No One Could Have Guessed the Weather

by Anne-Marie Casey

  In fact, it had been easy to avoid telling Christy anything over the last few months because she had been increasingly preoccupied and distracted. If Julia hadn’t known her so well, known that Christy kept no secrets whatsoever from her, she would have sworn she was up to something furtive herself. Christy did not answer her mobile phone, even though she had put a special boinging ring on it to tell her it was Julia calling, and didn’t ever seem to have the time to chat. This had happened before in their relationship, and Julia assumed it was for the same reason. For while Christy was resolute about not letting her girls become spoiled and extravagant and talk about their full money boxes or bringing child-size cuddly toys home from far-off places by buying an extra seat in first class on the plane, Vaughn was a very rich person, and Julia had long known that the lives of the very rich are not the same as those of the medium or fairly rich. Occasionally, Christy had to get involved in very-rich-person activities such as renovating ski lodges or flying to Barbados to play in charity golf tournaments, which made her distracted and distant, as she never liked to admit to them.

  So Julia had begun ringing Lucy when something chatworthy happened; and that was how she had ended up telling her the news first, and realizing that Lucy had somehow usurped Christy in her affections. Julia also realized that this feeling would never be entirely mutual, as Lucy’s best friend was Richard and, despite Lucy’s occasional intimations about the “ups and downs” they had endured in the past, now they were the happiest couple Julia knew, herself and Kristian included.

  Romy was shouting something outside, and Julia looked out of the window and witnessed Lucy and Richard’s arrival, the rumbling of the tiny rental car muffled by the duvet of snow. It was like watching a silent film as their boys tumbled out of the backseat, scrapping, and Richard leapt out after them, lifting the smallest up and spinning him round, taking in the 360 degrees of expansive views around them. Lucy appeared now, a guitar case in her right hand, and when she handed it to Richard he threw his other arm around her, gesticulating and talking and thinking and talking again.

  Kristian came over, embraced them, and led them to the former Oat Store where they were going to camp out together. Julia had been embarrassed offering them this accommodation (Christy had preempted it by saying she would check her family into a suite at the Luxury Olde Inn down the road, as Vaughn always made clear that he liked nature as long as it wasn’t natural), but Richard had enthusiastically announced that he had been awarded thirty Cub Scout badges (including air activities) in the three years his father had been posted in Hong Kong, and it would be good for Lucy to learn how to tie a reef knot and melt snow in an empty baked-beans can. Julia had then felt embarrassed to tell him the building actually had a bathroom, electric heating, and wiring for cable TV, so she had whispered it to Lucy, who visibly relaxed and surprised Richard by her enthusiasm for the survivalist experience.

  Lucy bounded up the path, marveling at the size of the enormous footprints she made in her wader boots.

  “It’s like yeti tracks,” she said, kissing Julia firmly on the cheek in the doorway.

  “What’s a yeti?” asked Max, pausing only briefly to drop graying chunks of wet snow on the tiles before hurling himself toward Lee, who had two-player Guitar Hero ready to go in the den.

  “A great hairy beast,” Julia called after him. “Nothing at all like your mother.”

  “You haven’t seen my legs,” said Lucy. “I don’t shave them after the clocks change for winter.”

  “Really? Does Richard go for that?”

  “Yes, he’s got some posh-boy thing for the peasantry. It makes him feel very droit du seigneur pillaging a filthy local maiden. ROBBIE! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  On the path behind her, Robbie had pulled down his track pants and was sending a yellow arc of urine rippling into a flower bed.

  “I am mortified,” declared Lucy for good form’s sake, though it wasn’t actually true, but Julia just smiled and went out to peer at the evidence as one day at her very worst, exhausted, white-as-a-sheet former self on the Crime Show, the Asshole had told her that her eyes looked like piss holes in the snow, and she had often wondered what that really looked like. (Boreholes with a greenish-yellow tinge at the top. Interesting.)

  She returned to the kitchen to see that Lucy had pulled open the oven door to peer at the enormous brisket roasting inside, the smells enveloping the room with the promise of satisfaction and happiness and all good things.

  “I’m glad I didn’t offer to bring any food. I mean, you are so domestic goddess.”

  “I know,” Julia said, and grinned. “And you wait till tomorrow. I’m only getting started. It’ll be the full monty . . . isn’t that what you lot say? All the trimmings round the bird.”

  Lucy flinched involuntarily. Not only had Julia’s approximation of an English accent (a cross between Joan Collins and Rupert Everett) sounded exactly like a sadistic art teacher she had loathed, but the very use of the word “bird” for turkey brought back all her unfortunate memories of Christmases in her childhood which mainly involved overcooked or undercooked “birds” and, one year, a sherry-soaked argument between her parents so ferocious that it ended with her mother throwing a sherry-soaked trifle, in its glass dish, at a group of carolers from the local Church of England and breaking the vicar’s baby toe.

  Julia didn’t laugh when Lucy explained this. Whenever she got such throwaway glimpses of Lucy’s childhood, she marveled at how her friend had ever survived to become halfway sane.

  “Oh, well.” Lucy wanted to move on to the happier present. “Now. Have you told Christy yet?”

  Julia shook her head and started to make gravy. Lucy’s eyes widened as she pondered the implications of this. Julia had promised a stress-free holiday among friends, and, while she could not imagine a trifle-throwing competition breaking out between them, she had witnessed enough of the intense nature of their friendship to be concerned about how Christy might take Julia’s news. She glanced up at the clock.

  “When are she and Vaughn due?”

  “The middle of April,” boomed a male voice behind them. “How did you know?”

  Lucy and Julia turned to see Vaughn, charismatic and handsome with the new, carefully trimmed white beard he had grown, in an Italian duffel coat, carrying four bottles of whiskey with a huge designer poinsettia balanced precariously on top.

  “Know what?” said Julia, rather more aggressively, thought Lucy, than one would normally expect when welcoming guests for a holiday lunch.

  “Know that Christy’s pregnant,” replied Vaughn, refusing to falter, in the voice that had launched a thousand hostile takeovers.

  At this moment Christy appeared, ravishing in a white ankle-length coat, the two girls beside her in matching red capes, all their hoods and eyelids flecked with fresh snow. As she stood next to Vaughn, it was as if Merlin had married a benevolent Snow Queen and they had given birth to two little Red Riding Hoods. Christy was carrying three Bloomingdale’s big bags full of presents wrapped by the service. Mindful of her condition, Lucy hastily took these.

  “It’s really starting to come down out there,” Christy said. “Thank goodness it’s so warm in here.” But as she said this her voice trailed off as she felt the temperature around her dropping once again.

  “What’s up?” And she looked at Vaughn.

  “The ladies were talking about due-ness, and . . . I misheard . . . so I let our . . . news slip.”

  “So many congratulations to both of you,” said Lucy warmly, kissing Vaughn on both cheeks and embracing Christy while leaving space around her stomach with appropriate sensitivity. It was as if such news were a completely normal occurrence, and Christy blinked in surprise. There was such a depressing lack of drama about Lucy sometimes.

  At least over by the oven it was not only the gravy that was simmering.

  “Why didn�
�t you tell me?” said Julia, and then, “How could you?”

  And so Christy, caught off guard, disoriented, who had had a speech ready for when she and Julia were alone later that day, possibly by the glowing fire, possibly ruddy cheeked in the snowscape, felt robbed of her moment delivering the news of her Big Life Decision. Now disappointed, she decided to deliberately misunderstand what Julia had said.

  “How dare you? What do you mean How could I? I’m not that old. And neither is Vaughn.”

  “I have to disagree with you about that, my dear,” said Vaughn, who was working out how quickly they could make a dignified exit, “but as I told her, Julia, at least I won’t have to deal with the appalling teenage years, because I intend to be dead.”

  He reached for Julia’s hand and gripped it. They had always got on well. She looked at the liver spots on his paper-thin skin and the veins knotted beneath it.

  “I’m sorry, Vaughn. You know I didn’t mean—”

  “I know, sweetheart. But even this won’t keep me alive forever, and other people will think and say it, and we would be well advised to prepare ourselves.”

  Christy knew this remark was directed at her, just as she knew her continuing obsessive secrecy was all about avoiding tut-tutting and raised eyebrows and too-long pauses before halfhearted congratulations, so she adopted a mama-grizzly tone and directed it back to Vaughn.

  “I don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks. This is only about my family.”

  “I rather think, Christy, that this is all about you,” he replied.

  “I’m not feeling very well,” she said. “I’m afraid I’ll have to go back to the inn.”

  “No one’s going anywhere at the moment, baby.” Vaughn pointed to the window, where at least four inches of snow were piled up on the outside mantel; picture-perfect had become The Shining.

  Julia glanced at Christy, whose face had blanched and whose eyes were like piss holes in the snow. Then she glanced over at Vaughn. He was shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, reacting physically to the unusual feeling of being stuck somewhere he didn’t want to be, in this case a wood-framed cottage inside a snow globe, complete with two color-coordinated Christmas trees, small shouting children, and the ever-present threat of someone trying to start a board game. He was staring at the bottles of whiskey on the table with the meditative intensity of a Buddhist monk. It was obvious that his attitude to his impending new fatherhood could best be described as ambivalent and, even as Julia was furious with Christy for keeping it all secret, not to mention her weird jealousy as she was reminded of how much she would have liked a third child herself if she had not been so terrified of postpartum psychosis, she wanted to protect Christy from the way Vaughn could be when he decided to, and so she decided to get a grip.

  “I’m delighted for you both,” she said, chivvying Lucy and the girls to round up the others for lunch and absentmindedly handing Vaughn cutlery to set the table with, forgetting that he had not done such a thing for at least thirty-five years.

  (He obeyed, of course; the situation had all the elements of the first act of a play. Not a tragedy, perhaps, but certainly a drawing room farce.)

  “Yes. It’s wonderful,” replied Christy. “The best news ever.”

  (Who else, Vaughn wondered, was going to come bouncing in through the door, overhear the end of a conversation, misconstrue it, and utter an ill-timed revelation?)

  “I’m so glad you feel that way.” It was Kristian, who had entered carrying the coal bucket and ran over to embrace Christy by vigorously rubbing his chest against hers to avoid putting his blackened hands on her.

  “You know I’ve thought for a long time we needed to get out of the city and so I’m just thrilled that you support us. It’ll mean so much to Julia. Right, darling?”

  Christy looked at him, confused. Kristian looked at Julia, confused.

  “You have told them, haven’t you?”

  “Told us what?” said the Snow Queen snowily.

  “We’re moving to L.A. in the New Year.”

  There was a pause. Then Christy burst out laughing.

  “Good one.” She looked at Julia. “You? L.A.? You loathe all that sunshine and positivity. What you gonna do? Grow organic vegetables and build a henhouse?”

  “Well, yes,” said Kristian, his lower lip starting to tremble.

  “You can’t leave the city, Julia. You only look right next to concrete and glass. And you’re not safe driving a car. I’ve never heard such a ridiculous idea.”

  But to Christy’s amazement, Julia walked over to her husband and put her arm around his waist.

  “No, Christy. We are going. Next month. The kids are starting school there. I’m sorry, I tried to say something, but you’ve been in a strange mood for weeks and . . . now I know why . . .”

  Kristian felt nervous. He was concerned that he was in trouble for doing something, but he had no clue what it might be.

  “Christy’s pregnant,” Julia explained, and although this was part elucidation, it was not all.

  “I need a drink,” said Vaughn.

  “Absolutely,” said Kristian, suddenly feeling on safer ground. “Let’s celebrate. I’ll get the champagne.”

  “No, no,” said Vaughn. “I’ll have whiskey.”

  Christy hadn’t been listening to any of this. A sudden hopeful thought had struck her.

  “Are you feeling. . . . okay, Julia?” she began, with a meaningful look at Kristian. “Isn’t this sort of thing, a mad irrational decision that could have catastrophic consequences for your life, exactly what the doctors told you could precede a manic episode?”

  “I don’t know, Christy,” Julia replied frostily. “What’s your excuse?”

  “We want food! We want food!”

  Vaughn shuddered. Max and Robbie were marching in at the head of a line of children, Lucy and Richard laughing indulgently behind them. Julia, who had now totally lost interest in her perfect hostess thing, plonked the lunch onto unwarmed plates with the gracelessness of an underpaid school dinner lady and poured herself a four-unit glass of red wine while Christy stared accusingly at her. They both sank into their chairs and sulky silence, leaving it to Lucy to hurl herself once more unto the breach by regaling the table with stories on a tangential holiday theme.

  The first was about a job in Yorkshire she had once had with her friend Camilla. Lucy and Camilla, wearing green tights and red sweaters to give a sense of elfishness, had been employed by a farmer to take five live reindeer, dressed up with bells on their horns and red coats with a white furry trim, round to local fairs in nearby country towns. Then they would charge the parents of small children for the delight of a ride in a sleigh, a small cart on wheels that had been covered in festive wrapping paper, to visit Santa, who would inevitably be an unemployed actor of wide girth who would equally inevitably encourage Lucy and Camilla to sit on his knee. Kristian smiled encouragingly at Lucy, hoping that this monologue might continue with an amusing anecdote not involving bottom pinching, a moral, or perhaps an unexpected insight into Lucy’s personality, but no, Lucy had finished at the point where it was simply a humiliating but successful business opportunity.

  “What happened to the reindeer in the spring?” he asked.

  “Oh, two of them caught TB off a badger and died, and I think the other three . . . you know . . .”

  Kristian did not know, so Lucy was forced to make a small throat-slitting gesture with the forefinger of her right hand.

  “When you cure reindeer meat, it tastes like prosciutto,” said Richard cheerfully, kissing the side of Lucy’s face. Then he looked over at Vaughn. “We’re going to hear the patter of tiny feet ourselves soon.”

  Before Vaughn had time to begin to make sense of this, Lucy elbowed Richard in the chest and explained.

  “We bought a puppy—it’s coming in a week. Right, boys?” Max
and Robbie elbowed each other in the head, fell off their chairs, and rolled on the rug.

  “It’s my lovely little girl at last,” giggled Lucy.

  Christy looked up, triumphant. She had been waiting for a wry joke or a wistful comment to indicate that Lucy had secretly always wanted another baby. She had been looking forward to this on the journey.

  “Would you like to have another baby?” she asked.

  Lucy did not bat an eyelid. By now she was used to the inappropriately personal question as small talk. It was, she knew, simply a fact of life in New York.

  “God, no,” she replied. “I’m far too old.”

  “You could adopt,” Christy retorted, feeling quite desperate now. (She knew Lucy was several years younger than she was.)

  “No, I’m temperamentally unsuited to the process. I wanted to get a puppy from the dog rescue, couldn’t see why we couldn’t give a home to some runt thrown out of a lorry on the Interstate (Julia had told Christy that this was how some English people dealt with unwanted pets—Christy had found it very disturbing), but honestly, after five minutes of them telling me about all the questionnaires I’d have to fill in, and making a date for the accommodation inspection, and practically having to swear on the Bible I’d never go away on a holiday, I told them, no, that’s okay, I’ll just buy one.”