The Real Liddy James

by Anne-Marie Casey

  I have no idea, thought Rose. This realization made her both laugh and curse bitterly.

  “I wonder what will happen now?” she said.

  Suddenly there was a genteel but firm tapping on the front door.

  Quickly Rose ran toward it, expecting Peter and a story about lost keys, but instead she pulled it open to reveal the unexpected sight of Sophia Lesnar. Sophia had adopted the long, white, and flowing approach to New York summer dressing, with a straw hat perched on top, so it was as if an energetic Edwardian lady explorer from England had appeared on the doorstep.

  “Darling Rose,” said Sophia. “How are you?”

  She held out her arms and kissed Rose on both cheeks, and Rose got a glimpse of her Edwardian-style abundantly hairy armpits. For some reason this made Rose even more nervous.

  “Fine,” she said.

  Sophia paused and stared at Grace for a moment. “Adorable!” she whispered, then crept silently away saying, “Let’s not wake her,” which Rose now understood and felt grateful for.

  “How are you?” said Rose.

  Sophia followed her into the kitchen. She made herself comfortable at the table.

  “Oh, very good, thanks.” Sophia inspected the room curiously as if searching for important artifacts, like a laptop or a few pages of research. Then she turned her piercing stare back toward Rose. Rose experienced the uncomfortable sensation of being pinned against a wall, like a moth on a canvas.

  “Tea?” asked Rose, wriggling. “Lemonade?”

  “A quick lemonade, please,” she said. “I’m on the clock! So how’s the writing going?”

  Rose carried a glass of homemade lemonade to Sophia and handed it to her. Sophia sipped it approvingly.

  “Delicious!”

  “Thank you,” Rose replied. “I use lime and lemon.”

  Rose knew she sounded dispirited and nervous and thought that Sophia could not fail to notice. But she did not. Rose wondered if Sophia’s husband, whom she had never spoken to but with whom she had often felt solidarity, sounded nervous all the time.

  “I understand completely why you haven’t been in touch, what with the pregnancy this and the bedridden that, and of course Peter’s ex cracking up—don’t tell him I said anything, by the way, he’ll think everyone’s been gossiping. Which of course they have!”

  Sophia paused for breath but only for a moment.

  “Anyway, I’ve told Charley at the Literature Review that I will be sending them a ten-thousand-word piece by November twentieth. Then a week before, I will say I have a family emergency and that you’re filling the slot instead on behalf of the department.”

  Rose poured her another glass. “I don’t want you to lie for me, Sophia.”

  “Mmmm . . .” Sophia slugged the lemonade down approvingly.

  “I’ve got three kids, Rose. I have a family emergency once a day, twice a day if you include things like plumbing. Okay? Where’s Peter?”

  “I don’t know,” said Rose.

  “Typical!” exclaimed Sophia, standing up. “Can’t take the swollen breasts and the various discharges. But we both know men are redundant at this stage of the game. That’s why in ancient cultures pregnant women retired alone to a secluded place for confinement and recovery.”

  They also died of postpartum infections, thought Rose, whose experiences had made her impatient with the “squatting over a pit is better” school of birth advice.

  Sophia was now marching toward the door. “Bye, Rose. You know one of the best things about having a baby—you’re not pregnant anymore! Call me when you have your subject.”

  She paused. “I have complete confidence in you.”

  Rose looked straight back at her. “Thank you, Sophia.”

  She closed the door carefully and turned to see her bag on the floor, beside her baby in the stroller in the hall.

  She opened it and pulled the pad out of it. She saw her scribbled idea on it. She thought of the quote she had alluded to with Barbara.

  This Achilles / He’ll pay the price for that great courage of his

  Alone, I tell you—sob his heart out far too late—

  She walked into the library. She switched on the computer.

  She thought of Liddy.

  She asked herself, What is the difference between arrogance and courage in a tragic heroine?

  She began to write.

  Peter was not a creature of impulse, a trait that Liddy had always admired, so when she spotted him walking toward them through the crowded terminal building, she assumed she had made some sort of mistake and he was about to berate her for a misremembered plan. But when he saw her he waved cheerfully.

  Matty ran straight over to him and they hugged each other hard, but because Cal was sitting on top of the bags on her trolley, Liddy made more cautious progress.

  “Have I missed something? Did we make an arrangement?” she asked, genuinely curious. Then she looked at Matty.

  “Did you make an arrangement?” She paused. “Peter. Why are you here?”

  He ruffled Cal’s hair, then moved behind the trolley to push it himself.

  “I’m in the green parking lot,” he said. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine, actually. Well, more than fine. I’m good. Very good.”

  She somewhat stuttered through this answer, because, in truth, the combination of Peter smiling happily at her and the fact that he did not answer her question rattled her.

  “That’s a relief,” he said. Then he paused, not for long, but long enough for Liddy to notice that there was no tremor in his voice, no loaded comment, no pain.

  “I need to say something to you.”

  He stopped outside a small snack bar. He lifted Cal down from the trolley, took a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet, and handed it to Matty.

  “Boys, get something for the journey home.”

  Matty took Cal’s hand and ran toward the doughnuts.

  “Well, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about future arrangements,” said Liddy.

  “It’s not about that. Well, it is a bit about that.”

  His phone rang. He looked at it. “It’s Rose,” he said, but did not answer it.

  “I’m confused,” said Liddy. “Are you bringing Matty home to meet Grace?”

  He did not answer her.

  “Did you tell Rose you were coming?” said Liddy accusingly.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “For everything. That’s what I want to say to you.”

  Liddy did not think it would be possible for her to be more astonished. She peered at Peter. She did not recognize him.

  “What happened to me wasn’t your fault,” she said quickly, because she felt a familiar protective urge toward him rising within her. She stopped this. Last time she felt this way they ended up married. “And I’m sorry for everything too,” she continued.

  They both exhaled. Peter’s phone beeped with a message from Rose.

  “What will I tell her?” asked Peter, as this had not occurred to him as he zealously planned his mission that afternoon.

  “Tell her you decided to come and get Matty as a surprise. It was a spontaneous thing.”

  “That’s a good idea, but she won’t believe it.”

  “Tell her the truth, then, I don’t care.” Liddy grinned mischievously. “Just stop her panicking that you’ve come to declare undying love to me.”

  For a moment she felt twenty-five years old again, Lydia Mary Murphy, full of brightness and grit and inexperience, sitting in the storytelling salon in the Cornelia Street Café.

  “What if I have?” he said, a particular expression on his face that scared as well as reassured her. It was Peter, all right.

  “Don’t,” she said, suddenly serious. They were still standing far apart, so she reached out her hand to him. Peter took it.


  “Get over it, Peter. For all our sakes. Our story ended. It shouldn’t have ended the way it did, but—”

  “Do you want anything, Mom?” Matty shouted from the register. Liddy shook her head.

  “What do you mean?” Peter asked.

  “I mean, I think,” said Liddy, “that in real life we can’t force things to have a beginning, a middle, and an end we always like. And I’ve tried, God knows. I love to be in control. I am a woman who has a spreadsheet for packing.”

  Cal trotted back to them and clambered back onto the trolley, a doughnut as big as his head in his mouth. Liddy linked her arm through Peter’s and they walked on, Matty at a little distance ahead.

  “You know, Liddy, I have dedicated my professional life to the analysis and understanding of literature, with its stories of heroes and villains, happy endings and often reassuring morals. But the day we brought Grace back from the hospital, I went outside to be alone for a moment and there, sitting on the bench by the fig tree, I thought about everything that has happened over the last few years, and I experienced such an overwhelming sense of the randomness, the chaos and shapelessness of existence, that I burst into tears. I understood that such structure can never be duplicated in real life.”

  “Maybe we wouldn’t want it to be,” said Liddy. “Peter, you’re a good man.”

  “Not good enough, Liddy. Within the chaos we can live with purpose and ethical rigor, and on many occasions I have singularly failed to do that.”

  There was a long pause. What had needed to be said had been said and they both considered it.

  “Don’t mess things up with Rose,” said Liddy. “To lose one . . . something . . . may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like—”

  “Carelessness,” finished Peter. “The Importance of Being Earnest.”

  “Exactly, Oscar Wilde, right?” said Liddy.

  I miss Sebastian, she thought, so she decided to mention him to make herself feel better.

  “My friend who owns the house in Ireland is Irish. He’s a divorce lawyer too.”

  Peter turned toward the car with a little dismissive grunt.

  “And a published poet,” said Liddy, thinking, Take that, because she couldn’t stop herself reacting to that grunt.

  They had reached the parking lot now. Peter had forgotten where the car was, so he clicked the button on his key and a set of lights, three rows over, flashed at him obediently. Matty ran over to it. Liddy lifted Cal down.

  “What are we going to do about him?” said Peter, looking as Matty clambered into the back of the car and beckoned for Cal to follow. “I’m terrified. And we’ve got at least another four years of him walking around with a permanent erection.”

  “I’m terrified too,” said Liddy. “And remorseful. Do you think it’s payback for what I put my parents through? I look at Matty sometimes and I think, Why are you speaking to me like that? Where did you come from? And then I remember my father calling me a changeling.”

  Peter smiled. She turned to him.

  “We’re going to ride the roller coaster beside him and try not to shout too much.”

  “Good,” he said.

  They got into the car. Liddy found the lever to push back the passenger seat to make room for her legs.

  “I have this incredible urge for a drink,” said Peter. “We could go to that speakeasy on Grove Street if it’s still there.”

  “We can’t. You’re driving and we all have to get home,” said Liddy. “Call Rose.”

  “Didn’t we have a terrible argument there one night?”

  “Yep,” replied Liddy. “It was about Barry Manilow. You impugned my taste in music with specific reference to ‘Mandy.’”

  Peter shuddered and said, “Don’t start singing it,” but she did anyway, and they leaned over toward each other and laughed hard.

  Matty and Cal looked at each other. Matty put his fingers in his ears and Cal, giggling, followed suit. Liddy stopped on a high note.

  “Call Rose,” she said again.

  Rose had stayed awake and kept writing, waiting for Peter and Matty’s return, but when Grace had fallen unexpectedly and deeply asleep at about eleven o’clock, Rose took a short nap on the floor of the nursery beside her. It was there that Peter woke her.

  “What time is it?” she asked blearily.

  “After midnight. I dropped Liddy and Cal off in Tribeca. I’ve put Matty in bed.”

  He sat beside her, and she propped herself up on her elbows.

  “I would have been a useless lookout in the Wild West,” she said.

  “Yes,” agreed Peter. “Or pilot in the dawn patrol in World War One.”

  This was not how Rose had imagined the conversation beginning at all.

  “Why did you go and meet Liddy?” she said.

  Peter did not answer for a moment. This did not frighten Rose because Peter always took time to reply, as he liked to speak in proper sentences.

  “Big changes are upon us, my love,” he said slowly.

  Now Rose felt a pulse of pure terror, for she knew how he ridiculed those who spoke in banalities (“That wins first prize in a ‘stating the obvious’ competition,” he had shouted at her once), and so what he was about to say would be unexpected.

  “I don’t care,” she said defiantly. “We’ll manage. I just wrote a thousand words of my article.”

  “It’s more than that,” he replied. “I’ve been to see a lawyer.” He saw the expression on her face and stopped. “What’s wrong?”

  “You tell me,” she said, thinking, Is this it? Why hadn’t she listened to Liddy? Why hadn’t she got him to sign that “Couple Cohabitation Agreement”?

  “Rose, my love. You know I did not greet the news of my impending second chance at fatherhood with . . . shall we say, unbridled enthusiasm. I didn’t want another child.”

  “Do you want this child?” she whispered, so upset she could not use Grace’s name, but he seemed not to hear. “Is that why your marriage broke down?” she said, a little louder.

  “Liddy really wanted another baby, and if I had agreed she would never have done what she did. I mean, if I’m honest, when I look back I see how unhappy we were, but she wouldn’t ever have left me.”

  At this moment, there was a loud crash! and muffled swearing from upstairs as Matty fell out of bed, which he sometimes did while dreaming.

  “Sounds fun, doesn’t it?” Peter said ruefully.

  “Do you want this child?” Rose asked again, because he had not answered her the first time, and when he said yes immediately, she smiled and fell silent, deciding to quit while she was ahead, but Peter had not finished.

  “This time it’s different,” he said. “I was enough for you without it.”

  Her anxieties vanished. Rose relaxed. She was safe, secure, she could be Rose again, Rose for whom enough was enough, Rose whose faith in life and Peter James, which to her were the same thing, had not been misplaced, and she rejoiced. He lay back on the floor and she cuddled up next to him.

  “The moment I saw our beautiful daughter, so perfect, so new, so full of grace, I was overwhelmed by the desire to make her life as unsullied as I could. I have wasted so much time feeling angry and bitter toward Liddy and I don’t want to feel like that anymore.”

  There was a new purposefulness and peace in Peter’s expression that Rose liked. She knew it meant that he had no more desire for revenge.

  “I know we won’t get any more money from her,” said Rose. “I know I have to go back to work. My article may be late, but it’ll be great. And I have an idea for a book about the ‘good’ stepmother in nineteenth-century literature.”

  Peter paused to consider this. “Like Isabel Archer?”

  “Yes. I was thinking that there are so few models of successful stepparenting in fiction. I’m sure I can do somethin
g interesting with it.”

  “Sophia will love that,” he said with the sort of intonation that Rose knew was not a compliment but a grudging recognition of her resourcefulness. “If it works you’ll finally get yourself on tenure track.”

  Rose grinned. “I hope so. I called Sophia and she says she’s excited. She also said that one of the adjuncts was caught on security camera this afternoon in a closet with a graduate student, so the dean is looking favorably on my . . . maturity.”

  “I never heard about that,” said Peter, for a moment thinking wistfully of the escapades of his presurveillance younger days.

  “So,” she said, “Liddy? . . .”

  “I want to sell this house and give her half the proceeds. That’s what should have happened when we separated.”

  Rose stopped. Even restored to her old saintly self, this was a shock. “What will we do?”

  “Turns out it’s worth a frankly immoral sum of money, so even with half, we can happily buy ourselves a very pleasant place a little further outside the city—commuting distance for us both, of course—and make our own home. We can also invest a little nest egg and plan for my retirement.”

  She stopped and looked at him. Despite his talk of retirement, in this moment of heroic generosity he had never appeared stronger or more manly or younger to her.

  “What about Connecticut?” she said quickly, for her brother Michael lived there and he had flower beds and chickens in his yard and talked about the excellent public schools.

  “Sure. I want you to be happy. I want us all to be happy. And I want to cease being . . . cangled . . . with my ex-wife. You and Grace have made me a better person.”

  Tears welled up in Rose’s eyes and the yellow light of the street lamps outside blurred and surrounded both of them like a halo. It was the final miracle of her life, she could ask for nothing more. But there was more, for, to her amazement, Peter stood up and then, creakily, got back down on one knee between the sippy cup and the discarded toys.