by Meg Donohue
“I don’t want to do whatever I want,” she says. “Doing whatever I want holds no appeal for me at all.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Dani says.
“Live a little!” Vanessa says. She has no idea how much Kate hates this expression. “Loosen up!”
“Did Gabe give you his number?” Dani asks. “Let’s call him.”
“I don’t want to,” Kate says. She feels testy. It’s distressing to think she has nearly a year of these mood swings ahead of her.
Dani is back at the stereo, flipping through the CDs again. She replaces Neil Young with another CD, and spins around, wagging her eyebrows as the opening guitar riffs of Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” blare out of the speakers. Vanessa laughs, and she and Dani begin to gyrate around the rug in front of the couch. They motion for Kate to join them but she doesn’t feel like moving. Gracie trots over and nudges her head below Kate’s hand and releases a soft, halfhearted woof that blows out her butter-yellow cheeks and sounds like humph. Her brown eyes shine.
How will Gracie feel about the baby? Will she chew the baby’s toys out of jealousy? Or will she sleep beside the crib, protecting the baby? The room seems to tilt, and Kate closes her eyes. When the music shuts off, Kate opens her eyes to find Dani and Vanessa watching her. Dani is pointing the stereo remote at her, as if she might use it to change Kate’s mood. Both of her friends look as if they are trying not to be annoyed. She thinks of Colin—he was always ready to remind her that nobody likes a party pooper. She is glad that her brother can still make her angry; it makes it feel like less time has passed than actually has. A lump forms in her throat. She knows Peter wants her to deal with what happened to Colin, but she decides now, in this moment, that it will be easiest to wade into the secrets, starting in the shallow end and working her way to the deep.
“I’m pregnant,” she says.
“Are you sure?” Vanessa asks. She and Dani are sitting on either side of Kate. “Remember that time you thought you had an iron deficiency?”
Kate has a habit of Googling her symptoms—in the case that Vanessa is referring to, bruising easily—and calling her friends with self-diagnoses.
“Or maybe you really are allergic to gluten,” Dani says. “Remember when you thought gluten was making you nauseous?”
“And swollen?” Vanessa adds.
“This isn’t like those other times,” Kate says. “I’m not self-diagnosing. I’ve been to the doctor. I’m eight weeks pregnant.”
“What are you going to do?” Dani asks.
“I’m going to keep it. Her. Him.”
“I can’t believe Peter broke up with you when you were pregnant,” Vanessa says.
“Peter doesn’t know. Nobody did until now.”
“What? You haven’t told him?”
“No.”
“Your mother is going to have a heart attack,” Dani says.
“That is so not helpful,” Vanessa says. Then, turning to Kate, “You’re giving her a grandchild. She’s going to be thrilled.”
There is a chain-gang pop of fireworks outside that ends nearly as quickly as it starts. Gracie sits bolt upright, trembling. Kate strokes her silky ears. The Fourth of July isn’t until Monday, people, Kate thinks. How hard is it to stick to a schedule? She realizes she is biting her bottom lip, her whole mouth screwed over to the side. She does this right before she cries, each and every time. She begins to cry.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ve been crying a lot.”
“Don’t apologize for having feelings,” Vanessa says.
Dani snaps her fingers and points at Kate. “Birth control is your messy closet!”
Kate is familiar with Dani’s theory that everyone is hiding something. For years, Dani has been peering into Kate’s purse and opening drawers in her kitchen, determined that Kate could not possibly be as meticulous as she appears. If only, Kate thinks, my secret is as innocent as a messy closet or unprotected sex. “You caught me,” she tells Dani. “Every once in a while, I forget to take the pill.”
“How are you feeling?” Vanessa asks.
No one has asked her this yet. Kate takes a moment, considering. She wants to say that she is terrified. That she is afraid that if she does not tell Peter soon she will lose him and be single forever. But her friends are looking at her in a way they have never looked at her before, and so she draws herself up a little and says, “Thirsty.”
Vanessa nods. “You should drink a lot of water. Carry it around with you all day.”
Dani stands. “I’ll get you some.”
When Dani is in the kitchen, Vanessa leans close to Kate. “You’re having a baby!” she whispers. She is drunk, Kate realizes, but still the tears in her eyes are a surprise. “Drew wants us to have another baby.”
“Oh, Vanessa. Do you want another baby?”
“Someday, but . . .” She shakes her head. “Sorry. I’m not going to hijack this conversation.” She’s still whispering. “I’m really happy for you. Congratulations!”
Her words sink into Kate and wrap around her heart.
“Well, Kate, thanks a lot,” Dani says when she returns from the kitchen and hands her a glass of water. “A career and a baby. Way to make me feel like an overgrown child.”
“You’re doing it all,” Vanessa says. She looks despondent.
“Um,” Kate says. “Note you did not list ‘husband’ in there anywhere.”
“Whatever,” Vanessa says.
“I’ll buy you a vibrator,” Dani says, clinking Kate’s water glass with her own.
They spend another hour on the couch discussing baby names, Ginny Kimble, and everything they know about the current lives of their old classmates from Philadelphia Friends School. Kate knows the most about their old classmates, so she does most of the talking. Heather O’Donnell, who had gone to Harvard and started her own consulting firm in Boston, stopped working after having her second son and is now pregnant with her third child. Matt Gordon, a wiry boy who had seemed incapable of finding shirts that weren’t too big and who had never said a word to Dani or Vanessa, but with whom Kate had occasionally studied, is now a Hollywood agent with a reputation for being a cutthroat negotiator. These are the tidbits that are the most fascinating—the people whose lives have turned out so differently from what Kate or her friends might have imagined, revealing, perhaps, just how little they had understood one another. Still, they had all known one another when they were young, and this would always tie them together.
It’s after midnight. Vanessa has finished an entire bottle of wine by herself. She lies on the couch, eyes half-lidded, her feet on Kate’s lap. Kate would not have pegged Vanessa as the one who would spend most of the weekend drunk. Maybe this is what motherhood does to you. The thought, naturally, is troubling.
Dani is sitting on the rug with her back against the ottoman, absentmindedly stroking Gracie, who is stretched on her side in a deep sleep, her exposed ear twitching whenever the breeze picks up. “Peaceful Easy Feeling” is playing on the stereo, as it has a hundred times before. Kate feels a mix of excitement and contentment—the unlikely combination of feelings she only experiences when she is with Dani and Vanessa.
“I can’t imagine what they say about me,” Dani says without looking up.
“Who?” Kate asks.
“Heather O’Donnell and Matt Gordon, when they’re sitting around gossiping about the people they used to know.” Dani’s hand still rests on Gracie, but she’s no longer petting her. “The conversation probably goes something like, ‘Kate Harrington? She’s a hotshot lawyer at some big firm in Philly. Vanessa Dale? She married the son of Thomas Warren; they live in Manhattan and have a daughter. Dani Lowenstein? Huh. No idea what happened to her.’ ”
“You just defined me by the man I married and the fact that I have a daughter,” Vanessa says. She’s speaking slowly, staring at the ceiling and blinking.
Kate is still surprised that Vanessa gave up her job at the gallery when she had Lu
cy. It’s clear she struggles with the decision, and Kate wishes she would talk about it. She’s empathetic—she doesn’t know who she would be without her job either. She loves working, possibly to an embarrassing degree. When she was still in law school, she and Vanessa would call each other and talk about their days as they walked back to their respective apartments. Vanessa always sounded a little out of breath and excited on those walks home from the gallery; these days she sounds tired, but her voice has a softer quality too. Kate would never tell her friend this, but the excitement in Vanessa’s voice as she strode down the streets of New York had made Kate feel a little sad. Vanessa had a new home. She was never coming back to Philly.
“I don’t think she’s defining us,” Kate tells Vanessa.
“It is a definition, actually,” Dani says. Dani has made jokes about her own life choices over the years, but Kate has never heard her sound so melancholy. She finally turns around to face them on the couch. “People sum you up in a sentence, two if you’re really interesting. It’s the two-cent, gossip version of the whole picture. A dictionary entry versus an encyclopedia. I’m not telling you guys anything you don’t know.”
“Well, it’s up to the listener to know the value of being a mom,” Kate says to Vanessa. “We know what an important job it is. You’re raising a little girl. What could possibly mean more?” Vanessa shrugs and closes her eyes. Kate turns to Dani. “And you. What’s going on with you? You’re a California girl. You’re writing a novel. You’re living the dream. That’s what people say.” Kate thinks for a moment. “Anyway, since when do any of us have to be the brightest star? If you’re content in your life, then who cares that no one is sitting around talking about what a genius you turned out to be?”
Dani looks up at her, shaking her head, smiling. “Kate,” she says, “you have always been the best therapist money can’t buy.” Just then, Vanessa releases a soft snore. Kate and Dani laugh.
“You know, I really don’t think it would hurt anything to call that Gabe guy,” Dani says. “Just for fun.”
It’s what everyone seems to want from her—to loosen up, to have fun, to not think so much about the future. She just wants them to be happy, and if this is what it takes, she’ll do it. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll call him.”
Dani looks surprised. “Are you delirious? Should we go to bed? You’re up pretty late for a pregnant lady.”
Listening to the Eagles, talking in the rambling way that only time away from the demands of everyday adult life allows, feels like a gift. It makes Kate sad to think of the summers that have come and gone over the past eight years without their meeting up in Avalon for this time together.
“Music is good for babies,” Kate says.
For a moment she sees a glimmer of the love Dani feels for her shining in her eyes. It’s like the sun peeking out from between clouds, a flash of soul-fortifying warmth, and Kate basks in it. She wishes she could bottle this feeling, take it home in a doggie bag and feast on it later.
“Well, then, we should turn it up,” Dani says, pointing the remote in the direction of the stereo. “For the baby.”
14
Vanessa
Vanessa stirs, awake but barely. She is wearing the clothes she wore the night before and is stretched out on her stomach, lying diagonally across the queen-size bed. She only vaguely remembers Kate shaking her awake last night, stumbling down the stairs to bed. The room is now full of sun. She wants nothing more than to continue sleeping. If this were a typical Sunday morning in New York, this would be the moment when she would hear Lucy’s voice through the monitor. But here, there is only the sound of birds outside the window. Vanessa is so relieved she could cry. She pulls the covers over her head and sinks back into a deep sleep.
An hour later, her phone buzzes. It’s Drew.
“Morning,” he says.
Vanessa squints. The room is painted a pale shade of yellow. On the wall by the closet are a series of framed photographs of the sun setting over the wetlands. They’re schmaltzy, sentimental, and poorly composed; she guesses they were shot by Suz. She hates them. It gives her some satisfaction that Dr. Lowenstein hung them down here in a guest bedroom. He must hate them too, but now he’s stuck with them. They’re part of the Suz package—the hot sex will only last so long, but the bad photography and huge pink hats are here to stay. She doesn’t like to think what else might change around this beautiful house as Susanna makes her mark.
“Hi,” she says to her husband. “How’s Lucy?”
“Happy as a clam,” Drew says. “She went down the slide about eighty times yesterday. She was playing with another little girl. Emma, I think. They seemed to know each other.”
Vanessa remembers this little girl and her mother, a willowy woman of ambiguous ethnicity who wears camel-colored sheath dresses and patent leather flats to the park, her hair glossy around her face. Exactly the sort of woman Vanessa would have said was Drew’s type, back when she thought she knew his type—back when she thought she was his type.
“I’m glad she’s having fun,” she says. “I miss her.” Why does she sound whiny? Vanessa clears her throat. “Kate is pregnant.”
“You’re kidding!”
“She’s having the baby. On her own.” Part of her feels sorry for Kate but, selfishly, she is excited about the possibility of Kate becoming a mother. None of Vanessa’s premarriage friends have children yet and most of the mothers she meets in New York are a decade older; it’s hard for her to connect with these women, some of whom have built and sold entire companies before having children and say things like, When I’m on my deathbed, I won’t wish I had spent more time at work. Now she’ll have a friend with whom she can speak honestly.
“Wow. How is she doing?”
“She seems okay. I can’t believe she’s known for weeks and hasn’t told me. She might be in denial.”
“Well, I guess she has nine months to get used to the idea.”
“It takes a lot longer than that,” Vanessa says. “It’s not just being pregnant. It’s her whole life. Everything is going to be different from now on.”
The edge in her voice is obvious, but Drew does not acknowledge it. They didn’t used to be like this. They used to address the emotional undercurrents of their interactions, call each other out on their occasional sharp tone, and rehash the turns their conversations had taken, pinpointing the places where they had misunderstood each other or hurt each other’s feelings. They used to talk. Vanessa knows she has pushed them to this point. But he started it.
“Just assure Kate that every once in a while, even in the midst of being a mother, you get a free pass to go away for a long weekend with your best friends and be young again,” Drew says. “Everyone gets a break.”
These are the things she loves about Drew: he has a habit of circling Vanessa’s wrist with his fingers and pulling her toward him to kiss her shoulder when she walks by; he bought an expensive camera the month before their daughter was born and has taken, literally, thousands of surprisingly wonderful photographs of their daughter; he gestures like an Italian when he speaks; he admires strength and beauty, and this makes Vanessa feel strong and beautiful; he has impeccable manners, not the least of which is always refilling everyone else’s wineglass before his own; he washes his hands the moment he walks through the door at night because he has an intense fear of bringing germs into their home; he is so handsome that women’s eyes are drawn to him when he strides down the street; he loves to travel; he speaks as easily and genuinely with cab drivers as he does with their elderly neighbor, her father, his fraternity brothers from Columbia, and the president of his network; he is himself in every environment, a feat that indicates a bottomless pool of confidence and is deeply, irresistibly sexy. All things considered, it is a long list. But there are times when Vanessa also hates some of these things.
She wants to tell Drew that there is no such thing as a break when you are a mother. And if she needs a break from anything, it’s not motherhood
, it’s them, but the shards of their relationship are lodged so deep that she carries them everywhere. She wants to tell him that she hears Lenora on the phone with them, her breath on the line like the phantom roar of the ocean in a conch shell. But they’ve rehashed this all so many times. What more can he do? He’s told her he loves her. He’s told her the “indiscretion” was a mistake. He’s told Vanessa that he believes in their marriage and he wants to be with her. It’s Vanessa’s turn now, but she doesn’t know what to say. She thinks of Colin, of Jeremy, of all of the paths her life could have taken but didn’t. It used to be so easy for her to walk away. Vanessa can’t believe she has grown up to be a wife whose husband kissed another woman, a mother who does not know what she wants.
When she finally gets out of bed, Vanessa finds a note from Kate on the counter telling her to meet them at the beach, and to remember to shut the screen door behind her when she leaves. She loads the coffee filter and then sits on the kitchen floor and pets Gracie while she waits for the coffee to brew. The breeze off the ocean is warm and she tries to enjoy these moments of dripping coffee and the sweet rise and fall of Gracie’s belly as she breathes, but she has never been a person who handles waiting well. When a few ounces of coffee have filled the pot, she pours them over ice in a glass, sits back on the floor, and drinks. Once the pot fills again, she adds more ice to her glass and refills it. This time, she adds two heaping spoonfuls of sugar. What the hell, she thinks. I’m on vacation. She takes the coffee downstairs and gulps it while she puts on her bikini and a gauzy olive-green tunic. She looks around the room for ten minutes before remembering that her sandals are in the living room. This leisurely pace and the quiet house make her miss the constant company of Lucy and at the same time luxuriate in being alone.