The One That Got Away

by Leigh Himes

  Though because she was just shy of her thirty-sixth birthday, we both knew Jules was probably more right than I. Time was a cruel and discriminating bitch, and she preferred to leave slightly pudgy, often wifty, dog-loving hippie chicks behind. No matter how sweet, beautiful, and talented their best friends thought they were.

  So as she pulled out her current surefire weight-loss solution, I didn’t say anything, just watched her open small plastic containers and pour all the items onto a paper plate snatched from Bagel Towne’s counter. At least this week’s choice—the Pacific Rim diet, which promised that if you ate with chopsticks you would eat slower and feel full faster—had lasted all the way until Friday. I acted like eating homemade pad thai with chopsticks at a bagel place was perfectly normal and continued with my news.

  “Do you remember when I worked at that little agency after college, and I met that guy in the elevator? The one doing the internship?”

  “Not really. Why?”

  “Come on. You remember. The really cute one? The one I almost castrated with my key card?”

  “That sounds familiar. Didn’t he ask you out or something?”

  “Yes! And like a dope, I said no,” I said, then turned the magazine toward her and stabbed his face for emphasis. “Well, there he is.”

  “Wow, he sure knows how to wear a tux,” she said as she pulled the magazine closer.

  “Well, he should. He’s a van Holt.”

  “And apparently an ardent supporter of botanical gardens,” she said, reading the caption. “How admirable.” She rolled her eyes as she handed it back to me.

  “I never even gave him a chance,” I said, my voice serious and quiet. “My bosses were horrified—they couldn’t believe I turned down a van Holt. Or understand why someone who was twenty-three wouldn’t say yes, boyfriend or not.”

  “Oh, well,” said Jules. “He’s probably a weirdo anyway. A cokehead or serial killer or something.”

  “No, he seemed sweet. Not like a rich jerk or anything. Not that I knew who he was then.”

  I pulled the magazine and stared even closer, then looked up. “Why was I so stupid?” I continued. “The boyfriend I had at the time—the one I was so devoted to—broke up with me, like, three minutes later. Couldn’t he have realized he didn’t want to be tied down, like, before Alexander van Holt asked me out?” I felt my heart drop, as if that phone call was just yesterday, not years ago.

  “Stop,” said Jules. “Why are you getting so upset? It doesn’t matter.”

  “I know it’s silly, but I can’t help but think about what my life would have been like if I had just said yes,” I said.

  “Oh my God, Bee,” said Jules, using my college nickname and a softer tone. “It wasn’t a mistake. You have a great life.”

  “I know, I know. I love my kids. They are more than wonderful,” I replied as tears welled. “But life’s just so much harder than I thought it would be. There’s no money and no prospect of money, and Jimmy’s gone all the time, and the kids are always fighting and work is overwhelming and I’m just so tired. So, so tired.”

  Inexplicably, I began to cry, tears dripping down my face and splashing onto the orange Formica tabletop. I pushed over the bagel and magazines and laid my forehead down among the sesame seeds. I started sobbing uncontrollably, right in the middle of Bagel Towne’s lunch rush. Jules, always the supportive friend and never one to be embarrassed, reached out and stroked my hair, shushing me quietly while using her other hand to stab my bagel with her chopstick. After a few minutes, I began to calm down, letting the cool of the plastic tabletop and the hum of the restaurant lull me to silence.

  When I had quieted down, Jules spoke. “Well, Abigail Owen Lahey, I, for one, am glad you never went out with that rich guy. I can’t imagine you all Botoxed and blown out and lunching with the ladies.”

  “Me neither,” I said, head still resting on the table. “But I bet Mrs. Alexander Collier van Holt never has to worry about the mortgage. And by the way, don’t think I can’t hear you eating my bagel.”

  “Shut up, you dirty whore,” she deadpanned.

  Leave it to Jules to make me laugh through tears.

  Jimmy was picking up Sam on his way home from work, and Gloria’s carpool didn’t drop her off until later, so I knew I had a few minutes to change into sweats and slippers, start dinner, and maybe even use the bathroom without an audience. I was able to sneak out of work a half hour early, thanks to Charlotte needing a polish change before tonight’s Young Friends meet-and-greet at the Rodin Museum. As soon as she was safely out the door, computers were powered down and bags packed so fast you’d have thought there was a bomb threat.

  I turned up our street of seventies-era brick boxes and stone bungalows and arrived at the Lahey residence. It was typical of the area, its front door facing the neighbors’ in the Pennsylvania Dutch style, its white wood siding accented by a blue-gray stone chimney. Nothing spectacular, but solid and well built. It was one of the few houses on our street without an ugly addition tacked to its rear. In other neighborhoods, our family of four was average; in Catholic Grange Hill, we were just getting started.

  Ours was a commuter town, a lower-middle-class Bermuda Triangle wedged between West Philadelphia, the prestigious Main Line, and the rolling horse farms of Chester County. It was the kind of place where parents still yelled at their kids in public; lawn ornaments and birdbaths were considered chic without any sense of irony; and stores were named after what they sold: Fruits & Veggies, Beer/Soda, and Lamps! (the exclamation point the Grange Hill version of branding). The town seemed to suffer from decades of both overuse and neglect, the entire zip code in need of a good power washing.

  Turning into the driveway on autopilot, I slammed on my brakes, narrowly avoiding the side of a shiny red sports car parked sloppily across the asphalt. Its vanity license plate—“GRRRR”—did nothing to help identify the owner.

  “Who the hell…?” I said, shutting off the ignition and grabbing my stuff. Running up the back porch steps, I noticed every light in the house was on and the door was not only unlocked but slightly ajar, swinging inward easily as I rushed inside. I also noticed that the dog, usually pawing at the door, was already out in the yard.

  Panicking, I threw my bags down on the kitchen table and ran from room to room, though not sure what I was looking for. Thieves? Meth-heads on the hunt for drugs? A neighbor, already drunk from happy hour, mistaking our house for his and passing out on our couch? (That had actually happened once before; we gave him a cup of coffee and drove him home.)

  And then upstairs I heard voices and the sound of water running.

  “Jimmy?” I whispered as I crept up the steps, feet moving quietly on the worn runner.

  And then another sound, a high-pitched giggle. But this I recognized.

  As I opened the bathroom door, steam flowed out, revealing my daughter, Gloria, sitting on the toilet with a white towel wrapped tightly on her tiny frame and a second towel wrapped atop her head, framing her rosy-pink face. And standing just in front of her, someone even more sinister than a burglar, a desperate addict, or a drunken neighbor—my mother.

  Roberta Eleanor Owen DiSiano was not your typical grandmother, or your typical mother. Hell, she wasn’t your typical woman. At sixty-two years old, she had short, fluffy blond hair, layers of makeup, and long, dangly earrings that touched her shoulders. In the summer, she lived in tennis skirts and halter dresses, but on a cool fall day like today, she sported tight jeans, a fuzzy sweater, fur-trimmed boots, and plenty of turquoise and silver jewelry. Next to my tiny daughter wrapped in giant white towels, she looked like a slutty Eskimo hovering over the world’s smallest igloo.

  I had to admit Roberta looked good for her age—fit and firm and painted and plucked—but for decades now she had embarrassed me with her choice of attire. Day or night, her clothes were always a little too tight, a little too short. She said she dressed to match her “tiger spirit,” but I had no idea what that meant and wasn�
��t about to ask. All I knew was that she was desperate for attention: from men, from women, from bank tellers, from bartenders, from Gloria, from me, from anyone with a pulse.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, catching my breath. “And what is Gloria doing with you?”

  “Relax, Abigail,” she said, her eyes not straying from the nail polish, the exact flame-red shade as her lips, she was carefully applying to my five-year-old’s toes. “I got off work early, so I thought I’d pick up Gloria from school and show her my new car.”

  “Mom, you can’t do that. They have rules,” I said, exasperated. “I have to let them know in advance if we change the pickup person.”

  “It’s just elementary school; it’s not the Pentagon.”

  Gloria chimed in, emboldened by her new nails and an hour spent with the tiger spirit—“Yeah, Mom, it’s not the Pentagong.”

  I closed my eyes and took a breath, trying to remain calm. “I really don’t want Gloria wearing nail polish, and you know this. She knows this. Mom, I wish you would respect—”

  “Well, us girls just have to look great on a Friday night, don’t we?” she asked, steamrolling over me, then turning back to her granddaughter. “And when we’re done we can go downstairs and eat ice cream and talk about boys!”

  “Eeeewwww,” shrieked Gloria, jumping off the toilet and racing out before I could say no to the ice cream, the nails, the fun.

  I reached in and turned off the shower, then started picking up Gloria’s discarded clothes.

  “Mom, how many times do I have to tell you? My life is not an episode of Sex and the City, and my five-year-old daughter is not one of your girlfriends,” I said. “I am not Miranda, Gloria is not Charlotte, even if you are Samantha.”

  “Of course not, Abigail,” she replied, her eyes locking with mine for the first time since I entered the room. “Even Miranda wouldn’t be caught dead in that outfit.”

  After the kids were asleep, the dishes washed, and the laundry folded, I carried a cup of herbal tea up to bed. I padded carefully into the room, trying not to wake Sam, sleeping profoundly, as only a toddler could, just a few feet away. We kept his crib in our closet since the nursery radiator stubbornly refused to get hot. (When we had first bought the house, our plan was to renovate the back bedroom and add a bathroom, but with money being tight, what should have been a blue-and-brown monkey-themed nursery was now just a catchall for out-of-season clothes, old speakers, hockey sticks, and tax files.)

  I climbed into bed, holding my steaming cup carefully as I sank back into my stack of pillows. I had just cracked the Edith Wharton novel I was reading—only a few pages from the end—when Jimmy appeared carrying a white envelope.

  “What’s up?” I whispered.

  “Can you tell me what is a ‘bucket bag’ and why the hell is it five hundred and ninety-eight dollars?” he asked, half-laughing, half-serious. “I’m really hoping it’s some sort of marketing stunt that you’ll be reimbursed for.”

  “First of all, I’m in PR, not marketing, and second of all, it’s none of your concern,” I said, attempting to grab the envelope.

  He held it out of reach, knowing I was trapped by hot tea on a lumpy bed. He stared at me until I confessed.

  “It’s a purse, okay? I bought it a couple weeks ago.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I was having a bad day. And I guess it caught me in a weak moment.”

  “So you spent six hundred dollars on a purse? That’s crazy.”

  “No, it’s not. Lots of women I know carry purses way more expensive.” And those women don’t work half as hard as me, I wanted to add but didn’t. We glared at each other.

  “Abbey, you know we can’t afford it.” He sighed and looked away. “God, why do you always do this?”

  “Do what?”

  “Make me the bad guy.”

  “You’re not the bad guy; obviously I am for wanting to spend my money on something for me.”

  “Your money?” he whisper-shouted. “How come when you make money, it’s yours, but when I make it, it’s ours? That’s not fair.”

  What’s not fair is that you’re not making any money at all, I wanted to scream back. You sit in your office just waiting for the phone to ring or drinking at your brother’s bar, while I run myself ragged with work, the kids, the house, and the four thousand other responsibilities that somehow got dumped on me when I married you.

  But instead, too tired to fight any longer, I told him, “I’ll take it back.”

  “Tomorrow.” He threw the envelope down in front of me, his brown eyes almost black with anger, and walked out, the creaking floorboards underscoring his rage.

  I picked up the bill and attempted to toss it back at him, but its pages separated and fluttered back down into my lap, mocking me. I shoved them onto the floor, set aside my mug, then flopped back onto my pillows.

  I should have gotten up and brushed my teeth and wiped the mascara off my eyes. But I didn’t care. I turned off the light and curled up under the bedspread, the bitter taste of tea still on my lips.

  The next morning I made Jimmy watch the kids while I headed straight for Nordstrom. I was dreading it, knowing the saleslady would take one look at my fake Uggs and even faker diamond studs and give me that “we both know you shouldn’t even be in here” look. As I turned onto Route 1 toward the City Line Mall, I found myself thinking of that photo of Alex van Holt in Town & Country. What was his Saturday morning like? Was he married? Did he have kids? Had he ever thought about me again after that day?

  At a stoplight, I pulled up behind a smooth navy BMW, its glossy windows hiding the glossy family inside, and wondered why the choices you make when you are young don’t ever seem to matter until you’re too old to go back and fix them. Or too tired to even try. I was a thirty-seven-year-old woman who had worked full-time her entire adult life, yet I belonged wholly to other people—my kids, my husband, my boss, my clients, even my mother. My daybook was filled with grocery lists, half-written press releases, dry-cleaning receipts, appointment reminders, overdue cable bills, and a prescription for something my vet swore would heal those spots on the dog’s back.

  And I wasn’t even allowed a designer bag to carry it all in.

  So it was with a mix of irritation, anger, and self-pity that I walked into the busy first floor of Nordstrom and onto the escalator, feeling exposed and vulnerable, not just from the Betsy/Ellen run-in, but from the department store’s overly bright lights. Clomping up the moving steps and muttering to myself, my hands occupied with an umbrella and coffee and bags and boxes, my heart beat fast and my body felt strangely unsteady. As the first-floor accessories receded, I lost my footing—and my balance.

  What happened next was so fast, there was no time for me to be truly terrified, and I must have looked to others as if I was performing some strangely choreographed high dive. I swooned backward, my hands windmilling, as coffee flew upward in a thick arc. I tried to connect to the railing but overcompensated, so when I turned toward it, I hit it like a gymnast on the uneven bars, flipping over easily. Together with the umbrella, my old purse, and the silver box, my body twisted downward.

  A second later, my head hit the Nordstrom piano bench and then smacked the floor, a one-two punch of the most unforgiving wood and marble. I saw the red purse free itself from its box, then skid away on its little gold feet.

  And then I smelled roses and heard a few bars of a classical tune, the overly sweet scent and dramatic music making the whole incident seem all the more ridiculous.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I woke to the soft, repetitive drip of an IV machine in an otherwise still and silent room. As my eyes opened and began to focus, I saw spotless cream paint on smooth walls, the warm glow of a crystal lamp on a walnut dresser, and a small silver frame with “No Smoking” stenciled in calligraphy. Also on the dresser—and strangely out of place in this perfectly curated room: a blue plastic pitcher of water and some gauze.

  I lifted
my head, then shut my eyes and grimaced. It felt like someone had hit me with a hammer, leaving a pulsing ache above my right ear. I reached up and gently touched the spot, expecting to find matted blood and a gaping wound, but felt only smooth hair over a slight lump.

  I took a few deep breaths, and when the pain subsided, or I adjusted to it, I took another look around. And better understood. I was lying in a bed, in a hospital. But not one of the shared and shabby rooms in Delaware County Memorial, where I had given birth to my children. Here, there were tasteful watercolors on the walls; a flat-screen TV; a private, en suite bath; and beside me on another pretty mahogany table, an obscenely large bouquet of peonies. Eyeing the explosion of pink petals, I became scared. Just how long had I been here? And how badly was I hurt? The only way Jimmy would spend more than $12.99 on flowers was if something was really wrong.

  Oh my God, I’m paralyzed. I’m permanently disfigured. Or worse, I’m bleeding internally and have only days to live. I’ll be the first person in history to die from shopping… how humiliating.

  But then, before my racing heart could accelerate into a full-blown panic attack, in walked the most gorgeous doctor I’d ever seen, all straight teeth and bright eyes and strong shoulders, smiling at me like I was Marilyn Monroe back from the dead. He wore a beautiful suit, not scrubs, so I wondered if his shift was ending and he was heading out for a meeting or for dinner. If it was a date, she was one lucky lady.

  “You’re awake!” he said as he moved alongside my bed, grabbing my hand. “Sorry, I wanted to be here when you opened your eyes.”