She fell in easily with a position at Rusker, which was a biotech start-up at the time. It hadn’t felt like a consolation prize. She was helping people, she reasoned, even if not in the way she’d always dreamed. Fifteen years later, she’d worked her way up to a regulatory position. A good salary, order and structure to her days, a large private office, and enough stress to keep her heart moving at a healthy clip, even when the mundanity of child-rearing threatened to unwind all her own brain cells. If pressed, she couldn’t have said she loved her job. But she could get lost in it. Wasn’t that the same thing?
Health-authority audits were nerve-rattling events—they were long and grueling, and often the days were scattered with short tempers and sudden outbursts as she and her colleagues struggled to sift through research that took place ten, fifteen years ago and justify it as safe by today’s rules and regulations. Penelope’s boss, Nora, was a Swiss immigrant in every way possible: a striving perfectionist preferring simplicity and, while fair, could be blunt as hell. All this was in direct opposition to the upheaval in Penelope’s recent life, which was now overscheduled and complicated.
When Brett had a full-time job, she’d been allowed to sink into her professional life. Brett had done half the running around, as much as he could. They’d have conversations over the island in the morning, each with coffee in hand, a full day ahead of them, as equals—who had to be where and when. The whole family shared a complicated set of iCalendars, one for each of them, all feeding into one master schedule on their phones. Every practice, meeting, rehearsal, equipment pickup, car-maintenance appointment, medical checkup, dental cleaning. Their whole lives, cross-linked.
Ever since he’d been laid off, he acted as though the calendar no longer existed. He’d long stopped updating it, and Penelope patiently reminded him to check the schedule, but after a few phone calls from Tara or Linc being left at school followed by sullen rides home, she stopped badgering him. It was easier to do it herself than to fight with Brett about it, followed by doing it herself anyway.
The loss of a partner, not by death or illness, which might garner her a card or at least sympathy in the name of definitive labels, left her making excuses at work. Brett had an interview. She had a doctor’s appointment. And sometimes, she found herself sneaking out of work—on time, mind you, not early—to pick up Tara at rehearsal and trying not to get caught, like she was doing something wrong.
She liked Nora, had worked with her for over ten years. She thought she had a mutual understanding and respect with her boss. But lately, it seemed, Nora found every reason to needle her.
By the time the auditors had left for the day and Penelope found time to use the restroom, she found her hair had come out of the bun, wild around her face, and she had a slight smear of chocolate across her cheek from—she checked her watch—over three hours ago. As she fixed herself up, a stall door opened, and Nora appeared behind her.
“Debrief for an hour, you’ll stay?” Nora took her place at the sink next to Penelope to wash her hands. It wasn’t a question, although it was phrased to sound like one.
“Of course.” Penelope watched Nora as she dried her hands, patted the side of her head, and turned to leave the bathroom. “I think it went well today,” she offered at her boss’s back, hoping for some kind of exchange—the warmth they used to share. Penelope had a memory of enjoying coffee with Nora in the cafeteria upstairs. Of laughing easily. She had no idea when that had changed, but she suspected it was related to Penelope’s furtiveness. Her darting in and out of the office rather than explaining herself. Really, how could she? Brett has a sensory deprivation chamber appointment today; I have to get the kids!
Nora didn’t turn around. “We’ll see tomorrow.” And she was gone.
Her chilliness was unsettling, but it was more than that. Penelope sat through the debrief, offering insight when she could but her thoughts fully drifting. She knew she did a good job—although not as much of it as she had in previous years. She didn’t regularly work late or take the middle-of-the-night conference calls with China anymore. She found herself, with age, becoming less ambitious, not more.
“Tomorrow, Elias, will you run the room?”
Penelope’s head snapped up. That was her job. She opened her mouth to speak, and Nora gave her a quick headshake. Elias was eight years younger than Penelope. A bachelor. She realized with sudden dread that he’d been in his office every time she’d left work the past few weeks. Had he been there when she came in? She couldn’t remember.
On the drive home from work, she stopped at QuickShop, picked out a card each for Tara and Linc, and then, as an afterthought, grabbed a glossy, cellophane-wrapped for my husband card without even bothering to read it. She was bone tired. Not sure where her children were—all of her texts had gone unanswered. I’m stuck at work, catch a ride home from play, please. Her lone text to Brett—Can you handle dinner? Be home by 7, I hope—had been flagged only as delivered, not read.
At a stoplight, she thumbed through her phone, her finger landing neatly on Happy Valentine’s Day from that morning, and she reread the exchange and knew without seeing her own face that she was smiling. This was what this small, harmless friendship did for her—could it be that bad? If she smiled amid a harrowing day simply by rereading their texts?
The inside of her house was dark, but the smell of something warm and garlicky hit her as soon as she opened the door.
“Brett?” she called, hanging up her coat, slipping off her pumps. In stocking feet, she padded to the kitchen, which was dark at first. A light switched on, a cacophony of “Surprise! Surprise!”
“Happy Valentine’s Day!”
Tara, Linc, Brett stood around the kitchen table, Willa at the stove, Penelope’s apron tied around her waist. They all grinned at her, waiting, expectant.
“Well,” she said finally, her throat thick. “I wondered what happened to you all. I’ve been texting all day.”
“Linc took my phone because he said I’d spoil it.” Tara shot her brother a murderous look.
The table held enough plates for all of them and, in the center, two dozen red roses and a large, lacy heart-shaped box of chocolates. Penelope looked around. The kitchen was spotless, except for a decadent chocolate cake on a glass platter on the counter. She turned and looked at the living room—all the clutter was gone, the rugs freshly vacuumed. Underneath the scent of bubbling tomato sauce, Penelope whiffed a hint of Pledge.
“You all cleaned?”
“The whole house, even our rooms.” Linc rolled his eyes in the direction of his sister. Linc’s room, always neat as a pin, had likely required almost no attention.
“Did this take you all day?” Penelope asked, incredulous.
“We had a half day of school.” Tara pressed her lips together, maybe in disapproval, Penelope couldn’t tell.
“Oh my God, I forgot.” Penelope’s hand flew to her mouth. Oh God. She never forgot them. Never. It was always on the calendar. But the audit. Nora. Elias. Brett. Jaime, her inner voice whispered, cool as the devil on her shoulder.
Willa waved her away. “It’s fine. It’s all fine!” She smiled broadly. “Your kids are popular. They got rides home, and their friends are charming!” Willa gave Linc a little bump with her elbow. Penelope rolled her eyes in mock annoyance: Linc must have gotten a ride home with his buddy Jerry Tamish. Brett had called him a real-life Eddie Haskell—all thank you, Mrs. Cox, and Did you get your hair cut, Mrs. Cox?
Brett came up behind Penelope, his hands flanking her hips, and kissed the top of her head, lingering more than usual. She heard the sharp intake of breath as he smelled her scalp, that earthy part of hair where clean shampoo and the essence of skin met. “We do manage to somehow get along without you,” he whispered. “Although not always very well.” Penelope felt herself lean back into him, closed her eyes. The way he rubbed her arms when he was soothing her, comforting her, showing affection. It felt strange to have these flashes of intimacy, familiar and for
eign at the same time.
Willa motioned for them all to sit as she served lasagna, fresh from the oven. She turned down the dimmer over the table and lit two taper candles on either side of the vase of roses.
Penelope looked around the table at the shining faces of her family, and then at her old-new friend. Willa did this. Willa was fixing them. Bringing them all back together, whether she knew it or not, meant to or not. She’d done something similar all those years ago, not with sweetness but laughter. She used to be licentious—delighting in making Penelope blush and Flynn shift uncomfortably. Still, she’d come bursting through the door at six a.m., filled with stories about the men she’d gone home with. Everything felt dramatic, larger than real life. Bad sex, dramatic fights. He wore a T-shirt to bed. Not the T-shirt he wore on the date. As in he took off one shirt, put on another shirt. Then had sex. Why? WHY? They’d be bleary eyed in the kitchen, laughing too hard to drink their coffee.
Willa had mellowed with age, but she was still doing it. Her manicured hands flying as she talked rapid fire, the kids laughing; even Brett watched her, eyes shining. There were fewer curse words, and the stories were about her childhood, her teenage years, not about sex and heavy sweating men, but there she was anyway, using story to bring them together. Penelope could forget their shared history if she focused on the Willa here and now.
Penelope was filled with a rush of gratitude so strong it almost knocked the wind out of her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d sat down to a meal with her whole family without the need to tend to something—the next thing, the pressing thing. Without picking her words carefully, trying to mentally check something off the list. (Was the director still giving Tara a hard time? How did Linc’s science test go?) But right now, at this moment, it all felt easy. She had no mental checklist. Tara dripped sauce immediately down her blouse, and Linc snorted and called it typical, and she tossed her napkin—cloth! Penelope had forgotten she owned cloth napkins!—and she saw both Tara and Linc sneak a sip of wine from Brett’s glass, and Brett’s eyes met hers across the table, and once again, she saw her husband through Willa’s eyes and found him undeniably attractive.
After dinner, they cut into the cake made by Linc—one of his closest-held secrets was that he was an incredibly talented baker—and gorged themselves on moist cake with rich chocolate buttercream, until they all felt sick and sleepy. Finally, at eleven, Willa announced she would clean up and wanted everyone to go to bed.
“You’ve all made this Valentine’s Day—a day that could have been incredibly difficult for me—a happy and memorable one. I’m so grateful.” She wiped her eyes with the (cloth!) napkin.
Penelope stood up and put her arms around Willa from behind, hugging her old friend. She regretted not thinking to buy her a card with the rest of the family. Not even picking up a foil-wrapped candy heart. Did she regret the twenty years she’d avoided her? No, that was necessity. But they could start again, maybe. Maybe. Depending on how much Willa was willing to let slide. They’d never let each other avoid the hard conversations before, though. So many times they’d barged into each other’s rooms, shut the door behind them: Spill it, what’s going on?
“We’re happy you’re here,” Penelope whispered, because she felt like she couldn’t say any more. Her throat felt tight with tears, and she wasn’t quite sure why. She looked at the beaming smiles of her family and was overwhelmed with her own gratitude. Willa hugged her back, her hand patting Penelope’s forearm, and Penelope heard the familiar soft, almost imperceptible tinkling of jewelry.
Sliding beneath Willa’s rolled-up sleeve was a gold-link bracelet. Clasped with a ruby heart.
CHAPTER TEN
February 15, 2020
Dawn filtered in through the bedroom curtains, hazy and insistent. Brett curled behind her, his arm slung heavily over her waist, his thighs against her thighs, skin to skin.
They hadn’t slept naked in at least five years. Since the kids started barging into their room at all hours, no spaces left in the house were safe and private. She remembered the night before, a little wine-drunk. The Valentine’s dinner glowing in her mind. The cards creased and crinkled, forgotten, in her purse while Brett presented her with the small jewelry box. A pair of diamond earrings.
She had opened it carefully, the eyes of her children shining as they bore witness to their parents’ reunion. She could feel it in the house—a new electricity. She’d always felt this way about marriage, often wondering if every marriage was like this. Days, months, even a year, where everything felt off—little snipes at each other, quietly nursing private wounds—and then, something would change. A quick crackle of energy, a look, a gift, an olive branch. And then, something in her heart would inexplicably shift—those tectonic plates of love and lust and anger and fear, sliding past each other in halting motions like little earthquakes of the soul.
They’d find each other in bed, saying with their hands what they couldn’t with their voices.
Except. Penelope had waited this whole year for the shift. Instead, she’d only found Brett leaving early in the morning, coming home at dinner. Searching for jobs hundreds of miles away. Without even telling her! She worked hard to file that one away. He would have told her eventually, he had pleaded with her that night. He would never have taken a job five hundred miles away. I just need to know that I can still get the job. It was an ego thing. He swore up and down he wouldn’t have left. A tiny piece of her didn’t quite believe it. Ever since that night—the night with Jaime and the chicken dinner and the fight—she still sometimes wondered what it would feel like to live alone, with only Tara and Linc. What if, just what if, Brett moved without her? Would it have been so bad, really? Lots of people divorced.
They divorced husbands who were employed. Divorces were expensive—lawyers and court fees and filing costs. She and Brett were barely making ends meet as it was. Besides, maybe it was just his midlife crisis. Didn’t everyone get at least one? She’d schedule hers later, she always thought to herself with a wry twist to her mouth.
Sometimes, she even thought about leaving him. Leaving her husband. Aside from the money, things hadn’t been so bad up until a year ago. They’d been a little dry, a little routine. But Penelope wasn’t naive. She’d watched other parents in the neighborhood divorce, pick up with partners twenty years younger, just to come crawling back when all the wild newness ebbed away to reveal the dreary everyday person underneath—someone who still texted about going to the grocery store or threw their socks on the floor next to the hamper. She knew all about greener grass. Couldn’t she stick it out, at least for a while? You had to make the effort to fix your marriage before you threw in the towel. And right now, in the thick of things, she didn’t have the bandwidth for fixing anything. The battery for the living room television remote had been dead for six months. They’d all started just using their phones instead. It felt a little like that—finding workarounds to keep on going.
So, she stayed. Part obligation, part exhaustion, part necessity.
But still. He’d been living entirely in his own head and heart. She tried not to focus on the money—so much money spent on finding himself—yoga and therapy and even art classes (art classes!) for her wholly left-brained husband.
It sounded like a made-for-TV movie to say he’d come back to her. But it had finally happened. She’d hardly allowed herself to think the words. But it was how she felt: like she’d been living with a shell of a person, and now he was here in full. Present in mind, body, spirit. Penelope felt the release of that, a tiny pop of hope in her heart.
She hadn’t said, Brett, how much were these? Or, What credit card did you use? She hadn’t even thought those words until now, the new day shining its bright light on what she’d refused to see in the romantic glow of a candle.
His hand reached up, cupped her breast, made some noise of contentment deep in the back of his throat. Penelope moved his hand aside and sat up. He tugged on her wrist.
“Come
back,” he mumbled, his fingers tickling the inside of her thigh, inching up. “Can’t you go in a little late? It’s Saturday.”
“No.” She didn’t mean to be sharp. But she’d told him yesterday. “It’s an audit. I have to go in and catch up. I think I’m being replaced. I don’t know, something is going on. Nora is . . .” She let her voice trail off. She hadn’t told Brett about Nora’s chilliness, her distance, the small ways Penelope seemed to be losing her purchase. It seemed a lot of ground to cover now, especially because she didn’t trust herself to not let her own resentment creep in. To not let it slip that at least some of her work issues might be his fault. She knew them both well enough to know that she’d mention the calendar and he’d blow up, and she’d get exasperated and leave. No, it was better to change the pattern. “I’ll explain later.” She planted a kiss on his forehead and padded to the bathroom to get dressed. He grumbled and turned over, his back to her.
On the dresser, her gold bracelet glinted in the sunlight.
She had asked Willa last night: Where did you find that? I have one just like it!
She laughed and slid it off her wrist easily. It’s yours! I found it under the sofa and put it on so I wouldn’t lose it. Then I completely forgot about it! Her eyes had held Penelope’s, wide and innocent, and Penelope had slid it over her own cuffed shirt.
When Penelope emerged from the bathroom fifteen minutes later, Brett was half-asleep again. On the dresser, she slipped the bracelet onto her wrist. A day late, but not short, she thought.
“What will you do today?” She’d meant it as a simple question, but it came out heavy with implication, and he answered her flatly, without opening his eyes.
“I don’t know yet, Pen.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” she amended lamely, her hands spread, as though grasping for something. He didn’t reply, and she kissed his forehead and smelled his soap fresh from his shower the night before and felt his breath on her neck and let her lips linger there, silently sorry. Then she left.
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