After Wendy finished reading Gretchen’s second email, whatever embarrassment she’d been harboring over her behavior at Daphne’s baby shower was instantly erased. Her only regret was that she hadn’t also written “My Mother Is an Evil Shrew” in giant capitals on the back of the sleep sack. Envy was only part of it. Wendy felt exploited, too. There was no doubt in her mind that Daphne had had her and Adam in mind when she’d written up her film treatment. And that she could attach them to such a sleazy, gratuitous, and, most of all, presumptuous plot!
Wendy was exiting out of her email program when Alyson the Extraordinarily Attractive Intern appeared in her doorway. The expanse of leg between the top of her cowboy boots and the hem of her purple shorts seemed to encompass several football fields’ worth of creamy, veinless skin. “I’m so sorry to bother you?” she said.
“What’s up?” said Wendy, reminding herself that it wasn’t Alyson who’d dumped a bag of flour on her head, then sold a movie treatment mocking her marriage.
“I think the office is on fire?”
“What?!” Wendy breathed in. It did smell a little like smoke, she thought. But if there was a fire, wouldn’t the alarms be going off? Though, now that she thought about it, she didn’t remember ever having seen any.…
Wendy stood up from her desk and walked out the door of her office and into the hall, Alyson tagging behind. She glanced from left to right, then left again—just as a curling plume of white smoke wafted out the door to the kitchen. “Holy hell,” she said to Alyson. Then she bolted down the hall, yelling, “FIRE—EVERYBODY GET OUT!!” An assemblage of terrible haircuts and unkempt facial hair began to appear over cubicle walls and from inside office doors. “EVERYONE GET TO THE STAIRS!” Wendy cried.
Within fifteen minutes, the offices of Barricade were essentially wiped out. All eighteen staff members got out in time, but mostly because all one hundred sixteen pounds of Alyson the Intern had thought to run to the reception area, swoop all one hundred eight pounds of Lois into her arms, and carry the old woman piggyback-style down six flights of stairs. By the time the two of them spilled out onto the street, it was awash in sirens and flashing lights. At the sight of Lois and Alyson, Wendy found herself bursting into tears and consuming both in an enormous bear hug. Alyson cried, too. Lois remained predictably stoic. “You’d think Nagasaki was burning,” she grumbled at no one in particular, causing both Wendy and Alyson to burst into hysterical laughter. That was how Alyson became Wendy’s new best (young) friend.
Alyson also became the office hero. At an emergency staff meeting that evening at the all-white apartment on Union Square that Lincoln shared with his choreographer partner, Randall, the Misanthrope Himself took the opportunity to praise her “commendable work in rescuing the last surviving member of the Stevenson campaign.”
Not that Lois would admit to any such gratitude. “As if I need to live through another year of the Nixon administration,” she muttered—to much giggling.
After the meeting, Lincoln offered Alyson the job of “assistant to the executive editor” upon her graduation from NYU, the following January. And she gladly accepted, though not before reminding him that Barricade was her “favorite magazine ever.” The assumption was that by then, the magazine would have a new office. In the meantime, they were all going to have to work from home.
Also in the meantime, early suggestions on the part of certain Barricade staff members that a right-wing conspiracy may have loomed behind the conflagration soon gave way to the mundane truth: the fire had been started by the broken coffee machine. What’s more, the one working alarm, which was located in the elevator bank, had no batteries in it. All the local newspapers and news channels carried the story. Just as all of Wendy’s friends called or emailed over the next twenty-four hours to find out if Wendy was okay. Wendy’s mother called, too.
“Wendell—I’m so relieved to hear your voice,” said Judy, in a shaky voice when Wendy finally rang her back the next day. “I was up all night worrying about you!”
“You were worried about me?” said Wendy in disbelief.
“Of course I was worried!”
“Oh, sorry—Lincoln had us all over to his house. I should have called you back when I got home, but it was really late. Also, I guess I didn’t think you were the worrying type—at least, not about me.”
“I’m not made of stone!” cried Judy, “Truth to tell, I was worried about Adam, too. He must have been beside himself.”
“Actually, he was pretty mellow about the whole thing,” Wendy told her. “He mostly thought it was cool that I got to yell ‘Fire!’ in a crowded building.”
Judy cleared her throat imperiously. “Wendell, I think you need to seriously interrogate your desire to mock that husband of yours,” she said, sounding like her old self. “He’s a good man, and it’s time you realized it.”
Not surprisingly, the only “friend” who didn’t check in was Daphne. Not that Wendy expected her to do so. It was rather that the fire confirmed for her what she already knew but didn’t yet have proof of—namely, that her friendship with Daphne was officially over.
Wendy didn’t miss Daphne so much as, without her ever-looming presence, she felt disoriented. For almost sixteen years, she’d been anticipating Daphne’s reaction to everything that happened in the world—everything Wendy said and did, too. And now, in a single day, that “early-detection system” had been rendered defunct. Contrary to Wendy’s fears, their mutual friends didn’t abandon her. But Gretchen’s email aside, they remained scrupulous about not bringing up Daphne. Wendy wondered if she would even hear about it when, presumably by the end of the summer, Daphne gave birth. Wendy also wondered what name Daphne and Jonathan would choose for him or her. Would they go with something trendy like Milo or Tallulah? Or would they opt for an unassailable classic like William or Elizabeth? And why did Wendy still care?
Her sense of the world being upside down was only enhanced by the fact that, for the first time in a decade, she found herself working at home. Adam seemed as disoriented by his and Wendy’s new proximity as Wendy was. First thing each morning (which, for him, meant ten thirty), he took to disappearing with his laptop to his favorite coffee shop. He didn’t return until practically dinner. Wendy was waiting for the right moment to remind him that his twelve months of spousal support were now up. In the meantime, Adam made plans to return to Newton for a few weeks in early August to hang out with his father, who was making slow but steady progress. He didn’t invite Wendy to come along.
The evening before Adam’s departure, Wendy and Alyson went out for drinks. Wendy ended up telling her all about her fight with Daphne. “Maybe you guys need to sit down and, like, talk?” suggested Alyson, who also took the time to teach Wendy how to text. Maybe that was why, to Wendy’s astonishment, she found herself volunteering to pick up the tab.
The story might have ended there—in a stalemate marriage and a lost friendship—if Paige hadn’t contacted Wendy an hour after Adam had left on the train, to see if the two of them could meet up later that day. “It’s sort of important,” said Paige.
Wendy couldn’t imagine what Paige so urgently needed to discuss with her, but she suspected it had something to do with her falling-out with Daphne. Paige was probably trying to broker some kind of peace deal, Wendy figured. She had no conscious interest in reconciling with Daphne. At the same time, she was intrigued by Paige’s intentions. Maybe also, Wendy was hoping that Paige might reveal how Daphne was feeling about their breakup. (Sad? Relieved? Indifferent?) Wendy couldn’t help but be curious. She was also eager to hear more about Paige’s unlikely new relationship with Daphne’s handyman/tenant, Jeremy. Because as much gossip as Wendy consumed, it was never enough. There was still another story with the potential to bring color and humor to her mostly monochrome days (and reflect positively on her own less-than-ideal personal situation). It was also true that Paige’s absence from Daphne’s shower had left Wendy feeling more sympathetic toward her. Childless her
self, Paige had perhaps felt similarly ill-equipped to handle the scrum of mothers and babies. Wendy told her she’d be happy to meet her at Guerrilla Coffee, on the western edge of Park Slope, at one.
It was hot and humid and hazy outside—the kind of August day when the sun feels like a vise clamping down on your back. Wendy emerged from the subway feeling as if her dress had melded with her flesh. She found Paige seated at a café table in back. Amid a sea of shorts and tank tops, she wasn’t hard to miss—in her linen suit and two-tone Chanel sling-backs. “Paige!” Wendy called and waved to her across the room. “I’m just getting a coffee.” She motioned at the counter.
Paige waved back, before returning to her Wall Street Journal “Weekend Journal.”
In time, Wendy joined her at the table, paper cup in hand. “You look so nice!” she said, thinking she might as well get the conversation off to a friendly start. “Are you going somewhere afterward?”
Paige smiled unctuously as she laid down her newspaper. “As a matter of fact, I’m headed to a matinee performance of Aida. Truth be told, Broadway musicals aren’t really my thing, but the proceeds go to the Spinal Bifida Association.”
“Oh—cool!” Wendy nodded. “Well, maybe it will be fun?”
“Perhaps, but that’s not really the point,” Paige snapped back.
“Right,” said Wendy. “Meanwhile, how’s it going with Jeremy?”
“How’s what going?” asked Paige, her head cocked and brow furrowed, as if she hadn’t understood the question.
“Your relationship,” answered Wendy, who was instantly reminded of one of the many things that drove her crazy about Paige—namely, her refusal to disseminate anything more than superficial information about herself, even as she systematically mined others for their darkest secrets.
“Oh.” Paige tilted her head backward. “Well, since you ask, yes, we’re having a very nice time together.” Again, she assumed a tight-lipped smile.
“Well, that’s great,” said Wendy.
“Unfortunately, I’m not here to talk about Jeremy and myself,” said Paige, flaring her nostrils and lowering her chin. As if she had the misfortune in this world of having been anointed an emissary of those concerns that others would prefer to overlook but that Paige, in good conscience, couldn’t bring herself to ignore. “Let me begin by thanking you for meeting me on such short notice,” she went on. “Please understand, as well, that this is very awkward for me.” Wendy was stumped. Was Paige having trouble getting pregnant herself? Was she secretly hankering to become a left-wing journalist? “But my conscience is telling me that I need to say something. So”—she took a deep breath through her nose—“as you may or may not know, Jeremy does a certain amount of handyman-type work around Daphne and Jonathan’s house. Last week he was hanging some blinds in Daphne’s home office upstairs. She’d left her laptop out. The screen saver was most likely on, since Daphne hadn’t occupied the room in what Jeremy estimated to be at least a half hour and possibly as much as an hour. However, as he climbed a chair to better reach the window, he knocked up against her desk. The desktop on her computer popped back into focus—”
“What’s this all about?” Wendy couldn’t stop herself from interrupting. When Paige felt she had something important to relay—as she apparently did now—she talked incredibly slowly. Wendy found herself (a) having trouble concentrating on the trajectory of Paige’s narrative, and (b) growing crazy with impatience.
“Please! Let me finish,” Paige barked and scowled, as if Wendy had just broken the Eleventh Commandment: Though Shalt Not Interrupt Paige Ryan. She sighed punitively before continuing: “I want to preface what I’m going to say next by attesting to the fact that Jeremy is not, by nature, a nosy person. Far from it. In fact, he goes out of his way, I would say, to mind his own business. I also want to add that I have not discussed what I’m about to tell you with Daphne. Not yet, at least. After careful consideration, I decided that the prudent thing to do was to approach you first—”
“PAIGE!” Wendy yelled. She couldn’t take it anymore. It was as if her request had accomplished nothing more than to further retard the pace of Paige’s speechifying. “PLEASE! I’m begging you. Where is this going? I have laundry to do.”
Paige shot Wendy a fiery look before she announced, “As I was SAYING, the email literally appeared before Jeremy’s eyes.”
“What email?” asked Wendy.
“I’m about to tell you,” said Paige, jaw clenched. “There was an email opened on Daphne’s computer, and it was to your husband.” She glared at Wendy so intensely that Wendy almost jumped backward in her seat.
“So?” said Wendy, bristling at the implication of impropriety even as it hit an exposed nerve. “They’re friends. Why shouldn’t they email?”
Paige took another exaggerated breath through her nose. “There was an email from Daphne to your husband alluding to the fact that Daphne’s unborn child does not genetically belong to her husband, Jonathan.”
“What?” said Wendy, squinting in confusion.
Her neck elongated, Paige reached her right hand across the table and placed it on Wendy’s forearm. “I’m sorry to have to be the one telling you this.”
“Telling me what?!” Wendy could feel her heartbeat accelerating.
“The email indirectly alluded to the fact that the baby’s father is your husband, Adam.”
Wendy’s head had begun to spin. Or was it the room? All the laptops and coffee mugs and muffin wrappers appeared suddenly to be sailing through the air. “Indirectly alluded?! What the hell does that mean?” She shook Paige’s hand off her arm.
“Just what I said,” said Paige.
“You said nothing,” Wendy shot back.
“Don’t shoot the messenger, Wendy.”
“Messenger? Messenger of what? Either tell me what the email said or I’m leaving!”
Paige looked away. “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to reveal any more than I already have.”
“You show up here to tell me my husband’s impregnated my former best friend, but you can’t go into details,” cried Wendy. “This is officially insane!!”
Paige let her lids close halfway over her eyes, as if she could hardly stand to bear witness to her own truth-telling and sighed wearily. “Living in fear that J is going to find out that Peanut isn’t his,” she began in a blank tone. “Then what? Just feel like running away now. What are we going to do?” Her recitation complete, she clasped her hands in her lap and cast her eyes downward, the faintest hint of a smile on her lips. Or had Wendy dreamt that last detail up?
Wendy felt that at any moment, her head might lift off from her body. She couldn’t be sure that her heart was still in her chest. Her eyes filled with tears. She couldn’t hide their dampness. Again, Paige reached a hand across the table. This time, Wendy lacked the energy to fight her off. “I got divorced, Wendy,” Paige offered in a newly oily tone. “It’s not that bad.”
“Who said anything about divorce?” said Wendy, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.
“Wendy, your former best friend is having a baby with your husband. Do you really plan on staying with him?”
“You don’t know that for sure,” said Wendy, but her voice trembled as she spoke. (Her voice belied her conviction that Paige Ryan was a pathological liar who couldn’t be trusted not to poison her coffee.) “And would you please stop calling me Wendy?”
“As you like,” said Paige. Apparently miffed, she abruptly removed her hand from Wendy’s arm.
Her limbs returned to her, Wendy took the opportunity to flee the premises. “I have to go,” she said, rising from her chair and hooking her bag over her shoulder. “Have fun at Aida.”
• • •
The sun seemed even fiercer than it had twenty minutes earlier. It bounced off the parked cars and store windows, skewing Wendy’s vision. All the passersby on the sidewalk looked like gargoyles. She stepped off the curb without realizing it was there, jolting her insides. Of th
e many swirling thoughts that occupied Wendy’s head, the most dominant one was that she needed to reach Adam—to have him remind her that Paige Ryan was not her friend, never had been. She dialed his cell phone as she walked. But it rang straight to voice mail. She called again. He still wasn’t picking up. Wary of leaving Paige’s accusation in a message—and thinking Adam might already have arrived in Newton—Wendy dialed her in-laws’ house.
But Phyllis seemed confused by Wendy’s question. “Adam?” she said.
“Isn’t he coming to stay with you?” asked Wendy.
“Yes, but we’re not expecting him until the ninth!” Wendy was baffled. Had she misheard him? Had he made other plans for the weekend? Her brain began searching for innocent explanations, but all it came up with was nefarious ones. Meanwhile, Phyllis had begun to conjure nightmares of her own. “God, you don’t think something happened to him,” she said with a little gasp.
Wendy could hear the panic building in her mother-in-law’s voice. She wished she’d never called. She barely had the energy to deal with her own upset and confusion, let alone someone else’s. At the same time, she felt a sudden, overwhelming urge to surrender the last remaining shard of her privacy to this woman who had been like a second mother to her for the past eight years. Or so she liked to imagine. “I think he’s having an affair,” she choked out. “There’s no other explanation.”
“What?!” cried Phyllis.
“I think Adam’s sleeping with my friend Daphne—or, I guess I should say, former friend.”
“The girl who’s always having affairs with married men?!”
“She’s married now herself.”
“Wendy, that doesn’t sound like something my Adam would do.”
It was her mother-in-law’s use of “my” that took Wendy aback, made her think she’d overstepped (and now it was too late to retreat, too late ever to undo the damage). “I know it doesn’t,” she said, still determined to make her case. “But a friend of Daphne’s just told me—a friend told me that Daphne is pregnant by Adam.”
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