by Jane Porter
I’m standing next to the counter, making a grocery list. “It’s pretty, isn’t it?”
“I like this house,” she says, putting down the box and coming to stand next to me. “It’s little and old, but you made it nice.”
“Thank you.” Someday, I think, I’ll miss our old house, but for now, I’m determined to focus on the things I can do, the things I can make, and the things I can paint. “Did you and your sisters still want to get out some of the Christmas decorations today?”
“Are we going to get the tree, too?”
“Maybe.”
Jemma enters the kitchen with a stack of catalogs that came in yesterday’s mail. “I don’t want to do the tree today. I want to start our baking. We haven’t made anything yet.”
I add peanut butter to the list before looking up at the girls. “Maybe we can do the tree today and the baking tomorrow.”
“Or maybe we can do the baking today and the tree tomorrow,” Jemma answers, hauling herself onto the kitchen counter to look through the new Victoria’s Secret catalog. She loves all the catalogs, always on the lookout for something interesting or new. I used to be like that. I loved the opportunity to browse and shop. Every glossy catalog filled me with ideas of how life could be. Every purchase hinted at the person I wasn’t yet but hoped to be.
“Some of the girls in my class are already wearing a bra,” Jemma says, studying pictures of the world’s supermodels in delicate bra and panties sets.
“Girls develop at different ages.” I chew on the end of my pen and wonder if I’m going to finally have to give the birds and bees talk, something I’ve carefully avoided almost as much as Jemma has. She never asks questions about how babies are made, and I’ve never tried to explain . . . yet. But I should. My mom never explained it to me, and I found out through trash talk from friends.
“I know girls develop at different ages,” she answers, “I was just telling you that some are wearing bras. And Katherine Kelley is already big, really big. Everyone’s always watching her when she has to run because her . . . um”—Jemma puts a hand out in front of her small chest—“they go up and down. A lot.”
I put down my pen. “Do you stare?”
“No.” She pauses. “Maybe. It’s just . . . weird. Last year nothing, and now these big . . . breasts . . . and people treat her different. One boy, I don’t think he was a fifth grader, tried to kiss her and grab her there, and he got suspended. For a week.”
“That’s sexual harassment,” I say, surprised that such things are even happening at Points Elementary.
“What’s sexual harassment?” asks a deep male voice from the living room.
Nathan?
Jemma lets out a scream and leaps from the counter. “Dad!”
Brooke chases after, and Tori comes shrieking from her bedroom. “Daddy, Daddy!”
Stunned, I follow a little more slowly, emerging to see three little girls throw themselves onto Nathan. Within seconds he’s covered in arms, legs, and kisses.
I don’t think he’s even aware of me there with all the shrieks and hugs and love, but then his head lifts and he looks at me. He is shockingly thin, with deep creases and shadows beneath his eyes. He looks at me for a long moment. “Hello, honey.”
Honey.
Honey.
I try to smile, but I can’t. I sag weakly against the wall, my heart so tender that it hurts to speak.
The past rushes over me, the girl I was, the years we shared, the babies we had, the baby we lost, the house we built to fill the emptiness. And looking at him, I feel no anger, no sadness, just peace. Here is my man. Here is my partner. “Welcome home.”
Nathan takes the girls to pick out the perfect Christmas tree. I was asked to come, but I said I’d stay home and drag out the boxes of decorations from the storage unit (decrepit shack) that’s been attached to the carport in the backyard and start untangling all the lights.
Nathan and the girls are back within the hour with a tree that’s way too tall for the living room. I don’t even have to say anything to Nathan. He walks into the house, looks up at the ceiling, then sighs. “They are eight-foot ceilings, aren’t they?”
“Yep.”
Fresh lines run from his nose to his mouth. The furrows in his forehead deepen. “I should have called you.”
“It’s okay.”
“Dammit.”
I glance at the girls, who are hovering in the doorway. “We have a saw. We’ll just cut the bottom off.”
He turns away, stares out the living room window. “I can’t—” He breaks off, shakes his head, his expression infinitely sad.
My insides squeeze. Not this, not this, not this.
“Nathan,” I say quietly, calmly, as much for my benefit as his.
“It’s too much, Taylor.” There’s anguish in his voice, anguish and heartbreak, and my eyes burn, my throat tightening. Something bad is coming. Something bad.
“Mom?” Jemma asks uncertainly.
I look at the girls again, make a shooing motion to send them away. “What’s too much?” I ask once the girls have disappeared into their rooms.
“Everything.” He turns to look at me, and he’s so pale there’s a grayish tint to his skin. “I don’t know how to do this anymore.” He makes a rough sound in the back of his throat. “I don’t know that I can.”
My legs suddenly don’t feel strong enough to support me, and I sit in one of the living room chairs. “Maybe it’s time you told me whatever is it you’ve needed to tell me. Maybe it’s time we just got it all out.”
He gestures toward the hall. “But the girls are waiting to do the tree.”
“They’re okay.”
I wait for him to speak, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead he stands, hands on his hips, his gaze fixed toward the fireplace. He runs his hand over his jaw with its day-old shadow of a beard.
“I’m not in a good place, Taylor,” he says at last. “I haven’t been in a good place for a long time, and I keep trying to protect you from this . . . whatever this is . . . but I can’t anymore.
“I was in trouble,” he continues wearily, “crashing and burning, and the worst part was I couldn’t tell you.” He looks at me, damning shadows beneath his eyes. His exhaustion is real. He seems to have aged ten years in the past two months. “I couldn’t tell anyone. I didn’t know how to tell anyone. It’s still something I’m ashamed of.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He stares at his hands. “Playing football, you never blame anyone else. You learn mistakes cost games. You learn to suck it up, take the hit, and get back out there. I’ve been trying to do that, but it’s not working. I’m back out there, but I’m not the same. We’ve lost so much. We’re out of the game—”
“No, we’re not. We don’t have the big house, but we don’t have the debt anymore, either. We both have jobs, we’re both working, we’ll soon be able to have another house. It’s just a matter of time.”
He just shakes his head. “But none of this needed to have happened in the first place. If I’d been more of a man—”
“That’s not fair, Nathan,” I protest, my throat tightening. Nathan’s a perfectionist just like me.
“Yes, it is. I invested badly in the stock market, and I didn’t want anyone, much less you, to know. I didn’t want you to know I couldn’t do everything. I didn’t want you to know that I’d screwed up.” Self-loathing gives his words a hard edge. “Taylor, I hate myself. I hate what I did to you. I hate what I’ve done to the girls, and I went to Omaha to try to fix things, to try to save things, but now I can’t even save myself.” Tears fill his eyes. “I can’t do this, honey. I can’t. I can’t do this without you. Please, Taylor, forgive me.”
I go to him, put my arms around him, and hold him tight, as tight as I hold the girls after they’ve had a nightmare. “There’s nothing to forgive—”
“Yes, there is. I’ve got it all wrong. Tried to do it all on my own. Thought that’s what a man was supposed to do.
But I can’t face who I am, or what I am, without you.”
I hold on. “You don’t have to.”
“Tell me we can make it.”
“We can make it, Nathan. We can and we will.”
In between decorating the tree, a trip to the mall for the girls to see Santa, and a visit to Kirkland’s Houghton Beach Park to see the Christmas ships, Nathan and I talk. And talk. And talk some more.
He hates his job in Omaha, hates it with a passion. The work is boring, the management is unstable and petty, but that’s not what’s making him unhappy. He can’t stand living apart from us, can’t stand feeling as though he failed all of us.
That evening after the girls are in bed and Nathan and I keep yawning, we agree it’s time to sleep, too. I wonder, though, where Nathan will want to sleep. We haven’t slept in the same bed in months and months.
He looks just as puzzled, too, standing in the hall between the living room and bedroom. “Where . . . what . . . should I do?”
I stand in the doorway of our room. “What do you want to do?” I ask gently.
“Be with you.”
“Then come be with me.”
In bed, he lies close, wraps his arms around me. He’s silent, but I can tell he’s awake and something else is on his mind. I wait for him to speak, but he doesn’t and yet his misery is tangible. After another ten minutes, I can’t take it anymore. “What’s wrong, honey?”
He takes a deep breath, exhales. “I said some terrible things to you before I moved to Omaha. I said things I regret, and then I just kind of abandoned you.”
“It’s okay. I survived.”
“How?” he asks, genuinely bewildered.
I let out a breath. “I had to. The girls needed me.”
He hesitates. “Have you . . . been making yourself sick? You know . . . that eating disorder thing?”
“I don’t throw up anymore, anyway. I haven’t in years. But I still binge-eat a bit. But now instead of a whole bag of chips, it’s a half. Instead of a carton of ice cream, it’s a half box of Cheerios.”
“That’s progress.”
“Yeah.” And it is. I’m not “cured.” I’ll probably battle with food for a long time, but I’m learning to make better choices, and I just try my best every day. That’s all I can do.
“And you’re not shopping?” he persists.
“Definitely not.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s like the eating thing. I realized I don’t have to be self-destructive. I realized I can take a hit and be all right. I’m not afraid to take a hit, either. I might get knocked down, maybe even knocked out, but I know as long as I get up again it’s okay.”
Nathan draws me even closer to his chest. “You sound like a quarterback.”
I laugh softly, and lifting his hand, I kiss it. “I just love my quarterback, that’s all.”
He kisses the top of my head. “Your quarterback loves you.”
“I know,” I whisper. “I’ve always known.”
By the time Nathan catches a flight back to Omaha Monday morning, we’ve agreed on three things: 1) He’s taking a full week off between Christmas and New Year’s Eve to be home with us (which reminds me, I’ve got to cancel our Sun Valley tickets). 2) He’s going to start looking for a job in the Seattle area again. Immediately. 3) And if he can’t find a job in the Seattle area by June 1, we will move to Omaha to join him until he finds a job in Seattle.
I arrive at work late Monday morning, as I had to drop Nathan off at the airport first and traffic was a bear on the 405 heading north toward Bellevue. I don’t do the commute that direction, so I was shocked that it took forty minutes for what is usually a twenty-minute drive.
Fortunately, it’s quiet at Z Design when I arrive. Marta’s not in the office. She apparently had a doctor’s appointment. Robert and Allie are at their desks. Mel is traveling. Mel spends almost half her time in Chicago and New York with two of Marta’s biggest accounts, accounts that seem to require endless hand-holding.
When Marta appears it’s close to noon. Her cheeks are flushed, and it looks as though she may have been crying. Knowing that she’s been at the doctor’s, I’m worried but say nothing to respect her privacy.
At noon Tiana Tomlinson, Marta’s famous TV anchor friend from Los Angeles, calls on the office line. I step into the supply room, where Marta’s hunting down a legal pad, to hand her the phone. Marta takes the phone and walks outside with it. I can see her pacing the yard as she talks to Tiana. I can’t really see her face but know something’s up.
Later in the afternoon, when I see Marta just sitting at her desk, staring off into space, I ask her if everything is all right. She answers a blunt yes. I don’t press.
At home that evening, I’m just about to sit down with the girls and watch Rudolph on DVD for what feels like the hundredth time when the doorbell rings.
I open the door to discover Marta and Eva on our doorstep with a cake and a gift wrapped in festive purple-and-gold paper.
“It’s a housewarming gift,” Eva explains, handing it to Jemma. “We thought we’d get you something for your new house for the Christmas holidays.”
Jemma slowly takes the gift. “You celebrate Christmas?”
Eva’s frowning. “Yes, of course. Why?”
Jemma shrugs. “I just thought you didn’t believe in religious holidays.”
“The cake looks wonderful,” I say, a little too enthusiastically.
Marta’s smiling as they enter the house, and I close the door. “Eva made the cake. It’s a one-two-three-four cake,” she shares as the girls run down the hall to the bedrooms. “It was a favorite recipe in my mom’s family.”
“Well, thank you. Can I get you some coffee, or wine?” I ask, taking the cake and carrying it to the dining room table.
“Just water,” she answers, rubbing her nose. It’s then I see the glint on her finger. It’s not a little sparkle, either, but a brilliant sparkle from an enormous stone.
“Marta . . .” I look up at her, into her face, and she’s smiling crookedly. “Marta,” I repeat. “On your finger . . . the ring . . .”
Rich, dusky color floods her cheeks. “Luke asked me to marry him.”
“No!”
“Yes.” She smiles at me, and all the tension disappears from her face. She looks absolutely radiant.
“Have you set a date?”
“February seventeenth, during Eva’s winter break. We’re going to have the wedding at the Fairmont Springs in Banff.”
“That’s only two months away.”
“We decided not to wait too long.” She hesitates, picks her words with care. “It’s better to do it sooner, before I show too much.” She waits, sees comprehension dawn on my face, and then nods, shyly blushing and smiling simultaneously. “We’re expecting a summer baby.”
“You’re pregnant.”
She nods again, blushing, glowing. “I haven’t told Eva yet. She knows about the wedding, but I can’t figure out how to tell her about the baby.” Marta stumbles over her words. “I was thinking you might have some ideas for me, maybe help me come up with a way to break the news.”
I grin. That’s something I can definitely do.
Chapter Twenty-Four
A month has passed. A low-key Christmas came and went, along with our equally low-key New Year’s. In the past, we’ve had half a dozen parties to choose from, and this year we were invited to one party, but neither Nathan nor I could put a face to a name so we declined, choosing to stay home with the girls instead.
Now the girls have been back in school for two weeks, and Marta’s wedding is only a month away. It’s a small wedding, less than one hundred invited with maybe fifty attending. I’m both surprised and delighted to be on Marta’s guest list. She said the girls were welcome to come but there wouldn’t be any other children attending except for Eva. After talking about it, Nathan and I decide he and I will go without the girls. We haven’t had any time alone in mont
hs, and four days in Banff sounds unbelievably good.
I call Horizon Airlines to see if they’d allow us to exchange two unused Sun Valley tickets for tickets to Calgary. They agree, although there is a nominal service charge.
I’m so excited about the wedding: thrilled for Marta, thrilled for Eva, thrilled about the new baby. Eva knows about the baby, too, and she’s over the moon. She talks about being a big sister all the time. “It’s what I always wanted,” she tells me earnestly one day in the office as she sits at the conference table, poring over the most recent issue of Town & Country Weddings magazine.
In the weeks leading to the wedding, Lucy hosts the first get-together for the brand-new book club. There are just four of us for that first meeting. It’s Lucy, me, Marta, and Marta’s friend Lori Johnson, who owns the restaurant Ooba’s.
We discuss the book that Lucy has picked, The Pulpwood Queens’ Tiara-Wearing, Book-Sharing Guide to Life, and it’s the perfect book with which to start our new group, warm and bighearted. Reading the book makes you feel as if you’re sitting with a close girlfriend talking about life and what we women need.
It’s also the antithesis of the books we read in our former book club.
“I think my favorite part of the book is when Kathy Patrick writes that women shouldn’t feel bad for choosing to be stay-at-home moms.” Lucy flips open her book. “I think it’s on page eighteen where she says that serving others is a calling.”
“I liked that section, too,” I agree. “I’ve always felt a little apologetic for wanting to volunteer and working at school, but I like being involved at school and with the girls. It makes me feel good to volunteer. It makes me feel good to help others.”
“You know, Taylor, when I read those passages I actually thought of you,” Marta says. “I don’t remember the words verbatim, but it was something along the lines that women tend to hide their passion for everyday things, thinking people will think less of them for enjoying these things. I’ve said to you before, that we need people like you to care about our schools and our fund-raisers. We need women who love the everyday things as, God knows, there are women like me who don’t.”