by Ann Hood
Today, Emily sipped her coffee and watched Morning Joe, trying to figure out what she would do with Chloe, her adversary, her stepdaughter. Maya liked to point out that Chloe’s mother, Rachel, was the enemy. “Fourteen-year-olds don’t have it in them,” Maya said. “That mother causes all the trouble.” Dr. Bundy said Emily tried too hard. “So what if she doesn’t like you?” Dr. Bundy always said after Emily described all the small irritations that added up to Chloe. Michael blamed Emily. “You’re the adult here. Make it work,” he snapped just last night.
Chloe sat, her back straight, at the table across from Emily. She was already completely dressed, right down to shoes and headband, as if she was expecting to go somewhere. Emily knew Chloe disapproved of sitting around in pajamas all morning. She’d heard her whispering to her mother about that enough times. But Emily liked to ease into the day, to pad around the house barefoot, wrapped in her robe, drinking coffee.
Chloe frowned at her, as if she’d read Emily’s mind.
“So,” Emily said, “Daddy won’t be home until tonight. What should we girls do?”
Chloe shrugged and chewed her fake granola very slowly. Her mother, Rachel, was on some kind of a health kick and Chloe arrived with lists of foods. Wheat bread, not white. This granola. “It’s full of sugar,” Emily had said, waving the box at Michael. “And five bucks a box. This isn’t healthy.” She didn’t add that she’d read on the anorexia websites that eating healthier was another smoke screen on the disease. Mention Chloe’s eating problem and there would be a fight. “Can’t you ever let up on her?” Michael would say.
“I know,” Emily said. “How about we get manicures?”
Chloe actually brightened. “Really?”
The manicures had been Maya’s idea, and once again Emily marveled at how her friend always thought of the right things to do.
“Why not?” Emily said.
“When can we go?”
Emily glanced at the clock. “Now, if you want.”
“Well,” Chloe said, “you’ll have to get dressed first.”
“Right,” Emily said.
“I mean, it’s almost ten o’clock,” Chloe said. She stared at Emily innocently.
“It’s nine-thirty,” Emily said.
“That’s almost ten. We just did estimates in math.”
Well, good for you, Emily thought, cringing at her own childish behavior. She would have to ask Dr. Bundy why Chloe always brought out the worst in her. With a sigh, she stood and refilled her coffee cup.
“Did you know that caffeine can cause miscarriages?” Chloe said.
Emily inhaled sharply. “Which class did you learn that in?” She wondered if Chloe knew about those lost babies. Surely the child wasn’t that cruel.
“Sex education,” Chloe said.
“They teach you about miscarriages? They should be teaching you about birth control.”
“They teach us that too,” Chloe said. She ate another spoonful of cereal with those same slow, careful chews.
The anorexia website said that some girls even chew their food a certain amount of times. Emily watched Chloe’s tight jaw move up and down. Was she counting each one?
“My mother gave up coffee when she was pregnant with me,” Chloe said.
Sex education, my ass, Emily thought. Rachel knew about the babies and blamed Emily. I gave up coffee, she wanted to scream. And cigarettes and wine and even sex. Afraid she might say those very things, or worse, Emily headed out of the kitchen.
At the door, she stopped. “That cereal,” she said. “It isn’t healthy, you know. It’s full of sugar.”
Chloe stopped chewing and narrowed her eyes.
“I mean, I can get you the real stuff at Whole Foods. I just bought you that because it was on your mother’s list.”
Her cheeks flushed from her own pettiness, Emily rushed upstairs. This was what Chloe brought out in her. The absolute worst behavior. She turned the shower on hot and stepped inside.
“I am a thirty-eight-year-old woman acting like a fourteen-year-old,” she said out loud.
She stayed in the shower until her skin was pink and her fingertips wrinkled. Emily hated manicures. Her nails were brittle and uneven, her hands large. Michael knew that. But would he see what she had done to make Chloe happy?
Back downstairs, dressed now, Emily followed Chloe’s hushed voice down the long hallway. In the guest bathroom at the end of the hall, its door closed, Chloe whispered to her mother.
“Then she said the granola was unhealthy, and I’m like, yeah, right, granola is bad for you. Why don’t you go smoke another cigarette?”
Emily pressed her face against the cool door. It was painted a color called Revolutionary War Blue, a color Emily had chosen from a seemingly endless array of paint chips. Back then, she’d been so hopeful. Hopeful that Chloe would fall in love with her, that the baby she was carrying then would be healthy and beautiful. Now, the name seemed appropriate to how it all turned out. Revolutionary War Blue.
Chloe sighed. “We’re going for manicures. Can you believe it?”
Emily walked back down the hallway quickly. She did not want to hear anymore. She had heard enough.
MICHAEL STOOD AT the oversized Weber gas grill, with its warming tray and multiple levels and the rack from which barbecue tools of every imaginable kind hung, and beamed at Emily and Chloe.
“You both look beautiful,” he said.
He turned the chicken over, then dug his iPhone from his pocket. “Hold up those lovely hands, ladies,” he said, and snapped their picture.
His happiness over this simple thing made Emily feel so tender toward him that she went to him and kissed his cheek. The manicures had actually been fun. And afterward they’d gone for tea at that funny little place around the corner. Maybe she just had to ease up. On Chloe. On herself.
“Frankly Scarlet,” she said.
Michael raised his eyebrows.
“The color,” she said, wiggling her red fingernails at him. “And Chloe’s is I’m Fondue of You.”
He grinned. “There’s a job,” he said. “Naming nail polish colors.” He slipped an arm around Emily’s waist, as easy as anything.
Chloe said, “Have you ever heard of the Addams Family?”
Emily and Michael both broke into the theme song, right up until the part where they snapped their fingers.
“O-kay,” Chloe said. “Anyway, there’s a whole line of nail polish named after them, but it’s all shades of black.”
“Is that what you were showing me today?” Emily said.
“That was Morticia,” Chloe laughed.
“Well, I am very glad you two chose Frankly Scarlet and I’m Fond of You instead,” Michael said.
“Fondue of you, Daddy!”
Emily snuggled closer to him. The apricot glaze on the chicken smelled sweet. The flowers behind them did too. For a moment, everything seemed right. But then Emily made the mistake of glancing at Chloe, who was busily text messaging, her phone on her lap, a frown on her face.
Emily remembered what Dr. Bundy had told her about how children of divorce feel torn between conflicting loyalties. Just watch, Dr. Bundy had said, just when you think you’ve won her over, she’ll report to her mother. Was that it? Was Chloe guilty for the few hours of fun they’d shared?
Michael was humming now. He basted the chicken, unaware. Emily used to try to talk about these things with him, but somehow she always ended up the bad guy. I’m the evil stepmother, she’d say to Maya.
Abruptly, Chloe got up and went in the house, her head bent, her face hidden by a curtain of hair.
Emily closed her eyes and imagined a baby waiting for them.
Soon, she thought. Soon.
MAYA
The Red Thread Adoption Agency was well known for many things: Maya’s responsibility, the quality of the babies, the guides it hired in China, the Western doctors who accompanied all of the families to China, and Maya’s personal touches. In particular, families like
d that she took time to visit each of them separately.
Once the documents had been sent to China, a red envelope arrived in the mail with a handwritten invitation from Maya inside. These invitations were personalized. A family with three hockey player sons might receive an invitation for pizza with Maya after she attended one of the games. A couple that lived near the beach might have an invitation for a seafood dinner.
Maya invited Nell and Benjamin Walker-Adams to dinner at Al Forno. It was one of the most famous restaurants in Providence, and although Maya preferred the coziness of New Rivers or the French flair at Chez Pascal, she suspected the Walker-Adamses liked to be seen where they thought people were watching.
When Benjamin Walker-Adams called, Maya assumed it was to accept the invitation and make a date.
But as soon as niceties were out of the way, he said, “I’d like to meet with you privately. Without Nell.”
Maya waited.
“Is that against the rules?” he said finally.
“No, not at all. It’s not unusual for someone to want something that he perhaps feels uncomfortable saying in front of his wife.”
“Do you sail, Ms. Lange?” Benjamin asked.
Maya hadn’t been on a sailboat—or any boat—since she left Hawaii. There, she and Adam had a tomato red sea kayak and a small sailboat named Nene. They used to sail around the harbor, with the skyscrapers of Honolulu watching them and Diamond Head standing guard. She packed picnics: cold lemon chicken and curried rice salad and pineapple cut into fat chunks. Later, she’d put plastic containers of Cheerios and mashed bananas in the basket.
“I don’t sail,” Maya said.
“That’s what I do when I want to clear my head. I get on my boat and I go. Ever since I was a kid, that’s what I did when I wanted to escape, or to think. My family has a house in Maine, and we always kept sailboats there, and when my mother couldn’t find me, she’d say, ‘Ben has taken off on one of the boats again.’”
“I don’t sail,” Maya said again. On the Nene, they would spot giant sea turtles, stingrays, even dolphins.
Benjamin sighed. “I got that,” he said. “I don’t know why I’m avoiding the subject like this. What I want to say, what I want to talk about, is that I don’t think I want to do this. The adoption.” He sighed again. “That’s the first time I’ve said it out loud.”
“This happens all the time,” Maya told him. It was true. During the course of the process, people often changed their minds. Sometimes many times. “I always tell my families to just let the process happen. You can always say no.”
Benjamin laughed. “You’ve met my wife. Do you really think that’s a possibility?”
“She is determined,” Maya said.
“We lived together for three years, perfectly happy. Then one day she comes into my study, and I’m completely focused on a case, and she says, out of the blue, ‘Fish or cut bait, Ben. Marry me or get the hell out.’ Six months later I’m in the south of France on my honeymoon.”
“I used to have a little sailboat,” Maya said, surprising herself. “And on the spur of the moment I would sometimes just take off on her. Nene. That was her name.”
“What? I thought—”
“I understand how it feels to catch good wind. It’s almost like flying.”
Now it was Benjamin who waited.
“But you always have to turn around and go back to shore, don’t you?”
“I don’t feel like I’m ready for this. The responsibility. Financially. Emotionally. All of it.”
“There are some things,” Maya said, “that if we waited for the perfect conditions, we would never do them.”
“Right,” Benjamin said.
He would wait it out, Maya thought when they hung up. He would panic and sail and worry. But in the end, he would not back out.
Samantha opened the door. “Mei is on the phone from China.”
“I used to have a sailboat. Nene. I loved that little boat,” Maya said.
“I can’t picture you doing that,” Samantha said. “Sailing.”
Something large and painful welled up in Maya. Why had she told Samantha that? What was she thinking?
Samantha was staring at her oddly, her eyes wide behind her pink cat glasses.
“It was a long time ago,” Maya said dismissively.
“Uh-huh.”
“Why are you just standing there?”
“The phone call?” Samantha said.
Maya stood and motioned Samantha out. “I’ll call her back.”
She closed the door firmly so that Samantha would know to stay away. Without thinking, Maya retrieved the phone number she’d scribbled off the computer and dialed it again.
But she got his voice mail again. Of course Adam wouldn’t be at his desk this early. She had made the same mistake last time.
Maya began to pack papers into her suitcase. She would work at home, she decided.
She paused. She sat back down in her chair and Googled the University of California, Santa Barbara. Then she found the number for their Marine Biology Department and dialed it.
“Marine Biology,” the young woman who answered said.
Maya could hear her chewing gum. She imagined a blond surfer girl, freckled and suntanned.
“Dr. Adam Xavier,” Maya said, her throat dry.
“Oh, man, he’s on sabbatical.”
“Sabbatical?” Maya said, trying to hide the overwhelming disappointment she felt.
“Yeah. They’re in Naples. Good jellyfish in the Bay of Naples.” Then the girl added, “He’s my advisor. He’s awesome.”
All of the information washed over Maya, but what stung was the word they, as in his entire little perfect family: Adam, wife, and baby Rain.
“Yes,” Maya managed.
“Do you want his personal email address? That’s the one he checks.”
“Yes,” Maya said, more emphatically than she would have liked.
This girl, this surfing marine biologist gum-chewer was offering her the safety of email. No sadness revealed. No words caught in her throat.
The girl was lazily saying the email address, but even so Maya had to ask her to repeat it.
Then she hung up, and hit Compose, and wrote:
Dear Adam, I know it has been a long time, and that perhaps I am the last person you want to hear from, but I would very much like to talk to you. Hope you are well. Maya
Without even rereading it, Maya hit Send. She could almost see her words flying across the Atlantic Ocean, drifting down to a computer somewhere in Naples, Italy, reaching Adam.
THEO
I am a man about to have an affair, Theo thought as he walked across the lobby of the Hotel Providence and then rode the elevator to the fourth floor where Nell Walker-Adams waited for him.
He repeated it again, out loud this time, as if trying it on, like a new suit. He didn’t feel guilty. Not at all. And that bothered him. Sophie’s face floated into his mind. Why did her openness, her immense understanding and kindness, annoy him so much?
As always, thinking about Sophie and the accompanying irritation that brought with it, made him think about Heather. Heather. Soul mate. Love of his life. She did not irritate him. Even now, after the terrible breakup all those years ago and the disappointments between them, despite everything, when Theo thought about Heather his whole body warmed.
He could almost feel her, the sharpness of her hips and elbows, the callused feet he used to rub aloe vera on. Heather smelled like sweat and Love’s Baby Soft, a cheap drugstore scent she sprayed on herself lavishly. She used cherry-flavored Chap Stick instead of lipstick so her lips were always a little waxy and tasted slightly medicinal. Heather’s hair, long and straight and blond, was usually pinned up carelessly or held tight in a little bun at the back of her neck. She wore long jersey skirts in jewel tones, and scoop-necked tops or T-shirts, always in black or white or gray. Theo loved these things about her. The combination of carelessness and discipline, her long dancer
’s legs and neck and cheap drugstore products.
By the time he got off the elevator, Theo had to pause. He had to stand in the hallway with all of those closed doors and clear his mind of Heather. Sometimes, she just overtook him again, the way she had during freshman orientation when he’d first glimpsed her looking bored and lovely in an emerald skirt that draped around her so elegantly that he thought he might faint. But he went and sat next to her, and smiled at her and wrote on his notebook so that she could see: Will you marry me? Heather wrote back, right under it: No. And then he wrote: Wait and see. They were together from then on. Every New Year’s Eve, he asked her out for the next three hundred and sixty-five nights, and she always said yes, until…Theo inhaled.
“I am a man about to have an affair,” he said out loud.
A door opened and a man in a suit came out, lugging an oversized suitcase. He nodded to Theo. Then he glanced back at him, to see if Theo had gone somewhere or if he was just standing in the hallway of the fourth floor. Before the guy called Security, Theo made his way to Room 424.
For some reason all Theo could think about when Nell opened the door was Anne Bancroft in The Graduate with her sexy black lingerie and Dustin Hoffman gawking at her, not believing his good luck. Nell was dressed in a black pencil skirt and a white button-down shirt, black stockings and very nice high heels. Nothing at all like Anne Bancroft, but still Theo couldn’t shake the image.
“I’m here for an affair,” he said.
But Nell didn’t get the reference to The Graduate. She just frowned at him and offered him a martini, the glass big and sweating.
“I was starting to think you weren’t coming,” Nell said.
Theo sipped the drink, which was very strong. He usually stuck to beer or wine.
“That you had a crisis of conscience,” Nell continued.
“Oddly,” Theo said, “quite the opposite.”
It felt strange standing here in a hotel room making small talk when the point was to have sex. So Theo gulped down his drink and reached for Nell, pulling her toward him roughly.