Perfect Happiness

by Kristyn Kusek Lewis

  “Yeah, we had a good time,” Birdie says. “We went to La Moo and then watched a movie. An old one. Hannah’s mom said you’d know it. Ferris Bueller?”

  “Danke Schoen!” Charlotte hears Jason sing behind her, imitating Matthew Broderick. “Darlin’, danke schoen!”

  “Oh, God, Dad!” Birdie laughs, shaking her head.

  “What?” He feigns innocence, smiling at her in a way he hasn’t smiled at Charlotte in months. Can he just turn it on and off that easily? she asks herself, knowing that it’s a stupid question, because if there’s anything she’s an expert at, it’s faking a good mood.

  “Please, Dad, just get all of your embarrassing behavior out of your system before tonight,” Birdie says, letting go of Charlotte and starting down the hall toward the kitchen. Charlotte watches her, thinking of Tucker’s Instagram. Has she tasted beer before? she wonders. She had, by the time she was Birdie’s age, but that was a different time and place.

  “Tonight?” Jason jokes. “What’s tonight?” He glances at Charlotte and his expression straightens.

  “Dad!” Birdie yelps. “Stop!” She laughs again.

  “I’m gonna go change and mow the yard,” he says, starting up the stairs.

  Feeling calmer, Charlotte follows Birdie into the kitchen, and clears her throat. “Are you hungry?” she asks her daughter, who’s disappeared into the pantry. “I can make you something.” She reaches for her phone on the counter, taps a familiar dance with her fingertips across the screen. Her bunny picture has 31,437 likes.

  Two

  The North Arlington section of the city, where Jason and Charlotte have lived since their wedding day, is full of ramblers, the mid-Atlantic term for what Charlotte always knew as ranch houses, as well as bungalows and the ubiquitous Broyhill Colonials that were marketed to families after World War II. For decades, the landscape stayed basically the same, minus the occasional 1960s split-level or orangey-brick 1980s Neo-Colonial. But now, in North Arlington on any given day, and on any given street, there is the inevitable sound of a bulldozer gnashing its way through an old house’s foundation, or the clink of hammers nailing together an addition. The colonials, like Jason and Charlotte’s, grow appendages; two stories out the back and the sides, more space to accommodate the needs (and desires) of modern young families who have been steadily swarming into these hills for the past twenty years, lured by the excellent public schools and proximity to DC. The ramblers get replaced with six-thousand-square-foot behemoths built out right to the edge of the property line (no need for a backyard, of course, when the kids are too busy at practice and/or padding their college résumés). Space is precious and real estate is competitive and expensive. The conversations at PTA meetings, on the soccer sidelines, next to the potluck table at neighborhood block parties: Are you digging out the back? Total reno? How many times were you outbid before you got your place? Homes go under contract, inspections waived, before they hit the market. The real estate agents all drive luxury cars. The builders make a killing.

  Finch Cunningham took over his father’s construction business right after he graduated from Hopkins, and pulling into the circular drive in front of the Cunninghams’ home, Charlotte recalls the stories she’d heard when they built the house a few years ago. Unable to find a piece of land large enough to accommodate their wishes, they talked the elderly residents of three adjacent lots into selling, the rumor being that they gave the families a million each in cash. An airy stucco mansion, the Spanish Colonial style a nod to Dayna’s upbringing in Montecito, California, went up on two of the lots. A turfed, regulation-size sports field for Tucker was built on the third.

  Waiting for the Cunninghams to open the door, Charlotte notes the large potted lemon tree on the front terrace, pointing out the tiny green fruit to Birdie, and then glances beyond the house to the left, where a row of tall Leyland cypress trees outlines the field. The house is barely two miles from their own, and though she’s passed it many times while out walking the dog, she’s never been on the property. Through a separation in the trees, she can just barely make out markings on the grass.

  “Are those Tucker’s initials?” Jason says, taking the words out of Charlotte’s mouth. She can’t help but laugh at the ostentatiousness of it—the kid’s monogram on his field—and when her eyes meet her husband’s, she feels a glimpse of their old connection, the first she’s felt in days.

  “Oh my God, you guys!” Birdie whines. “Please don’t be weird!” Charlotte can tell she’s nervous. She’s been snippy all afternoon and changed four times, once because Charlotte told her she could not wear ripped jeans to dinner (she realized, as the words were coming out of her mouth, how much she sounded like her mother).

  “Best behavior,” Charlotte promises, reaching and pinching for a stray hair that’s caught in Birdie’s lip gloss, and then, hearing the faint tap of approaching footsteps, she glances back at the field, remembering Tucker’s Instagram story. Maybe Jason’s right, she thinks, eyeing the manicured green. Maybe just a bunch of boys hanging out, being silly. Maybe it was nothing. Harmless, she tells herself. Nothing more than that.

  Up close, Dayna looks like the kind of woman who knows every corner of every luxury department store in the DC metropolitan area. She is wearing ripped jeans, though quite clearly not homemade like Birdie’s, and a white tank top that shows off her commitment to Orangetheory or CorePower or whatever it is that keeps her lithe and lean. When she hugs Charlotte, air-kissing the space just beyond her ear, Charlotte notices that she smells cosmetic, like a combination of heavy floral perfume, powder, and body cream.

  “Come in, come in!” Dayna says, hurrying them inside. “I can’t get these . . .” She turns back toward the long corridor behind her, the marble floor gleaming beneath her leather wedges. “Boys! They’re here!” She turns back to them and rolls her eyes, and then seeing Birdie, she freezes, her ample lips forming a surprised O like she’s just discovered something precious and pleasing, a cupcake on a paper doily, a kitten with a satin bow around its neck.

  “You are just . . .” she starts, shaking her head, her eyes passing over Birdie from head to toe and back up again. With Charlotte’s prodding, Birdie had finally settled on a blue gingham top from J.Crew and white jeans, though she’s pushed the top’s elasticized sleeves off her shoulders a little farther than Charlotte would prefer. “I mean, I know we’ve met at school, Birdie, but look at you! You are adorable!” She shakes her head. “I am so not surprised that my son fell for you!”

  Birdie dips her head down, her cheeks turning a deep red, and Charlotte winces inside. Her daughter is rarely self-conscious or timid. This is new, and Charlotte doesn’t like it. She looks down the hall, wondering where Tucker is, thinking to herself that if he were her kid, she would have made him come to the door to greet them, too.

  Finch suddenly emerges from beneath one of the archways, wiping his hands on a striped dish towel. “Hey, hey!” he yells, his voice bellowing. “My apologies, I was just getting the grill going!” He does a little jog toward them, then claps Jason on the back. “Nice to see you, buddy!” When he shakes Charlotte’s hand, stuffing the dish towel under his other arm before he does it so that he can grasp her hand with both of his, she thinks to herself that he’s huskier looking than in the head shot she’d seen on his company website. Shorter, too. Above all, Finch Cunningham believes in the power of home, the copy next to his bio said, a statement so trite and cheesy it felt immediately untrustworthy, like the opening lines in a political ad. He’s sweating along his hairline, and his ruddy complexion matches the orangey red hue of his polo shirt.

  Suddenly, Tucker slides into the hallway in his athletic socks, dressed in khaki shorts and an untucked oxford shirt. His dark hair is wet, the comb marks running distinctly through it. “Sorry! Sorry!” he says, a wide smile materializing on a face that resembles his mother’s. His eyes pass over all of them as he approaches but he goes to Jason first, shaking his hand, looking him in the eye. Good move,
Charlotte thinks, and then: Too smooth?

  “Nice to see you again,” he says, giving Charlotte a faint hug that matches the one that he then gives to Birdie, who giggles a little, and Charlotte wonders how they greet each other at school, that it’s likely kissing but what kind exactly? And how much?

  Birdie and Tucker became official after Valentine’s Day, when she came home with an armful of red carnations that he’d sent to her through one of those school fund-raisers, with different colors symbolizing the gift’s significance: yellow for friendship, red for love. Charlotte’s only met Tucker in person twice since then: once, when she picked up Birdie after a basketball game at school this winter, and the second time, just a few weeks ago, when she dropped off Birdie and Hannah to meet Tucker and a group of friends in Westover for pizza and ice cream. Jason had asked why there hadn’t been any official dates yet, why she and her friends only seemed to travel in packs, and Birdie had looked at him like he’d asked whether Tucker was going to give her his letterman’s jacket.

  They all move into the kitchen and Charlotte tries not to gawk. She’s been in plenty of nice homes before; at trustees’ dinners for the university, for instance, and her own brother’s house back in Savannah is so gorgeous that Southern Living featured it a couple of years ago. But this is something else, if only in the sense that it seems like the Cunninghams want their home to scream, We have lots and lots and lots of money! She notices the glass-front refrigerator and twelve-burner stove and starts to ask Dayna whether she cooks but her hostess is already speaking.

  “So this is a really good Pinot Gris,” she’s saying, lifting the nearly empty crystal glass that Charlotte had noticed the moment they’d walked in the room. “We went to Sonoma over Columbus Day weekend. A miracle we could go anywhere at all, given Tucker’s lacrosse obligations.” She rolls her eyes up to the ceiling like this is a tremendous inconvenience, but Charlotte knows that this is meant to impress her. Parents around Arlington use their kids’ athletic achievements as social currency starting as early as kindergarten, and as much as she’d like to believe otherwise, Charlotte knows she’s done it, too, with Birdie and tennis. “Would you like a glass?”

  “Charlotte never met a glass of wine she didn’t like,” Jason pipes in. All of the adults laugh—Tucker and Birdie have already escaped to the periphery of the room, where they’re looking out the French doors toward the pool—and Charlotte manages to smile and make a jokey grimace at her husband’s remark, but the comment annoys her.

  “Well, that makes you my kind of girl!” Dayna giggles, handing her a glass.

  “That’s for sure!” Finch quips. “Dayna has a tank top that she wears to SoulCycle—What does it say, honey?”

  “Coffee till cocktails!” She laughs.

  Charlotte throws her a polite smile and takes a sip. The wine is in fact delicious, much better than the glass of grocery store chardonnay she poured for herself while she was getting ready.

  “It’s great,” she says, aware of Dayna’s eyes on her as she lowers the glass.

  “Yes,” Dayna says. “It is. Too bad for Finch that I like it so much. We have to have it shipped by the case from California.”

  Finch raises his eyebrows in an amused way and holds up a hand, rubbing his thumb and fingers together. “Every goddamn thing she likes is expensive!” He goes to his wife and wraps his arms around her shoulders, craning his neck to kiss her cheek. “She’s worth it, though!” Charlotte sneaks a look at Jason, sure he finds this whole display as over the top as she does, but his eyes are locked on Tucker across the room, his expression stony. When he finally turns back to them, their eyes meet, and she can see it all over his face. For all of his pronouncements this morning about her overreacting about Tucker’s Instagram, he doesn’t like the kid either.

  Finch releases his wife, pats the side of her hip, and she giggles. “Come on,” he says to Jason, waving him toward the doors that lead out onto the patio. “Let me show you my new toy!”

  As the doors close behind them, Dayna makes an exasperated face. “We have a pizza oven out there, a smoker, two grills, a rotisserie, but he’s never gotten as excited about anything as that damn Kegerator!”

  “A Kegerator?” Charlotte says. She hasn’t heard of anyone having one since she was in grad school and the Georgia Tech students who lived across the street installed one in their kitchen. She remembers the sour smell of it when she stopped in on their parties, the sticky feel of the linoleum floor under the soles of her shoes.

  “Yes,” Dayna says, leaning against the edge of the kitchen island and plucking a slice of cucumber from the overflowing tray of crudités in the center. “I finally relented and got it for him for his birthday last month. Not that a forty-eight-year-old man needs a Kegerator, but guys are impossible to shop for, aren’t they?”

  “Sure.” Charlotte nods, thinking to herself that she and Jason gave up on birthday and anniversary presents years ago, instead putting the funds toward household things like landscaping, a new HVAC system. At first this felt like responsible adulting, but now it kind of feels like one more aspect of their relationship that they maybe shouldn’t have let go of so easily, like date nights, or kissing each other hello and goodbye at the beginning and end of the day.

  “I mean, he’d prefer a new Tesla,” Dayna says. “But . . .” She flits her hand to her side. “Tucker, come here!” she says, calling to where he and Birdie are talking low beside the windows. “You two come eat some of this, chat with your mothers.” She smiles at Charlotte.

  Tucker pulls out a stool from under the counter for Birdie and then sits beside her. He digs his hand into a pile of cubed cheese and deposits the cheese on a cocktail napkin printed with tiny navy crabs, the greedy gesture reminding Charlotte of her three nephews. Birdie takes a water cracker and nibbles on the edge.

  Charlotte watches Tucker, noticing the smattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks, seeing the adorable little boy he must have been not so long ago. When she first met him at school, picking up Birdie after that basketball game, he’d leaned in the passenger-side window and introduced himself to her just after closing the door for Birdie. Charlotte had watched him for a moment after he walked away, noting that though he was shorter than the others in the group of friends he was with, she could tell from the way he carried himself that he was the alpha. She could always pinpoint this with her students; it was in the way that they talked (excessively loud, to be sure everyone heard them) and the casual, assured gait.

  “So how is your weekend? How is tennis going, Birdie?” Dayna says.

  “Great!” Birdie nods politely, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. “Our coach is super nice.”

  “You’re the only freshman on the varsity team, I hear?” Dayna says.

  “Not only that, but she started practicing with them when she was still in middle school,” Tucker says, looking slyly sideways at Birdie and nudging her in the waist. “She’s their best player.”

  Birdie smiles. “Tucker . . .”

  Charlotte purses her lips. She never sees Birdie like this, so demure, so modest, and she understands that her daughter is nervous—this is a first for all of them—but she still doesn’t like how Birdie seems to be making herself small.

  “Birdie picked up a tennis racket for the first time when she was three, when we were at Jason’s parents’ place in the Outer Banks,” she says.

  “Oh, they have a house there?” Dayna asks.

  “Just a little condo,” Charlotte says. “In one of those little golf communities.”

  “We have a house in Duck.” Dayna laughs. “Right on the water. I told Finchy that was a huge mistake, what with the hurricanes, but—” She crosses her fingers. “We’ve been lucky so far. Honestly, it wouldn’t really matter. We never get there. We prefer to spend the summer out west, at our place in Jackson Hole. Then, of course, last summer we were in the Seychelles. And before that, it was Tulum.” She rolls her eyes.

  The insanity of it all, Ch
arlotte thinks, grinning at her host. Poor thing. “Anyhow,” she says, clearing her throat. “We were in North Carolina and we’d brought Birdie to the court with a tote bag full of toys to keep her occupied while Jason and I played—nothing serious, just messing around—but tennis was all she wanted. We spent the rest of the vacation on the courts. She didn’t want ice cream, mini golf, anything. Just tennis. And it’s pretty much been like that ever since.” She reaches out to smooth the back of Birdie’s hair but when she does it, her daughter dips her head out of the way.

  “Fabulous!” Dayna says, draining her wineglass. She walks to where the bottle is chilling in an ice bucket across the room. “You want more?” she says.

  Charlotte eyes her glass and is surprised to see it’s nearly empty. She didn’t realize how fast she’d been drinking. “Sure,” she says. “Why not?”

  “Well, tennis is a sport you can play forever,” Dayna says. “And the outfits are so cute!” She looks Birdie over and then turns to Charlotte. “Where did she play before high school? Are you guys at Washington Golf?” she says, referencing the country club up the road.

  “No.”

  “Congressional?” She tilts her head, her brow furrowed in confusion. “Army Navy?”

  “We just go to Overlee,” Charlotte says, referencing the pool club that Jason’s family has belonged to since he was a kid.

  “Oh.” Dayna frowns.

  “I just always played through the county,” Birdie pipes up, her eyes meeting Charlotte’s. “At Tuckahoe Park or the courts at Yorktown or wherever.”

  “Well, if you’re good, you’re good,” Dayna says with a shrug. “I mean, just look at Serena Williams and her sister and where they came from.” She makes a face like she’s just smelled something awful. “I’m from California, and trust me . . .”

  “Serena’s my favorite player,” Birdie says, gently kicking Charlotte under the table. Charlotte reaches down and squeezes her daughter’s leg. Inside, she’s beaming. We’re still on the same team.