A Week at the Lake

by Wendy Wax

  “Isn’t that who you’re always with? When have you not been?” Mackenzie’s tone had taken on a scolding edge.

  Serena bristled. “Does writing a blog about not having children make you some kind of marriage expert?” she snapped. “Because between the two weeks at the hospital and almost three weeks here plus another until Zoe’s birthday, that’s six weeks away from your husband and your perfect marriage,” she pointed out. “How do you think women like me end up with other women’s husbands?”

  “Ladies,” Emma began, her tone distinctly uncomfortable. But for the first time since they’d ended up at the hospital, Serena and Mackenzie were focused only on each other.

  “Oh, really.” Mackenzie’s disapproving eyes were fixed on Serena. “So you’re not a predator looking for weakness then? We’re just not attractive enough to hold on to our men.”

  “If the shoe fits . . .”

  “That’s enough.” Emma cut them off, an odd look on her face, her tone making it clear she wanted nothing more than to change the topic. “I’m grateful that you’ve both been able to be here so much longer than you’d planned. I just . . . I don’t think we need to be attacking each other.”

  “Sorry. But I didn’t start the attack, I’m only trying to finish it. And whatever Mackenzie thinks, I’m not looking under rocks anymore. I’m done with the men who climb out from underneath them.”

  Mackenzie shot her a look. “You expect me to believe that?”

  “You can believe whatever you want,” Serena bit out. “Exactly what kind of proof were you looking for?” She imagined producing Brooks Anderson as exhibit A. But she was not about to fling him into this fray.

  “Not that anyone should be forced to prove such a thing to her friends,” Emma said to Mackenzie, but there was something in her eyes Serena couldn’t quite identify. “On the bright side I must really be getting better, because this is the first time you’ve let loose around me.” She gave them both a look. “I can’t tell you how thrilled I am.” Her tone was dry, her expression deliberately deadpan.

  Neither Serena nor Mackenzie gave her the laugh she was going for.

  The silence was broken when Zoe pounded back downstairs to shriek. “Oh. My. God. You’ll never guess what happened!” She came to a halt in front of them, oblivious in that way that only teenagers who are certain the world revolves around them can be, to the tension that still hung in the air. “Ryan invited me out to a party after my birthday cookout! It’s going to be at the club and everybody’s going to come by boat! I can go, right?” she said to Emma. “Because I told him I could.” She turned to Mackenzie before her mother could answer. “Please tell me my outfit will be ready in time!”

  “Absolutely.” Mackenzie smiled at Zoe.

  Zoe’s cell phone rang again and she didn’t even look at the screen before answering. The excitement on her face made it clear she expected it to be Ryan again. “Hello?”

  Zoe’s tone changed, the excitement dissipating. “Oh. Yes. Hello. Thank you.” Her eyes went to Emma. “Yes, she’s here.” Zoe covered the mouthpiece. “It’s Eve. She says she has a birthday present for me and wants to deliver it in person.” She looked pleadingly at her mother. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to her.”

  Emma’s lips tightened. “No problem,” she said, though it clearly was. She stuck out her hand. Zoe placed the phone in her palm.

  Mackenzie took the crop top and began to point out something to Zoe. Serena retreated upstairs as Emma turned and moved into the kitchen.

  Stopping in front of the kitchen window, Emma watched the running lights of a slow-moving boat just east of Hemlock Point. “I asked you not to use other people to call me,” she said to Eve.

  “I wouldn’t have to if you answered your phone.”

  “I don’t answer because I don’t want to talk to anyone right now,” Emma replied. Especially not you. “That’s what voice mail is for.”

  A silence fell. Emma made no move to fill it.

  “I’d like to come up to deliver Zoe’s present,” Eve finally said. “I can come anytime that’s convenient.”

  “So she said,” Emma replied, unable to think of any time that seeing Eve would be good or convenient. The breeze had picked up and the sway of the branches down near the beach drew her eye. “If you have a gift for Zoe, I’d prefer you send it.”

  “It’s not really that sort of gift. It’s a bit more complicated than that. And may require some explanation and, possibly, discussion.”

  “Then I suggest you choose a different gift.”

  Eve made no comment.

  “We’re keeping the celebration small. Zoe’s going out afterward. It’s her first date.” The information was out before she could stop herself.

  “Oh, I’d love to be there for that.” Eve sounded almost like any grandmother might. Wistful even.

  The comment hit Emma like a blow. “Really? That’s odd. You were never there for any first of mine that I can think of,” Emma said. Except of course for her first role and then for her audition for Daddy’s Girl. Eve had been all over those.

  The silence was weightier this time. Moonlight danced across the slightly choppy surface of the lake.

  “Why don’t you just tell me what this is really about?” Emma said.

  “It’s not about anything,” Eve insisted. But with Eve it was always about something else. In Emma’s experience that something was almost always Eve.

  “I really have to go,” Emma said finally. She’d already turned and begun to move her thumb to disconnect when Eve said, “Well, the thing is, I am at a bit of a loose end.”

  “A loose end.”

  “Yes. Regan and Nash are off on location. And . . .” Eve’s voice trailed off.

  “Perhaps you should have gone back to California with Rex,” Emma said. “Or maybe it’s time for one of your spa vacations.” Emma was more than ready to hang up. “I don’t know. And honestly I can’t really say that I care.”

  “Rex isn’t in California.” Eve’s words came out in a rush.

  “No?” Her mother had never bothered to share her or Rex’s plans before. Emma breathed an impatient sigh. “Then go meet him wherever he is.”

  “He’s gone to France,” Eve said. “On an extended . . . vacation.”

  “Alone?” Her father had never been particularly into solitude. Or anything else that might invite or result in introspection.

  “No,” Eve said. “He’s taken a house in Cannes. With Gerald. And I’m fairly certain I’m not invited.”

  This was something new. Her father had always had relationships, some of them of a long duration. But he’d publicly been dashingly heterosexual, careful to maintain his devoted husband/father/leading man image.

  “I’m sorry for everything I missed or ignored. All of it,” Eve said now without preamble. “I thought I had plenty of time to make it up to you one day. But, then there you were in that horrible coma. And . . .” This was the point in the scene where an actress would have lit a cigarette or performed some other bit of “business” to heighten the drama. The camera would move in on a close-up of said actress’s distressed face. “Haven’t you ever wished you’d done things differently?” It was an award-winning delivery from a highly skilled actress. But it was the question, not the delivery that left Emma feeling nauseated. If she’d chosen a different path there would be no Zoe.

  She closed her eyes and held tight to the phone as she thought about why she’d invited Mackenzie and Serena here.

  “Haven’t you ever done something you’ve wished you could take back or change or at least try to make right?” Eve asked quietly.

  “You know what,” Emma said more shrilly than intended. “Sometimes after you make your bed, you have no choice but to lie in it.”

  Twenty-eight

  Thou shalt not covet thy best friend’s daughter.
Thou shalt not covet thy . . . The modified commandment echoed loudly in Mackenzie’s mind as she sat at the sewing machine finishing off the hem of Zoe’s new patchwork skirt. Zoe worked nearby, her lip clenched firmly between her teeth, her head nodding to the beat of the music that played from her iPhone through a small but powerful speaker, as she contemplated how best to attach the large gem-colored stones to the straps of the white flip-flops she’d chosen. She’d bought three additional pairs so that she could make gifts for her mother and fairy godmothers once she’d finished the “prototype.”

  “What do you think?” Zoe showed her the tentative arrangement of stones. “I thought I’d try to build a small pyramid of them here at the center of the vee and then decrease the height and width gradually along the straps.”

  “I like it,” Mackenzie said, impressed with Zoe’s concentration and her innate confidence. “I think they’ll work perfectly with the outfit. You’ve got a good eye.”

  Zoe had been smiling since they’d sat down to work; the smile grew wider at the praise.

  “Who’s that singing?” Mackenzie asked, tuning in to the haunting young female voice. “She’s really good.”

  “That’s Lorde—her real name is Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor. She’s from New Zealand.” She noted Mackenzie’s blank look. “She’s BFFs with Taylor Swift.” An oddly familiar look of exasperation passed over Zoe’s features. “You have heard of Taylor Swift, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Zoe bopped her head and reexamined the pile of gems spread out before her with a critical eye. “Do you know Selena Gomez?”

  “Is she the one who dates Justin Bieber?” That at least was a name you’d have to be living under a rock to miss.

  “Not anymore,” Zoe said. “Listen to this.” Her thumbs moved so quickly over her phone they were a blur. “It’s called ‘Come and Get It.’”

  Zoe gave her a tutorial as they worked. It turned out there was a whole slew of young recording artists Mackenzie had barely heard of and given no thought to. She leafed through the Teen Vogue Zoe had bought for inspiration. It set Mackenzie’s mind racing down paths she’d never set foot on. There was so much youth and energy in the music and fashion worlds. And she’d missed all of it.

  The last time Mackenzie had spent time with Zoe, she’d been ten, a child. Now she was her own person, a teenager on the cusp of womanhood. And Emma had been a part of the whole journey. One day, God willing, she’d send her off to college, throw her a wedding, hold her daughter’s children in her arms. While Mackenzie might attend some of those events, she would do so as a secondary character in someone else’s story.

  Thou shalt not covet thy best friend’s daughter. She sounded out each word in her head, but like the real commandments this one was easier to say than to stick to. She would definitely not be using it as a blog post title anytime soon.

  The song changed. Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball” came on, hard driving and plaintive. Her thoughts turned to Adam and their life in Noblesville. Her sewing room at one end of the house, his study on the other. Her life reduced to helping bring Adam’s visions to life.

  She’d had visions of her own once. Visions that had been interrupted by an unplanned pregnancy just as his had. Unlike Adam she’d embraced the interruption, but she’d let go of all of her dreams when life had taken a turn. She’d never really replaced them.

  Having a child, a teenager in their lives, would have taken them outside themselves, given them a joined purpose other than the theater, kept them younger, more current. She caught herself bobbing her head along with the music but froze at the thought that followed.

  Did this jealousy, this covetousness, nullify everything she’d been writing? Did it make a mockery of the readers who’d rallied behind her? Did it make her a fraud?

  By the time they broke for dinner Mackenzie was certain that if there’d been lightning bolts thrown for commandment flouting, she would already have been struck.

  She straightened the materials as she always did before quitting, helped Zoe do the same, then volunteered to set the porch table where they’d taken to eating their evening meal.

  She was outside, her eyes on the lake, when her phone rang. This hadn’t happened in so long that she almost didn’t recognize the ringtone.

  “Hey, Mac.” Adam’s voice bore no sign of their recent awkwardness or lack of communication over the past weeks. It was, in fact, jubilant. “You won’t believe what just happened.”

  She pressed the phone tighter to her ear. Barefoot, she moved over the grass and toward the beach, where the sand that cushioned her toes was cool and damp.

  “Universal loved the revised screenplay,” he said before she could ask. “Matt and I met with them yesterday. We’ve reached a basic agreement. I’ve got a deal!”

  “Oh, my God,” she said. Tears pricked the back of her eyelids and the lake blurred before her. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Her mind was awash with thoughts and emotions that rushed by too quickly to cling to. The first was pure joy for him. “Oh, my God,” she said. “You did it. You sold your screenplay. It’s going to be a movie.”

  “Well, it has a very good chance of becoming a movie. Plus they’re paying a nice chunk of change for the right to develop it. And with Mitch Silverman on board to direct, well.” He laughed happily. “The odds are good. And in my favor.”

  “So, what happens next?” she asked, trying to take it all in, trying to squash the fear that had suddenly reared its head. Fear for herself. Fear of change. Adam had been writing a screenplay since she’d met him. Despite all the cheerleading over the years, she realized now she’d never really envisioned this happening.

  “That’s still being discussed. But I thought that while everything’s being finalized I’d come out to see you all.” He hesitated slightly. “You know, to check on Emma. And so that we can explore our options.”

  “Our options?” The word hung heavy between them. It was a business word, one used in negotiation. Not in a marriage. Mackenzie turned to pace the small beach, trying to dispel her nervousness.

  “Yeah, you know,” Adam replied. “What we’re going to do about the theater. Whether we want to keep the house or sell it.” He sounded so happy, so excited, while she felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach without warning. The items they needed to discuss tripped off his lips while his tone made it clear he’d already reached his own decisions.

  Mackenzie felt suddenly like she imagined Emma might have as the van bore down on her. She felt her life changing and splintering in that very instant. There would be only “before the call” and “after.” Whatever happened next, there would be no going back to how things had been.

  “I’m not sure whether I’ll be coming through LaGuardia or flying into Albany.” The mouthpiece was covered and Adam’s voice muffled as he spoke to someone else. She heard his laughter and even muffled it was sharp and joyous. “Listen, Mac,” he said a few moments later. “I’ve got to go. I’ll let you know when I have my flights set so you know when to expect me.”

  Two seconds later she was staring out at the lake, no longer connected to Adam. Or, she thought, to much of anyone at all.

  Okay, that’s it.” Zoe had just carried her plate into the kitchen and gone to pick out the evening’s movie when Serena stood up from the table and waved her cloth napkin in front of Mackenzie’s face. Mackenzie barely blinked. “I think we’ve got someone else who’s slipped into a coma,” Serena said. “What are the odds?”

  Mackenzie’s eyelids blinked rapidly. She sat up and focused on Serena. “You did not just say that.”

  “Yes, I believe I did.”

  “Then you should definitely apologize to Emma.”

  “No apology needed.” In truth Emma was greatly relieved that they’d finally stopped treating her like she was made of porcelain and might shatter
at any moment. She was also glad that someone was ready to address Mackenzie’s distracted silence, which they’d all been tiptoeing around since the meal began. “But we would like to know what’s wrong.”

  “Wrong?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Um, yeah,” Serena replied. “As in, you and your head are somewhere else entirely and we’d like to know where.”

  “LA,” Mackenzie said slowly. She looked down at the table, brushed a stray crumb out of the way. “Adam called.” She looked up. “He sold his screenplay to Universal. Mitch Silverman’s going to direct.”

  “Wow,” Emma said, shocked.

  “No shit?” Serena said.

  All three of them began to talk at once. It was Serena who asked what Emma had been thinking. “So why do you look so unhappy?”

  “Unhappy?” Mackenzie asked as a lone tear slid down one cheek, across her chin, and plopped onto the table. “I’m not unhappy.”

  Serena rolled her eyes.

  “You look like man who find out the dacha he just bought is not in Ozero but in Siberia,” Nadia, who had just carried in a purple-hued smoothie that Emma did not want, said. “Very big disappointing.”

  Mackenzie smiled, but the tears continued to fall. “He’s coming to talk about our options. I think he wants to sell everything and move to LA.”

  “And you don’t want to do that?” Emma asked, although the answer seemed obvious. Mackenzie’s was not the face of a woman who couldn’t wait to pick up and start a new life.

  “I don’t know. I feel like he’s already made the decisions.” Mackenzie looked down. “I’m not sure if he’ll care what I think. Or even whether I come with him or not.”

  “That’s crazy,” Serena said. “You guys have been married for, what, seventeen years? And together for a frickin’ lifetime before that. He’s damned lucky to have you.”

  “I don’t know. He seems to be doing just fine without me.”

  “Aw, sweetie.” Emma got up and came to put her arms around Mackenzie. “If you hadn’t gotten stuck trying to take care of me, you’d have already been out there and part of the celebration.”