by Jane Green
So what will Lila wear? She doesn’t usually care, but tonight feels different.
“It doesn’t matter what you wear,” Ed said. “I love you just the way you are.”
“That’s not helpful, honey,” Lila said. “What do the other mothers wear at these things? Are they dressed up? Trendy? Classic? Do they do makeup?”
Ed laughed and shrugged. “It’s a mix. A little bit of everything. But don’t worry about them; they’ll love you whatever you wear.”
Ed continued along these lines, firmly stating, as all men do, that it didn’t matter what she wore. But it matters. Tonight, it really, really matters.
Black, maybe. Slimming. Oh God. Why did she have to have that chicken and pasta dish for lunch? Her stomach is now blown up like a balloon. As a consequence perhaps her favorite and most flattering black trousers and a black cashmere poncho-style top. It hides her greatest flaws—certainly hides her post-pasta stomach—and makes her feel surprisingly elegant, particularly teamed with high-heeled boots.
Amber earrings . . . and Lila looks at herself approvingly in the mirror. But there’s still something missing. Something that isn’t quite right. Sighing as she leaves the bathroom, passing the range of Ouidad products lined up on the shelves, she walks to the corner of her bedroom and dials her hairdresser.
“This is Lila Grossman. Is there any chance Toni can squeeze me in for a blow-out in about fifteen minutes? Please? I’m desperate . . . Yes? I love you! See you then.” And she scampers out of the door.
“I’m nervous,” Lila says, as they pull into the parking lot behind the school.
“Don’t be nervous, darling,” Ed says. “Everyone’s incredibly nice and I’m sure Mindy will be on her best behavior.”
“Not about tonight,” Lila says. “About Callie.”
“What did her mom say again?”
“That she’d blacked out. She almost killed them, Ed. She almost killed herself. Do you have any idea how lucky they were that no one got hurt? And she’s still getting these headaches, but she hasn’t been to see anyone. The fact that her mom had to even call me scares me.”
“But she’s going to see the doctor?”
“Apparently this time she really is going. And Reece has banned her from driving until they’ve gotten to the bottom of it. But, Ed? I’m scared.”
“I know,” he says, parking and turning to her, taking her hand. “I know how much you love her, and I know she was sick before. This could be nothing, and they’ll run the tests they need to run and find out what’s wrong with her, and then they’ll treat it. There’s no point worrying about something that hasn’t happened.”
“But what if it’s . . .” She can’t say the C word.
“You’ll cross that bridge when you come to it.”
“I just . . . I just have this feeling that it’s not good.”
“That’s just a feeling, and feelings aren’t facts.”
“You’re right. But I hate walking around having this cloud of anxiety hanging over me.”
“It won’t be for long. The doctor will figure it out. It’s probably just some vitamin deficiency. There was a woman at the paper I used to work on in England who used to black out, and it turned out that she wasn’t getting enough vitamin B1. She’d developed some syndrome that caused the blackouts, but they treated it and she was fine. I’m sure it’s something like that with Callie.”
Lila takes his hand. “You always make me feel better.”
He smiles. “Good.” Then leans in to kiss her. “Can I just say something about your hair?”
Lila grins. “I know! Isn’t it gorgeous? Don’t tell me you want me to wear it like this all the time, though, because it took about two hours to straighten and I can only go through that for special occasions. I could get it professionally straightened, I guess, but I think I’d look kind of ridiculous with poker-straight hair, I need some bo—”
“Lila? Shut up!” Ed says, not unkindly, and with a smile. “I think it looks lovely, but I have to tell you that I prefer it curly.”
“You do?” She is shocked.
“I do. Because it’s natural. And it’s you.”
“Thank you, sweetie.” She opens the door.
Ed doesn’t need to know that she didn’t have her hair straightened for him; she had it done for Mindy.
Lila is not a competitive woman and she thought she had learned not to feel inadequate among other women, particularly if they were taller, thinner and prettier than her, but Mindy is something different and given the constant digs Mindy has made, Lila needs to prove herself, needs to prove she is as good as Mindy, even though, as Ed has pointed out, she is a million times better.
Lila spots Mindy as soon as they walk into the school foyer. Squeezed into a pair of jeans that might fit one of Lila’s ankles, she is teetering in skyscraper heels, with a fur-lined cream bomber jacket. She is standing with two identikit women and she gives Lila a cool smile and a wave before leaning in to the women and saying something, causing them both to look over at Lila.
“Oh please,” Lila hisses under her breath. “I feel like I’m back in high school.”
“What?” Ed looks down, oblivious.
“Your ex. She just . . . she gets to me.”
“She’s here?”
“Yup. Her broomstick’s propped up by the door. It’s the one with the big Chanel logo on top of the bristles.”
Ed grins. “You may be nasty, but you’re pretty funny.”
“Well, I’m serious. How else do you think she got here since her personal chauffeur went out of business?”
“You mean me?”
Lila puts her hands on her hips and gives him a slow stare. “Who else? Do I need to remind you?”
“Let it go,” Ed soothes her, rubbing her back, then bending down and giving her a long kiss. “She’s in the past. She’s the mother of my child, which is the only reason I have to have anything to do with her. What matters is now. You’re my present. And my future.”
And once again Lila looks at this man and knows what it is to feel truly loved.
Mindy disengages from the other girls and approaches them with a smile that reaches nowhere near her eyes.
“Hi, Lila!” Mindy says, smirking slightly as, to Lila’s surprise, she leans forward to give her a kiss.
“Mindy!” Lila beams. “You look beautiful.”
Mindy, unexpectedly, flushes with pleasure. “Oh . . . thanks. You look . . . nice too. Ed? Can I talk to you, please?”
Lila turns to look at Ed, wondering, not for the first time, what in the hell these two people were ever doing together, let alone married for as long as they were.
“Of course,” Ed says. “What’s the matter?”
Mindy gives Lila a sideways glance, as if to say “in private,” although she doesn’t want to say it out loud in case she offends Lila.
“It’s fine to talk in front of Lila,” Ed says wearily.
Mindy huffs. She wasn’t expecting this. “Fine,” she says suddenly. “It’s about child support. I need to talk to you about increasing child support.”
Lila resists the urge to laugh. Try getting a job, she thinks.
Ed’s jaw clenches. “I hardly think the school orchestra performance is the time to talk about this,” he says.
“Well, you never respond to my emails anymore, so how else am I supposed to get in touch with you?”
Lila standsthere, uncomfortable. She wants to excuse herself to go and get a drink, or use the restroom, or hang her coat—something. Anything. But she doesn’t want to leave Ed alone with Mindy.
“We can talk about it on Monday,” Ed says.
“I don’t want to talk about it on Monday,” Mindy whines. “I want to talk about it now.”
“Can everyone please make their way into the auditorium? The performance is about to start.” The voice echoes loudly from the speakers in each corner of the room.
“Oops,” Ed says. “Let’s talk about it after the show.”<
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“Did you mean that about discussing increased child support after the show?” Lila looks at him in disbelief as they sit in the auditorium, far away from Mindy.
“No. I plan on running over to give Clay a hug, then running out as quickly as possible.”
“Tell me again why you married her?”
“It was an out-of-body experience.” He shakes his head. “Honestly? No idea. I think I must have been abducted by aliens.”
“Damn right.”
“Clearly!” He smiles and leans toward Lila for a kiss just as the children file in with their instruments and take their seats.
Clay is toward the end, and once he is seated he scans the auditorium, his eyes finally alighting on Ed and Lila, who is waving furiously. Clay flashes a megawatt smile before leaning forward and adjusting the stand.
Venetian Chicken and Pasta with Rosemary
Ingredients
3½-pound roasting chicken
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
½ cup pine nuts, lightly toasted
Rosemary needles, finely chopped
⅓ cup sultanas, soaked in warm water for 30 minutes, drained
1 pound tagliatelle or fettuccine
2-3 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
Method
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Rub the chicken with the oil and sprinkle with the salt and pepper, then place it breast side down in a roasting pan and roast for about 1½ hours or until well browned, turning it over toward the end to brown the breast.
Take the chicken out of the oven, let it cool for about 1 hour, then pull the meat and skin off the bones. Discard the carcass and any fatty bits of skin, but keep all the lovely crispy pieces.
Heat the nuts in a small frying pan, browning them slightly.
For the sauce, pour all the juices from the roasting pan into a saucepan. Add the rosemary, the sultanas and the nuts. Begin to simmer the sauce when you’re ready to cook the pasta.
Prepare the pasta, salting it when it boils (a bit of olive oil helps too). Drain, then toss with the sauce, chicken pieces and parsley in a large warmed bowl.
Chapter Fifteen
“Mom?” An insistent voice whispers loudly, inches from her face, and Callie opens her eyes to see Jack hopping from one foot to the other.
“Jack? Do you need the bathroom?”
“No. Yes. But, Mom? Eliza’s being mean to me.”
Callie sighs as she pushes the covers back. “Okay. I’ll go and speak to her. Now YOU go to the BATHROOM,” she demands, smiling as he weaves through her bedroom and into the bathroom.
God, he is just so damned cute.
When Eliza was born, she never thought she could love anyone as much, ever again. Not even Reece. Her world revolved around this tiny little dark-haired creature, this little girl who won her heart the minute she was placed in her arms.
Callie loved everything about Eliza. She was conceived on a cold spring night, in their little apartment in an old Brownstone in Chelsea. That was their first apartment together, before they moved to the bigger one on the Upper East Side, a move which Callie always regretted.
And Callie swears she knew, even while making love, that she and Reece were making a baby. She remembers going into the bathroom and looking at herself in the mirror and seeing that something had changed, and she smiled a small, secret smile, and rubbed her stomach.
“Hey, baby girl,” she whispered.
“You are completely nuts,” Reece said, when she ran back into the bedroom and pounced on him, telling him the news.
“That may be true, but it doesn’t change anything. We just made a baby! And it’s a girl, and we’re going to call her Eliza.”
“Fine.” Reece shook his head with a grin before bending down and talking to Callie’s stomach. “Hello, Eliza. Daddy here. Everything all right in there?” And they both laughed.
Reece would come home and find Callie scouring baby sites, reading everything there was to read about pregnancy.
And this was only the first three weeks.
She started buying pregnancy tests, but it wasn’t until two days before her period was due that a faint blue line showed. The line became stronger and stronger with each one of the countless tests Callie performed over the next two days, and a visit to the doctor confirmed what she had known from the first second.
She was pregnant.
That it was a girl called Eliza took a little while longer to confirm.
She loved every second of being pregnant. Her body bloomed: lush and ripe and gorgeous. She talked to her baby every day, and as soon as Eliza smiled her first smile, giggled her first giggle, Callie knew that if, God forbid, anything happened to her child, she would not be able to live.
Jack was unplanned. Callie wasn’t even sure she wanted another child, so scared was she that she wouldn’t have enough love in her for two, but Reece wanted a boy. Her father wanted a boy, and there was still a part of her trying to please her daddy. She knew that at some point the likelihood was that she would have another baby, and she couldn’t help but think that if it was to happen, it would make everyone happier if it was a boy.
Still, this time she didn’t know. She felt very tired and only realized her period hadn’t arrived after seven weeks. The pregnancy wasn’t as easy and she felt enormous. She put on sixty pounds, hauling her body around, resenting it all the while.
When he finally arrived, Jack was colicky. In the mornings he would be fine, but by midafternoon he would be screaming, for no reason whatsoever.
Callie was trying to look after Eliza, only two herself, while trying to rock Jack—the only thing that seemed to quiet him was being rocked, or pushed in a buggy, for hours, and hours, and hours.
She tried everything. Gave up dairy in case he was lactose intolerant and unable to handle any dairy he was ingesting through her breast milk. Then gave him formula. Soy formula. Goat’s milk formula. Predigested formula. Nothing stopped the screaming.
Days would go by when Callie spent hours walking around like a zombie, wondering what the hell she was thinking in having another baby, and wishing she could turn the clock back to what was before—just the three of them.
The guilt was enormous. Looking at Jack she felt nothing like the overwhelming and all-consuming love she had had for Eliza from the first second. Looking at Jack, she felt . . . hate would have been too strong a word for it, but dislike, certainly. Which she couldn’t admit to anyone.
At three and a half months, everything changed. Honor showed up, unexpectedly, with a great big suitcase and a truckload of patience. She scooped up Jack and shooed Callie out of the room.
She decided to start Jack on solids, which Callie’s pediatrician had said not to do until he was six months old, telling her that babies’ digestive systems aren’t properly formed and they can’t handle the solids before then.
“Well that’s just not true,” Honor sang, rocking Jack in her arms. “You and your sister both started on baby rice at three months. Everyone did. And you both slept right through the night after that. We’re going to try it.”
Callie was too tired to argue with her.
Honor spooned a little baby rice mixed with formula into Jack’s eager mouth that evening and he slept until two a.m., in the little cot next to Honor’s bed in the spare room. (“I won’t hear of it,” Honor protested, when Callie weakly said that Jack ought to be in with her. “You need to sleep, and I need to spend time with my grandson.” Callie had the first proper night’s sleep in three months. In the morning, for the first time, she started to think that perhaps there was a light at the end of the tunnel after all.)
Honor gave him a bottle when he woke that night, and within a week he was off the two a.m. feeding and sleeping through the night. He also, miraculously, turned into a happy little boy, and one day, as he looked at Callie and smiled with delight, her heart opened up, and from that moment on
she loved him just as much as she loved Eliza.
And he adored her. Oh how he adored her. Even now, at six years old, he is so different from how Eliza was at this age. She was independent, strong willed, stubborn. Refused to be kissed or cuddled by Callie unless she was in the mood, but Jack?
Jack snuggles with her all the time. He flings his arms around her legs and squeezes tightly, looking up at her adoringly.
At night, when she goes to kiss them goodnight, Eliza gives her a perfunctory peck, occasionally requesting a proper snuggle, but Jack shifts over in his little twin bed to make room for her, and when she lies next to him he reaches an arm around her neck, pulling her close and stroking her cheek, unmitigated adoration and bliss in his eyes.
“Eliza?” Callie calls, pulling on a robe and stuffing her feet into slippers, wincing at the headache that seems to be constantly present these days. “What’s going on with your brother?”
“Nothing,” Eliza yells from her bedroom, appearing briefly in the doorway in skin-tight leggings, a T-shirt with a peace sign and a long, ratty pink scarf wrapped around her neck. “It wasn’t me, it was him.”
“Eliza, you’re older, okay? It’s up to you to set the example. Just be nice. Please.”
And as Eliza huffs and puffs, Callie goes downstairs to make breakfast.
“Why can’t Daddy ever stay and have breakfast with us?” Eliza asks when Callie places a plate of scrambled eggs in front of her.
“He’s working,” Jack says, in irritation.
“He’s always working.” Eliza is grumpy, and Callie turns her back so Eliza doesn’t see her expression, because she agrees with Eliza: sometimes it would be really nice if he left for work a little later, or came home a little earlier. Just spent a bit more time with the children.
“He’s always here at the weekends,” she says brightly, “and he spends lots of time with you then.” Which is true.