Perfect Life

by Jessica Shattuck

  “Let’s go up there.” She gestured. “There’s a nice field on the hill.”

  “Shit—I didn’t think—do we need a picnic blanket or something?”

  Laura patted her bag. It was an unusual role for her—master of organization and foresight—but with Neil this was what she felt like.

  They climbed the path without much chitchat and at the top of the hill, where one side of the path opened into a wide, slightly bald field, they spread the blanket at the edge of a cluster of poplars. The sky was pale and tufted with small white clouds that moved rapidly toward the west. Laura lay back against the old bedspread she had spread.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” she asked, shading her eyes to look up at Neil’s face. He looked different somehow. Less attractive. Smaller. The rise of stubble on his face gave his skin a grayish hue.

  “I’m taking the day off,” he said, rolling a blade of grass between his fingers.

  “Why?”

  Neil shrugged jerkily. “Mental health, I guess.”

  Laura rolled onto her side. “Why? Is something the matter?”

  “No,” Neil said testily. He tore off a new fistful of grass and let it fall on his knees, retaining one blade to roll into a pulp between his fingers.

  They sat in silence for a moment. Across the field, the wind swayed the tops of pines. She and Neil had not kissed. Had not, for that matter, even touched each other.

  “Hey, how’s the tapestry coming?” he asked, turning to look at her.

  “Good.” Laura smiled. “I really love it.”

  She had, in fact, been obsessed with it. Last night she had been up until nearly one a.m. working on the fruit trees in the background. Magenta and lime green were the colors she had chosen. She felt her mother would have approved. And as she stitched she had been overcome by a sense of how beautiful it was. A gorgeous, interesting object.

  “I was thinking about it,” Neil said. “I was thinking about that unicorn-versus-monk thing. Like maybe it’s kind of like science versus the church. Or not science, exactly, but impurity. Mixing—the half-horse, half-rhinoceros thing. Like it has to beat the monk back to be free. And then the interesting thing is that it’s more divine than he is. That the unicorn is actually the holy one.”

  Laura regarded him. Even a few weeks ago this analysis would have excited her: Maybe this is the key! she would have thought. Maybe this was what her mother was trying to tell her. But something had changed. She could register his idea as interesting. Possible. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was the way the process of stitching turned her, for the brief periods of time when she was working on it, into her mother—pulling the needle, concentrating on the waxy lattice she was filling, losing herself in the work. “Maybe,” she said.

  Neil gave her a funny look. Then he sighed and lay down on his back, looking up at the sky.

  “What kind of person do you think I am, Lo?” he asked. “You’ve known me a long time.”

  “Terrible,” she said. “A very, very bad person.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course not.” She stretched back out and looked up at the sky too.

  “Well, then, really. What do you think, really?”

  “It’s a silly question. Too open-ended.”

  Neil was silent.

  “Troubled?” she offered. “I think you are a troubled person.”

  “Shit. That sounds bad.”

  “No. Not bad. You’re not a bad person.”

  “But not ‘good,’” he sighed. “I’m not good either.”

  Impulsively she sat up and smoothed his forehead. “What kind of conversation is this?” She laughed. “We’re not in Star Wars.”

  Neil smiled wanly and shifted onto his side, curled himself around her knees. He looked so slight and so vulnerable, like a baby. She was reminded suddenly of Colin, his baby—his biological offspring, but a baby who would in all likelihood grow up to be very different from him. It made her think of Jeremy’s cancer. Shouldn’t Neil know about this? But she couldn’t tell him: she had promised Jenny she would tell no one until Jenny was ready. It would probably just agitate Neil anyway. And their time together today had been so much better and calmer than the last few times she’d seen him precisely because they had not been talking about Jenny. But Laura felt a twinge of unease at dismissing the impulse—putting Jeremy and his cancer aside rather than telling Neil.

  “Remember Tory Sasserass?” Neil said.

  “Yes.” Laura laughed. “Except that definitely was not his name.”

  “That guy was bad. Through and through.”

  “That’s true.” She had not thought of him for ages: an ex-boyfriend of Jenny’s, an All-American running back, arrogant men’s club enthusiast, notorious date rapist. It had been the early nineties, after all.

  “I’m not like him, am I?”

  “Of course not!”

  A bank of blurry white clouds was moving into view over the treetops and the whir of rising wind grew. Neil stayed curled in his fetal position. And Laura stroked his head as if he were, in fact, a baby. As if he were as innocent and unformed as one of her own children.

  There was no more spark, Laura realized suddenly. This was part of the nostalgia she had been feeling. Did he feel it too? For a moment she teetered on the brink of melancholy. How empty not to have lust, or that tingle of excitement, anticipation.

  She looked down at her hand on his dishwater-colored hair. What did it matter? If it wasn’t there, it wasn’t there. And certainly, from a practical standpoint, from the standpoint of her life, this was for the best, wasn’t it? For all she knew, in some twisted way he was still in love with, or at least obsessed with, Jenny. Where had she thought this weird passion she had felt for him was going to take her? Neil, after all, was incapable of any simple straightforward feeling of love or attraction. She had the best of what he could give her, which was his trust. And his friendship. What was it that had happened between them? It felt as though it had transpired in a dream, and here she was, wide awake suddenly and removed—slightly embarrassed, even.

  Neil rolled onto his back and looked up at her. “What are you thinking?” he asked, smiling.

  “Nothing!” Laura said, startled.

  “What a schlub I am, I know.” He poked her playfully in the knee. With surprising grace he sat up and onto his knees before her, taking her hands in his. “Someday I’ll get it right,” he said, kissing the tips of her fingers.

  That night, Elise and Chrissy and the boys were coming over for dinner. Mac was out of town again. The brief lull in his work was over. And in the face of darkening news on the real estate pages, he was back to his old self: distracted, grouchy, and barely present. It made Laura nervous: last night she had woken twice to the sound of his teeth grinding.

  “Why can’t we have Chinese takeout?” Genevieve whined as Laura gazed blankly into the wasteland of freezer-bitten chicken nuggets and “organic” pizzas that populated the freezer.

  Chinese dumplings were Genevieve’s latest obsession and she had managed to beg and wheedle them out of Laura for the last three nights in a row.

  “We can’t just always get take-out food,” Laura said. “It costs money, you know.”

  “So does everything,” Genevieve retorted.

  “Not as much,” Laura snapped. “And anyway, it’s not healthy. That’s the point. We’re having chicken and broccoli. And noodles.”

  “Yay!” Miranda chirped from the corner where she was cramming toilet paper into one of Genevieve’s Barbie bags—a forbidden act (wasting rolls of toilet paper) that Laura was pretending not to notice.

  “Well, then I just won’t eat,” Genevieve said stubbornly.

  Laura glanced at the clock. Five-ten. Elise and Chrissy and the boys were due any minute. And it was after five anyway. She pulled a bottle of wine out of the refrigerator. She was a cliché. Her life was a cliché: the chicken nuggets, the saucy six-year-old, the five o’clock drink. Were all middle-class (
a vestige of Neil’s voice chided her for the self-abdicating misnomer: Rich, it breathed. Don’t kid yourself, rich and pampered) mothers as sucked into this stream of commonalities, or were there some who managed somehow to put their own unique stamp on the experience of, for instance, fixing dinner?

  It was after dinner, in the blissful (if guilty) lull of Disney-induced quietude, that Laura found herself bringing up Neil.

  The children were snuggled under a sleeping bag watching 101 Dalmatians—the one DVD that had proved uniquely capable of holding everyone’s interest. Cocoa was snoozing on her stinky L. L. Bean bed. And Chrissy, Elise, and Laura were sitting drinking wine at the dish-strewn table. Elise and Chrissy had brought sushi for the grown-ups, and the remnants of soy sauce and black plastic take-out trays mingled with stray chicken nuggets, smears of applesauce, noodles, and wet clumps of rejected broccoli on the table.

  Laura refilled her glass and leaned back in her chair.

  “Do you think something is the matter with Neil?” she blurted out, apropos of nothing. This was a slip, she realized, but the wine and the revelations of the afternoon made her careless.

  “Yes,” Chrissy said emphatically, and at the same time Elise asked, “Why?”

  Elise frowned and turned to her partner. “You do? You never said so to me.”

  Chrissy shrugged sassily. “It’s obvious!”

  Laura laughed. She loved Chrissy. Loved that Elise had ended up with someone so fun to hang out with.

  “Okay,” Elise rolled her eyes and turned to Laura. “Why do you think so, Lo?”

  “I don’t know—I saw him today and he just seemed so…” She searched for the word. “Unhappy.”

  “Well, he’s always been unhappy, don’t you think? I mean, at least sort of?” Elise said.

  “Lost,” Chrissy pronounced.

  “You didn’t even know him then!” Elise exclaimed.

  “I’m talking about now,” Chrissy said.

  “Yes,” Laura agreed. “Lost.”

  “Hm.” Elise took a sip of her wine and caught Laura’s eye. “Where’d you see him anyway?”

  Laura averted her gaze and looked over at the children in the play area. “Oh, I had lunch with him,” she said breezily.

  “You have to admit his job is weird,” Chrissy said. “You said so yourself, Elise.”

  Laura was grateful for this return to Neil himself rather than her lunch with him.

  “True,” Elise said reluctantly. But then, who am I to say so? I don’t know anything about that business. It’s probably very creative.”

  “Oh, very,” Chrissy said. “There are so many ways to kill people.”

  “Chrissy!” Elise said testily. “We don’t know anything about the games he works on. You’ve never even played a computer game.”

  “I just wondered if he was in some kind of trouble,” Laura said. “But I’m probably just being silly.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that.” Elise frowned.

  For a moment they were all three silent. The sound of Cruella de Vil’s shrill voice drifted in from the other room.

  “Do you think this will give the boys nightmares?” Chrissy asked sounding wholly unconcerned.

  “I don’t think he’s using—” Elise said. “I mean, is that what you were thinking of? I didn’t get that sense when he was staying with us.”

  “Oh, no!” Laura said. “No—I mean something else. Like more…spiritual. Or something,” she finished lamely.

  “Depression,” Chrissy said. “Like he’s depressed.”

  “I don’t know.” Laura sighed. Suddenly she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Why had she brought it up?

  “I should check in on him,” Elise mused. “I haven’t talked to him since he moved back to his place.”

  Laura rose and began clearing the table. Her mind drifted involuntarily to what Neil was doing right now: lying on that depressing couch in his apartment, maybe. It gave her an anxious feeling.

  There was a shriek from the other room.

  “Ah!” Laura jumped, dropping the pile of sushi trays she was holding.

  But it was only Miranda, jumping up and down and shrieking at the TV.

  Nigel began to cry.

  “She’s just happy!” Chrissy explained soothingly, scooping him up. “Look at the doggies.”

  But Disney’s spell was broken. Genevieve’s leg hurt and James wanted quiet and Miranda was still jumping and shrieking.

  Plates were piled in the sink, protests about helping clean were made and rejected, children’s shoes and jackets and sippy cups rounded up.

  As Chrissy and Elise were heading out the door, Elise turned back to Laura. “Do you still have animals on Scrubb Farm?” Scrubb Farm was Laura’s father’s country house, a rambling pastoral place in western Massachusetts.

  “Animals?” Laura repeated blankly. “Chickens. But the pony died. I thought I told you.”

  “But that caretaker still works there? Takes care of the chickens?”

  “Mm-hm.” Laura nodded, frowning. “Why?”

  Miranda chose that moment to race across the room and nearly bowl her over with a hug.

  “Nothing,” Elise said. “I was just wondering.”

  “Why?” Laura asked through the mop of her daughter’s hair.

  “I’ll call you,” Elise said. “Thanks again—and I will check in on Neil. Not that I have some special power to fix things.”

  “Who’s Neil?” Genevieve’s voice asked.

  “An old friend,” Laura said with a sigh, kissing Elise goodbye.

  “That guy in the car?” Genevieve asked.

  “What guy?” Laura stiffened.

  “The guy you went to Patrick’s with,” Genevieve said, cocking her head and looking up at her mother quizzically.

  “Hmmm.” Elise raised her eyebrows.

  Laura hesitated for a moment. “Yes,” she said. “That guy.”

  And the look in her daughter’s searching eyes gave her a chill. She felt an almost uncomfortable swell of love for her. She put Miranda down on the floor and bent to kiss Genevieve’s forehead.

  “Let’s go get ready for bed. It’s been a long day.”

  2

  JENNY SAT BACK IN HER SEAT and tried to process what Galena had just told her. Why had Neil been in the girl’s apartment at four in the morning? Or actually, she understood why, but how had this come to pass? Jenny blinked. This was not the point anyway. Apparently he was destined to reenter her life through every possible crack and crevice.

  Before her, Galena Ibanesku sat very straight in the faux-Eames chair and even so her head just barely cleared the back of it. She was wearing a cheap-looking navy-blue suit and flats. But something about the effect was formidable. She looked ready to pounce.

  “I just think it’s very strange that he was trying to steal it,” Galena said stubbornly. Maybe she had expected a more dramatic reaction from Jenny.

  “It is strange.” Jenny sighed. “He is a strange person.”

  Galena narrowed her eyes at her evaluatively.

  Jenny was exhausted. She had been up until two with Colin, who had come down with a cold. And then Jeremy had tossed and turned beside her in bed, and they had both lain there, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep. She felt like something ragged—a body in one of those action movies, being pounded, kicked, beaten to a pulp.

  “Do you know what his previous affiliations are?” Galena said, cocking her head to the side. “I mean, has he ever worked for Gen-zyme? Or Novartis?”

  “No,” Jenny said. “I’m sure he hasn’t.” If she were not so tired she would have found the idea funny.

  Galena frowned.

  “I just don’t think he’s a corporate spy,” Jenny said firmly.

  The girl gave an insolent shrug. “Then why was he stealing the mock-up?”

  Last night, while trying to soothe Colin and at the same time make something at least moderately appetizing from the macrobiotic cookbook Jeremy now wanted to s
trictly adhere to, Jenny had called her mother.

  “I’m getting on a plane tomorrow,” Judy Callahan had pronounced. And for once in her life, Jenny did not resist her mother’s oversized, overbearing gesture. This meant she had now told three people about the cancer: her mother, Elise, and Laura. All sworn to silence.

  This was because she had still told no one in her office. Last week she had decided to go in to Eric with the news. But then, sitting in his office, staring at the ostentatiously framed photograph of his own happy family—a big, jolly wife and three children, all rosy-cheeked and wearing windbreakers at the top of some mountain peak they had just summited—she froze completely.

  “So there was something you wanted to talk to me about?” Eric had asked, after the usual introductory chitchat.

  And looking at that picture, that happy, wholesome American Dream picture, Jenny had been gripped by resistance. Cancer had separated her from Eric forever. No matter what happened, she and Jeremy and Colin had just diverged irrevocably from the happy club Eric was still a card-carrying member of. Would he, from now on, see her as someone to be pitied? Her silence, she was aware, sitting there on the sofa in his office, was heading toward awkward.

  “I wanted to talk about the Barkman team,” she found herself saying. “They’re not hitting their targets.”

  Eric blinked. There must have been something about her voice, her manner, or maybe simply the buildup toward this conversation that made this a surprising subject. But if he suspected a bait-and-switch, he did nothing further to indicate this. The conversation proceeded as usual. It was only when Jenny left and walked out into the carpeted, cube-lined hall that she felt the blood pounding in her ears and the gaze of the receptionists’ eyes on her like X-rays.

  That afternoon Jenny snuck out of the office on an impulse: she would surprise Jeremy by coming home early. She would pull him away from the computer and take him for a walk—maybe on the Wellesley conservation trails she had heard so much about, or into the city, to Newbury Street, where they had walked so often in the early days of their marriage, to Stefanie’s for a drink or Starbucks for a cup of coffee.