Twenty
“Well, if it isn’t my favorite task,” Jason hears her say, then feels a hand on his shoulder. He turns.
“You want to help?” he says, holding up one of the bottles of glitter.
Jamie sighs. “Oh, why not?” She takes it, and he slides over a metal tray of raw meat he’s just cut into cubes. “Blue glitter on that one. I’ll do the silver here,” he says. When elementary and middle school groups come to visit the zoo, they completely lose their minds when they learn that zookeepers examine animals’ poop to monitor their health, even occasionally adding glitter to their food so that when it comes out the other end, they’ll know which animals produced which specimens.
“So how was the date?” he asks, though he’s not sure he really wants to know.
“Good enough,” she says, a smile on her face like there’s more to the story.
“Good enough?” he says. “That’s it?”
She tick-tocks her head back and forth. “Yeah.” She winks.
He reaches for the cap for his glitter container and fumbles as he twists it on, trying to ignore the picture that’s just materialized in his head of Jamie writhing under some out-of-shape middle manager whom he’s sure isn’t good enough for her.
“And how was your weekend?” she says, putting down her bottle and leaning against the counter behind them.
He lets out a sigh.
“That good?”
“Long story,” he says, thinking of Saturday and the apologetic texts Charlotte has sent since. Everything is going to change now, she wrote this morning, a statement as meaningless and vague as if she’d written it in hieroglyphics. He wanted to believe her, but how could he, when he knew she was deceiving him? He’d done something he never could have imagined himself doing and logged in to her Gmail, using the password (her father’s birthday) that he knew she used for everything, and sure enough, she’d written Reese, telling him everything about Saturday night and the conversation she’d apparently had with Birdie the next morning, and Reese had written back with bland platitudes (“It’s going to be okay.” “Hold your head up”) that he couldn’t believe his wife—or at least, the Charlotte he’d fallen in love with—could possibly find useful.
More than anything, he’d wanted to drive over to the house and see Birdie, whom he hadn’t seen or spoken to since he peeked in on her before he left the house the morning before. She was sound asleep, Hannah passed out next to her. He felt helpless, wanting to be the father he knew she needed right now.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” Jamie says.
“Not really.” He turns and grabs a pen to label the trays, thinking of how he’d filled his Sunday afternoon. He went for a run but abandoned it twenty minutes in because his back hurt so bad from tossing and turning in the guest room the night before. He went to the grocery store and bought a few things, but the very act depressed him. Everybody around him was filling their grocery carts for the week with big bags of chips and popcorn for the lunch boxes they’d pack, shrink-wrapped trays of chicken and ground beef for the family dinners they’d cook, giant clamshells of greens, gallons of milk. He felt a crushing sense of not belonging, with his sad basket of food for one: a plastic bag of sliced turkey from the deli, a couple of frozen burritos, a plastic jug of iced tea.
Jamie’s looking at him expectantly. “What’s going on?” she says. “Your face just changed twenty different times. Something’s gnawing at you.”
He sighs and throws the pen down on the counter. “Okay,” he says, and he ends up telling her everything. By the time he’s done, tears are rolling down her face.
“I’m sorry,” she says, wiping her cheeks. “Ugh.” She shakes her head at the ceiling. “Life just sucks sometimes, doesn’t it?”
“Yup,” he says. He feels no sense of relief from having spilled his guts. If anything, he feels worse.
“All right,” she says. “Well . . . Do you want to know what really happened with my date? It may make you feel better.”
“Sure.”
“We met at Del Mar.”
“Well, well,” he says, remembering the review he’d read of the sleek Italian seafood place on the Wharf.
“His choice,” she says. “And it wasn’t worth the price of admission. He talked and talked and talked, going on and on about his work, and as I sat there, all I could think about was how much I missed Warren.”
Jason’s shoulders slump. “Oh, Jamie. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” she says. “So the truth is, I left. I just got up, put my napkin on the table, told him I couldn’t do this, and I walked out.”
“Ugh.”
“Yeah,” she says. “It was awful. And then, to make it even more pathetic, I walked down the block to Ben & Jerry’s, stood in the massive Saturday night line of teenagers and cute families and couples on dates that were actually going well, and I sat on a bench by the water, eating my huge waffle cone, and cried like a crazy person.”
“No,” he says. “Oh, Jamie. That just sucks.”
“Sorry . . . I . . .” She moans at the ceiling. “I just sometimes wish things weren’t the way they are, you know? Simple as that. I mean, I’m an adult. Life is hard. I get it. I just didn’t know it would be as hard as this. Why me? Know what I mean?”
He nods, and they stand there, staring at each other for a moment, and then he walks two steps across the tiny room and wraps his arms around her, hugging her hard, nestling his head against the top of hers, feeling her fingers against his back through his shirt. They are so close that he feels her deep exhale, her heartbeat against his, their hips fused so neatly together, and before he knows what he is doing, he kisses her. He tastes the mint from her gum and the salt from her tears and he doesn’t think of anything else in that moment, he just kisses her, and it feels good, to be wanted, to feel her hands against his back, the way she presses herself closer to him, and then—
“Oh my God,” she says, her palms against his chest, pushing herself away.
He holds his hand to his mouth like he’s been stung. Oh my God, his thoughts echo.
Her eyes widen, but then she takes another step toward him, like she wants this to continue.
“No,” he says. “I’m sorry, I can’t—Jamie, I—”
She steps back and turns for the door, fleeing before he can finish.
He goes outside to get some air, and sees one of the zoo’s famous pandas wrestling with a piece of bamboo, flopping onto her back and hugging it to her chest. A family standing a few feet away watches her and laughs, and then all four of them—the parents, two teenagers—pull out their phones, yelping to each other about getting pictures, about which of them will take a video. It depresses him, how many people he sees doing this each day, observing the animals through their screens instead of taking them in with their eyes, missing anything outside of their shot, all of the things on the periphery that are every bit as, if not more, compelling.
He thinks of Charlotte then, always on her phone, always feeling the need to project the right image, and he feels an intense wave of guilt, thinking of what he’s just done. He thought he might feel vindicated somehow if it happened. It wasn’t as intentional as that—he didn’t know he was going to do it until it actually happened—though leveling the playing field had crossed his mind over the past couple of days. But kissing Jamie unlocked something he didn’t expect: He just misses his own wife that much more. He misses her more than ever.
* * *
Charlotte’s standing in the kitchen in her sweaty running clothes, taking a long swig of water, when Wendy calls.
“Sooooo . . .” she says, uncharacteristically quiet.
“What is it?” Charlotte says, pulling her hair from her ponytail and shaking it out. She looks at the clock. Birdie will be arriving home at any moment, she hopes. Charlotte took the afternoon off, telling Tabatha she planned to work at home and prepare for final exams, but she really intends to take Birdie out to dinner, anywhere she wants, if Birdie
is up for it.
“I got an email,” she says. “From someone I worked with ages ago. She used to be in magazines—I used to pitch her my books all the time—but now she works out in California at a marketing agency for some of the tech firms.”
“Uh-huh,” Charlotte says, the subject of the conversation dawning on her. Montana. She’d told Wendy about the social media thing, and her agent had written it off as nothing to worry about, something that would go away if they just ignored it. And she’d been correct. But she’d skirted over the details of the Montana talk when she emailed Wendy, not being entirely truthful about how it had gone. She wanted to erase the trip from her memory, to never think of it again.
“She said she saw your talk,” Wendy begins. “How did it . . . You said it went okay, correct?”
“Uh-huh,” Charlotte says. “Yup.”
“Okay,” Wendy says, sounding relieved. “You’re sure? This woman was always a bit of an exaggerator, and cynical, kind of a pain in the ass. The type of person who complains about the sun being too hot during a day at the beach. But she said . . . she said your talk was . . .”
“What?” Charlotte says, worried now because Wendy is never at a loss for words.
“Lackluster.”
“Lackluster?”
“That’s the word she used.”
“Well . . . I was nervous, so maybe I wasn’t my best.”
“I figured as much. But I watched the video this morning. I thought it was odd that they hadn’t posted it on the symposium website, because they always do. Every year.”
“Right,” Charlotte says, pulling out one of the chairs at the kitchen table and sitting.
“So I called my contact there and she sent it to me. She said they’d decided not to put it up.”
“Oh,” Charlotte says, not sure whether to feel disappointed or relieved. “Okay.”
“You weren’t your best on it, Charlotte, I gotta say. You seemed really off. Did you take an anxiety pill or something beforehand? Did you have something to drink? Because you seemed kind of, I don’t know, dopey.”
“Ouch,” Charlotte says.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Char, I really am, but it just didn’t seem like you. Is there anything you’re not telling me? I want to make sure as we head into this next book that everything’s okay.”
Charlotte bites her lip. She’s done a pretty good job of ignoring the next book since Wendy’s visit to DC, telling herself that she’d focus on it after school gets out, as if her family issues would be resolved by then. “I think I was nervous, Wendy,” she says. “Really. I know it wasn’t my usual caliber. I think I just airballed, you know? I’d really worked myself up about the audience.”
“Okay,” Wendy says, but she doesn’t sound like she’s buying it.
“It won’t happen again,” Charlotte says, resting an elbow on the table and putting her head in her hand.
“It’s all right,” Wendy says. “As long as you’re honest with me.”
“Of course,” Charlotte says, closing her eyes.
A moment passes, and then another. “All right, all right,” Wendy says. “I’m just gonna . . . This is really uncomfortable, Charlotte, because I don’t have any desire to get involved in my clients’ private lives, but this is an instance where I think I need to.”
“What is it?” Charlotte asks, clenching a fist in her lap.
“This is really uncomfortable. But the woman I know who was at the talk?”
“Yeah?” Charlotte says, her anxiety ratcheting up.
“She also mentioned that she saw you walking back to your room. With a man.”
A feeling like water rushing into her ears comes over Charlotte, her adrenaline spiking as she realizes what this is about. Wendy is waiting for her to say something.
“Oh, God,” she says. “Wendy, I can—I had too much to drink. It happened really fast. I don’t . . . I can’t really explain it; I think it was the altitude. The man was Leo. The . . . house manager, I guess? He helped me find my room.”
“And that’s it? That’s all he—”
“What?” Charlotte says. “Of course that’s it! Did you think—”
“I didn’t know.”
“No!” Charlotte says. “No, absolutely not, Wendy. He just walked me to my room.”
“Charlotte, just tell me before we officially sign these papers that you’re capable of writing a happy family book. You really stalled on me when I was down there and presented it to you, and if this is the reason why, I need to know. Is your marriage on the rocks? Because those texts that woman posted on Instagram made me worry, too.”
“Everything’s going to be fine,” Charlotte says, surprised by how forcefully she wants to fight for this deal now that it’s precarious. “I promise you, there is nothing to worry about.”
Wendy sighs heavily into the phone. “Okay. I’m taking you at your word.”
“You have it,” Charlotte says. “I promise.”
Twenty-One
I’m inside, Jason’s text reads. Charlotte pushes through the double doors into the darkened ballroom on the ground floor of a bland office building in Ballston where the Yorktown High School auction is being held. She feels nervous in a way that she hasn’t in some time, keenly self-conscious that this is the first time she will face Jason since last weekend. She wants to tell him that she hasn’t had a drink since then. At night, she makes big bowls of ice cream for Birdie and herself, not caring if they both know that the whipped cream and caramel sauce and rainbow sprinkles on Birdie’s bowl are an obvious ploy for forgiveness. Her daughter still isn’t really speaking to her, but her silence this time feels less like animosity and more like a strategy to see if Charlotte will live up to the expectation she set during that morning-after conversation. Charlotte gets it: Actions speak louder. And so every night, she hands Birdie her bowl and nudges her over on the couch, pulling an edge of the blanket Birdie usually has over her lap onto her own, and they sit there together, silently eating, watching whatever Birdie’s chosen. It is slow, incremental, but it feels like progress. In part because, instead of floating into the wine haze she’d become so accustomed to, Charlotte is there. She is present.
But she wants to drink. Badly. After the phone call with Wendy, she went straight for the kitchen and opened a bottle, and then she paused. She paused. She saw herself again, swerving, wobbling. She saw herself knocking her shin into the coffee table in front of Jason. Accidentally handing Birdie her wineglass instead of the water she asked for. Unable to drive her own car, to mother her daughter in her time of need. She poured the entire bottle down the drain, and then gathered up the three remaining bottles in the house and emptied them, too. She doesn’t know if she’s done drinking forever, if she is finished for good, but she knows that the role that drinking plays in her life can no longer be a leading one. Try harder, Birdie had said that day on the back patio. Try harder, Mom.
The auction committee has clearly gone to great pains with the decor, but to Charlotte’s relief, at least there isn’t a theme. No jungle safari fake palms in the corners, no shining sparkling cardboard cutout stars hanging overhead. There are silver and blue balloon arches and tasteful bouquets on the skirted tables, a five-piece band playing palatable jazz on the stage on the far end of the ballroom. Dozens of people mill about, and Charlotte waves to some of the familiar faces, looking for Jason, who should be the most familiar face of all but feels like just the opposite.
A woman—pretty, young, her wavy hair clipped back from her face—stops in front of her with a tray of drinks in clear plastic cocktail glasses. “Can I offer you a drink?”
“What is it?” Charlotte asks, desperate to quell her nerves. It’s a pinkish red, like the drink she used to order in college, vodka and soda with a splash of cranberry, a selection she thought was so sophisticated at the time. She felt grown-up, leaning across a crowded bar, shouting her order to a bartender while everyone else ordered Bud Light and Jäger shots.
“
A . . .” The waitress glances down at the note she’s pulled from her black pants. “A patriot, they’re calling it.”
“Ah, like the school mascot,” Charlotte says.
The woman shrugs. “It’s vodka and pomegranate juice.”
Charlotte shakes her head and steps away. She scans the room, holding her chain-link evening bag in front of her middle, in a matronly way, she realizes, then tucks it under her arm.
“There you are!” Stephanie says, appearing at her side with her husband, Joe. “We just saw Jason,” he says, hooking his thumb back over his shoulder. “He’s looking for you.”
“You didn’t come together?” Stephanie says, furrowing her brow. Charlotte eyes the glass of wine in her friend’s hand.
“I had a work thing that I knew would run late,” she says, reciting the line she’d come up with this morning, after she asked Birdie, again, if she’d told Hannah that Jason wasn’t living with them right now, and Birdie insisted, again, that she hadn’t (“Why would I want to embarrass myself like that, Mom?”).
“This place looks nice, doesn’t it?” Charlotte says, changing the subject. “Have you checked out any of the auction items?”
Stephanie nudges Joe in the side. “This one already bid on, like, six different things,” she says. They give each other a teasing look, and Charlotte feels a pang in her stomach, envying their closeness. She searches past them, looking for Jason, and suddenly spots him.
“Oh, yeah. There he is.” Stephanie makes a face at her. “Talking to Finch Cunningham.”
Jason is wearing the jacket they bought together on a Saturday morning at Nordstrom a few years ago, when he finally acknowledged that the sport coat he’d had since college had seen better days. Charlotte can picture him standing in front of the bathroom mirror, the air humid with steam from the shower.
“You heard about Finch and Dayna, of course?” Stephanie takes a step toward Charlotte, dipping her head.
“I know that he left,” she says, her eyes still on Jason.
Perfect Happiness Page 27