Joel runs his fingers through her hair before answering. He’s told Meredith how Kat was his first love, how she jilted him over the phone years ago and more or less broke his heart. She knows the fuzzy details in the way that new lovers come to know about past lovers when you first start dating, like the abbreviated highlights of a tennis match that didn’t end well. “Yep, that was Kat.”
“The Kat?” Meredith presses.
“The one and only.”
“Uh-oh. Should I feel threatened?”
He laughs. “C’mon, honey. That was what? Thirty years ago? We’re talking high school.”
“But she was the one that got away, right?”
“In a manner of speaking, I suppose, but trust me, you have nothing to worry about.”
“Is that right?” With her finger, she traces the dark coil of hair running down his chest to his waist.
“Yes.” He can’t help but grin now. “Turns out she’s gay.”
That gets Meredith’s attention. “Whoa. Didn’t see that coming.”
“Me, either. But apparently she’s happily married to a woman.”
“Wow. So many questions!” Meredith snuggles in closer. “But I’m too tired right now. I hope you’ll introduce us tomorrow. Does she have a son or daughter graduating?”
“Daughter. Cassandra, I think?”
“Mmm... That’s a pretty name.”
Joel doesn’t say anything for a minute. He can sense Meredith’s drifting off to sleep. “How about Roger showing up? Did you know he was coming?”
It’s quiet for a moment. “Not a clue,” she says, stifling a yawn. “Typical Roger, last-minute change of plans. But I’m glad for the kids. I think it meant a lot to them, especially Dawn.” He decides not to bring up the fact that, to his eye, Roger seemed to be getting pretty cozy with Meredith tonight. Not that Joel is jealous exactly, but, come on! There was no need for the guy to stand so close. Or, to keep resting a hand on her arm as if they were old pals.
“Thank goodness he didn’t bring Lily along,” Meredith says now.
“Yes, thank goodness.” Joel’s voice carries a whiff of teasing. He knows his wife nurses a nutty inferiority complex around Lily, who so obviously represents Roger’s midlife crisis, his trophy wife, that Joel finds it almost comical and most certainly, cliché. Meredith is in an entirely different league, much classier.
“You’re not still worrying about her, are you?”
“Not in the least,” Meredith says, but they both know she’s lying.
It doesn’t matter, though, because before long, it appears that Meredith has decided to wave off sleep for some fooling around. She’s climbing on top of him, her hair flowing over her shoulders, and all Joel can think about is how incredibly sexy his wife is and how much she still turns him on. He could spend all night making love to her, trying out new positions on this bed that feels as wide and rollicking as a bouncy house. Before this afternoon, they hadn’t had sex in seventeen days. Talk about a dry spell. Seventeen days! Meredith seemed surprised when he’d mentioned it.
“Huh? That long, really?”
“That long.” During the last few weeks, he’d started feeling like a horny teenager, pointing out virtually any opportunity that presented itself for hopping into the sack together. He knows Meredith keeps complaining about the extra pounds she’s put on since the kids, but Joel honestly doesn’t see it. He thinks she looks great and catches the way other guys watch her when she walks into a room. Aside from some lip gloss and face powder (“to minimize the shine,” she says), she’s never been one to wear makeup—and she doesn’t need to. Joel loves everything about the face that greets him each morning: the cute spray of freckles across her nose, her warm, brown eyes, the thick auburn hair. The way she bites her bottom lip sometimes when they make love, like she’s doing right now.
Several minutes later, when she rolls off him, he waits for Meredith to break down the night, a favorite hobby of hers—analyzing the party’s players and their various transgressions, like that mother dressed in teal or how they all thought Cody was going to win the award. Often, Joel finds himself amazed by the slights and innuendoes she will have picked up on, stuff that slid right past him when he was pretty sure everyone was talking about the Red Sox. What has she gleaned from tonight’s banquet? But after softly kissing him goodnight, she rolls over, and within minutes her snores drift over from the other side.
So. That leaves Joel to perform his own analysis. All in all, if someone were to ask him, he thinks the evening unfolded as well as could be expected. There were only a few times when he had to exchange pleasantries with strangers, guys whose self-deprecating humor quickly wore thin. But those constitute minor details. And even though no one predicted Roger would show up, Joel actually admires the guy for making the right call. He should have been there tonight to celebrate the kids. They have only so many more milestones left to revel in as parents, all of them. Meredith ribbed Joel afterward about trying to mark his territory when he snuck up on her and Roger. And maybe he was being overly protective, a bit possessive. But can she fault Joel for wanting to make sure she was all right? Plus, what if she did something she might regret later? Like, he thinks with a small smile, break Roger’s other hand.
Something else pricks at his conscience, though. While he can’t exactly say what, something felt off with the kids tonight. Maybe they had a falling-out before they came downstairs from their dorm to meet them? It stays with him, that uneasy feeling he sometimes picks up from his kids at school. A feeling not so dissimilar from the one he gets when the weight shifts in bed at night and he realizes that Meredith has gotten up to fetch a drink of water. Subtle but unsettling nonetheless, an imbalance that keeps him awake until she returns. He’s pretty certain Cody was smoking tonight (he reeked of cigarettes) and files it away to raise with him another time. It’s more than that, though. He tried to pry it from Dawn earlier, asked her what was going on between her and her brother. But no amount of gentle questioning could dislodge the slightest information.
Tonight Cody had seemed super jazzed, as if he’d downed ten Red Bulls before the banquet. It’s a popular party trick among kids, Joel knows: counter all the alcohol you consume with an energy booster to keep you awake. Red Bull and vodka make for a potent mix, and maybe that’s what the kids were doing when they’d disappeared from the tent. He wonders if he should have called them on it, then scolds himself for being a hypocrite. Wasn’t he just telling Meredith to go easy on them, let them have a little fun? There’s no worse buzzkill than your stepdad telling you to lay off the sauce on the night before graduation. Besides, Joel knows as well as anyone—the kids were headed off to more parties after the parents left. The night, as they say, was still young.
He rummages around for his glasses on the bedside table to check the clock across the room. 12:32 a.m. If he has any hope of functioning tomorrow, sleep is critical. Tomorrow is the real deal, the big day. All his antennae need to be tuned to high alert to run any potential interference between Roger, Lily, and the rest of the outlaws, as he and Meredith occasionally refer to them.
Within minutes, sleep blissfully overtakes him.
* * *
Lily and Alison have been drinking. Heavily. Lily hasn’t the faintest idea when Roger will return home. And why would she? He hasn’t bothered to text or call. She and Alison are having themselves a fine old time without him. They’ve moved from the pool to the lounge chairs by the pool, and now they’re sitting in the family room, where Lily lies on their exceedingly comfortable leather sofa. Around nine o’clock, when the mosquitoes had started siphoning off their blood, they’d piled up their plates and moved the party inside. Party for two, Lily thinks smugly. Who needs Roger?
“Hey, just get through this weekend, and everything will be fine.” Alison scratches at a swollen red bite above her ankle and licks her finger to apply some saliva, an old trick. “Family events ca
n be stressful, and you’ve been a member of this one for only a few months.”
“Six and a half,” Lily corrects. “Seven months if you round up, though I don’t know that it makes any difference.” She languidly pulls a tortilla chip through a bowl of salsa. The lime chips are her favorite, even though Roger hates them. Whenever she’s feeling especially indulgent or mopey, she’ll buy a family-sized bag just for herself. And, if she has been drinking, it’s especially easy to forget every calorie that passes her lips. “I keep thinking it takes time for everyone to get adjusted, but I didn’t assume I’d still feel like a third wheel.”
Alison sets her glass down on the table. “You’re not! A third wheel, I mean. I’ve seen the way Roger looks at you. Head over heels, my friend. Definitely.”
Lily lies back on the sofa. Her head hurts, and the wine and tequila of earlier are mixing in her stomach in an ugly stew. Moses pads over, licks up a few crumbs littering the floor, and settles at her feet. “I just wish the kids would give me a chance. I mean, I don’t expect to be best friends, but do they have to hate me so much?” She drags the back of her hand across her eyes, which unexpectedly begin to brim with tears.
“Wait a sec. Oh, hon. Are you crying?” Alison comes over to sit beside her and squeezes her arm consolingly. “Look, no one hates you. If anything, the kids don’t know how to react around you, and can you blame them? You’re practically the same age.”
“Okay. Not helping?” Lily counters. “I’m nine years older to be exact.”
“Same decade.” Alison pulls a hand through the air. “Big whoop. At least to them.” She circles back around to her side of the table and flops down on the adjacent sofa. “Think of it this way. What if your mom remarried some hot dude who was only a few years older than you when you were in college? Wouldn’t you be a tiny bit resentful? Or jealous? Or something?”
Lily sniffs and reaches for a glass of ice water, which prompts Moses to lift his head, sensing he might be needed, before settling back down. She knows herself well enough that if she doesn’t switch to ice water now, there’s zero chance of her being fabulous tomorrow. “Hard to say. It’s difficult to imagine my mom ever holding on to any guy long enough to marry him.”
Alison slings back another tequila shot, says, “Bottoms up,” and Lily watches as her friend’s face grimaces before biting into a wedge of lime. It’s a visceral reaction, one that Lily imagines having duplicated herself when she’d downed her shots earlier. It’s been that kind of a night. Alison slaps her hand on the table, clears her throat. “Point taken.” She is familiar with Lily’s complicated family history, which Lily has divulged in various installments over dinners, trips to the spa, and coffees shared post-yoga. “But think of poor Cody. He’s one big walking hormone. When he sees you...” Alison’s voice trails off and she shrugs.
“When he sees me, what?” Lily leans forward, really hoping her friend isn’t suggesting what Lily thinks she is.
“C’mon, Lily. Don’t be stupid. You’re hot. Of course he must think it’s weird that his dad married a chick that he’d prefer to be dating.”
Lily falls back on the couch. “You’ve just taken the women’s movement back two decades. That’s gross. Cody doesn’t think about me that way. He has a girlfriend!”
“Whatever you say.” Alison grabs the remote and switches on the television, flipping through the stations. She has visited enough times that she acts as if this is her house, too. Which Lily doesn’t mind; in fact, she kind of loves it. Because she can offer this spacious, beautiful home to her friends, it somehow feels more like her house and not just Roger’s “place” that she has moved into. Whenever Alison helps herself to food in the fridge or sleeps over in the guest room, Lily has a vague sense of paying her good fortune forward. She always wanted a pretty home where she could host family and friends. Of course, never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined a place set on the ocean with its own swimming pool and lawn crew.
“Anyway, it’s really Dawn I’m worried about. She’s the tough nut to crack.”
“Give her time,” Alison counsels. “Besides, in three short months, she’ll be in Chicago. It’s not like you’re expected to help raise these kids.”
Huh. But isn’t that precisely what Lily has been hoping for all along? To join a family in all its iterations? Dawn and Cody, she’s beginning to realize, though, are more or less grown-ups already, fully bloomed. There’s little she can do to mother them or guide them down the right path now. Meredith would probably behead her, anyway. (Lily has caught her sideways glances at Roger, the judgmental looks that suggest she thinks her ex-husband has married beneath him.) And with a college degree and prospective jobs awaiting them both, the twins have already zipped light-years ahead of where Lily was at their age. What advice can she possibly offer them?
“I kind of want to, though,” she says softly.
“What?” Alison has paused on a movie channel that’s replaying Ghost. “Oh, I love this movie!” she exclaims and flops down on the poufy pillows that dot the floor.
“Raise them. Raise a family,” Lily repeats.
She and Roger have talked about having their own baby a few times, but only hypothetically, in broad, imprecise strokes. One evening, in particular, sticks in her mind, a balmy spring night when they were dining alfresco in the North End next to a couple with a little girl, probably around three. Every so often, the little girl would climb down from her booster seat and wheel around the patio, off to investigate the pots of begonias or the water gushing from a small fountain. At one point, something possessed the girl to bring Lily a red flower she’d picked, and Lily had cooed with thanks.
“See? Everyone finds you enchanting,” said Roger.
Lily smiled. “Do you ever think about having another?”
“Another? As in another kid, you mean?” His pointer finger circled the edge of his wineglass.
“Yeah.”
“I haven’t given it much thought, I guess. They’re a lot of work!” He laughed. “As I think you’re beginning to see with Dawn and Cody.”
“Oh, they’re not so terrible,” Lily had lied. In truth, she’d met the kids only a few times by that point, and they’d been horrible each time. Cody mostly didn’t say anything, but Dawn threw Lily the stink eye whenever she got the chance. And how about the time, only a few months ago, when Lily lent Dawn her Jeep to run errands, only to have Dawn call saying she’d gotten into a little fender bender? I’m fine, she reassured Lily. But your car might need a little work. Lily had rushed to meet her (Roger was out golfing) and reassured Dawn it was no big deal, only a dented fender where Dawn had backed into a Dumpster. On the sly, Lily took the car to the repair shop—Dawn had made her promise not to tell her dad and Lily had foolishly agreed, thinking maybe it would foster a bond between them. If anything, though, it had accomplished the opposite.
“Why? Are kids something you’d want?” Roger asked that night.
Lily dipped her bread in the olive oil pooling on a plate between them. “Not sure. Maybe. I still have plenty of time to decide, right?” She’d brushed it off as if they were discussing a possible trip to Greece next year, a weekend getaway to the Berkshires. “I’m only thirty, after all.”
And he’d taken her hands into his, softly kissing each fingertip. “The world is your oyster. And I, for one, feel like my world is complete with you in it.”
Now Alison stares over at her as if Lily has shot off a .22 rifle in the room. “Well, girlfriend, if that’s what you got into this marriage for, then I suggest you and Roger get busy creating some mini-Lilies or Rogers.” She launches a pillow across the room at her. “And here I thought you were all about the money and extravagant lifestyle,” she teases. “When really you’re a softy. All you need to be happy are some cute little baby toes and fingers.”
Lily whips the pillow back. “Stop it!” she cries. “So what if I do?”
“Oh, nothing.” Alison flops down on her pillow. “Just prepare for your life to pivot about a hundred and eighty degrees.”
“I wouldn’t mind. I think it might actually be nice. You know, a chance to raise a daughter like she should be raised, with tons of love.” Memories of waiting up late for her mom to arrive home from her shift at the bar still haunt Lily. She would never, ever do that to her own child. Of course, she’ll need to stop popping the little pills, but she’s fairly confident she can do so as soon as she has a real purpose. Surely, if her baby’s health depends on it, Lily will cut out all bad substances, eat only healthy foods, and devour prenatal vitamins like the Smarties she adores.
Looking back, it’s funny how easily she slid into Roger’s life, as if she were a missing piece. At the time, she’d hardly even noticed that she was leaving behind most everything that defined her—her waitressing job, her apartment, her friends on Beacon Hill—to better fit into his life. And what had Roger done to fit into hers? She honestly can’t point to any adjustments on his part, aside from having to share his bed with her every night and opening his house, their house now, to her friends.
When he proposed, she’d instantly said yes. Unlike some women she knew, Lily didn’t need to make a list of pros and cons about whether this was the man she should marry, whether he would make her happy. Because the answer was: of course. When she’d first met him, working as a waitress at the Sevens on Charles Street, she’d served his table a round of beers, and Roger had glanced up, caught her eye, and asked what time she got off work. A physical reaction had surged through her body then, suddenly giving new meaning to the phrase “makes you go weak in the knees.” She’d retreated to the back room to sit down for a minute and steady her nerves before agreeing to go out with him.
Around Roger, she feels like the most important person in the room, which, to be honest, seems to be the effect he has on pretty much everyone. Well, except for Meredith, that is. Only later in their relationship did he paint a picture of his former marriage (Lily had been too afraid to ask). He confided that Meredith had been—and was still—a terrific mom but an “unenthusiastic” wife. As soon as the kids were born, it was as if he no longer existed, he said. It became less and less appealing to go straight home from work, and he’d started hanging out in the bars with his friends, crawling into bed later and later each night, until finally he’d given up on ever making love to his wife again and had started looking elsewhere. It was a long time ago (nearly a decade!), but when Roger recounted the disintegration of his marriage, Lily felt a stab of pity for him. Her friends who’d split with their exes had shared similar tales of a flame that had dwindled, of a relationship taken for granted once kids entered the picture.
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