The Best of Us

by Sarah Pekkanen

  Are you guys coming? Can Gary get off work?

  Savannah’s fingers paused over the keyboard. It would’ve been better if the invitation had come last year, when she and Gary were still together. Or next year, when Savannah could show up with a suitcase full of bikinis and a hot new boyfriend. She’d told her friends in North Carolina, but no one in the group from college knew because for some reason, saying the words—I’m separated—seemed almost as hard as actually going through a separation.

  Screw it, she thought as she exhaled loudly. She’d pick up a new sarong and get a spray tan with Gary’s next check, and she’d go to Jamaica. She’d dance barefoot to steel drum music on the beach and take a few windsurfing lessons, and fool around with the instructor, if he was as hot as Savannah imagined a windsurfing instructor was constitutionally required to be. She’d even give Dwight a few free glimpses of cleavage, for old times’ sake.

  Wouldn’t miss it, Savannah typed.

  She couldn’t tell Allie about the looming divorce, not now. Allie would immediately phone, asking sympathetic questions in her gentle social worker’s voice, and Savannah would probably do something ridiculous, like burst into tears. And then a good prospect would walk in the door and size everything up—ugly picture frames, bucktoothed children, peeling wallpaper, sobbing real estate agent—and flee.

  She’d call Allie later, when she had a glass of good scotch in hand—the expensive, aged scotch Gary splurged on and adored, which Savannah had relocated to under the sink on his moving day.

  Yippee! Allie wrote back.

  Savannah could almost see her leaping into the air like the high school cheerleader she’d been. Savannah pictured Allie with her reddish brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, her big blue eyes bright, her perfect teeth displayed in a big smile. Since Allie went running almost every day, she’d probably be wearing spandex—but nothing too tight or revealing, which was a shame, because Allie had a cute little body, even if she was flat-chested. Why not show it off while she still could? For that matter, why not just buy a set of better boobs?

  I can’t wait! Allie wrote. Hugs!

  Savannah smiled. Allie’s relentless optimism could grate at times, but maybe it would be contagious on this trip, and Savannah could use a little infusion of joy. Sure, it might feel odd to be the only single one, but Savannah had always felt comfortable around Gio and Ryan. She’d kicked back with them on the couch many times, shouting orders at the football players on TV and drinking Sam Adams from the bottle, leaving Allie and Tina to gossip in the kitchen. In fact, Gary was the one who hadn’t fit in with them; he had no interest in sports.

  See you soon, babe, Savannah typed.

  She needed to get used to doing things alone. She needed to feel desirable again. This trip would be a good start.

  * * *

  You could divide the ten women sitting around the big rectangular table into two equal-size groups, Pauline mused as she reached for the silver coffee service and freshened her cup of French roast.

  Group A was composed of the high achievers: the well-connected women who brokered seven- and eight-figure deals and jetted to Tokyo for a day. They wore plain business suits and expensive watches, had short hair—Pauline imagined their schedules were too busy to accommodate blowouts—and frowned while their fingers flew across their BlackBerrys.

  Then there was Group B, the ones like her. The spouses.

  Pauline had already figured out that the high achievers had joined the board of Children’s Hospital to balance the gritty realities of their day jobs, during which they screwed over employees and fattened the bottom lines of environment-polluting companies. They could tell themselves that they were doing some good—plus, it was a networking opportunity.

  The spouses, on the other hand, did it to fill time, because the alternative was to shop, or take another exercise class, or look around for a room to redecorate.

  The pot of coffee felt light in Pauline’s hand, and as if he’d sensed her thoughts, Caleb, the house manager, turned to look at her. She glanced pointedly at the server, and he came over, relieved her of it, and replaced it with a fresh one.

  “Anything else, Ms. Glass?” he whispered.

  She shook her head, and he stepped back, his movements so smooth and discreet that he seemingly melted away.

  Pauline hid a small, satisfied smile. Soon after she and Dwight had gotten married, eighteen months earlier, they’d moved into a home with a library big enough to seat twenty people. She oversaw a staff composed of Caleb, a maid, a gardener, and a part-time driver. Their two-story garage held five cars, including a classic Karmann Ghia, as well as Dwight’s collection of vintage arcade games.

  Pauline had grown up with some money—her great-grandfather was one of the founding members of the stock market—but the perception, carefully cultivated by her mother, was that the family was wealthier than they actually were. There was a big difference between founding the stock market and buying a lot of early shares, and while her grandfather had been a genius, he’d lacked common sense. Still, her trust fund had covered a top boarding school in Massachusetts and her degree from Vassar.

  Pauline was about to turn twenty-seven and was working at an art gallery in Georgetown, on one of D.C.’s most exclusive streets, when she answered the phone call that would forever change her quiet, comfortable life. On the other end of the line was Val, her old boarding school roommate, who’d suggested a blind date with her husband’s boss.

  “He’s kind of shy, very rich, and brilliant,” Val had said, reeling off Dwight’s attributes as efficiently as a police officer detailing a suspect’s vitals. “He created a dot-com company right after he got out of college and took it public, then he sold most of his shares just before the Internet bubble burst. Now he’s got his fingers in a lot of different ventures. He’s thirty-one. Not bad looking. I was seated next to him at a dinner last night, and I asked if he was dating anyone. He said no and asked if I knew anyone . . . so I thought of you. What do you think?”

  “Sure,” Pauline had said, a little too quickly. Why had Val picked her, especially since they didn’t talk all that often? she’d wondered. Maybe all of Val’s other friends were already taken.

  She’d cringed, glad that the gallery was empty of customers and that Val couldn’t see her face. Pauline certainly wasn’t in old maid territory yet, but she’d long carried the expectation that she’d marry, and marry well. It was unspoken but understood, as clear as the rule in some families that only a union within the same religious faith would be acceptable. Pauline sometimes wondered if things would be different if her older sister—her only sibling—hadn’t been born with congenital birth defects that required round-the-clock care. Therese was unable to speak and had the mental capacity of an infant, yet was fully grown. Her parents had entrusted her to a private institution, but Pauline knew insurance covered only some of the costs. And shortly after Pauline had graduated from college, her father had passed away from a brain aneurysm, leaving only a small portfolio and a smaller insurance policy.

  As Pauline had traveled through her twenties, she’d begun noticing the changes: Her mother had suddenly professed an interest in taking over the gardening that had always been left to professionals; and she’d stopped traveling, complaining that planes were too crowded to make the experience enjoyable. Then the small warnings had erupted into larger ones: Her mother began talking about downsizing to an apartment—“All these stairs are so rough on my knees!” And Pauline had noticed a cherished heirloom diamond ring was missing from its usual place on her mother’s right hand. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to ask why.

  Pauline had tried to slip her mother money, but her mother always refused to take it. “Buy yourself a pretty new dress,” she’d say, but that seemingly carefree comment would be followed by a question with tension underlying it: “Meet anyone interesting lately?”

  One night shortly before Val’s unexpected phone call, Pauline had been unable to sleep and was
flipping through television channels when she’d paused on a poker tournament being broadcast live from Vegas. The camera had zoomed in on a guy who looked like he was barely out of his teens. He wore a black hoodie and sunglasses and had spent a long time studying the five cards in his hand.

  “I’m all in,” he’d finally said, pushing his pile of chips forward.

  The poker player and Pauline’s mother were different genders, races, and ages, but in that moment, they could’ve been the same person. Her mother was going all in on Pauline, and while some daughters might’ve chafed under the weight of the implied responsibility, Pauline never did. She had the exact same goals for herself—or maybe she’d unconsciously absorbed her mother’s so long ago that they’d become part of her.

  Kind of shy. Pauline had repeated Val’s words as she’d gotten dressed for her blind date, choosing a taupe silk sleeveless wrap dress. Very rich. She’d pulled her blond-streaked hair back into a chignon, applied brownish black mascara, and dotted the insides of her wrists with a delicate floral perfume. Thirty-one. She’d taken a final, appraising look in the mirror after she inserted her two-carat diamond teardrop earrings—fakes, but good ones—into her lobes. From a distance, she was classically beautiful. Closer up, one saw past the tricks of makeup and noticed that her eyes were set a fraction too close together, her mouth was a shade too small, and her nose was too narrow, as if someone had placed two strong hands on the sides of her features and squeezed.

  Still, she’d once read that the three things women needed to be gorgeous were great hair, teeth, and skin. Those she had; those could be bought.

  When she’d first glimpsed Dwight, what she’d felt more than anything was disappointment. The doorman had phoned to let her know Dwight was in the lobby of her apartment, and she’d picked up her clutch purse, counted off sixty seconds in her head, then gone to meet him.

  Not bad looking, Val had said, but Pauline thought the assessment was overly generous. Dwight was as skinny as some of the women in her Pilates classes, wore a brown jacket with oddly large lapels, and had an angry red zit on his chin.

  But she’d smiled, and reached for his hand, and spoken his name in a soft voice. And then he’d led her to his Mercedes, and whisked her off to one of those restaurants that was so exclusive it had no name on the door. Or maybe it was a club? She’d had no idea.

  Don’t screw this up, she’d warned herself as she sipped a glass of crisp Sancerre and perused the menu. One of her most embarrassing secrets was that she hated expensive food. Escargots, foie gras, and lobster tasted like slime and lard to her. What she really adored was comfort food: If she was on death row and being granted a final meal, she’d order mashed potatoes with gravy, roast chicken, and hot, yeasty buttered rolls—the kind that came out of a refrigerated cardboard tube.

  Of course, that night in the restaurant—club?—she’d ordered the escargots and lobster, and she’d smiled through every bite. To this day Dwight thought she loved them. He had no idea that when he was out of town, she snuck down to the kitchen and made a piece of cinnamon toast for dinner, layering the sweet cream butter on thick and sprinkling on a perfect combination of cinnamon and sugar before carrying it to her room on a tray to savor slowly.

  Now she put down her cup of coffee and tuned back in to the board meeting—or as she’d once referred to it in an e-mail, the “bored meeting.” Luckily she’d caught that Freudian slip before blasting the message to the group.

  “So we have venue and entertainment taken care of for the auction,” Delores Debonis, the chairwoman, was saying. She was in Group B, the spouses, but you’d never know it by the way she obsessively checked her iPhone. She tapped her pen against the table. “Flowers. Who wants to handle flowers?”

  “I will,” Pauline said, just as another woman at the end of the table spoke the identical words.

  The other woman deferred to Pauline with a gracious nod. “Please. I’ll find something else.”

  “Thank you.” Pauline smiled back, just as graciously, and swallowed a yawn.

  “Food,” Delores Debonis said loudly, and Pauline started, thinking for a second that Delores was demanding a snack. “We’ve received bids from three catering companies with proposed menus for passed hors d’oeuvres and the seated meal. I’ve made copies for everyone.”

  Delores reached for the papers in front of her and handed them out.

  “Aren’t stuffed mushroom caps kind of . . . I don’t know . . . nineteen nineties?” someone said, wrinkling her nose as if one of the unfashionable fungi had materialized in front of her.

  “I agree,” another woman added. “It shows a lack of creativity. The first caterer isn’t impressing me.”

  A third woman cleared her throat. “I’m worried we won’t have enough passed hors d’oeuvres. Six selections for two hundred people isn’t much variety. And what about the vegetarians? I only see two non-meat or seafood options.”

  Pauline allowed her mind to drift again, as she did so often during these meetings. She began to think about what would happen the day after the auction, when they’d leave for Dwight’s birthday trip to Jamaica along with his college friends—people Pauline barely knew and probably had nothing in common with.

  She’d made a massive mistake.

  What had come over her? Why had she blurted out the idea the moment it popped into her head, without even sleeping on it first? Now it was far too late to cancel the trip; the invitations had been delivered, and everyone had sent back gushing acceptances. She was going to be stuck spending an entire week with these people.

  “So no mushroom caps,” Delores was saying. Tap, tap, tap went her pen. “Are we in agreement about the goat cheese—Pauline?”

  She hadn’t realized she’d stood up until she heard Delores speak her name.

  “Are you unwell?” Delores asked as every head swiveled to look at Pauline. “You’re so pale.”

  “It’s nothing,” Pauline said. She pressed her hands together to camouflage their sudden trembling. “Excuse me a moment.”

  She walked down the hallway to a bathroom, locked the door behind her, and studied her reflection in the large oval mirror. Delores was right; she did look even paler than usual.

  She might as well get this over with, she thought as she slipped her skirt down over her hips and sat on the toilet. And there it was again: a streak of red on her panty liner. She stared at it, wondering how much longer she could blame it on Dwight’s traveling, on bad timing, on it being harder for a woman to get pregnant after she turned thirty.

  Dwight wanted children. It wasn’t something they’d discussed at length, but an older woman who’d been friends with Dwight’s mother had asked about it at their wedding reception, and he’d said, “Of course.” As if it was such a given that his response had required no thought at all. Dwight and the woman had turned to look at her, and she’d smiled. “One or two, definitely,” she’d said. “Or three or four,” Dwight had said, and the old woman had laughed and said, “You’d better get started!”

  To her surprise, Pauline had discovered she liked the idea of a little girl in a dress with a wide silk sash, throwing a tea party for her dolls. Pauline had trouble envisioning a baby, but she could see a daughter at age five or six—after the mess of diapers and formulas and spit-up was over.

  Did Dwight wonder why it was taking so long, too? Maybe he was beginning to suspect that Pauline had a problem, that a life with her wouldn’t be the one he was counting on.

  The natural thing to do would be to go to a fertility doctor. But she couldn’t. She knew there would be questions she couldn’t risk Dwight ever learning the answers to. She covered her mouth with her hand, feeling nausea rise up through her throat.

  The irony didn’t escape her that she was feeling ill for a reason that was the precise opposite of the one she’d hoped.

  Her nausea passed and she stood up, flushed the toilet, and washed her hands. Then she walked back into the boardroom. People were waiting for her.
r />   “What did I miss?” she asked, forcing a smile as she slipped into her seat.

  Chapter Two

  * * *

  The Night Before

  “WHERE’S MY LIST?” TINA asked as she dumped a pile of warm laundry on the bed.

  Gio didn’t look away from the television. “Which one? You’ve got a hundred.”

  “Four,” Tina corrected, picking up one of his legs, peering under it, and letting it flop roughly back onto the bed. “One with everything I need to pack for us. One with everything I need to pack for the kids. One with the kids’ schedules and all the emergency numbers to give to Allie’s mom. And one with everything I need to do before we leave. And that’s the one I can’t—”

  She snatched a piece of paper from under Gio’s other leg and smoothed it out.

  “I’ve got to give a spare key to what’s-his-name,” she said. “We’ve lost all the spares. We’ll have to take it off my key chain.”

  “Who’s what’s-his-name?” Gio asked.

  “The kid down the street who’s going to walk Caesar and get our mail,” Tina said. “The one with the pierced eyebrow.” She was jotting something on a piece of paper as she talked.

  “Tell me you’re not writing another list,” Gio said. “And a pierced eyebrow? He’ll drink all my beer the first night.”

  Tina looked at him, sprawled on top of the bedspread, one arm bent behind his head. Her husband was so sexy, with his black hair, heavy eyebrows, and tan skin—genetic gifts from his Italian ancestors. He was only five-foot-seven, but perfectly proportioned, with the shoulders and chest of a weight lifter, a benefit of his very physical job. Six years ago, she would’ve caught one glimpse of him lying there in his faded Levi’s and launched herself on top of him like a nimble Russian gymnast.

  But right now, annoyance dueled with her desire. Why couldn’t Gio understand that watching him unload the dishwasher was as big an aphrodisiac as watching him flex his washboard abs?