes and watch the kids so that he could smoke cigars with his friends. I thought of my father leaving. I thought about Rich. Maybe an instinct for protectiveness made me skeptical, more so than anything Jake had ever done. He is sweet, you know.
I looked out the wide sunporch windows at the sloping hills of the yard, illuminated only by the full moon. It was too dark to clearly see the river running below, but I could hear it if we stayed completely still. It was pleasant to listen to, but somehow it sounded more like a distant memory of home than like home itself.
“Maybe I should get going soon, too. I know you have an early Christmas morning tomorrow.” The Davis family always attended an early church service and then opened presents, all before Christmas brunch.
“Stay a little. Even with all the wedding planning, I never see you. I’m about worn-out.”
“From cookie decorating?” I teased.
She lifted her head from my shoulder to look up at me, eyes wide. “From everything, really. Mama and I have just been doing so much for the holidays, and for the wedding.”
“Well, I’ve heard wedding planning is always stressful,” I offered meaninglessly. “But it’ll be over in just a few more months, right?”
“But even after we get married,” she added tipsily, “I know it’ll be more of the same. The same type of work.” She sighed and then smoothed her hair behind her ears. I realized that maybe Michelle would have a full-time job after her wedding—albeit an unpaid one. Homemaking wasn’t the sort of work I imagine being satisfied by, but it was work all the same.
I looked at her wide-eyed, expectantly, hoping that she would continue. If marriage talk had to dominate most of our conversations, I wanted to hear the reality of her feelings, not platitudes pulled from someone’s blog or Pinterest page. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be that way if you don’t want it to, Miche. Right? Have you and Jake talked about how you’ll—”
“Well . . . oh, I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m just beat.”
“Because if you need my help—with anything, I don’t just mean the wedding—you can tell me. I’ll—”
“No. You’re sweet, but really it all couldn’t be going better.”
“Seriously? You’re sure?”
“I just need a good night’s sleep and a pancake breakfast tomorrow.” She paused. “You remember the year we tried to surprise my parents by waking up extra early to cook them breakfast in bed? Spilling the batter and ruining everything, though, is all we actually managed to accomplish.”
“I remember.”
“I just can’t wait to see my kids do the same kind of thing.” She giggled tipsily. “Think about it, though, a little Michelle and Julie getting into all kinds of trouble like we did? I’m excited for that. Don’t tell Jake; I don’t think he’s ready. But he will be.”
I felt a sharp sting in my chest. I’m not, I tried to say with my eyes. I’m sorry. There were so many things I could have told her right then, but I simply bit my lip and said nothing. I did not tell her about the pregnancy, or about my decision to end it, or even about Mark’s asking me to move in with him. I ventured nothing, risked nothing. Fear sat uncomfortably inside me, clenching my chest.
“Never mind all that. I think I might be a little drunk.” She laughed again softly. “After all, we have to have a wedding first. Babies later.” She closed her eyes, and I let her rest against me once more even as I stiffened, wanting nothing more in that moment than to be alone.
As her breathing evened out into sleep, I checked my phone. Midnight, and officially Christmas morning. I thought about Rich and Marcia, surely cozy in their pajamas somewhere inside their sprawling house as Marcia finished wrapping a present or two. I thought about Jake, probably reading a brief and waiting for his future wife to climb into bed with him. It all made sense, somehow; everyone knew where they belonged, and someday Michelle’s children and her children’s children would have their place, too. That didn’t mean it came without sacrifice; something was given up, and I sensed that was what Michelle had almost admitted to me when she talked about the work she and Marcia had done, and had always done, to keep the family unit running to perfection. No one among us lives without sacrifice, I reminded myself—another thing Marcia had always repeated. But there were some sacrifices, passed down only from woman to woman as the circle of life endlessly replicated, that I suddenly knew I could not make myself.
That line of thought exhausted me, too. I placed a hand on my still-flat stomach in disbelief, reminded again that it was all more complicated than I ever could have imagined. I turned my head to look at Michelle sleeping peacefully next to me. We hadn’t been wholly honest about those complications in a long time, I realized. I could still tell her. I could squeeze her shoulder and wake her up and just tell her.
But then I thought about her putting on a velvet dress for church in the morning, and of all the times she had told me that children were the greatest blessing on earth. I thought about the Bible verse she had posted to Instagram when the Reproductive Health Act passed in New York, the one that read, “Before you were born I set you apart.” I had scrolled past it with a lump in my throat, but then I liked the photo below of her and Marcia at their church fund-raiser. I had wanted to do my best to acknowledge the things she cared about. In return, she had liked a photo of me at the Women’s March in New York with Dana. I wondered now what that passive approval meant for both of us. Which things about me Michelle really supported, and which ones she, like me, had been silently looking past. It made me angry how consciously I still avoided interrogating this. Was I afraid or simply complacent? And which was worse?
My phone buzzed with a call from Mark. Hands shaking, I swiped to answer.
I heard the indistinct thrum of voices and music in a bar crackling through. “Hello?”
“Jules! Realized I didn’t respond to your text when you landed. Hey, Merry Christmas,” he slurred slightly.
“Merry Christmas,” I said tightly. “Are you out on Christmas Eve?”
“Local bar stayed open for everyone tonight. I’m here with the guys.”
“What?”
“The guys. Here with the guys!” he shouted, and I heard a voice, probably one of his high school friends, call out, “Shots!” in the background.
“Well, have fun,” I whispered, turning my head to check and make sure I hadn’t woken Michelle. “Enjoy it, enjoy . . . Christmas tomorrow. Let’s talk when I’m back.”
In his buzzed state, Mark seemed oblivious to the serious implication in that sentence. He simply yelled the same greetings back, told me to have fun, and hung up.
I stared at my phone for a minute in silence. Then, in a gesture that surprised me com
pletely, I scrolled down my contacts and found my mother. “Merry midnight Christmas, Mom,” I texted her. “I’m coming home now.”
CHAPTER 16
Somehow, that Christmas was the best one my mom and I had ever spent together. She was in one of her good moods. Our quiet moments at home together, drinking tea as we each opened our Christmas present or laughing as we botched a seemingly simple chicken recipe, were a welcome respite from the outside world. It didn’t feel like a period of forced confinement away from my real life, as it often had over the years. Of course, our time together was still punctuated by periodic analysis about Jeff or annoyances caused by coexisting in a space scarcely bigger than my New York apartment, but when I left I experienced a strange feeling. As much as being home always reaffirmed how small my life in Langham had once been, this time it was tinged with a bittersweet quality of leaving the only true safe harbor left to me in the world.
But I couldn’t hide on the fringes forever, nor did I want to pretend, as everyone at Michelle’s Christmas party apparently had, that everything was largely the same as it had been in high school. Instead, I had to decide what I really wanted my life to look like. Within that knowledge came something else I didn’t expect: While I still vacillated between shock and anger, a small, quiet corner of my mind was starting to insist that maybe this was going to turn out for the good. You wanted a reason to change your life, this voice inside me had started to say. You wanted to find out exactly what you wanted. Perhaps I had been bluffing, but the universe had now forced my hand.
* * *
• • •
On my first day back at the office, I left at three p.m. with the generic excuse of a routine doctor’s appointment. Slightly dizzy with nervous anticipation, I made my way to my gynecologist’s office. Her practice was close to my office in the Flatiron District, and I walked the five blocks between buildings in a haze. I watched men in suits and with briefcases hustling past Madison Square Park bump into tourists with overfull shopping bags, amazed at the normalcy of it all. I looked for some last sign that this was all a dream. I expected the skyscrapers to change shapes or turn dazzling colors, proving that I wasn’t in the real world after all. They remained irritatingly, resolutely gray.
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